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With thanks to Bryan Weiss of Daytripper Photo, I got a short time hands-on with a variety of Sony products. Bryan in making a short film and Sony provided him a stack of gear to use and he has allowed me to do a quick look during his period of use. The camera I was most excited to try out is the new a7R II
Read MoreIn this video I show how easy it is to use the XPOBalance and demonstrate using Lightroom how to make the settings once for an entire session and then sync them across all the images from the session.
Read MoreHere's a quick video on the XRite Color Checker Passport explaining why you should use one and how to make camera profiles with it.
Read MoreIt's that time of year again and time for my annual gift guide. You'll find great gift ideas for photographers and videographers of all levels and I've worked to ensure that I cover different budget sizes since we aren't all millionaires. Well maybe you are, me not at all.
Read MoreOn Saturday November 20th 2015 I was invited by Henry's Newmarket to deliver a seminar on the theory and practice to make great photographic prints, whether you print yourself or prepare your images to be handled by a lab. I've done this video for those who wanted a reference and for those who could not attend.
Read MoreRegular readers know that I've looked at a lot of mirrorless cameras, always looking to see if this is a space to expand into. I've liked many of them, and hoped for more from others. I guess I'm already a mirrorless user, as I've been shooting Leicas for many years, starting with film, then a substantial gap in time to the M9 and now the M (240). They are wonderful cameras but different from the "standard" mirrorless in that they are manual focus rangefinders. The SL however, is something very different indeed.
Read MoreI've been hearing questions from people in my programs as well as other folks about some confusion between using heads on monopods vs tripods. I've written a lot on tripod heads and it's probably time for a quick treatise on monopods and monopod heads.
Read MoreI have a shoot coming up where I need to provide 4x6 prints to the client's guests nearly immediately after making the photographs so they can take the photo with them that evening. Research led me to the Canon CP100 printer, a dye sublimation system that puts paper and dye sub film into a single box. My MacBook Pro runs El Capitan, the current shipping operating system from Apple. As I have found in the past, Canon's installer is OS version specific, even when it makes no sense to do so. I would be stuck, except for Pacifist.
Read MoreBarely a week can go past without hearing the same complaint and concern from developing photographers. "My pictures look different on xx than on my screen. Be the xx representative of another display, a web service, a mobile device, a TV, a different computer or a print, the complaint is the same. Let's solve this issue.
Read MoreRegular readers know that I am sometimes overly cautious about HDR. It can be a highly subjective effort in terms of outcome and drives a wide range of responses. I don't personally subscribe to the "HDR Must Die" school of thought, but I personally prefer more realistic uses of dynamic range extension over the glow in the dark nuclear waste look that some folks love. The outcome is your art, how you get there determines the ease, flexibility and customization available to you as you make your art. I wasn't blown away to hear of another HDR software tool but I have been very pleased with everything I have used from the folks at Macphun so gave them the benefit of the doubt. I did so because they write excellent software, limited only by its availability only on the Macintosh. The acclaimed photographer, Trey Ratcliff, was heavily involved in the development, and that in itself will draw many buyers. What really matters is how incredibly good this product is!
Read MoreIt’s official. Nikon has announced that the D5 is coming. The D5 will be the follow-on to the professional grade D4S. Nikon also announced the pending release of the SB-5000 Speedlight and the WT-6 wireless transmitter. The release is included at the bottom of this article and I find it very Rumsfeldian. We don’t know when, we don’t know where and we don’t know how much, but it’s coming. Regardless, the announcement is absolutely necessary.
Read MoreEditing images on your smartphone or your tablet doesn't have to be limited to picking from a limited group of presets that make your work look just like everybody else's work. It also doesn't have to be ugly or limited in functionality. How can I say this? Because I use Polarr!
Read MoreMy dear friend and fellow tenured photographer, the incredible Joseph Leduc, introduces me as Mister Flash. Sounds great, and potentially creepy but he's right that I love using flash to make better images. Sometimes other photographers find flash frustrating and often very expensive. I recently had a chance to use in production some new Cameron products available exclusively from Henry's, Canada's largest independent photo-video retailer.
Read MorePhotographers everywhere place the words HDR and the photographer Trey Ratcliff in the same wheelhouse, because Trey's work is synonymous with HDR. Coming November 19, 2015 is a brand new application from the great people at Macphun called Aurora HDR and it was built in conjunction with Mr. HDR himself, Trey Ratcliff.
Read MoreYou want a camera. Or you want to give someone a gift of a camera. The decision is to go with a DSLR and now it's time to shop. Then you go to the big box store, or the dedicated photo shop, or you sit in the kitchen shopping online, but in the end you come away frustrated because there are so many choices and when you find something that looks decent, you immediately find a review from someone who hates the thing. Arrgghhh! I cannot promise that this article will make your life easier, but if you are seeking a DSLR for the starting or growing photographer, you should take a look at the D5500 from Nikon.
Read MoreOne of the banes of digital photographers who have to change lenses in less than ideal field conditions is the potential to collect dust on the sensor. This dust turns to dark spots on your image and if you have a lot of images shot at the same time, you have a lot of spots to deal with.
In this tip, I'm going to show you a tip using a basic Lightroom function to find and clean spots on a single image and then remove the same spots in all the images shot at that event.
Read MoreThe saga of Canon mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras is a sad one. The M1 was not successful. The M2 never came to North America. The M3 made it here after long delays. On October 13th, Canon announced the M10. After looking at the specifications, and Canon's state target market, I really think that they have to stop dropping acid.
Read MoreON1 will ship Photo 10 at the end of October 2015. I'm one of the folks that has been asked for early release reviews and information sharing so this is the first of a series of posts on what you can expect starting with the Browse module
Read MoreI've been an Adobe Lightroom customer since the first release. Every release since then has been evolutionary, some stronger and richer than others but steps forward. Having spent a large part of my professional life in software, I became nervous when Adobe adopted a subscription delivery model, and I fear that very model is what is hurting Lightroom today.
Read MorePhotographers like to be creative. Some of us like to extend our creativity into the digital darkroom. Some of that group have chosen a Macintosh as their platform of choice. For these people, the Macphun Creative Kit is an excellent toolset.
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