It was time to upgrade my entire lighting system. My Profoto Compact heads (in perfect working condition) we coming up on their 10th anniversary. In my Profoto arsenal, I had two 300 w/s heads, one 600 w/s head, and an AcuteB600R.
Advances in flash technology in the past years have brought HSS, TTL, and (wireless) radio triggers into the mainstream (no more need for Pocket Wizards) and portability and long battery life in the form of Lithium-Ion battery packs. Only two years ago Godox was still taking baby steps in the strobe arena. Today, they have, in my opinion, the most affordable and comprehensive cordless, radio triggered, strobe and lighting ecosystem on the market.
Godox works seamlessly on Canon, Fuji, Nikon, and Sony. It’s the transmitters that do the heavy lifting and are coded for each camera line. All strobes are cross-compatible with each camera system. The transmitters are designated (stamped) with a C for Canon, N for Nikon, S for Sony and F for Fuji. Some flashes in their line are full manual while others are both Manual, HSS, and TTL.
The Godox flash system works on a 2.4GHz wireless X system to achieve wireless control in 1/3 stop increments. Wireless trigger on-board control is fairly straightforward compared to other brands I’ve used. For instance, I tested out the robust Elinchrom ELB 400 Action To Go kit with their TTL – HSS trigger and simply couldn’t figure it out. Even after a call to the Elinchrom support department, which was very knowledgeable and helpful, it was still a hassle and counter-intuitive to use the remote. Not so with the Godox radio triggers and flash system. It’s essentially plug-and-play. They just work seamlessly.
Godox newest radio trigger, the XPRO Flash Commander, is currently shipping. The XPro series is more user-friendly with a simpler operation, and users can directly assess group selection(s) to adjust the output.
Significant new features include…
The XPro Triggers are now available for Canon, Fuji, Nikon and Sony (pre-order). It’s a welcomed update to the Godox ecosystem. They are robust, much easy to use with quick access to each flash group, allowing you to easily dial in flash output without screen diving and scrolling through menus than any of their previous models.
I especially like the TCM/Zoom function. A short press on the TCM/Zoom button will magnify the highlighted group and enlarge that to full screen. Click again and it will go back to a view of all 5 groups.
Sony tip: If you are a Sony shooter and don’t need to use the TTL feature, I recommend purchasing the Canon or Nikon XPro. Why? Because the Canon and Nikon do not use a Multi-Interface hot shoe mount. If you use the Sony XPro, which has a Multi-Interface hot shoe mount it will knock out the real-time exposure capabilities of the EVF. The Canon and Nikon do not. The workaround is that you can simply shut off the Sony Xpro to see live real-time info on your EVF.
When shooting architecture, having the real-time data is paramount for ambient light exposures. That’s why I’ve opted for the non-Sony XPro. If I was an event shooter I’d get the designated Sony Xpro. With the soon to be released XPro radio triggers for Sony (Canon and Nikon and Fuji currently available) you’ll be able to access each group/flash individually without menu diving. Quicker access to all menu functions. Retail is $69 and worth every penny.
I’ve used my Godox flash system on countless luxury real estate shoots, headshots/executive portrait sessions, and studio product shoots. I’ve never encountered a single misfire. The color temperature is consistent over a long shoot and jobs that have spanned several days.
Specs on paper are one thing. Real life shoots tell the real story, and the Li batteries in all my Godox products deserve a standing ovation! The Li batteries for the Godox V860II are nothing short of amazing.
Fully charged, they’ve never run out of juice on a full day’s luxury real estate shoot. Similarly, the AD200’s Li battery has done the same. The Li power packs for the 360 flash system have lasted me three days on location photographing over 1,000 headshots 1/4 manual output pushing f/5/6 through Cheetah 55×12″ strip banks on a grey seamless. And they still had at least 1/2 the power left in the packs.
The Flashpoint XPLOR 600 almost lasted three days of location portraiture and 1,000 headshots at 1/4 manual output through a Westcott Rapid Box XXL pushing out f/8.0 at approx. 6 feet from my subjects. I’ve never gotten anything close to this from my Profoto heads. While I do have 4 backup batteries for the V series speedlights, I do not have any backup batteries for the AD200, 360s or the XPLOR 600. It just isn’t necessary because they last so long.
Godox is made in China, and sold under a few different brand names (and is exactly the same – only the name and printed branding is changed): Godox is also branded and marketed as Flashpoint EXPLOR, Flashpoint, eVOLV, WISTRO, AD as in the AD200, and you’ll see the speedlights referred to as V or TT.
I had faced with the same dilemma three years ago when I switched from Canon to Sony. At the time Sony had made some quantum leaps with EVF and mirrorless but had a small lens lineup. A short three years later, they’ve flushed out an amazing line of lenses and are the leaders in mirrorless camera technology. Canon was starting to phase out support of some of their legacy L lenses…WTF? And I needed to update both my lenses and glass. The bill was upwards of $20k to upgrade my Canon system. I weighed out the pros and cons and ultimately switched from Canon to Sony.
As I mentioned earlier, it was time to upgrade my lighting system. I have more than one brand and needed a lighting ecosystem that I could work with, in each genre of photography that I specialize in. To wit: Luxury real estate photography, portrait photography, food photography, pet photography, and wedding photography, studio product photography. After almost 18 years as a photographer, you get to develop different brands. And because the economy is always in flux, its great to have different income streams that generate income when one genre is slow the other is busy.
Last December, I made the decision to switch from Profoto to the Godox system. I’m big on reading reviews in lieu of being an early (first) adopter. And all the reviews for Godox’s flashes on the market were impressive. In a sense, I was an early adopter. To me, however a real early adopter, just orders the product as soon as it hits the market, not reading reviews. My decision was based on the following criteria: I wanted a system that was…
Profoto B1 $1,895 x 2 = $3,790 (At the time there was no HSS/TTL trigger for for the Sony system. Profoto has brought one to market.)
Profoto B2 250 AirTTL with two heads = $2,695
Profoto Grand Total = $6,485.
$6,485 is cost prohibitive. Cha-ching! And we still haven’t added in radio triggers here, which are approximately another $120 each.
Now compare that to the value and savings of a complete Godox system. A few caveats when purchasing…some flashes must be purchases for your specific camera brand as noted below.
V860II speedlights HSS/TTL (must purchase for your specific camera brand) $179 x 2 = $358
(Compare the V860II to the top of the line Canon Speedlite 600EX-RT for $479, IMO the Godox is built just as well and does everything that the Canon flash does for about 1/3 of the price)
Flashpoint Streak Light 360 (360 w/s with Li battery packs, must get Canon for Sony cameras) HSS / TTL version $429 x 2 = $858
AD200 TTL Pocket Flash Kit (200 w/s HSS / TTL the physical size of 2 speedlights with the output power of 3 speedlights, one version for all brands, the radio trigger must be compatible with your brand) $300
Flashpoint XPLOR 600, Bowens Mount 600 w/s HSS/TTL (Make sure that you purchase the XPLOR 600 for your camera brand Canon will work with Sony.) $749
(If you want to save some money and know you’ll never use HSS/TTL go with the full-on Manual Flashpoint XPLOR 600 for $550)
X1T Radio Triggers (Supports all flash functions M, HSS, TTL) $46 x 2 = $92
XT32 Radio Trigger (The Canon triggers works perfectly with the Sony system. The XT32 does not support TTL on any camera system. I use it only for full Manual control) $46
(Note: One anomaly. I’ve noticed that each of the aforementioned triggers, when in the hot shoe and turned on, will deactivate the EVF Live View on all my Sony bodies.)
Godox Grand Total= $2,403
Win! That’s a 60% savings. A no-brainer. And a complete flash ecosystem that fits all the criteria listed above.
When investing in any system, you also need to think of upkeep and maintenance costs. Replacement flash tubes for the Godox system is a fraction of the price of Profoto. A typical flash tube replacement for a Profoto B1 is $163 while the Godox 600 is $50.
During Christmas, I found the 600 and 360 on sale and save another couple hundred dollars, bringing my total purchase well below $2,000, which is a heck of a deal for a comprehensive lighting system.
About the author: Marc Weisberg is an architectural and luxury real estate photographer based in Irvine, California. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of his work on his website. Weisberg is also teaching an upcoming workshop in California, in May 2018. This article was also published here.
]]>Here’s a 6-minute video from Andrew Mikhaylov that looks at how you can easily shoot beer can photos using 4 light sources for that signatory reflection on the can.
First off, the most important thing is to make sure your beer can is completely straight from the point of view of your camera. If it’s not, this is really tricky to fix in post.
Mikhaylov uses two sheets of white cardboard, held using grips on stands, to create highlights on the can. He then takes a test shot, continually tweaking the light source until he’s happy with the reflection he’s achieving.
Once that’s done, it’s time to bring in some more strobes to properly light the scene. Using a small diffusion panel, Mikhaylov ensures that the whole beer can will be covered by the light.
He puts a strip box behind the diffusion panel, creating the ideal gradient by placing it close to the panel.
Throughout the video you can see his entire process, experimenting with the angles and positioning of his 4 light sources to achieve the ideal lighting. He suggests even using small reflective materials to reveal details in darker areas, producing images which can then be composited into the final image at the end.
Mikhaylov also made this 9-minute video showing how he post-processed the photo. It has four parts: (1) creating a background, (2) compiling different elements of a can, (3) retouching, and (4) color correction:
(via Andrew Mikhaylov via Photigy)
]]>Do you often struggle when posing newlyweds, not knowing what to do next? Shooting under pressure, you then ask the couple to kiss while neglecting their body positioning, posture, hand movement and facial expression.
The ingredients to a good portrait include: quality of light, composition, exposure and a flattering pose. To not properly pose your client is similar to missing a key ingredient in your meal. Something just doesn’t taste (look) right.
My name is Jimmy Chan, the wedding photographer of Pixelicious from Montreal, Canada, and this in-depth guide is…
If you find my previous article on wedding photography lighting helpful, this will be just as worthy of your time.
Unlike lighting and composition where I would encourage others to experiment, the human anatomy hasn’t changed much in the past few thousands of years. In other words, a flattering pose for a female subject will remain a flattering pose, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
Instead, they say “I don’t really care about what other photographers have done in the past. I’d rather experiment and find out on my own what makes things work for me and my clients!”
Do you really believe that anyone can figure it all out by himself?
If you’re looking for the easy way to become a creative portrait photographer, then continue to study here, to practice, and to grow. If, on the other hand, you decide that you’d rather make your life difficult, go ahead and learn the hard way—put this book away right now and try your own hit-and-miss techniques until you might stumble on something that will work once in awhile. It’s up to you.
—Monty Zucker in Portrait Photography Handbook
This might sound strange, but nothing in this article is new. I am only sharing knowledge gathered from other master photographers who spent decades perfecting their craft: Monty Zucker, Cliff Mautner, Jerry Ghionis, Roberto Valenzuela, Sue Bryce, Lindsay Adler and so many others whom I will credit as we go along.
