Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Canon has filed yet another interesting patent: a gadget of the past and the future at the same time. Yes, it’s a selfie stick – but on the next level.
While the selfie stick is so 2014, Canon’s new patent adds an interesting twist to the gadget I thought we all forgot. It comes with a built-in camera and it automatically controls the focal length, as well as the length and angle of the stick itself.
On the used camera market, the question you always see is “How many actuations does it have?” It’s a perfectly reasonable question to ask. It’s no more weird than wanting to know how many miles the used car you’re about to buy has done. The more it’s done and the more it’s been used, the less life there’s likely to be left in it, right?
While some manufacturers don’t post the numbers publicly, pretty much all cameras come with some kind of expected shutter life count. These days, that number hovers somewhere between 100K and about 300K depending on the level of camera you buy. The Canon 5D Mark II was rated to 150K when it was released back in 2008. But this one, acquired by YouTuber FoxTailWhipz has over 2.2 million actuations and is still going strong.
As the world and technology are changing, photographers change their habits and choice of gear for the job. And surely a lot has happened in the industry over the past decade or so. Mirrorless cameras have exploded in popularity, many major manufacturers have had issues (especially during the COVID-19 pandemic), and Olympus even sold its business. So, what is the No. 1 choice for photographers when it comes to camera brands and models?
Folks over at Shotkit decided to find out. They surveyed 1,000 photographers to answer the question: What camera do amateur and professional photographers use in 2022? They say that the results surprised them, and honestly, some of them surprised me as well.
No matter which team you shoot for, it seems that the Canon EF mount has sort of become the de facto universal standard for (almost) all of them. Kind of like the lens equivalent of a Bowens mount. And if the camera you’re using doesn’t have a native EF mount, whatever mount you do have can be easily adapted. Now that adaption seems to have come to Nikon Z cameras, thanks to Meike.
Meike’s new MK-EFTZ-B adapter lets you mount Canon EF and EF-S lenses onto Nikon Z bodies with full autofocus support and aperture control from the camera body. It even appears to support Canon’s IS lens stabilisation system, too, according to Meike’s description of the product on their website and also transmits EXIF data along to the camera body.
7Artisans has been showing off a couple of new APS-C lenses on Chinese social media platforms. One is a very wide angle ultra lightweight 4mm f/2.8 lens designed for use on drones while the other is a slightly less wide (but still pretty wide) 12mm T2.9 cinema lens. Both lenses appear to be manual focus lenses but beyond that, there isn’t much information available about them yet. We do know what mounts they’ll be available for.
Despite reportedly showing the new lenses off on Chinese social media, the two lense shave yet to make an appearance on the 7 Artisan website. But from the images teased, we can see that the 12mm T2.9 cine lens will be available in Sony E, MFT, Fuji X, Nikon Z, Leica L and Canon RF mount. The 4mm f/2.8 drone lens, though, will only be available for Sony E, Fuji X, MFT and Canon EF-M mounts.
It’s true that we’ve seen a lot of lights at the IBC Show, many of which have been interesting updates. But it’s rare that you find a company prepared to completely reinvent things and come up with something totally different.
DIYP were excited to discover Pipe Lighting which was showing off its truly innovative lighting designs. We chatted to CEO and co-owner, Eduard Bochanov to find out more.
When it comes to macro lenses, the name that springs to mind most these days is Laowa, produced by Venus Optics. Now, they’ve added another new one to their lineup, the Laowa 58mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO designed specifically for mirrorless cameras. Like Laowa’s other lenses, it’s a manual focus lens, and this one comes in four full-frame flavours. Sony E, Canon RF, Nikon Z and Leica L mounts.
The new lens offers a 40.9° field of view on full-frame sensors and focuses all the way from 2:1 magnification to infinity, making it suitable for not just macro but also portraits or a general walkaround lens. It features an apochromatic (APO) design to suppress chromatic aberration as well as 3 ED and 3 Ultra-High Refractive Index lenses for maximum sharpness.
We all strive for the highest quality of footage when we’re filming. But let’s face it, bad audio will sink your video faster than you can say ‘iceberg ahead’.
With that in mind, there are many many options of microphones for recording stellar audio, all suited to different needs. DIYP caught up with Colberg Ambassador Karim Yatrib to learn more about Synco‘s so-new-it-isn’t-released-yet G3 Wireless microphones.
It’s crazy fast, portable, and so rugged they actually tested it by landing a helicopter on top of it! Yes, you read that correctly, a real-life actual helicopter! If that’s not proof that OWC‘s latest portable storage device should hold up under even Indiana Jones-style conditions then I’m not sure what is.
DIYP was obviously intrigued by this claim, so found Sam Mestman from OWC to learn more about it.
Large productions using several cameras shooting 8K means that there will be a lot of data to both store and somehow get from the cameras to the rest of the creative team working on post-production. Add to this infrastructure problems and teams often being situated around the world and you’ve got some quite complicated problems to solve.
Luckily, OWC specialises in solving these exact issues. DIYP spoke to Sam Mestman from OWC to find out more about larger storage options for productions and teams.
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