Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
A few months ago, I gave a masterclass about how to create colorful portraits. One of the setups was a unique portrait with a model “trapped” inside a light-painted circle. I wanted to share how I created that portrait using a drill, a found garden hose, and a couple of KYU-6 LED lights.
You may hear me saying “don’t try this at home” a couple of times. If you do decide to defy me, please use soft materials like a garden hose and soft KYU-6 lights. (vs., say, a broomstick).
UPDATE: This giveaway has now ended. Scroll to the end to see if you won. Huge thank you to our sponsors for the prizes and support.
With IBC starting this week, we are excited to start our traditional IBC cinema gear giveaway. And this year, we have partnered with top brands to give you the best package to kickstart (or elevate) your Cinematography Career.
Among this year’s participating brands are Sachtler, Sennheiser, B&H, SmallRig, Insta360, Prograde, OWC, Spekular, and Tether Tools. For the full list of amazing prizes hit the rest of the post.
All you have to do to participate is tell us the brand of camera you are shooting with.
This giveaway ends on Tueday, September 20th!
Everybody hates Instagram.
Well, not everybody, but it sure sounded like that this week. You certainly heard two Kardashian sisters, a Change.org petition and high-profile bloggers raising their voices in opposition to Instagram’s shifting to a virtual all-video platform.
It’s all part of the effort for Instagram and sister app Facebook to try and catch onto the success of TikTok, the China based app that has made a huge dent in not just Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, but Google as well.
With a raise of hand, how many of you have more than one battery for your photography gear? More than 2? More than 5? More than 10? I personally have more than 20. Each with its own proprietary charger. Actually, with all those chargers, I am not surprised that some people build a small shrine to worship all those battery maintenance devices.
With some engineering background, this seems highly inefficient. Why not make one standard to charge all batteries. Well, there is such a standard, it’s called USB-C. And Nitecore just brought a Sony-compatible battery that charges via USB-C, the Nitecore UFZ100 (announced here). It has some other perks as well. hit the jump to learn more.
Update: This giveaway has now ended, jump to the end of the post to see if you won.
For this giveaway, we’ve partnered with Zhiyun to give away a Smooth-Q4 gimbal to a lucky winner.
We chose this gimbal because it is amazingly small, and it folds to fit in your pocket. This makes it perfect for those times when you travel or explore and just need something better than a selfie stick. All you have to do to enter this giveaway is to let us know what color you prefer for your gimbal (assuming you could get them in any color of the rainbow).
The giveaway ends on July 22nd!
For the last five years, I’ve been using a ThinkTank Photo Airport International bag for my video needs, and I love it to pieces. Sadly, as the years went by and as my kit got larger, I needed more space. I did not want to carry a second case, so I was looking for a similar roller case but with more space. After looking at a few options, I got the newly announced OR-516 from Orca for $323.00.
What can I say I love it. It has a lot of character and plenty of space and protection. For the full review hit the jump.
Some things are unforgivable! Your audience will forgive a few seconds of blurry footage, a little bit of over-exposure, but kill their audio and they will flip to another channel.
Joby sent us their new line of Wavo mics (POD, AIR, and PRO) and we’re going to use them to demonstrate our top five vlogging audio mistakes to avoid, and how to fix them.
You know how your camera always wants friends? A monitor, a recorder, transmitters, mics, and more. (And then the friends want their own friends, like batteries, memory cards, and so on, but this is another topic). Well, all those “friends” need a place to live on your setup, and the new iFootage Spider Crabs could easily be the BFF in this group.
The Spider Crabs are a set of magic arms. Those are articulating arms with small ball heads on either side and a central knob if you are not familiar. When you tighten the central “elbow” knob, it locks the entire arm together. This makes it really easy to mount accessories and move them with ease.
A few weeks back, we asked you how many bubble gums we could fit inside one Lowepro PhotoSport bag—the 24-liter version. 1,198 of you made a guess, and I must say, you were pretty close!
Here is the idea, some of you are math wizards, some are bubble gum experts (huh?), and some work in candy stores. But, then, some of you have no clue about bubble gum, or bags, or volume calculations. But guess what? The results could not have been more surprising.
Running with a small crew can be a challenge but if you are coming well prepared, it could be an advantage. Being just one person, or running with a small team means that you can keep things light, move around and generally if you play your cards right, you can set up and teardown relatively fast. While having a big crew is nice, some jobs just call for smaller, light crews. Today, lets dive into the world of “one man” production.
Specifically in this video, I want to talk about creating cinematic interviews. A one-person team does not mean you need to give up on location, sound, or lighting. Most of it comes down to your approach and choices of gear. Hit the jump to see how I handle this.
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