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Signili Review – Invisible Digital Watermark to Protect Your Photos from Copyright Infringement

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If you share your photography online, you know that your images will be re-distributed and re-published without your permission.

If you are a professional photographer, or a photo enthusiast, you probably also realize that rampant online copyright infringement costs creative professionals a significant amount of lost revenue – every image that is published without a valid license is a lost sale for someone.

If you have always wanted to fight back against copyright infringement, or if you just want to see exactly who is using your photography where, one solution is to apply an invisible digital watermark to your photography.

In this article, we will review Signili, a new service that can add invisible watermarks (as hidden copyright information) to your photos, and then help track exactly where those photos are used online…

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First impressions of the Tamron 70-210mm f/4 Di VC USD Lens

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Working on hitting the trifecta, Tamron has released a new lens which includes a very respectable 70-210mm focal range, a quality packaged compact footprint, and a price targeted at starting shooters. The folks at Midwest Photo and Tamron were kind enough to provide me with a pre-release copy, so I happily took it for a spin.

Before we get too deep into my first impressions, let me tell you that I wouldn’t normally consider a lens in this focal range, with anything less than a f/2.8 aperture available to me. I decided it would be worth considering what this lens had to offer, so here we are. I won’t jump to the conclusion just yet, but let me quickly summarize here and let you know that I enjoyed shooting with this lens and it has some surprising features in store for its price point.

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Laowa 15mm f/2 Sony FE Review

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Most of you have probably heard of the name Laowa by now. They were a rather unknown brand up until recently when they made name for themselves in the landscape photography world with the Laowa 12mm f/2.8 wide angle lens that was well received. Laowa (Venus Optics) is a Chinese brand known for their innovative lenses. Laowa is showing support to the Sony E-mount with releasing their 15mm f/2 that was specifically designed for the E-mount making it possible to make it smaller and lighter than the lenses they make for DSLR mounts. 2 years ago I met the Laowa guys at Photokina and I already briefly tested the prototype of the 15mm there. I was impressed with the sharpness across the frame and was eager to try out the final version. Now that I have this lens for a while I feel confident to write a decent review about it. I used this lens in my own country the Netherlands and took it to Dubai, Norway and Iceland. I have seen a bunch of reviews online but they were mainly technical without a lot of real world examples. In this review I’ll discuss how this lens performs in ‘real world usage’. Most people who are reading my articles know that I am a landscape photographer so you can expect a lot of landscape photography use with this lens.

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Action light Death Match: Lume Cube vs. Litra Torch

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Face it, if you want an action-light (those small on-your-motorcycle cube lights), there are two options in the market: the Lume Cube (Amazon, B&H) and the Litra Torch (Amazon, B&H). They are both great lights if you are doing any sorts of action sports photography, they are compact, light, have some resistance to the elements and hold a few hours if you avoid max power. But which is the better light? Which of those light will give you the most bang for your buck? we set out to find out and ran the two lights through a battery of (sometimes ridiculous) tests.

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Rockin’ out with Kodak TMAX P3200

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Lead by spunky frontgirl Ashley Miles, Vinyl Rhino is my favorite cover band in Frederick, Maryland.  For years, they’ve rocked our bars with high energy hits from the 80’s to what’s current.  Saturday night they stopped by Champions and blew the roof off the place.  I was there to capture it on the newly re-released Kodak TMAX P3200.

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Moment lenses for Smartphones: Thoughts after a month

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You may remember that a little while back I wrote a first look at the Moment lenses (these: Moment lenses) and I was pretty impressed with the build quality. The image quality was pretty good too. One of my concerns, though, was that they are pretty large and heavy compared to other lens systems that I’ve used in the past and I wasn’t sure whether that would affect how I used them or not. We all know the old adage of the best camera is the one you have with you. So I thought that maybe because of the size and weight, I would eventually decide that I couldn’t be bothered to carry them around with me, which would make them not that useful.

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DIYP reviews the Zhiyun Crane 2 motorised 3-axis gimbal stabiliser

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Ever since I got to play with the original Zhiyun Crane at Photokina 2016 I’ve wanted to put one of these things to work and see how it handles. I’ve used a number of smaller gimbals for phones, but the ability to load up a DSLR or mirrorless camera offers huge benefits. I almost never invest in the first generation of anything, but then they released the Zhiyun Crane 2.

GearBest got in touch with us to see if we wanted to check one out for ourselves and how it might help with the content we create here on DIYP. With The Photography Show and other events coming up where we need to shoot video, it seemed like a great opportunity to give it a good workout and really put it through its paces. But it’s quickly become one of my favourite video creation tools.

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Four weeks hands on with the iMac Pro

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I am not going to bore you with the how and why I was able to get my hands on a $5,000 iMac Pro for a few weeks. Let’s just say I’m glad that I’ve already had my firstborn, otherwise I think I’d be delivering him to someone else.

Let’s start with the packaging – yes I know, the packaging. I really, really wanted to not be a fanboy about this and I really don’t appreciate other reviews that talk about the packaging of a product because who cares, right?

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Using diffusion filters – LEE ‘Soft’ Filters 1 to 5 comparison test

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I’ve used diffusion filters for years but rarely for their intended purpose. If you don’t know or haven’t heard of them, then diffusion filters are transparent glass or plastic sheets that go in front of the lens and they diffuse the light as it enters the camera. The resulting images taken with a diffusion filter have an appearance of reduced contrast that ultimately looks hazy offering a slightly dream-like effect.

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