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See How The Canon 500mm F/4 L Lens Is Made

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Canon’s 500mm F/4 L IS II Lens is a $10,499 behemoth. It is a second generation of the 500 f/4 L glass, following a v1 stabilized unit. Both are considered top of the line lenses.

It is amazing to see that part of the production process includes manually crashing optical glass by hand. Than on the other hand, after the glass has been ground and polish it is handled with care saved for diamonds.

If you want to cry, jump to 8:46 where you see an entire tray of the front element simply sitting on a cleaning table.

[How It’s Made – Canon 500mm f/4 L Lens via Janoeliop]

P.S. unsurprisingly, Lee Filters are going through a similar process

Why We Started Photography in the First Place

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When I was in high school, I started messing around with my dad’s DSLR. It was a Canon EOS 20D, and we had two different lenses for it. I started carrying it around and taking pictures of stuff I thought looked cool. Then I took whatever Photoshop skills I’d been accumulating since the 7th grade and started editing the hell out of everything I shot. It was an entirely new hobby for me, and I eventually started wanting to make short films and try putting together a portfolio.

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Photographer Wally McNamee Talks About His Time With John F. Kennedy

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“He would allow people to photograph his most unguarded moments with his family.”

Wally McNamee used to work for Newsweek, a job that took him everywhere from basketball courts to the White House itself. Many of the photos he’s taken over the course of his life have now become a part of history itself, and some of his most important work came from his time photographing John F. Kennedy.

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Getting a Complete Day Of Battery power For a camera and Monitor for $150

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If you were not satisfied with the 9 hours battery solution we shared last week, Caleb Pike shares an even better solution that not only lasts more than a day of shooting HD on a DSLR, but it can also power a monitor for that day.

The solution is build around a (bit shaky) NP-F970 Battery Adapter which is compatible with Canon in via a similar adapter to the one we showed last week.

Now Caleb is pretty upfront about the build quality of the unit which apparently is not that awesome, but on the flip side of it, it is very budget friendly. [Read More…]

Comparing Video: a $600 Galaxy Note vs. a $3500 Canon 5D Mk III Is Pretty Surprising

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I guess a few years back this title would have made me laugh. How are those even comparable. Some were courageous enough to ask how they compare and analyze the resulting footage. And by some I mean cinematographer Alec Weinstein.

I mean the Canon 5DmkIII was used in shooting Black Swan, Captain America and House and it costs about $3500 without a lens, while the Galaxy Note 3 costs $600 and was used to shoot…. well…. cute cats and babies. It does however sports a 4K resolution.

The video is set up pretty cleverly, the lighting is not very challenging – all bright daylight; focal length has been adjusted, and shutter was matched at about 1/200th .Each shot is a few seconds, see if you can spot which shot was taken with which camera. Some are not that trivial to figure out.
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3 (+1) DIY Backdrops That You Find Right At Home

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When I started photography I was very interested in learning everything I can about studio photography. Obviously, I didn’t have a studio back then, so I needed to work with what I had to create photographs that looked just as good as their studio-taken counterparts.

Here are three different backdrops I used to create a high-end feeling to my photos. You can find them all in your house. Plus an additional cool background you can use which is made out of tarpaulin.[Read More…]

LAPD Reaches Out to Social Media and Launches a Crowd-Sourcing Tool For Gathering Photo and Video Evidence

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Recently, there was a riot in Isla Vista, California. As the investigation behind it continues, the LAPD’s decided to try something unusual in the hopes of gathering evidence; they’re initiating an online app designed for users to help out by submitting their own photos.

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VSCO Gains Recognition as it Receives $40 Million in Investments

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Visual Supply Company [VSCO] is a small company in Oakland, California. Right now, they employ 43 people. You’ve probably seen their name pop up on the photography charts in the iOS and Google Play app stores; that would be VSCO Cam, the company’s image-editing app, which has basically become an absolute must have for mobile photographers. Proving that they’re not just another filter processor, the company’s gained almost a cult-like following because of their commitment to film emulation. Reports are now coming in that another company’s seeing potential in them as well, with Accel Partners announcing their investment of $40 million into VSCO.

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How A Complete Photography Bag Looks When X-Rayed

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I’ve been working with Guy Viner and until now I am not really sure if he is more talented or more crazy. We discussed the idea of submitting his kit to In My Bag and he came up with a brilliant concept of submitting his bag X-Rayed (that must have come from the crazy half). This is not the first time Guy X Rays photography items. Our last rundevues was with a set of X-rayed Nikon Lenses. Below, you can find the complete kit plus some interesting observations Guy had after finishing fiddling with the X ray camera and his kit.

The kit is organized by numbers so it could be fun to treat this as a quiz and see if you can identify each of the parts before hitting the jump and seeing what each piece is.[Read More…]

Amazon’s New Patent: Why We Should Probably Chill Out

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There’s been news circulating around of a new patent Amazon’s recently secured itself with, and it sounds a bit ridiculous when you take a look at the headlines coming out. For those who don’t know, Amazon basically patented a type of photography where one light is shining straight at the subject, along with light completely filling the background; in other words, seamless white background photography.

The patent was granted back in March, but news of this made the rounds just yesterday, angering many voices in the online photography community. The good news, however, is that there might not be that much cause for concern in the first place.

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