Don’t expect a laundry list of “best wedding poses” that you can replicate, we all know this is a recipe for disaster. Instead of blindly copying others, develop a systematic approach to posing your clients that works for you which will yield consistent results shoot after shoot, even when pressed for time.
Remember that we aren’t working with models so don’t expect them to pose like one. It also means that they expect guidance from us. This is wedding photography, not photojournalism. The bride will not magically hold her bouquet with her eyes closed waiting for the camera. You must ask, direct and pose for the shot you wish to achieve. Here’s an excellent posing guide with models for those interested.
The body is positioned for light and composition. After a couple of test shots, my exposure is set. By having 3 out of 4 ingredients taken care of, I can now fully concentrate on the posing and interaction with my clients.
Tip on exposure: I want you to observe your subject’s face before grabbing the camera next time. Does her face become brighter or darker by the second? If not, then why does your exposure need to change? Shooting in Manual mode not only makes sense, it will save you tremendous time because you can batch edit the images later. Being constantly worried about exposure will undermine your ability in posing your subject.
I want my brides to look tall, elegant and confident. I do this by asking them to really stretch their spines, no slouching allowed.
The spine is the cornerstone of any pose. Ignore the spine and the whole pose will fly out the window. So if I can help you with one thing in this book, let it be this statement: The spine must always be straight and as tall as possible.
—Roberto Valenzuela in Picture Perfect Posing
You might have heard of Jerry Ghionis’ mirror technique for posing (fast forward to 10:15 in the video below). The idea is to have your subject follow your movements instead of communicating verbally. Not only does it work, I will shamelessly attempt all the feminine poses you see in this article and I am a guy. The brides end up laughing (at me) and this has become a great icebreaker for those who are reluctant in posing for portraits.
I like my grooms to look classy and handsome. This can be achieved by reverse engineering how I pose female subjects:
Wedding photographers are always pressed for time so I have since learned to not sacrifice productivity for perfection. I recognize countless flaws in my images, but a photographer sees pictures differently from a client. Don’t get me wrong, when the stars are aligned, go all out and get that money shot. Otherwise, capturing the safe shots first, then move higher on the difficulty scale, remains a viable strategy.
We are not looking to make the Mona Lisa sometimes, we are looking to create texture, dimension, and mood, and give a nice array of images, fast.
–Cliff Mautner in Searching for the Light
If you watched Jerry Ghionis’ video above on posing, you would come across what he refers to the “phone number” technique (fast forward video to 25:28). By making small changes to the pose, you end up with a different picture. In practice, I can capture both holding hands (one shot), one hand raised (another shot), both looking at the camera (another shot), both looking at each other (another shot) and so on. You don’t need to memorize and execute 50 poses, only a few strong ones will suffice. Quality over quantity, always.
When I was just getting started in photography, one of my mentors taught me this amusing saying: “When’s the best time to take a horizontal image? After a vertical. When’s the best time to take a vertical image? After a horizontal.”
—Lindsay Adler in Fashion Flair for Portrait and Wedding Photography
3 focal lengths x 2 orientations x 3 small changes = up to 18 workable images for me to further cull down at home from “one pose”. This can be achieved quickly with minimal effort from the client.
Let’s dive further into other common scenarios we’ll come across:
Tip on composition: Whether on the street or at the lake, you will come across the horizon in the form of a dominant horizontal line across the frame. When shooting at eye-level, this line can slice through someone’s joints: elbows, hips, knee or ankle. You can “control” the horizon line by lowering yourself, such as kneeling or laying down on the ground.
The bad news is that clients aren’t necessary fans of family formals. The good news is that all the posing techniques apply, whether for the bridal party or the guests. To help expedite the process, prepare a list of must-have groups in advance. Also, inquire about the family dynamics to prevent awkward situations (putting divorced parents together).
Children play a big role at weddings so don’t neglect them. We want to capture them naturally so it’s best not to force things. Also, lower ourselves down to their height when shooting, let them invite us into their world. Elena Shumilova shares some amazing tips on how to photograph children.
If you also have wedding photography posing tips that weren’t covered in this guide, feel free to share them with the community in the comments below.
About the author: Jimmy Chan is a wedding photographer based in Montreal, Canada. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of his work on his photography wedding business website, Pixelicious.
This one tells a personal story about how some art my Uncle gave me turned out to be a big influence on my artistic life. It also bled into many of my Antarctica photos! Enjoy!
The International Wedding Photographer of the Year (IWPOTY) competition has just announced the winning photos for 2017. The grand prize winner was photographer Erika Mann of Two Mann Studios, who captured a remarkable photo of a bride in front of a double rainbow.
Here’s what Mann had to say about the winning photo:
Paige and Daniel had a super low key wedding, with the reception taking place in their parent’s backyard, with about 25 guests. Thankfully their parents have one of the most beautiful backyards in the planet, along the banks of Cougar Creek in Canmore, Alberta. After a short, and unpredictable storm, we were treated to the most amazing double rainbow. Lanny and I got low into the creek bed so we could remove the houses, and simplify the frame to the rainbow, mountain and Paige, with her dress billowing in the wind.
Mann wins the $9,125 grand prize package, which includes $3,000 in cash, a Nikon D850, and more.
Here are the other 8 winning photos and photographers picked by the panel of judges:
Photographer Paul Woo of the United States won the Single Capture category and was the runner-up to the grand prize for his portrait of the son of the bride with tears in his eyes during the ceremony.
The child was the son of the bride. As everyone stood up and waited for the bride to come down the aisle, he started expressing so much emotion. I was solo shooting this wedding and this moment was difficult because I was secretly bawling behind the camera, and had to prioritize this moment over the bride coming down the aisle. Yes, I got both photos, but I knew this moment was THE moment. I decided to enter the image because everyone talks about timeless and epic photos, and to me it wasn’t about scenic places or post processing. What truly is timeless are moments.
Photographer Francesco Gravina of Italy won first place for best Album (you can view the entire album here).
The story of Giulia and Amitai – crossing borders and traditions to create the perfect wedding. She left Italy to find herself, he left Israel to discover the world. They found each other and then themselves – engaged in Amsterdam, settled in Barcelona and married in Sardinia. With the heart on their sleeve, their free spirits and the unbelievable deep connection they created in one day with the photographer, they opened up their most intimate moments before and during their once in a lifetime experience. With their family and friends from all over the world, they gathered on the beach where the sky outlined the ocean and showed that love has no boundaries or no borders. Creating their own traditions and the start of a life that they both always dreamed of – they gave each other their yes and embarked on a journey of love, dreams and happiness.
Photographer Bruno Sauma of the United States won top prize for best black and white photo.
Dani and Alisson Wedding took place at the Hudson Portuguese Club in Massachusetts USA. in September 24th, 2017.
The perfect place and time to be when tears are under the spotlight… I am so proud I could capture and share this unique touchable moment during the Father-daughter dance… Her hero will always have a special place in her heart…
Photographer Angela Ruscheinski of Canada won for best Bridal Party photo.
I’d scouted out this location in advance and had the idea to put Sydney and Brandon’s extra large bridal party in front of an impressive mountain backdrop. Instead, we had thick fog and fluffy snow. So, I rolled with it and mirrored the fog using my iPhone screen. If you zoom in close enough you can see the snow on the black suits!
Photographer Jayme Lang of Canada had this photo selected as best Couple Portrait.
This image embodies so much of what I love about Wedding photography. When we walked into the parkade I was immediately drawn to the clean parallel lines & I envisioned the two of them laying in separate stalls, serene & statuesque. I love having the opportunity to get creative with something seemingly so ordinary, like a parking garage. I was lucky that they were trusting enough to lay on the ground in their wedding attire & get creative with me.
Photographer Mike Vallely of Canada won 1st place in the category Dance Floor.
With friends and family from all over the world Kate + Sayed decided on the Pemberton Valley in Canada for their wedding. These two were so stoked to get married. They ran, jumped + danced everywhere during the day so I knew their reception entrance would be a good one! I really wanted to capture the setting along with the celebrating so I backed way up, climbed a fence and set up my frame. One of the biggest perks of shooting together with Shari is it allows one of us to try things a bit differently while the other gets the safe shot. If we only had a single image to describe this day this would be it!
Photographer Lanny Mann of Canada, the husband of grand prize winner Erika Mann, was also a top winner. His photo won the Epic Location category.
Angela and Dan got married in one of the most beautiful and, on that particular day, windiest places on Earth. You simply can not, however, get married in a place like Waterton Lakes National Park, Canada, and not take advantage of the remarkable scenery. So Angela and Dan headed out like warriors into the buffeting winds for portraits amongst the mountain grandeur!
Photographer Adrian O’Neill of Ireland won the top prize for the category From Above.
The Couples names are Maria & Michael and were Married in the University of Cork’s Honan Chapel and the reception was in the Dunmore House Hotel In Co. Cork. The couple were a Wedding photographers dream, they were so awesome. The couple gave me all the time I wanted to get stunning images of them. The actual shot was taken by me standing in the back of the convertible hanging on for dear life, but was so worth it. The couple have this image hanging up in their beautiful home. Im so glad that my images have portrayed their stunning day. thank you very much and very, very kindest of regards.
You can find the other finalist photos on the IWPOTY website. The competition is open to all professional wedding photographers, both part-time and full-time, and you can keep your eye on the website if you’d like to submit your work for 2018 edition of the contest.
]]>My name is John Kraus, and I work as a photojournalist at Cape Canaveral, covering rocket launches with up-close cameras at the various launchpads here. For yesterday’s Atlas V rocket launch, I had two cameras at Space Launch Complex 41. These cameras were sound-activated; the sound alone would kill anyone standing at the launchpad during liftoff.
Both remote cameras I placed were Nikon D7000s, but each was poised to shoot drastically different images. Both cameras and their lenses were wrapped in plastic grocery bags, with a hole cut out for the front element to poke through. At a relatively safe distance from the rocket — maybe 500 or 600 feet — one D7000 was equipped with a Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 and was zoomed in to capture a closeup shot of the rocket’s engine and four solid rocket boosters.
That setup was completely unharmed. This post will focus on the other camera setup.
The other D7000, which was just over 300 feet away from the rocket, was in the midst of the chaos. This camera was armed with an 8mm Rokinon fisheye lens that I picked up the day before remote camera setup. This camera was just to the left of the flame trench, of which is where most of the rocket’s energy is directed.
Here’s my favorite image from the fisheye setup:
The afternoon backlighting was great. I’m really pleased with the resulting images. According to my in-camera time, the above image was taken at 15 seconds past the minute.
Here’s a photo from :20, five seconds after that image:
And here’s :26, 11 seconds after the first image:
This image is why I think there was a mixture of both water and solid exhaust on my lens.
The Aerojet Rocketdyne AJ-60A solid rocket motors used on this rocket are fueled by hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene, which is very acidic. We were warned by our NASA escort to not touch our faces after handling equipment coated in the solid rocket exhaust and to wash our hands ASAP after arriving back at the KSC Press Site.
