Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
“Hey, mom, what is going on here?”
“Oh my goodness, let me take a look. THAT is you at 2 weeks of age.”
“Why am I hanging from a tree in this one picture? That’s weird. And, holy shit, mom, I’m in a nest of fire in this other one.”
“Stephen, don’t be ridiculous. You weren’t really in a tree or in fire. We just wanted it to look that way.”
When it comes to shooting photos or video on drones, it quickly becomes apparent that filters are key to getting the best footage. And the first name that springs to mind for drone filters is PolarPro. They’ve pretty much been the leading company for drone camera filters since they started taking to the air.
Today, though, PolarPro announce that they’re expanding their range to include larger lenses for DSLRs, mirrorless and cinema cameras with the new QuartzLine series of filters. It looks like their whole range for drones has been scaled up to fit the larger lenses in a variety of sizes.
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.
The fascination with degrading the performance of our gear is interesting. On the one hand, why does a person spend thousands of dollars on equipment to want to do that? On the other, it can have some neat visual effects, even if that’s sometimes down to luck. Regardless of the reasons, or what kit is being used, it’s quite popular. Even if just to play and experiment with. In this video, the guys at the Cooperative of Photography (COOPH) show us 8 ways to make our own DIY lens filters to get some of these effects.
With a new year comes new products. There’s already been a couple of new ones announced yesterday by DJI, including the DJI Osmo Mobile 2. And here’s another one for mobile photographers and filmmakers from Moment Lenses.
Moment lenses have become rather popular and are often found in the serious mobile photographer’s toolbag. But one of the biggest questions they’ve received concerns the use of filters. Specifically, how the heck do you attach one? Moment have answered this call with a new 62mm filter adapter, allowing photographers and filmmakers to use many of their existing filters.
Irix, the Swiss lens manufacturers are branching out into new products besides lenses. The natural extension to lenses is filters. While Irix lenses do come with rear filter holders, you often need them on the front. Things like polarisers and graduated NDs are impossible to work with when sandwiched between the lens and body. So, to tackle this issue, Irix have today announced a new 100mm filter holder system.
The Irix IFH-100 is a dedicated adapter designed to hold 100mm wide filters. The filter is made of aluminium alloy, allowing for a compact size with a lot of strength. The front side of the filter is also lined with light absorbing fabric to prevent internal reflections. Irix have also announced a range of 100mm filters to go along with the new holder.
When I took on photography, there were a lot of filters to consider. ND, Haze, warming, cooling, grad-ND, polarizers. Heck, I had so many filters that sometimes they needed a little bag of their own inside my photography bag. Today though, most of the filters can be mimicked with photoshop.
Landscape photographer Mark Denney makes an interesting point, he shows three of the more common filters, ND, Grad-ND and a circular polarizer and while two of those filters can be replaced with photoshop-work. Mark asks a simple question, would you rather be spending your time editing in front on a computer, or hiking and shooting behind a camera.
Neutral density filter reduces the amount of light going into the lens, so you can take long exposures even when the light is bright.
Long exposures blur anything moving, like water, clouds, or people. This can be very useful for making choppy water look smooth, making clouds streak, or getting rid of people at a tourist attraction.
These types of filters usually cost up to $200 (especially on big diameter lenses), but with this simple hack, you can make it for only $5.[Read More…]
The “protective” filter debate rages on as always, but whether for them or against them, how do they all stack up? The folks over at Lens Rentals wanted to know. The man assigned to the task, Roger Cicala, didn’t really want to know, though. He’ll “get around to it some day”, he said. “Some day” came when he was told that it would involve lasers.
The test is to essentially see which filters will, theoretically, degrade your image the least. Which causes the least amount of light loss, reflection, refraction and distortion. So, 21 popular UV & protective filters were put to the test. It’s not entirely scientific, but it does involve lasers. The results are in and some of them are quite surprising.
With the Great American Eclipse on Aug 21 only a few weeks away, I decided to put together some solar filters. With the high travel costs to get to the eclipse from Southern California, I saved some money through purchasing the solar filter sheets instead of the pre-made filters. To facilitate a fast detachment during totality, compared to a screw on filter, I made some cardboard holders that fit into my Lee filter holder.
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