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The new Zoom H8 records up to 12 audio tracks and once and kind of looks like a spider

 

 

Zoom has announced the new Zoom H8 Handy Recorder, their newest field recorder which can record up to 12 tracks simultaneously using 8 separate input signals. It’s also expandable through various separately available capsules for recording 360-degree ambisonic audio or to take it up to 12 total inputs.

It features a bunch of analogue input dials, but what makes it particularly interesting is the 2.4″ touchscreen colour LCD and the “app-driven” interface it offers to provide several main modes of operation. There’s a Podcast App, a Music App and a Field App to cover a multitude of uses. And, yeah, it kinda looks like a spider when all the cables are plugged in.

This “long-distance wet plate portrait” was taken in isolation thanks to video chat

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To keep themselves busy and creative in isolation, some photographers are turning to alternative shooting methods such as video chat. Shane Balkowitsch is one of them, and he did something that I find pretty extraordinary. He didn’t only conduct a portrait shoot online via video chat, which is amazing on its own. He created a wet plate portrait from his US home, photographing his friend in the UK via Zoom video call.

Here is a simple Photoshop zoom trick you probably didn’t know

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Whatever you do in Photoshop, chances are there are a few ways to do it. The same goes for zooming in and out when you need to work on details of an image. In this video from Photoshop Training Channel, Jesús Ramirez shows you a quick and simple trick for zooming in that you may not have discovered yet.

The Rylo 360 camera gets zoom and timelapse feature with the latest firmware update

The Rylo 360 camera was published a year and a half ago, and the company is apparently listening to its customers’ suggestions. With the latest firmware update, the camera brings you two great new features: zoom and timelapse effects within your 360-degree videos. What’s also great is that you don’t have to buy a new camera to get these features. All you need to do is upgrade the one you already own, as it was the case when the company introduced the 5.8K resolution.

These trippy double exposure photos were made entirely in camera

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Both double exposure and light painting photography open up a whole new world of creative possibilities. But photographer Jason Rinehart has combined the two techniques and created a set of photos that grabbed my attention the moment I saw them. These trippy (and slightly creepy) photos were created entirely in-camera, and I chatted with Jason about how he created them.

Nvidia’s new “computational zoom” tech lets you change composition in post

This whole “computational photography” thing always felt a little bit weird. But it also intrigued me. The idea that a computer can realistically create things that weren’t actually shown in the original shot is pretty amazing. Maybe it was seeing this scene in Blade Runner as a kid that did it for me. It was pure fantasy back then, but we’re getting there.

A new “computational zoom” technology developed by researchers at Nvidia and UCSB brings us a step closer to Deckard’s reality. Essentially it allows the photographer to change the focal length and perspective of an image in post, but this description barely does it justice. It actually allows you to simulate multiple focal lengths simultaneously. Here, watch this video, and it’ll all make sense.

How to turn off that annoying grid in Photoshop when you zoom in.

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Hey, guys!

I’ve been working on 4K for the last year, and as such, I have to zoom in quite considerably more than resolutions such as 1080 and 1440 to get to the same level of “zoomed in” view. This extreme zoom-in adds a grid to the view. As a photographer and a retoucher, it can make life very difficult if you’re not aware that you can turn this grid off.

Here’s how Sony Mirrorless cameras allow you to double your lens’ focal length without losing quality

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Mirrorless market continues to expand, and many professional photographers switch from DSLR to mirrorless cameras. Both of the systems certainly have their advantages, but there’s one interesting feature you can find specifically in Sony mirrorless cameras. It’s called Clear Image Zoom, and it helps you turn a prime into a zoom lens (sort of) without losing quality. Manny Ortiz talks about it in this video giving you some tips and hints for using it.

Zoom solves the issue of bad audio in your videos by building a camera into a microphone

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Bad audio is something that’s plagued action cameras since their inception. Some of them don’t do too terrible, and a few even let you plug in external mics. But action camera sound does generally tend to feel like an afterthought. Zoom have come up with a novel way of solving this issue. Instead of trying to cram better quality microphones into cameras, they’ve put the camera into the microphone.

That’s basically what the new Zoom Q2n is. A microphone with a camera & LCD shoved into it. It’s actually a pair of stereo microphones in an XY configuration recording at up to 96Khz 24Bit Far beyond anything available in other action cameras (or even DSLRs, for that matter). It shoots 1080p at 24 or 30fps.

This 200x zoom camera lets you read the writing on airplanes

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Even without the assistance of the 4x digital zoom, the 50x optical zoom of the Canon PowerShot SX50 HS was pretty impressive when it was released. But what does a combined 200x zoom actually look like? Well, it means you can read the writing on planes flying overhead. Planes that you can’t even see when the lens is set to its widest focal length.

The 50x optical zoom alone is the focal length equivalent of 24-1,200mm on a full frame body. The 4x digital zoom brings that up to 4,800mm equivalent, but you’re still probably better off sticking with the optical and scaling in post if you need to. That being said, it’s still pretty impressive. That it can make out anything at all at that distance is pretty ridiculous.

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