Here’s a photo of what the lens looked like right after I picked it up from the launchpad:
The residue is a sort of dried, cake-y, powdered material stuck to the lens. I’m guessing that the solid exhaust mixed with the water from the pad’s water suppression system, and that resulting substance adhered to the lens.
After I got home, I took a wet cloth and wiped off the powdery substance. It came off relatively easily, and I initially thought the lens was fine after I dried it off. That was until I looked at it in better light. The lens was heavily pitted from the solid exhaust particles.
That’s not sand or dirt resting on the glass — that’s pitting in the front element itself. Note the dirt and twigs around the glass, too.
I’d likely be able to replace just the front element, but I picked up this lens for a hundred bucks, so if I want to do a fisheye shot for a future launch, I’ll probably just buy another one. I’ve retired this lens after just one launch. The same thing happened to an 18-55mm kit lens I placed next to a Delta IV launch in 2016.
Looking through the viewfinder of a body with that lens mounted is like looking through glass covered in raindrops.
Now, I have some explaining to do, because inevitably, someone is going to write “WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST USE A UV FILTER!?!?!?” in the comments below.
Using a glass filter triples the area that dew can form prior to liftoff. I’ve had shots ruined by dew forming on the front element. Add in a filter, and you’ve got the front element and two additional glass surfaces for dew to ruin your shot. Cheap filters can introduce unwanted image artifacts such as glare. And why use quality filters if the same thing can happen to them rather than the front element?
And yes, I only use plastic grocery bags to protect the cameras. Both the camera bodies were fine. It was just the exposed fisheye lens that saw damage. Overall, I’m really happy with my resulting images from both setups, so I’m not bummed at the loss of the fisheye lens.
About the author: John Kraus is an 18-year-old photographer based in Florida. He shoots a wide variety of subjects including rocket launches, landscapes, aerial photography, astrophotography, aviation, and much more around Florida. You can find more of his work on his website and Instagram.
]]>In addition to announcing the entry-level Rebel T7 this week, Canon also announced its new EOS 4000D DSLR over in Europe. When the camera is official in the United States, it might become the cheapest DSLR ever launched.
The Canon 4000D is low on both features and build quality. You’ll notice immediately that instead of having a metal lens mount on the front of the body, the camera has a black, all-plastic one (perhaps perfect for the Canon “nifty fifty”). It’s a mount that won’t take a beating as well as other Canon DSLRs, but it should do its job of holding onto a lens.
Inside the 4000D is an 18-megapixel APS-C sensor, down from the 24.1-megapixel one found in the Rebel T7/2000D. The 4000D does feature the same DIGIC 4+ image processor and has the same maximum ISO of 6400 (expandable to 12800). The camera can shoot 3 frames per second continuously with a 9-point autofocus system.
On the back of the 4000D are a 6.8cm (~2.68in) LCD screen and a centrally-mounted optical viewfinder.
Other features of the 4000D include Wi-Fi connectivity, Full HD video recording, in-camera feature guides for beginners, and a battery life of about 500 photos (or 1 hour and 15 minutes of HD Video).
Here’s a chart that compares how the 4000D stacks up against the 2000D/T7:
Here are some official sample photos captured with the Canon 4000D:
DPReview reports that the 4000D will be priced at around £330/€380 for the body only. That price “would equate to somewhere around $385 without tax,” DPReview writes. “That’s the lowest launch price of any DSLR we can remember.”
Canon Rumors reports that the 4000D will be called the Rebel T100 in the United States when it’s officially announced on this side of the pond.
]]>Consumer Reports has published its latest research regarding the best smartphone cameras on the market. The non-profit magazine concluded that the iPhone X is number 1 camera on the market today. The number 2 and 3 spots? They’re held by the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, respectively.
Here are the 10 best smartphone cameras available, according to Consumer Reports:
As many reviewers are finding as of late, the quality difference between the cameras in flagship smartphones these days is shrinking almost to the point of being non-existent.
“[O]ur lead phone tester, Richard Fisco, notes that from a camera-quality standpoint, there’s very little variation among the top 10 smartphones,” Consumer Reports writes. “In fact, the differences among this group are so small that they could be chalked up to variations in our test samples, he says.
“All of the top 10 phones did very well in our tests of still-image quality, which evaluate resolution, dynamic range, color accuracy, and visual noise. The all-around top performers in that area were the iPhone X and 8 Plus, which just nudged past their iPhone 8 sibling.
“All of the listed cameras are great choices for still images.”
Just yesterday, we reported that DxOMark has ranked the new Samsung Galaxy S9+ #1 in its camera quality rankings, beating out the Google Pixel (now #2) and iPhone X (now #3).
Consumer Reports‘ latest report doesn’t include the S9 and S9+, as they have yet to be released. The magazine will be testing the S9 and S9+ in its labs in March when the phones officially launch, and it will be interesting to see if the iPhone X subsequently loses the top spot.
]]>We all plan for our shoots, we pack our kits, check it twice, and always heave a sigh of relief when we get to the job and everything is there. The airline didn’t lose anything, nothing was dropped, there are no shattered lenses and those anxious few hours is over and done with.
As owner and head photographer of Drag Photos Australia, I travel several times a month to cover both the National Drag Racing Series and other international automotive events. You would think the more I travel the less anxious I would get, but I always worry about making sure I have everything I need in working condition to complete the jobs I am paid for.
Last weekend, it was just another day on the black stuff, shooting the country’s fastest and toughest street cars at Sydney Motorsport Park with my trusty Canon 1D X Mark II when the dreaded ERR30 flashes up on the screen.
In a panic, I jumped on Google to see if there was any workaround to get the Canon workhorse up and running. I tried everything but no luck and I was smack in the middle of a racetrack in the middle of a driving session with no way of being able to access my backup camera.
So being a professional in the industry and a member of Canon Professional Services, I gave them a call to see if they could point me in the right direction to get old faithful working, even intermittently, till I could get back to the media center. I also wanted to organize for another camera to be shipped to my house for when I flew home, as I had no downtime between jobs.
Colin Lucas from Canon Australia was the voice at the end of the phone. He knew about the event and where it was being held, which was thankfully only an hour or so away from the Canon Sydney office, and said he would get back to me. Understanding my frustration, Colin decided that he was going to help any way he could.
Eventually, an hour and a half later, I managed to get to back to the media room, only to be presented with a package from the Media liaison, marked “Urgent Dave Reid CPS Sydney.”
I opened up the box to find a new 1D X Mark II all ready to use from Canon Professional Services… only 1.5 hours after calling to troubleshoot the issue. Colin had organized an express courier to deliver the camera to the racetrack — you could just imagine the shock on my face. Service like this just doesn’t happen anymore.
It’s one thing to have a supportive customer service to liaise with the professional shooters, but to go out of their way like this is next level, and it is great to see that there still is some good old-fashioned customer service out there.
Here are a few shots from the event from Drag Photos Australia thanks to CPS:
Canon offers its pro-shooters worldwide membership that provides speedy repairs, discounts on repair, free sensor cleaning and more. It’s up to you if you think it’s worth having, but next time your luck runs out, I bet you could only hope to have someone like Colin in your corner to help you out.
About the author: Dave Reid is a professional racing photographer based in Australia and the owner of Drag Photos Australia. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of his work on his website.
]]>Matteo Bertoli is known for shooting cinematic 4K videos with the latest smartphones and apps to hit the market. But for his latest project, he decided to use the cheapest smartphone he could fine: a $32 used iPhone 3GS from 2009. This 2-minute video is what resulted.
“I know it sounds weird, but I think it came out really good and it was a very interesting experience,” Bertoli tells PetaPixel. “I just wanted to know if it was possible to shoot something decent with a 9 year old phone.”
Bertoli picked the 3GS from eBay because it was the first iPhone that could shoot video. And while 4K video resolution is becoming standard in smartphones these days, the 3GS has a resolution of just 640×480.
“Dynamic range is pretty bad too, especially when you compare this phone to an iPhone X or 8 Plus,” Bertoli writes. “But if we are going for a retro/vintage look I really think this phone does an absolutely fantastic job.”
Everything was shot handheld in and around Temecula, California, and Bertoli ended up capturing about 700MB of video for the film before editing and grading it in DaVinci Resolve.
]]>The post 55% plastic surgery patients want to look better in selfies, study finds appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The post 55% plastic surgery patients want to look better in selfies, study finds appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The new Irix Edge ND32000 neutral density filter reduces incoming light by 15 stops, allowing an exposure time of up to five minutes on a sunny day!
The retail price for the Irix Edge filter ND32000 is 159 euros and it will be available on sale in the next few days.
]]>The new Irix Edge ND32000 neutral density filter reduces incoming light by 15 stops, allowing an exposure time of up to five minutes on a sunny day!
The retail price for the Irix Edge filter ND32000 is 159 euros and it will be available on sale in the next few days.
]]>The post Bride ruins wedding photographer’s business by trashing her online, needs to pay $89,500 fine appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The post Bride ruins wedding photographer’s business by trashing her online, needs to pay $89,500 fine appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The post Focus on the Story appeared first on Photo Contest Insider.
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]]>Here’s another how-to video showing how to enhance details in your photos using Aurora HDR 2018. This particular tool, as you’ll see, can only be detected when you are zoomed into 100% or 200% on the image.
Here's my friend Katie Ann out enjoying the beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She came down with her boyfriend to meet me for the day and take some fun photos. I don't do a lot of this sort of thing, but I was getting a little bored of JUST taking photos of sand and water and clouds. Don't get me wrong, I love that sort of thing, but after several thousand, I wanted to mix it up a little. She's not a professional model or anything, just a cool gal with giant buns.
The post Memories appeared first on Photo Contest Insider.
]]>The post Memories appeared first on Photo Contest Insider.
]]>The post 2018 ALL Cityscapes appeared first on Photo Contest Insider.
]]>The post 2018 ALL Cityscapes appeared first on Photo Contest Insider.
]]>The post This is all the shiny new camera gear announced at this year’s WPPI appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The post This is all the shiny new camera gear announced at this year’s WPPI appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>There has been a wave of updates to raw processors recently, including new releases this week from Topaz and ON1. Consequently, it has been difficult for me to finish this review, but developers updating their software is a good problem. Finally, here it is!
I’m covering a couple of different categories of raw processors: Two optimized for single image processing and two that are more comprehensive hub type solutions with image management capabilities. They are Luminar 2018 (v1.1.1) and Topaz Studio (v1.8.2) for the former category and ON1 Photo Raw 2018 (v2018.1) and Lightroom Classic CC (v7.2) for the latter.
Note: Although this is a Fuji-centric (RAF/X-Trans) review, I also tested this software with several other file types and included Sony results so much of the information will be useful to shooters of every brand.
This review is geared towards factors that add or take away from the potential enjoyment you receive from processing your images. The main factors are efficiency (AKA your time), interface, and accuracy, all leading to perhaps the most important factor: enjoyment.
Let’s face it, if you don’t enjoy working on your images then you may have to question your dedication to photography. An intuitive interface with images that open up with proper color and a workflow from start to finish that is fast and efficient will all lead to a more enjoyable experience. And the opposite will lead to frustration and spending too much time trying to reach your imaging goals.
