DIY Photography

Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time

Search

Submit A Story

Canon 7D Mark II Announced: 20.2MP, 1080p/60 Video, Native ISO 16000 And 3 Lenses

by 6 Comments

We knew it was coming and there you have it. Just one day ahead of Photkina and Canon announces the Canon 7D Mark II. While there are no big surprises, there is an interesting spec to go through:. But first the good news: The camera is planned to be be available for purchase in November for $1800 (though it is available for pre orders now).

As far as new stuff, Canon did not do much on the body, a bit smaller and a bit heavier than the mk1, but all the buttons just about remained the same. The internals however are completely renovated:

[Read More…]

The Importance of Face for Creating Artful Portraits With Real World Subjects

by 2 Comments

Tyler Stableford, a Colorado based fine art photographer, recently spent several months traveling through the United States working in collaboration with Canon on a portrait project titled The Farmers. In the seven minute long, Canon produced video, below, you’re invited to follow Stableford as he takes you behind the scenes of on one of his photoshoots, offering his insights and wisdom on how he goes about taking powerful and artistic portraits of real world subjects.

“Even if we’re in a beautiful area, a person’s face is so important to me, I’m always thinking ‘How shallow can I bring this depth of field,’ because I want the viewer to connect immediately and intimately to the subject and the subject’s face and eyes.”

[Read More…]

Sigma Gearing to Aim at Tamron With New Massive Telephoto Lens

by 3 Comments

It’s that time of the year again, and with Photokina back in session comes the inevitable new gear announcements, as well as the rumors leading up to them. This time, the rumors are about a new and upcoming telephoto lens from Sigma. Made for their Sports line, the 150-600mm F/5.6-6.3 lens seems to be a direct competitor to Tamron’s own recently released 150-600mm model.

[Read More…]

Future Is Bright: Magic Lantern RAW Footage In Canon Official Ad

by 8 Comments

We love Canon for taking a positive stand with Magic Lantern (in fact, we would not be surprised if when the entire ML story unfolds, it would be Canon who either funded or heavily tipped the custom firmware team)

It’s not that Canon cameras takes bad video, but with Magic Lantern, the footage is unarguably better. The well known hack, is an open source project that is available as a third party add-on for certain Canon camera models. Filmmakers consider Magic Lantern essential and many still photographers utilize it as well. It delivers photographers full control over bitrate and framerate, while providing the option for custom bulb timers, bracketing for exposure, and more. It basically fills in all the gaps left by, what some may consider, underwhelming Canon firmware.

[Read More…]

Canon and Microsoft Announce Patent Cross-Licensing Agreement: Future Windows Phone Camera Plans Ahead?

by Leave a Comment

Yesterday, Microsoft and Canon announced a new broad patent cross-licensing agreement, which will essentially grant the two giant companies licenses to each others patent portfolios.

While Microsoft and Canon have been known to partner up in the past, this time around the situation looks pretty different. There’s a number of reasons this agreement took place, and the top possibilities revolve around the mobile industry. Microsoft and Canon may not have disclosed the terms of the agreement, but they did mention that “certain digital imaging and mobile consumer products have been included in the agreement.”

With Microsoft’s recent business ventures with Nokia, the patent agreement may very well be the beginning of an involvement by Canon in Nokia’s Windows Phone line. With how heavily focused the mobile company is on its smartphone cameras in the Lumia line, Canon would be a great company to get support from.

[Read More…]

The Wonderful Tilt-Shift Effect You Get When Coupling A Mamiya Lens With A DSLR

by 3 Comments

Photographer and editor Chris Rutter constructed a fairly simple, yet powerful tilt shift camera by combining a Mamiya 45mm lens with a Canon 600D body.

I think that using a Mamiya lens is a stroke of genius for doing DIY tilt-shift lenses, mainly for two reasons: for one those lenses can be found on eBay for around 50-150 US Dollars and they provide superior quality for the price.

The second reason has to do with the optic qualities of large format lenses. A large format lens has to cover a large piece of film (or a large piece of sensor), as a result it casts a large image onto the film plane. This allows light to hit the sensor even if the image is tilted or shifted. But it gets better, the Flange Focal Distance – the distance a lens requires from its rear end to the film plane – is larger for medium format cameras so using a Mamiya lens allows having some bellows between the lens and body while still allowing non-macro photographs to be taken.[Read More…]

Sigma 50 Art Lens Compared With The Canon 50mm F1.2L

by 33 Comments

Up until recently the question of getting an original branded lens (e.g. Canon, Nikon) vs a 3rd Party lens (e.g. Sigma, Tamron) was not really a question. If you could afford the original brand lens, the answer was, go for the original.

However, with Sigma’s recent ART lenses things may have changed. Photographer Will Chao took both the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 ART lens and the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM Lens for a head to head battle and the results are not as conclusive anymore.

The photo at the top of the post and the photo below are an easy daylight test for the lenses. [Read More…]

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

by 10 Comments

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

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

by 40 Comments

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.
[Read More…]

Pocket Wizard Flex TT5: How To Trigger Nikon Flash With Canon or Trigger Canon Flash With Nikon

by 1 Comment

Back when I was photographing Ontario’s largest climbing gym, astute readers might have noticed that I was using both Nikon and Canon camera bodies interchangeably, but I was triggering a set of Nikon strobes (and one studio strobe).

To be more specific, I was using a Pocket Wizard Plus X as a transmitter on a Canon 5D Mk II, a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 transmitter on a Nikon D300, and three Nikon specific Pocket Wizard Flex TT5 receivers on my Nikon strobes (the remaining four strobes were triggered by optical slave – which just thinks bright light is bright light).

However, since Pocket Wizard Flex TT5s are brand specific – Nikon or Canon (and especially if you have ever tried this), you should be having a saaaaayyyyy whaaaaat moment right about now – because this unholy alliance won’t work out of the box.

In this article, I will show you how to convince your camera bodies to love everyone.

[Read More…]

Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

Recent Posts