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Is Nikon Repeating Canon’s Mistake Or Does It Have An Ace Up Its Sleeve?

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August 23, 2007 was a day no Canon executive would like to remember. That was the day Nikon announced its new DX format flagship, the D300.

Saying that the D300 was the Canon 40D’s new competitor would be a wild overstatement as they weren’t really competing. Nikon’s new camera slapped the 40D into a whole different time zone!

Nikon further strengthened its hold on the semi-professional market two years later with the release of the D300s. At this point Nikon had completely dominated the mid-range market.

It was only in September 2009 that Canon had caught up and announced a true competitor worthy of challenging the undisputed mid-range king.

There is no doubt that Nikon greatly benefited from Canon’s failure to respond to the D300/s. Why, then, would Nikon now repeat Canon’s mistake?

[Read More…]

Jazz With A Camera – Are You Really Familiar With Your Gear?

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Jazz with a camera… quick, can you answer these questions instantly or do you have to think about them… thinking means you need more work. If you were playing a solo you cannot ‘think’ about how to make an f# cause that moment is passed, man… blowin’ by. Just sayin’… You should be able to answer these questions instantly: [Read More…]

Canon Rumored to Dominate the Megapixel War Once Again. Nikon and Sony to be left behind?

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Photography newcomers may not be aware, but until 2012 a fierce war took place. A war that lead to the demise of many loved cameras and the birth of many more advanced models – the megapixel war (or the ultrapixel war).

Temporarily put to rest with the release of Nikon’s record-smashing 36MP D800, it seems that the ultrapixel war will soon be making an impressive comeback.

[Read More…]

Good News For Canon 70D Owners – It Just Got Magic Lantern Booted

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Over at Magic Lantern forum we saw a happy announcement today. According to nikfreak, the Popular 70D just got “Boot Disk Enabled“. A boot disk for a DSLR is kind of similar to providing an autoexec.bat to a dos system via an external system. It enables a user (or a developer) to instruct the camera to run a dedicated set of commands.

This of course marks a big step for porting Magic Lantern over to the Canon 70D, which is in the market for over a year.

The announcement came yesterday, with an image to show…

Enabling Magic lantern on the sub $1.000 Canon 70D is quite interesting. Aside from the low cost this camera boasts a 22MP sensor and a Dual Pixel CMOS AF which provides smooth focusing in live view and video modes which may be an awesome feature for videographers.

It would be interesting to follow up on this….

[via reddit]

Why You Only Need One Lens To Make World Class Images

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I’ve been a professional photographer for 6 years and like most photographers I have invested in a number of high quality lenses (check my kit over at InMyBag), but have recently concluded that this has been a waste of money.

It’s not that these are not great lenses, but I truly prefer to use a single lens.

At first, I used other lenses and always changed lenses during the shoot. Once I started using my 50 mm prime lens, I slowly started using the others less and less, until now I shoot everything with that ones.

I’ve hesitated from selling my other lenses because they can occasionally be useful for some jobs, but what 50 mm gives to me, it’s totally great. I feel comfortable with it, and now I know it so well, that I really do use it constantly.

So, here’s why I think that you only need one lens to make world class images:

[Read More…]

Video Showing How Light Travels In a Digital Camera

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http://youtu.be/ezIZjFt80kQ

Even with digital images existing for over 40 years, the process of light becoming an image inside a box still somewhat magical. This movie takes the Nokia Lumia 1020 and breaks down how light transverses the lens, shutter, hitting the sensor, goes into the imaging processor and finally arriving at the LCD. Some of the early stages if entry also show the different lens elements and the images stabilization mechanism.

While the process of smartphone-photography is not 100% similar to the process on a DSLR, it gives a pretty good idea on the light path while keeping it magical.

[Behind the lens of a 41MP Nokia Lumia 1020 via popphoto]

P.S. If you are a Lumia fan, you can see 50 of them in action here.

This Remote Controlled BuggyCam Looks Like Even More Fun To Use Than A Drone

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This is what you get when you put a BBC wildlife cameraman (Rob Drewett) and a buggy racer/design engineer (Andy Nancollis) together in the same workspace: a really sweet looking 4WD buggy that can pack your camera over all sorts of terrain at speeds of up to 40mph. Collectively called Motion Impossible, the two based the BuggyCam design on a race proven remote controlled vehicle, and as though that wasn’t cool enough, Drewett and Nancollis made it even better by developing their V-CON camera mount system to pair with a Freefly Movi M15 stabilizer ($11,995), which means you can use it to get professional quality photos and smooth video.

It also means it’s sturdy enough to carry professional grade photography and cinematography equipment. In fact, in the two clips below, you can see the guys using it to tote around a RED while shooting on location in a forest and also capturing some great footage of a peregrine in flight.[Read More…]

Tiffen Announces Pro Power LED for On-The-Go Photographers

Today Tiffen announced that the Lowel Pro Power LED is now available for purchase (at $600). Tiffen says that its perfect for the photographer with on-the-go shooting and small location setups. I am constantly on-the-go and lugging around studio lights gets to be a bit cumbersome. Lets see what they have done to make this setup different.[Read More…]

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