I would love to be able to tell you there is one winner that will solve all your needs. The reality is we all have different needs, goals and personal workflows. I encourage you to read the rest of the review, check out the Pros and Cons below and look at the chart I made to help you match one or more of these processors to your own personal needs and workflow. I may be the exception but I actually use all four of these. I realize that may not work for everyone so here’s my bottom line on these:
ON1 Photo Raw 2018 is the closest to being a comprehensive solution. If you deal with lots of images and want to manage them (culling, rating, keywords, searches, etc.) and have a broad array of useful tools for processing along with fabulous masking capabilities, then ON1 Photo Raw is it. It does a great job with Fuji X-Trans files. It is also fast with most tasks. I would really like to see ON1 provide the ability to combine RAW+JPEG. You can work around it by filtering to see just raw or just jpeg but it can be a problem if you already have final versions in other formats that you want to see alongside raw without seeing hundreds of jpegs. All this said it is my main hub. ON1 will be releasing a significant update in a few days. I’ve been working with a pre-release and will report on the update when it’s released.
Luminar 2018 is a fabulous single image processor (image management coming down the road.) It has the most intuitive and easy to use interface out there. It’s simply a joy to use it. Fun and enjoyment rank highly in my book. I typically hop into Luminar after I’ve exported a high-resolution file from ON1. It does handle raw files well, including Fuji X-Trans but there are two reasons I don’t use it for initial raw processing with my Fuji raw files: 1. No lens profiles built in (supposed to be coming in the future according to Skylum) 2. It takes 21 seconds to open an X-Trans file. Lack of lens profiles is definitely the bigger factor and really more applicable for mirrorless users like me, where we’re used to seeing corrected images in our viewfinders and want that to be reflected when processing. I consider these a minor inconvenience and would not want to be without my favorite filters in this gem of a processor (Golden Hour, Sunrays, Orton Effect, Bi-Color Toning, and AI-Accent)
Topaz Studio is unique with a dedicated following and Topaz products are an old favorite of mine. Until their release of Studio, they had been creating plug-ins. This company has their roots in creativity and consequently they have come up with Adjustments and plug-ins that no one else has. The base Studio program is free along with some basic adjustments and extensive masking capabilities. You can have multiple images open and create versions, all of which appear on a filmstrip at the bottom. There aren’t any image management capabilities so other than the aforementioned capabilities, it’s a single image processor. There are two main reasons the Topaz following is so dedicated: No one else has free lifetime upgrades and no else has the likes of Impression, Glow, Abstraction, AI ReMix, Precision Contrast, and ReStyle. Some of these migrated from plug-ins and some are new.
Lightroom Classic CC on paper (see my chart) should be the best choice for an all-rounder but the numbers aren’t the whole story. If I didn’t have ON1 Photo Raw as an option I might still be using Lightroom for my main hub as I was before, relying on other programs and plug-ins to make up where Lightroom is lacking. There are two main reasons I don’t use Lightroom as my mainstay processor anymore: 1. I shoot a lot of work on my Fuji system and Lightroom still has problems with “worm” effects and diminished acutance (aka “sharpness”) on some subjects with Fuji raw files. I make large prints and it shows up. 2. I add selective contrast for a sense of depth to almost every image and this is not feasible to do in Lightroom- typically I do this with Dynamic Contrast in ON1 Photo Raw or Precision Contrast in Topaz Studio. There really is no good equivalent in Lightroom.
I feel Adobe is playing catch-up to their competition and still behind. This latest version does make great strides in speed as long as you have a fast machine with at least 12GB of RAM and multi-processor CPU. It’s still quite poor on my laptop which I use when I travel and shoot on location. I still like the reliable and fast image database capabilities, the stellar print engine and I make use the slideshow, web, and book modules.
The best workflow is one that fits your needs and the way you shoot and think. You may not even need to “manage” your images with a browser or cataloging. If that’s the case and you don’t need built-in lens corrections you could easily use just Luminar and be very happy. It’s easy, fun and intuitive. Or if you like to go way beyond a photographic look, your application of choice may be Topaz Studio for its unique artistic effects. At the other end of the spectrum are shooters like me that have many tens of thousands of images to manage and keyword along with a vast array of processing needs. As mentioned, every one of these programs has unique features that I use. For everyone else in between the ends of the spectrum I have an easier time recommending ON1 Photo Raw as a hub (over Lightroom) and then hopping into either Luminar or Studio (or both) as needed for their particular assets. Use the chart and Pros and Cons as well as the trials offered by all the developers in this review to choose what makes sense for your particular workflow.
When I looked into the raw processing of Fuji X-Trans files a couple of years ago, image quality, particularly acutance (aka “sharpness”), was the main challenge. With almost every other file type (Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc.) acutance and detail were a given whether you used Lightroom or something else. That’s how it should be and finally is for Fuji X-Trans raw files (except Lightroom in some cases.) I will say that when I make big enlargements I can see differences among the processors but most of my patrons will never see the nuances I do, especially when viewing large prints at a normal distance.
I can always spot the photographers when I have an opening or show because their viewing distance is dictated by the length of their nose. Humor aside, I could pick nits with any of these on very large prints as they all have their strengths and weaknesses but when real life and all the other factors of a workflow are taken into account the issues are mostly negligible. The one that bothers me in some cases is Lightroom. In spite of using deconvolution* sharpening I still see “worm” effects, particularly in landscapes with green foliage and rock formations/mountains.
* Typical deconvolution settings for X-Trans files in Lightroom: Detail slider all the way up with moderate use of Amount slider, generally no masking, and optimal Radius, which is usually about 0.7 with X-Trans 24MP files. Basically Lightroom starts using deconvolution sharpening once you move the Detail slider past the 50% point.
Ultimately you will decide this for your personal workflow but I want to point out a few things I believe are important for processing virtually any image:
A constant annoyance for me over the years has been Lightroom’s lack of ability to clone. I don’t use cloning very often but avoiding an extra trip to Photoshop is something I’ve always wanted with Lightroom. These days it is a bread and butter task.
Luminar and ON1 have the best set of tools among the bunch for retouching and cloning. I like that Luminar shows you a mask of the area you’re about to “erase” and can change it before committing to it but it does take several seconds for each step. With either of these programs, the cloning tool saves you going into Photoshop. Topaz Studio has a good retouch tool but it’s only for removing small items or dust without being able to set a clone source or change it. Lightroom has a very rudimentary tool that works fine for dust and retouching small things but anything beyond that will require a trip to another program that has real cloning abilities.
Currently, only Lightroom has Fuji film profiles which are applied to raw files at the Camera Calibration level and you can have them applied during import using a preset. Although Adobe developed these with Fuji they’re not an exact match to the in-camera profiles. That said I think they’re pretty close. The conundrum, of course, is that you may be sacrificing quality with Lightroom due to it’s less than stellar results with some Fuji X-Trans images. Luminar 2018 has the ability to apply a LUT (custom LookUp Table.) This means you can use third-party LUTs for various effects including Fuji film profiles. The ones I’ve used have been excellent and the closest match I’ve seen to the in-camera profiles.
Modern digital cameras capture a huge dynamic range and to get the most out of your image you often have to use highlight and shadow sliders to bring back detail that is in the raw file but you may not see until you make these adjustments. This is especially applicable to landscapes and outdoor scenes or anything with direct sun and/or heavy shadows.
To test highlight sliders, I used a snow mound in direct sun and brought the sliders down as far as possible to retain the most detail. The fact that the X-Pro2 even has tone and detail on a snow mound in bright sun is a testament to the X-Trans sensor and the XF 23mm f1.4 so if you want to retain that, your processor has to cooperate.
All do a good job with retaining highlight tone and texture in the snow but with LR you will run into cases where you get the worm effect when you sharpen enough to get the kind of detail you retain with the other processors. This is using “deconvolution” with Lightroom which, in my opinion, is the only way to get reasonable sharpening in Lightroom even though you can still get the worm/plastic effect in many cases.
The shadow sliders in Photo Raw, Luminar, and Studio are all pretty good- once you go above a certain point you start to affect mid-tones and eventually even highlights. Not a big issue with a tight face portrait but in a broad scene like a landscape, you will likely be using a mask to isolate the shadow adjustments.
In the case of Luminar and Photo Raw 2018, you will be using a different filter from the basic/raw ones (Tone and Tone Enhancer respectively) if you want to use masking. Interestingly ON1’s Tone Enhancer (mask-capable) is much less heavy-handed as you move towards the maximum effect than its non-masking-capable counterpart in Develop. Topaz Studio doesn’t limit masking anywhere. Lightroom’s shadow slider is so subtle that even if you max it out, you may still need more boost. Not really an issue if you’re doing it selectively. LR’s masking is more tedious to use and you may not remember whether you masked something as a gradient, radial, brush or some combination of those without consulting your history or digging through the effects.
If you are trying to get by with just one program then you will want one that has lens correction profiles, especially for Fuji or other mirrorless users. Soon that shouldn’t be a concern as all but Luminar have them built in and Skylum has said Luminar is supposed to have them coming in the future. All of these processors have manual lens corrections but I find manual corrections to be tedious and some aberrations (like dark vignetting in the far corners) just can’t be properly corrected without the lens profiles. You also want a processor that extracts useable color, tone, and contrast from the raw file.
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
The chart below is a condensed version of my comparisons where I’ve evaluated the factors that are important to everyday editing, particularly Fuji X-Trans files. And yes I work on images virtually every day. Where timing is concerned I used a digital stopwatch and did numerous runs of each test.
Fuji raw X-Trans files (.RAF) are a tough test because they use a different sensor pattern than every other camera and thus require different algorithms. I also gave these raw processors another difficult test with Sony raw (.ARW) files from my A7R II which are 42MP and a challenge due to their size. As you can see I compared a robust recent model desktop computer and my 3-year-old laptop which has decent specs but nothing special by today’s standards. I believe this provides enough criteria to help make an informed decision on various aspects of the raw processors and how they will handle a challenge.
The images above pertain to the color accuracy column in the chart.
Important factors to keep in mind:
1. The desktop/iMac times may be influenced by the fact that it has a 5K display and I take advantage of the real estate so even in “Fit” view the image is around 1200 pixels in the long dimension. Due to the limited real estate on my MacBook Pro laptop, the Fit view is much smaller at 600-700 pixels depending on the application.
2. A faster GPU with a lot of RAM will generally help performance. Adobe and Topaz state this specifically and in Lightroom you can turn it on or off.
3. The desktop machine I used is a 2017 iMac Retina 5K with 4.2 GHz Intel Core i7 with 32 GB RAM and GPU is Radeon Pro 580 8GB.
The laptop I used is a 2014 MacBook Pro 13” Retina with 3GHz Core i7 with 8GB RAM and Intel Iris GPU with 1.5GB RAM
4. My image server is a Drobo 5D3 (135,000 images) using hard drives connected via Thunderbolt 3 to the iMac. For the MacBook Pro, I used my usual travel rig with images on a 1TB external SSD connected via Thunderbolt 2.
