Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
It’s true that we’ve seen a lot of lights at the IBC Show, many of which have been interesting updates. But it’s rare that you find a company prepared to completely reinvent things and come up with something totally different.
DIYP were excited to discover Pipe Lighting which was showing off its truly innovative lighting designs. We chatted to CEO and co-owner, Eduard Bochanov to find out more.
When it comes to macro lenses, the name that springs to mind most these days is Laowa, produced by Venus Optics. Now, they’ve added another new one to their lineup, the Laowa 58mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO designed specifically for mirrorless cameras. Like Laowa’s other lenses, it’s a manual focus lens, and this one comes in four full-frame flavours. Sony E, Canon RF, Nikon Z and Leica L mounts.
The new lens offers a 40.9° field of view on full-frame sensors and focuses all the way from 2:1 magnification to infinity, making it suitable for not just macro but also portraits or a general walkaround lens. It features an apochromatic (APO) design to suppress chromatic aberration as well as 3 ED and 3 Ultra-High Refractive Index lenses for maximum sharpness.
We all strive for the highest quality of footage when we’re filming. But let’s face it, bad audio will sink your video faster than you can say ‘iceberg ahead’.
With that in mind, there are many many options of microphones for recording stellar audio, all suited to different needs. DIYP caught up with Colberg Ambassador Karim Yatrib to learn more about Synco‘s so-new-it-isn’t-released-yet G3 Wireless microphones.
It’s crazy fast, portable, and so rugged they actually tested it by landing a helicopter on top of it! Yes, you read that correctly, a real-life actual helicopter! If that’s not proof that OWC‘s latest portable storage device should hold up under even Indiana Jones-style conditions then I’m not sure what is.
DIYP was obviously intrigued by this claim, so found Sam Mestman from OWC to learn more about it.
Large productions using several cameras shooting 8K means that there will be a lot of data to both store and somehow get from the cameras to the rest of the creative team working on post-production. Add to this infrastructure problems and teams often being situated around the world and you’ve got some quite complicated problems to solve.
Luckily, OWC specialises in solving these exact issues. DIYP spoke to Sam Mestman from OWC to find out more about larger storage options for productions and teams.
Just when you thought DIYP couldn’t get enough COB LED lights, we had a little look at Colbor’s latest offering in the market. But this one isn’t the monster-sized light aimed at large productions and broadcasts that we’ve seen at IBC 2022. This one is firmly aimed toward the solo filmmaker or people with smaller budget needs. But it’s still just as awesome. We talk to Colbor ambassador Karim Yatrib about the new Colbor CL60.
The CL60 is an extremely compact COB LED spotlight which has a particularly unique feature. It can be used by itself as a stand-alone light, or it can be mounted together with up to 8 other CL60 lights to create a powerful light bank which uses one light as a master and the others as slaves.
Sony has revealed the world’s first Full-Frame PTZ (Pan/Tilt/Zoom) interchangeable lens camera with their brand new FR7. Aimed firmly at live productions and cinema, the camera is fully compatible with the entire range of over 70 Sony E-mount lenses.
This is quite a game changer in terms of PTZ cameras, and DIYP was excited to find out more about the FR7. Here we talk to Hiroaki Nakao from Sony who walks us through the key features.
DJI has announced their newest handheld smartphone gimbal, the DJI Osmo Mobile 6. Over its predecessor, DJI says that it comes with a larger clamp for supporting the ridiculously large smartphones that companies seem to be releasing these days (for real, how big do they think our pockets are?) along with a new Quick Launch feature as well as the updated Active Track 5.0 subject tracking features.
A new built-in status panel allows you to quickly see and set your mode – of which there are four – as well as being able to easily keep an eye on your battery levels. A new Side Wheel allows you to adjust zoom and focus without touching your phone while the more powerful motors help to keep your smartphone’s camera steadier than previous Osmo Mobile gimbals.
Popular filter manufacturer NiSi has teased a new lens through the Chinese social media platform Weibo. This would be the second lens NiSi has produced since announcing the NiSi 15mm f/4 manual focus lens for full-frame mirrorless cameras last January. There isn’t a whole lot of information about the new lens yet, although we do know that it will have a focal length of 9mm and a maximum aperture of f/2.8.
Beyond that, there isn’t really any other information, although in a second Weibo post, the company did suggest that the new lens will be weather sealed and water resistant. The ring around the bottom of the lens in the photos also appears to be silicone or some other kind of rubber that would also help to prevent dust and water ingress into the camera body.
Virtual production. It’s definitely a whole other world, but you’d be surprised to learn that many of the principles of photography and video are also important in virtual production and VR too. “It’s about using real-time computer graphics in your production,” explains Technical Director from Mo-Sys, James Uren.
James explains that it’s critical for the VR people working on the renders to know the exact location of the camera in the real-life scene. This is because they need to create the VR world from the exact same perspective, or the whole illusion fails. To do this, they track the camera using a tracking system. And that is one of the things that Mo-Sys does, along with producing camera robotics. James spoke to DIYP about their Star Tracker device.
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