In most cases, one size won’t fit all. I use all four of these as each one has something I need and I’ve figured out an efficient workflow with them. I may be the exception. Hence I’ve done this extensive comparison so that others can figure which of these can best fit their needs, goals, and workflow.
Image Management and Beyond
Of these ON1 and Lightroom are, right now, the only ones with image management capabilities. Both also have lens correction profiles built in. This is critical for me being a mirrorless user. If I were still shooting Canon or Nikon DSLRs then it wouldn’t be as important. This is because I see the corrected image at the time of capture with my Fuji mirrorless cameras and an uncorrected image through the viewfinder in a DSLR.
The processing capabilities of ON1 Photo Raw 2018, especially with today’s update, are beyond Lightroom and with a more sensible interface with effects contained in a layer, each of which has masking and opacity (Effects module.) It is a multipurpose hub solution. Because of its roots as a plug-in maker, ON1 essentially is a new generation of image management and processing with all kinds of capabilities that would require plug-ins were you to use Lightroom as a host/hub. I use Photo Raw for my initial processing and hop into Luminar or Topaz Studio for the unique filters and effects those programs offer.
You might have ascertained that in terms of image processing capability, Topaz Studio also has layers with opacity sliders, many effects that no-one else has, masking capabilities second to none, and very fast processing speeds. The main reason I can’t use it as a hub is that it has no image management capabilities. But that said it has many effects, especially artistic ones that no one else has. And once I go into it I have many of the best interface qualities with fabulous masking. So I can’t live without it.
I loved Luminar the first time I used it and that hasn’t changed. It has the most intuitive user interface of them all. The net result is that it’s just plain fun and a joy to use. Luminar 2018 has many useful and unique filters/effects. It is an excellent raw processor, especially if you don’t need or want built-in lens corrections. Regardless of where I start I often end up in Luminar for some of my favorite filters and effects like Golden Hour, Orton Effect, and the numerous others I lauded above. If you had to choose just one raw processor for everyday single image processing this would be it. And it makes a wonderful companion to other processors too!
Price and Support
All of these products are relatively cheap ranging from free to about $80 with discounts and promotions mentioned above. And upgrades come in cheaper. This makes it feasible to own multiple products without breaking the bank.
Just to keep this in perspective I spent $6800 on Adobe products when they had perpetual licenses and several hundred dollars so far just on my Photoshop/Lightroom subscription. And Adobe’s support is seriously lacking. ON1, Skylum, and Topaz are much smaller companies and my feedback from customers runs the gamut in terms of satisfaction but all of them offer free email support and in general the feedback I get is good for all of them, not to mention my own personal experience has been good, even as an everyday customer before I started working with these companies.
Workflow Efficiency, Fun, and Options
Processing software is much easier and more fun to use than ever. However, in spite of the marketing hype, there really is no one-size-fits-all product to meet all your processing needs. Granted, if your needs are simple you might be able to do that. And if you are an intermittent user with modest needs then look at the pros and cons sections and you may indeed be able to get by with one of these.
I will be the first to admit it one has to make a fairly big time commitment to learning these products to get the most out of them. But if you do, you will be rewarded exponentially by greater efficiency, allowing you a more enjoyable experience and in the long run, more time behind your camera.
Happy Shooting!
Joel
Aurora HDR 2018 is far and away the best HDR product out there but you can also use it for more than HDR. It handles X-Trans files very well. In the end it is a fairly specialized product so you’d probably still want one the other ones I reviewed here to go with it. But for many images it’s a great starting point, especially for images with a large contrast range.
Iridient Developer is renowned for it’s exceptional acutance (“sharpness”) with X-Trans files where it still reigns king. However it is a pass through type application in that you still need one or more of the processors in this review to complete optimization of an image. It is also somewhat difficult to get accurate color. If you want the utmost in acutance you’re better off using Iridient Transformer which can batch process your raw files with the option of “Adobe Standard” which does yield accurate color. If storage space is an issue for you, bear in mind that Transformer outputs only DNG files which are 3X the size of Fuji’s lossless compressed and at about 50% larger than uncompressed.
Capture One is an excellent raw processor and has a dedicated following. There are several reasons I didn’t include it, not the least of which is their lack of a clear commitment to Fuji X-Trans raw files. They have gone back and forth on supporting X-Trans lossless compressed in the last few versions. I think you are fine using it with Canon, Nikon, and Sony but it may be a gamble for long term support for Fuji. It uses an import system of cataloging like Lightroom but other pros I have talked with that use it run into problems once the catalog goes above 10,000 images.
Editor’s note on 3/2/18: The original version PetaPixel published made it less clear that this review is geared primarily toward Fujifilm photographers with more general information included throughout. We’ve added “Fuji” into the title to make this more clear, and we’ve added in the Epilogue by Wolfson. Sorry for the confusion.
About the author: Joel Wolfson is an internationally published photographer who loves teaching as much as shooting. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. He shares his 30 years of experience as a working pro with other photographers and enthusiasts by way of his workshops, 1 on 1 training, webinars, articles, blog and speaking engagements. He is one of the pioneers of digital photography, having conducted digital photography seminars for Apple and other corporations starting in the early 90s. This article was also published here.
]]>An angry bride has been ordered to pay a wedding photographer C$115,000 (~$89,000) by a Supreme Court judge in Canada. The court ruled that the woman had defamed the photographer through her online posts that trashed the wedding photography business.
CBC News reports that wedding photographer Kitty Chan’s now-defunct business, Amara Wedding, was “ruined” after client Emily Liao posted a series of messages around the Web to tear down Chan’s reputation.
Liao had reportedly been upset after seeing proofs of pre-wedding photos after signing a $6,064.80 contract for Chan’s services in 2015. Liao had asked Chan to shoot the photos herself — something that wasn’t specified in the contract — but Chan instead delegated the task to another trained photographer.
Liao and Chan then reached an impasse when Liao refused to pay the remainder of the agreed balance, forcing Chan to withhold photos that had been shot. Liao proceeded to sue Chan in small claims court, but she didn’t stop there: she also began publishing “disparaging comments” on blogs, forums, and social media services (e.g. Facebook, Weibo, Wechat, Blogger).
The comments stated that Amara Wedding “was a major scam shop and deceitful photography mill business engaged in extortion, dishonesty, unfair practices, bait and switch and other dirty tactics, lies to its customers who it tricks and coerces to enter into contracts which it breaches and attempts to falsify, had provided raw unfinished photographs under the guise of the finished product, had destroyed evidence, used a secret, fictional identity and had threatened the defendants,” writes Justice Gary Weatherill.
After the posts went viral, Chan’s business withered up until she was unable to attract new customers. The business was officially closed up in January 2017.
Weatherill ruled that Liao’s online posts were false, defamatory, and published with malice in an effort to harm Chan, so he awarded C$75,000 (~$58,000) in damages to Chan’s business as well as C$40,000 (~$31,000) in aggravated and punitive damages for Liao’s actions.
“This case is an example of the dangers of using the internet to publish information without proper regard for its accuracy,” Weatherill writes in his decision. “Emily, and others who think it is acceptable to use the internet as a vehicle to vent their frustrations, must be given the message that there will be consequences if their publications are defamatory.”
]]>It seems that every new Sony camera announcement these days creates an insane amount of hype because the company keeps pushing the envelope in different directions. Photographer and filmmaker Max Yuryev just tested the newly-unveiled a7 III‘s low-light abilities against the Sony a7R III, Sony a6500, and Panasonic GH5, and he was “shocked” by how impressive it is.
The a7 III is Sony’s new entry-level full-frame mirrorless camera. With a price tag of just $1,999, it’s a more affordable option than the $2,700 a7S II, $3,200 a7R III, and $4,500 a9. It may be the cheapest option of the bunch, but the a7 III isn’t short on features and specs — many of the latest technologies unveiled in the a9 and a7R III have found their way into the a7 III.
In the a7 III, you’ll find a 24MP back-illuminated full-frame sensor, a 693-point AF system, 4K video with advanced features, 5-axis stabilization, ISO 204800, 10fps shooting, dual SD slots, Wi-Fi/NFC, USB Type-C, weather-sealing, and a 3-inch tilting touchscreen.
But it’s the high-ISO performance that Yuryev wanted to check out. He shot footage of himself with each of the 4 cameras at ISO values ranging from 1600 to 51200. At ISO 6400, the a7 III is “insanely clean”, a little noise is creeping into the a7R III, and the GH5 has become unusable.
At ISO 12800, the a7 III is “still ridiculously clean.” The a7R III is “usable,” and the GH5 has fallen apart by this point.
Taking ISO even higher, Yuryev was surprised to find that the a7 III is (slightly) cleaner at 51200 than the a7R III is at 25600.
“Wow… so we have at least a stop of low-light performance improvement over the a7R III,” Yuryev says. “And the a7R III is not a slouch. Everybody was really quite impressed with that camera just a few months ago when it launched.”
What this test’s finding boils down to is that Sony’s new cheapest full-frame camera has become one of the top performers in low-light performance (perhaps just behind the a7S II).
]]>The new Samsung Galaxy S9+ officially packs the best smartphone camera ever tested by DxOMark. The camera equipment testing lab just published its review today, and the S9+ received a top score of 99, placing it above the Google Pixel (98) and iPhone X (97).
One of the main selling points of the S9+’s dual camera is the fact that the wide-angle camera features the first variable-aperture lens to appear in a smartphone. It uses a f/1.5 aperture in low light situations and switches to a f/2.4 aperture when there’s more light.
Features and specs of the S9+ camera include a 12MP main camera with a 1/2.55-inch sensor (the variable aperture camera); a 12MP secondary camera with a 2x telephoto lens, f/2.4 aperture, and a 1/3.6-inch sensor; optical image stabilization for both cameras; dual pixel phase detection autofocus on the main camera; an LED flash; 4K video recording at 60fps; and 720p video at 960fps.
Here’s the breakdown of how the S9+ performed in the major photo and video categories:
Strengths include great noise control, a fast and accurate autofocus, bright vivid colors, good stabilization, and great zooming resolution. Weaknesses include exposure instabilities, noticeable image issues (ringing, color fringing, and loss of sharpness), and slight color casts.
“The Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus is a smartphone without any real weaknesses in the camera department,” DxOMark writes. “In both still and video modes, it performs well across the board, delivering consistently good photo and video image quality in all light and shooting situations, thus earning itself our highest DxOMark Mobile score to date.
“Add one of the best smartphone zooms and a capable bokeh simulation mode to the mix, and the Galaxy S9 Plus is difficult to ignore for any photo-minded smartphone user. With the Galaxy S9 Plus, Samsung is setting the pace for 2018. We’ll see if the competition can follow suit.”
]]>ImageBrief has announced to its members this morning that it will be closing after six years of connecting agencies and brands with photographers.
The company was founded back in 2011 and went on to raise $1.5 million for its mission of disrupting the stock photography industry. The idea was that instead of purchasing generic cheap photos through stock agencies, buyers could simply post “briefs” with their requests, budget, and time frame. Photographers signed up to ImageBrief would then receive the briefs and submit photos for consideration.
Premium photographers could also use the service to promote their services and be connected directly to buyers to arrange a photo shoot to satisfy the briefs. ImageBrief’s Twitter states that the service was being used by 12,000+ brand marketers to source photos from 65,000+ photographers in recent days.
Unfortunately, it seems that ImageBrief has reached the end of the road. Here’s the email message
Today, we’re announcing that after six years of connecting agencies, brands and creators, we will be closing down ImageBrief’s photographer marketing services
We’re proud of the products and apps we built, but even more so, we’re grateful for the community that enabled them to grow. More than 70,000 creators earned millions of dollars collaborating with 12,500+ global agencies and brands in 169 countries.
There has never been a better time for creators to thrive. Demand for content has increased, and the tools to create world-class creative are more accessible than ever.
Our talented team of engineers, designers, developers, and curators have worked tirelessly to make ImageBrief a success in a competitive and rapidly evolving landscape, and our immediate priority is to help you transition to other services to support your business.
In the coming days, our team will be in contact with you directly with detailed information about your specific account, license history, and services. Over the next week, we recommend logging into ImageBrief to download and retain your license history and related assets. […]
We want to thank you for your participation and loyalty, and look forward to working with you in the coming weeks to ensure a smooth transition.
Sincerely,
Team ImageBrief
Another failed example of business model based on photogs. shouldering all risk 4 chance of pennies on the dollar ROI. Spec work isn’t work.
— David Robin (@eyetide) March 1, 2018
I didn’t participate in many briefs but @ImageBrief seemed like it was doing well. Surprised to receive an email from them a short while ago stating that they were closing the photography section https://t.co/GPL6iP7BjR
— Feroz Khan (@zoomnclick) March 1, 2018
ImageBrief says that all photographer photos that have been uploaded to the service will be deleted from its servers within the week. During this week, you’ll also be able to log into the site to grab additional copies of your licenses (with you’re still legally obliged to adhere to).
Image credits: ImageBrief screenshot by Kaptur.co
]]>The post Ilford’s crash course teaches you how to develop black and white film appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The post Ilford’s crash course teaches you how to develop black and white film appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>We recently shared an analysis that showed how IKEA’s cheap LADDA rechargeable batteries are virtually identical to pricey Eneloop Pro batteries in capacity. But get this: it seems LADDA batteries actually outperform Eneloop Pros when it comes to flash recycle speed.
Wedding photographer Martin Cheung made this 3.5-minute video in which he puts the two battery brands to the test using two Godox TT685 flashes. He triggered the flashes at exactly the same time to see which flash would be ready again first.
As you can see in the video, the flash containing the LADDA batteries recycled noticeably faster than the other flash every single time, even when the batteries were swapped into the other flash to ensure it wasn’t a difference in the flash units. Do keep in mind, though, that Cheung’s didn’t test how many flashes you’re able to fire off with each set of batteries.
IKEA LADDA and Eneloop Pro batteries can currently be purchased in packs of 4 for $7 and $21, respectively. The prices seem to fluctuate a bit, and you can sometimes find them for $5 and $20, respectively, resulting in an even bigger price gap.
But if you’re in the market for rechargeable batteries for your camera gear, it seems like IKEA’s offering will cost you 1/4 to 1/3 the price while having the same capacity and superior performance (for this type of usage, at least).
(via Martin Cheung via DPReview)
]]>The post A round up of what people think about the new Sony A7III appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The post A round up of what people think about the new Sony A7III appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The post These five simple and cheap tricks will make your smartphone videos more interesting appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The post These five simple and cheap tricks will make your smartphone videos more interesting appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>If you’re a wildlife photographer hunting for bird photos that no one else has, here’s something to add to your bucket list: a yellow cardinal. That’s what a photographer in Alabama managed to capture on camera.
AL.com reports that it all started when a birding enthusiast in Alabaster, Alabama, named Charlie Stephenson spotted the unusual bird in late January. She recorded some video of the bird and reported her find on Facebook.
“I thought ‘well there’s a bird I’ve never seen before’,” Stephenson tells AL.com. “Then I realized it was a cardinal, and it was a yellow cardinal.”
Stephenson reported that she was always able to spot the strange yellow cardinal when she looked for him at her bird feeder.
When wildlife and wedding photographer Jeremy Black saw the post from his friend Stephenson, he asked if he could visit her backyard to try and shoot photos of the bird.
After waiting for about five hours on February 19th, Black saw the bird return to the feeder and managed to capture a series of photos of it.
Auburn University biology professor Geoffrey Hill tells AL.com that yellow cardinals may be “one in a million” and the result of an ultra-rare genetic mutation.
“I’ve been birdwatching in the range of cardinals for 40 years and I’ve never seen a yellow bird in the wild,” Hill tells AL.com. “I would estimate that in any given year there are two or three yellow cardinals at backyard feeding stations somewhere in the U.S. or Canada.”
You can find more of Black’s work on his website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Image credits: Photographs by Jeremy Black and used with permission
]]>The post Win ThinkTank bags in ‘Modes of Transport’ appeared first on Photo Contest Insider.
]]>The post Win ThinkTank bags in ‘Modes of Transport’ appeared first on Photo Contest Insider.
]]>The post ‘Grey’ contest – win premium camera straps from Blackrapid appeared first on Photo Contest Insider.
]]>The post ‘Grey’ contest – win premium camera straps from Blackrapid appeared first on Photo Contest Insider.
]]>The post Photographers Forum’s 38th Spring Photo Contest appeared first on Photo Contest Insider.
]]>The post Photographers Forum’s 38th Spring Photo Contest appeared first on Photo Contest Insider.
]]>The post Instagram photo of LEGO rifle and threatening caption send a 14-year-old to jail appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The post Instagram photo of LEGO rifle and threatening caption send a 14-year-old to jail appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The X-Rite i1Studio is an all-in-one colour management system for photographers. Comprised of a spectrophotometer and accompanying software, X-Rite i1Studio can be used to create accurate colour profiles for a monitor, projector, printer, camera and scanner. Is it worth the £450 / $489 investment? Find out by reading our in-depth X-Rite i1Studio review...
]]>The X-Rite i1Studio is an all-in-one colour management system for photographers. Comprised of a spectrophotometer and accompanying software, X-Rite i1Studio can be used to create accurate colour profiles for a monitor, projector, printer, camera and scanner. Is it worth the £450 / $489 investment? Find out by reading our in-depth X-Rite i1Studio review...
]]>The post 5 tips to get steady handheld shots without a gimbal or monopod appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The post 5 tips to get steady handheld shots without a gimbal or monopod appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The Sony E 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS is a compact and lightweight 7.5x zoom lens for Sony APS-C mirrorless cameras. Designed to be a significant step-up from the usual kit lenses, is it worth the £570 / $599 asking price? Read our in-depth Sony E 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS review with full-size sample images to find out...
]]>The Sony E 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS is a compact and lightweight 7.5x zoom lens for Sony APS-C mirrorless cameras. Designed to be a significant step-up from the usual kit lenses, is it worth the £570 / $599 asking price? Read our in-depth Sony E 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS review with full-size sample images to find out...
]]>Cosina Japan have launched three new Voigtlander lenses at the CP+ show in Japan - the Voigtlander MACRO APO-LANTHAR 110mm F2.5 E-mount (pictured), Voigtlander COLOR-SKOPAR 21mm F3.5 Aspherical E-mount and Voigtlander NOKTON 50mm F1.2 Aspherical VM lenses.
]]>Cosina Japan have launched three new Voigtlander lenses at the CP+ show in Japan - the Voigtlander MACRO APO-LANTHAR 110mm F2.5 E-mount (pictured), Voigtlander COLOR-SKOPAR 21mm F3.5 Aspherical E-mount and Voigtlander NOKTON 50mm F1.2 Aspherical VM lenses.
]]>The post The new 400GB SanDisk Extreme is the world’s fastest UHS-I microSD card appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The post The new 400GB SanDisk Extreme is the world’s fastest UHS-I microSD card appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The post Tokina announces Opera 50mm f/1.4 “Top Premium” full frame lens for Nikon and Canon appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The post Tokina announces Opera 50mm f/1.4 “Top Premium” full frame lens for Nikon and Canon appeared first on DIY Photography.
]]>The shortlisted and commended photographers for the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards have just been announced. Nearly 320,000 images were submitted from across the world, seeing a 140% increase in entries compared to 2017. The overall winners will be revealed on April 19 2018.
]]>The shortlisted and commended photographers for the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards have just been announced. Nearly 320,000 images were submitted from across the world, seeing a 140% increase in entries compared to 2017. The overall winners will be revealed on April 19 2018.
]]>ON1 Photo RAW 2018.1 is the first major free update to Photo RAW 2018, a photo editor designed by photographers for photographers. Version 2018.1 includes image quality enhancements, performance improvements, and key features to optimize the photographer’s workflow.
]]>ON1 Photo RAW 2018.1 is the first major free update to Photo RAW 2018, a photo editor designed by photographers for photographers. Version 2018.1 includes image quality enhancements, performance improvements, and key features to optimize the photographer’s workflow.
]]>The Sekonic L-308X is a new light meter aimed at both photographers and filmmakers. The pocket-sized Sekonic L-308X is packed with all of the latest functions, including all of those found in the L308S and L-308DC light meters. Features such as a customised new screen display and LCD backlight, Aperture (F) Priority photo mode and ISO 850, to match the native ISO of Canon cinema cameras like the C300, make the L-308X one of the most versatile and affordable photo/cine light meters available today. The Sekonic L-308X will retail for £215 in the UK.
]]>The Sekonic L-308X is a new light meter aimed at both photographers and filmmakers. The pocket-sized Sekonic L-308X is packed with all of the latest functions, including all of those found in the L308S and L-308DC light meters. Features such as a customised new screen display and LCD backlight, Aperture (F) Priority photo mode and ISO 850, to match the native ISO of Canon cinema cameras like the C300, make the L-308X one of the most versatile and affordable photo/cine light meters available today. The Sekonic L-308X will retail for £215 in the UK.
]]>I came across this amazing List of Rooftop Bars in Hong Kong. I marked most of them on my personal map and will see how many I can visit and photograph while there. If you like city-photography, these are often some of the best places to go take photos!
There’s a game called Bar Golf where you go out with your friends and have a golf-scorecard. You start at Bar #1 and the oldest person picks the first drink for everyone (like Champagne, for example). The number of sips it takes you to finish is your score for that hole. Then you go to Bar #2 (Hole #2) and the next oldest person chooses the next drink. And then I assume you see how the rest of the golf game plays out. I’ve never tried it, I can’t imagine finishing the front 9.
Speaking of rooftop bars in Hong Kong, here is a gentleman from Papua New Guinea. I'd love to get back there with my new Sony setup. I think I could be even more productive. If I recall, I was using a Leica lens here which required a bit of manual focus time. I'm pretty fast, but not nearly as fast as Auto-focus. I missed a few little expressions here and there that I would have liked to nab.
Adorama has a killer deal on the Canon PIXMA PRO-100 printer right now for $79 after instant and mail-in rebates. You must use the coupon code HBWPPI99 at checkout to get the additional instant savings.
The add to cart price is $379.99 but use the coupon code and it is $329.99. Then, the $250 rebate makes it a net cost of $79.99. You also get a free 50-sheet pack of Canon’s 13″ x 19″ Pro Luster paper, which is normally $44. This deal is a limited time only, so get it while it lasts.
Check it out here at Adorama.
]]>Whether you’re aware of the correct terminology or not, you have likely experienced color contamination happening in your photographs already. Put simply, color contamination is when one color is affected by the presence of another color in close proximity.
For example, if you’re photographing two friends side by side, one of them is wearing a white t-shirt and the other one is wearing a red t-shirt, the white t-shirt will likely take on a pinkish tone due to the fact that it’s receiving bounced light from the red t-shirt close by.
This color contamination effect has nothing specific whatsoever to do with photography as it happens around us all day every day and we are so accustomed to it that most of us never even notice it. So why bring it up? I bring it up because it’s a frustrating effect when it happens in our shots, especially if we aren’t aware of what’s causing it.
We may even just write it off as a white balance issue or other color balance problem as it’s usually so subtle we might not even try to correct it. But when color contamination is at it’s most intense, we have to take note and address it.
Think about doing a portrait shoot in the woods. You’re surrounded by green, the leaves in the trees, some bushes and maybe there’s even green grass on the floor around you. The daylight comes through the trees and bounces around on all the foliage before it hits your subject resulting in some very sick-looking green subjects. Not a great look. Think about how many woodland portraits you’ve seen that have been converted to black and white. Starts to make more sense now right?
White balance exists on the Kelvin scale that specifically deals with balancing a certain range of colors, so no matter how hard you try, a lot of these color contamination shots simply can’t be fixed with white balance alone, hence the black and white solution.
But more than that, color contamination is often a localized effect. Let’s go back to that white t-shirt that looks a little pink now because it was next to a red one. We can’t color balance the scene to correct the shirt without affecting the whole image. It’s these factors that make color contamination such a troublesome problem and one that is incredibly overlooked.
Strangely, radiosity is what I was taught 20 years ago in the film days but you hardly hear the word used in association with photography anymore. Now the word is more related to how light and color act upon one another in computer generated worlds. In fact, one of the greatest leaps forward 3D modeling has made was to accurately model how light affected one surface when in proximity to another.
Without getting too nerdy, 3D modelers ironically love radiosity as it gives their worlds and textures an added depth and realism. We as photographers, specifically portrait photographers hate it and we try and color balance it away where we can. If you’re interested then you can take a look at the Radiosity in Computer Graphics page on Wikipedia, but be warned: there’s a whole lot of maths involved.
Regardless of what you want to call it, this color contamination effect is a very real problem for us photographers if we want to depict objects like people, cars, clothing and so on in the best possible way.
No company wants you to photograph their white car only for it to look a ‘little pink’ on one side, and the same goes for fashion as well. We need to be aware of what colors we’re putting next to one another.
In the images below, I set up a mini set to illustrate the color contamination effect in action. I purchased three spheres, the cue ball with its very shiny surface, the table tennis ball with its very matte surface and the golf ball for its very textured surface. I placed them all on a white surface and shone a single light at them with a variety of colored papers next to them and took shots to document the whole thing.
Look closely at the shots below to see just how the different surfaces and textures are affected by the close proximity of color.
Upon first impressions you may not think it’s a big deal because our eyes are so accustomed to normalizing color variance when it’s in proximity to similar tones, but as the images change you should be able to see just how dramatic the effect is.
To further cement my point, I’ve isolated the separate spheres in the images below and placed them next to the image of the spheres shot against the white. In isolation like this, the effect is a lot more visible and significant, to say the least.
You may look at the images above and think that it’s just a byproduct of taking photos, that there’s no use worrying about something that can’t be helped. Although there are times when this can’t be avoided, color contamination is very real and it is something we can limit a lot if we’re careful.
For example, think twice about photographing the bride right next to a huge bunch of flowers, that green will bounce back onto the face. Consider bringing her slightly forward to avoid that or look at alternatives.
Think about the effect of photographing a model next to a brightly colored car or building. You don’t need to avoid the shot but there are things you can do to limit the effect, like always having the face pointed away from the brightly colored object.
As I documented in the images above, if you can’t avoid the color contamination, always try to have the offending color in the actual shot. The effect is dramatically reduced visually if the eye can see where that color is coming from compared to if you crop it out.
The good news is that you can use this color contamination effect to your advantage if you’re clever. Remember that this radiosity isn’t exclusive to color — you can use blacks and greys to add dimension to your subjects and objects. You’ll often see studio photographers using black polyboards (large polystyrene boards) either side of the model to control the light, this not only controls the light but also adds a lot of shape through shadow in the process.
I will always carry black velvet sheets with me on location to limit the bounce of light around a subject but I also have sheets of grey card in the studio that are less severe than black to add a little definition to the features where necessary.
In the sphere comparison photos above, look at the light grey and dark grey images compared to the black and white images. See how they shape the spheres differently though shadow? Use this to your advantage either in the studio or on location.
Also, consider taking a white sheet with you on location too. Along with my black velvet, I always have a white sheet with me that I can throw up to either bounce in some light or limit the color contamination of nearby colored surfaces.
Many years ago I was photographing fashion in natural light at the beach. A pretty easy job but the issue was that when I got the images back and started working on them I saw a very ugly and insipid looking greenish tinge to some of the clothing and skin. It was only apparent in some of the shots and it was always localized to certain areas.
It took me a very long time to work out what this was until I remembered that my assistant on the day had a bright yellow/green t-shirt on. In some of the shots, he was in very close to the model holding a reflector just out of shot but not only was he bouncing in light from the reflector, he was also bouncing in light from his hideously ugly t-shirt.
People joke about my grey sweatshirt but trust me, if you’ve ever tried to color balance out greenish tinges to skin you’ll switch to looking boring as hell like me in a heartbeat. When I was assisting all those years ago back in London in the film days, black shirts were mandatory on set, no ifs or buts. Now the sets are a kaleidoscope of color balancing nightmares. Take a look at the BTS of the film industry — how many lighting technicians are you seeing wearing day-glo?! Not many.
I know I sound like a grumpy old man, and although it’s a very real problem it actually only affects certain situations like still life shooters with shiny surfaces or macro beauty work etc. Still life shooters who photograph metal or other shiny surfaces nearly always wear all black to avoid this. Either way, it’s very wise to be aware of it and advise assistants on set to dress appropriately where necessary.
I think this color contamination effect is an incredibly overlooked aspect of modern photography due to the “I’ll fix it later in post” mindset. Not only is it very time consuming to fix it in post but it’s also practically impossible in certain situations due to the colors being outside of the white balance spectrum.
If you’re aware of the colors around you when you’re shooting then you can limit the effect or use it to your advantage where necessary.
About the author: Jake Hicks is an editorial and fashion photographer based in Reading, UK. He specializes in keeping the skill in the camera and not just on the screen. If you’d like to learn more about his incredibly popular gelled lighting and post-pro techniques, visit this link for more info. You can find more of his work and writing on his website, Facebook, 500px, Instagram, Twitter, and Flickr. This article was also published here.
]]>If you’re a Nikon D500 owner who feels like batteries run out of juice faster in the camera than in other Nikon DSLRs, it may not be just you. A new report suggests that the D500 measures remaining capacity differently and doesn’t use up all available charge.
Photographer Martin Beran brought the issue to light in a new report published over at Nikon Rumors.
“I found one surprising issue related to how Nikon D500 measures remaining battery capacity,” Beran writes. “D500 displays lower remains capacity than what other Nikon bodies do.”
Through his experiments, he found that an official EN-EL15 or EN-EL15a battery that shows as completely empty in a D500 is still able to shoot 100 to 200 more photos in other Nikon DSLRs. Here’s a short video he made to demonstrate this “Batterygate” issue:
And although the D500 shows fully-charged batteries as 100% correctly in the battery indicator, partially used batteries always show less charge remaining than on other compatible Nikon bodies (Beran has tested this with the D7200, D750, D810, and D850).
“The less capacity is remaining, the difference between D500 and others is bigger,” Beran writes. “If a battery has about 20-30% of remaining capacity in other bodies, the D500 qualify such battery as empty and does not turn on at all.”
Beran created this chart showing how the remaining capacities of six different batteries were measured in 5 different Nikon DSLR bodies:
Beran also tested this on multiple D500 units of different ages just to make sure it wasn’t a flaw with a single camera or a single batch from the factory.
After contacting Nikon Service, Beran learned that Nikon isn’t aware of any differences in battery metering between the Nikon D500 and other Nikon cameras.
“My conclusion is that all D500 cameras by design measure remaining capacity of battery lower than other Nikon bodies,” Beran writes. “What makes me confused is the fact that Nikon D500 is not able to fully utilize the capacity of the battery. The number of shots per battery can be about 25% higher if D500 would be able to utilize the battery the same way as other bodies.”
]]>A few years ago, I flew out to Ecuador to create a high-resolution image of the capital city of Quito. The final image turned out to be 16 gigapixels in size and at a printed size of over 25 meters (~82 feet), it allows people see jaw-dropping detail even when viewed from a few inches away.
I’ve always thought that gigapixel technology was amazing since I first saw it around 8 or 9 years ago. It combines everything that I like about photography: the adventure of trying to capture a complex image in challenging conditions as well as using high tech equipment, powerful computers, and advanced image processing software to create the final image.
I’ve been doing this for a while now, so I thought that I would share some of my experiences with you all so that you can make your own incredible gigapixel image as well.
The picture was made with the 50-megapixel Canon 5DSR and a 100-400mm lens. It consists of 912 photos with each one having a .RAW file size of over 60MB. To create the image a robotic camera mount was used to capture over 900 images with a Canon 5DSR and 400mm lens. Digital stitching software was then used to combine them into a uniform high-resolution picture.
With a resolution of 300,000×55,313 pixels, the picture is the highest resolution photo of Quito ever taken. This allows you instantly view and explore high-resolution images that are over several gigabytes in size.
The first step in taking the photo is site selection. I went around Quito and viewed several different sites. Some the sites I felt were too low to the ground and didn’t give the wide enough panorama that I was looking for. Other sites were difficult to access or were high up but still not able to give the wide panoramic view that I was looking for.
I finally settled on taking the image from near the top of the Pichincha Volcano. Pichincha is classified as a stratovolcano and its peak is over 15,000ft high. I was to access the spot via a cable car and it gave a huge panoramic vista of the entire city as well as all the volcanoes that surround Quito.
The only drawback that I saw to the site is that I felt that it was a little too far away from the city and I didn’t think that people would be able to see any detail in the city when they zoomed in. To fix this situation I decided to choose a site a bit further down from the visitor center. That meant that we would have to carry all there equipment there (which isn’t easy at high altitudes) but I felt that it would give the best combination of a great panoramic view and be close enough to the city for detail to be captured.
The site was surrounded by very tall grass as well as a little bit of a hill that could block the complete view so I decided to set up three levels of scaffolding and shoot from the top of that. There wasn’t any power at the site since it was on the side of a volcano so we had to bring a small generator with us.
I ran extension cords from the generator up to the top of the scaffolding where it powered the panorama head, as well as my computer. I didn’t plug in the camera in because I would be able to easily change the batteries if they ran out.
Anything that affects the light rays on their path to the camera’s sensor will affect the ultimate sharpness of the image. Something that is rarely mentioned is the effects of the atmosphere on high-resolution photos. Two factors are used to define atmospheric conditions: seeing and visibility.
Seeing is the term astronomers use to describe the sky’s atmospheric conditions. The atmosphere is in continual motion due to changing temperatures, air currents, weather fronts and dust particles. These factors are what cause the star images to twinkle. If the stars are twinkling considerably we have “poor” seeing conditions and when the star images are steady we have “good” seeing conditions.
Have you ever seen a quarter lying on the bottom of a swimming pool? The movement of the water makes it look like the quarter is moving around and maybe a little bit blurry. Just as the movement of water moves an image, atmospheric currents can blur a terrestrial image. These effects can be seen in terrestrial photography as the mirage effect, which is caused by heat currents and also as a wavy image due to windy conditions. It’s interesting to note that seeing can be categorized according to the Antoniadi scale.
The scale is a five-point system, with 1 being the best seeing conditions and 5 being the worst. The actual definitions are as follows:
(Note that the scale is usually indicated by use of a Roman numeral or an ordinary number.)
Visibility: The second factor that goes into atmospheric conditions is visibility, also called visible range is a measure of the distance at which an object or light can be clearly discerned. Mist, fog, haze, smoke, dust and even volcanic ash can all effect visibility.
The clear high altitude air of Quito made for some amazing visibility the day of the shoot. The only things that affected it that day were a few small grass fires in the city. The Cotopaxi volcano was also giving off smoke and ash but it didn’t seem to be a problem since it was blowing away from the city. There also weren’t any clouds in the sky which made it so that the exposure wouldn’t be affected by any clouds blocking out the sun.
Camera: I decided to use a 50 megapixel Canon 5DS R. The 5DS R is an amazing camera that is designed without a low-pass filter which enables it to get amazing pixel-level detail and image sharpness.
Lens: A Canon 100-400mm f/5.6 II lens was used to capture the image. Several factors went into the decision to use this lens such as size, wight and focal length. The 100-400mm was small and light and would allow the robotic pano head to function with no problems. It also has a good focal length of 400mm with would allow for some nice detail to be captured.
I thought about using a 400mm DO and 400mm f/2.8 but each had its own drawbacks. The 400mm DO didn’t have a zoom and I wanted to be able to change the focal length for different types of captures if I had any problems and the 400mm f/2.8 was too big and heavy to be used properly in the pano head. I have a Canon 800mm f/5.6 which I would have loved to have used but it was also too heavy to be used with the robotic pano head (humble brag).
Another interesting factor that went into my decision to use the 100-500mm f/5.6 is that the diameter of the front lens element was small enough so that atmospheric distortion wouldn’t be too much of a problem. I have spent a lot of time experimenting with astrophotography and the larger the front lens element is the more atmospheric distortion or “mirage effect” will be picked up resulting in a blurring of the photo.
Pano Head: I used a GigaPan Epic Pro for the image capture. The GigaPan is an amazing piece of equipment which automates the image capture process. The GigaPan equipment is based on the same technology employed by the Mars Rovers, Spirit, and Opportunity, and is actually a spin-off of a research collaboration between a team of researchers at NASA and Carnegie Mellon University.
To use a GigaPan you first need to set it up for the focal length of the lens that you are using. You then tell it where the upper-left-hand corner of the image is located and where the bottom-right-hand corner of the image is. It then divides the image into a series of frames and automatically begins scanning across the scene triggering the camera at regular intervals until the scene is completely captured.
There are several other brands of panorama heads out there including Nodal Ninja and Clauss-Rodeon but I like the GigaPan the best since it is automated, simple and reliable. The GigaPan is also able to be connected to an external power source so the battery won’t run out during large image capture sequences.
Computer: I didn’t think that the memory card would be large enough for all the images to be stored on it especially since I was going to be making multiple attempts at capturing the image. I decided to shoot with the camera tethered to a MacBook Pro via Canons EOS Utility. This software not only allowed me to write the images directly to my hard drive, it also allowed me to zoom into the image in live view to get critical focus. Just in case something went wrong I simultaneously wrote the images to an external hard drive as a backup.
Aperture: I set the aperture to f/8. This was done for a couple of reasons. The first was to increase the resolution of the image. Although the Canon 100-400mm f/5.6 II is a very sharp lens shooting wide open, stopping down the lens a little bit increases its sharpness. Stopping down the lens also reduces vignetting, which is a darkening of the edges and corners of the image.
Although the vignetting is minimal on the lens, I have found out that even the slightest amount of vignetting on the frame will result in dark vertical bands being shown in the final stitched image.I didn’t want to stop down the aperture too much because I was worried about diffraction reducing the resolution of the image.
Focal Length – I shot at 400mm so I could capture as much detail in the city. I could have used a 2x teleconverter but there was so much wind at the site that I was afraid that the camera would move around too much and the image would come out blurry.
ISO: I shot at an ISO of 640 due to all the wind at the site. I knew that using a high ISO would increase my shutter speed and reduce the chance of vibrations from the wind blurring the photo.
Shutter speed: All of these factors combined gave me a final shutter speed of 1/2700.
RAW: I shot in .RAW (actually .CR2) to get the maximum resolution in the photos.
Live View: I used the cameras live view function via Canons EOS Utility to raise and lock the mirror during the capture sequence. This reduced the chance of mirror slap vibrating the camera.
The GigaPan has a lot of different settings for the capture sequence of the images. One can shoot in columns from left to right or in rows from the top down and left to right or any combination thereof. I choose to shoot the image going across in rows from top down going from left to right. Even though the image capture sequence would only take an hour or so I have found that shooting in this sequence makes for a more natural looking image in case of any change in lighting conditions. I also included a 1-second pause between the GigaPan head moving and the trigger of the camera to reduce any shake that may have been present from the pano head moving.
I had to go at it a few times but the final image was taken with 960 photos with each one having a .RAW file size of over 60MB.
Two Image Sets: Each day of the shoot presented itself with different problems. One day the city was clear but the horizon and volcanoes were obscured with clouds. On another day the horizon was totally clear. I decided to create two different image sets and combine them together to make the final image. One large image set was used for the clear sky and volcanoes another image set was used for the city.
Pre-Processing: For the horizon and volcanos I selected an image that I felt represented an average exposure of the sky into photoshop and corrected it to remove any vignetting.
For the image set of the city found an exposure of the city and color corrected and sharpened it to the way I wanted it before bringing the images into the stitching software. I recorded the image adjustments that I made and made a photoshop droplet with them. I then dragged and dropped all the files onto the droplet and let it run, automatically correcting each image of the photo sequences. It took a long time but it worked.
Autopano Giga: After the images were captured I put all of them into Autopano Giga. Autopano is a program that uses something called a scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) algorithm to detect and describe local features in images. These features are then matched with features in other frames and the images are combined or stitched together. The software is pretty straightforward but I did a few things to make the final image.
Anti-ghosting: Autopano has something called an “anti-ghosting” which designed to avoid blending pixels that don’t match. This is useful for removing half cars or half people that could show up in the image due to the movement of objects between frames.
Exposure blending – Just in case of any vignetting or differences in the lighting I used the exposure blend function in the software to even out the exposures and make a nice blend.
.PSB: .PSB stands for Photoshop Big. The format is almost identical to Photoshop’s more common PSD format except that PSB supports significantly larger files, both in image dimension and overall size.
More specifically, PSB files can be used with images that have a height and width of up to 300,000 pixels. PSDs, on the other hand, are limited to 2 GB and image dimensions of 30,000 pixels. This 300,000-pixel limit is the reason why the final image has a 300,000-pixel width. I could have made the image a little bigger but I would have had to use a .kro format and I’m not sure that I would have been able to successfully blend the two images (one for the horizon and one for the city) together.
Computer: To stitch the .PSB together I used a laptop. I was worried that my laptop wouldn’t have enough horsepower to get the job done but it worked. The computer I used had the following specs: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 16GB 1600 Mhz DDR3, AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2048MB.
Hard Drive: The important thing to know when processing gigapixel images is that due to the large sizes of the images the processor speeds and RAM don’t really matter that much.
Since the processor cache and RAM fills up pretty quick when processing an image of that size the software directs everything to the hard drive where it creates something called a “page file” or “swap file” A page/swap file is a reserved portion of a hard disk that is used as an extension of random access memory (RAM) for data in RAM that hasn’t been used recently. By using a page/swap file, a computer can use more memory than what is physically installed in the computer. However, if the computer is low on drive space the computer can run slower because of the inability of the swap file to grow.
Since everything is happening on the hard disk it is really important to not only have a hard drive that is fast, but also one with a lot of space since it fills up really fast and won’t process the image if there isn’t enough space available since the swap file size can get gigantic. To process the Quito image I tried to use a fast PCI SSD that had around 500GB of space to process the image but the drive filled up. I took the computer back and got one with a 1TB PCI SSD and it was able to process the image.
Photoshop: I had to stitch one image for the horizon and another image for the background. Once these were done I opened them up in photoshop and used the eraser tool set to a large diameter to manually tool to manually blend them together. I then flattened the image and saved it as a .PSB file.
Image Tiling: I used a program called KRPano to make a tile of the images. If I uploaded the resulting .PSB file to the internet it would take forever for it to load up so people could see it. KRPano divides up the image into layers of small tiles. Each image you see is made up of a low-resolution tile. As you zoom into the image different small image tiles are quickly loaded and displayed with allows people to quickly view and explore the image without having to load the entire image. About 174,470 tiles were created for this image.
Once all the image tiles were created I compressed them into a .zip file. I felt that it would be easier to upload one large file instead of over 174,000 separate small files. The image upload went fine and I manually unzipped the image inside of the Hostgator server using FileZilla. It is good to check with the hosting company to make sure that they allow files to be unzipped inside their servers.
Once the image was created, tiled and uploaded I made a simple website and embedded the .html file into an iframe so It could be displayed.
You can view the photo through an interactive viewer on Quito Gigapixel.
I hope that this little guide proves helpful for all of you. Gigapixel technology is really interesting and fun to try out. I have done quite a few gigapixel images but am by no means an expert and am always interested in learning more.
About the author: Jeff Cremer is a Lima, Peru-based photographer who works in the Amazon. You can find more of his work on his website and on Twitter and Instagram.
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