News entries for March, 2014

 

Photo: Josh Rossi

It’s fitting that Adobe would commission an image that pushes Photoshop to a surreal extreme, stacking layer upon tweaked layer, with a depth of field, richness of color, and level of detail that makes it look more like a digital rendering than anything a camera would really capture.

Photographer...

 

 

Canon users have long enjoyed improved stills and video capabilities in their cameras thanks to the hacked firmware versions provided by Magic Lantern, and were therefore envied by many a Nikon shooter. But now it's time to rejoice for Nikon videographers, as Nikon Hacker has just released its latest firmware patch...

 

Photo: Seamless / Sean McCurry

Apparently it’s quite difficult to find a decent, affordable follow-focus ring to transform your typical still photography lens into a more cinema-friendly one. Most of the rings out there have some annoying flaw: too bulky, or the ergonomics are weird, or they slip off the lens,...

 

Photo: LensRentals.com

Get your MTF charts ready: Roger Cicala and the team at LensRentals.com just got a new lens calibration tool, and documented the setup for all to see.

Cicala writes that for the past year and half, he’s been on "a Holy Quest, trying to find better ways to optically analyze and adjust bad...

 

 

It's the start of a new week, so let's get things going properly with a new selection of camera deals! Up today are a variety of savings for Canon, Nikon, Panasonic and Ricoh cameras, from DSLRs to mirrorless to compact cameras, including a rugged, waterproof model. Lastly, there's also a couple nice lens deals...

 

 

Are you a fan of macro photos, but struggle with the shallow depth of field that can make your macro subjects disappear into a blur of bokeh? Olympus aims to fix this problem with its brand-new Stylus Tough TG-3 digital camera, the world's first with in-camera focus stacking. And that's not the only macro shooting...

 

 

If you're a fan of Olympus' retro-styled PEN-series mirrorless cameras, but favor travel zoom cameras for their compact dimensions while providing generous telephoto reach, Olympus has good news. The Olympus SH-1 digital camera sports PEN-like styling, complete with an aluminum alloy top deck and controls, but it's...

 

 

We've just published our review for the Sony FE 24-70mm f/4 ZA OSS Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar T*, the compact, Zeiss-branded zoom lens that was announced alongside the hot Sony A7R and A7 full-frame E-mount mirrorless cameras. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be quite up to the same standards as the FE primes we...

A UK policeman who had threatened a photographer trying to cover the scene of an accident back in November 2013 has now been found guilty of 'misconduct' by the local authorities, the Amateur Photographer reports. This is the result of a lengthy investigation that started when the photographer first reported the incident shortly after it had...

 

 

Things are pretty peaceful on the firmware front this Firmware Friday. We've only two updates to report on this week, from Zeiss and Canon respectively, so if you're getting ready for a weekend of photographic fun you can likely hit the road without updating first.

If you're shooting a Zeiss Touit lens on...

 

 

As video subjects go, there can be few which are harder to film than coral. The marine invertebrate colonies that make up a coral reef are undeniably photogenic, but shooting on a fragile reef out in the real world brings a million challenges. But even just shooting coral in an aquarium is tough. Not only do...

 

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Want to pick up some Lightroom tips from a pro? X-Rite has a free webinar for you, coming up in April.

Hosted by photographer and educator Chris Orwig, the tutorial looks like it will mostly focus on workflow and color management topics, including “working with Catalogs and backing up your...

 

 

When you think of a photojournalist, what kind of camera do you picture them using? It’s probably nothing like the Ricoh Theta.

Ricoh and CNN are teaming up for the Spherical Report 360 contest. Aspiring local reporters (or anybody, really) can submit an essay (360 words or less) about why they deserve a Ricoh...

 

 

Have you bought a Canon digital camera in the last couple of decades? If so, you're not alone. Far from it, in fact. Some 19 years after it jointly launched the EOS DCS 3 with Eastman Kodak, Canon has just announced production of its 250 millionth digital camera!

To put that mind-boggling figure in perspective,...

 

 

Ten years in the making. 172 days of cumulative exposures. More than 2.5 million photos in all, and if printed out at 300 dots-per-inch resolution, some 150 feet across. This just-released infrared, 360-degree panorama of our galaxy shot by NASA's Spitzer space telescope might not be the largest photo ever made,...

Iceland is one of these countries that we just can't get enough of. Only recently we wrote about a video taken with a drone copter in Iceland's rough yet beautiful landscapes, and now comes another film that shows off the country's breathtaking scenery. 'Crystalapse: Frozen in Timelapse' is a blend of timelapse, regular video and drone footage...

 

 

Fear not Olympus OM-D fans, the next installment of my Olympus E-M10 shooter's report is here. In this update, I was fortunate to have all the stars fall into alignment and was able to test the E-M10 on a variety of subjects, that happen to be some of my favorites -- sports, wildlife and long exposures.

Pushing...

 

 

Earlier this week, HTC unveiled the HTC One M8, their new flagship smartphone. One of the headlining features is the dual-camera setup on the back—a standard 4-megapixel camera, seemingly identical to the module in last year’s HTC One, plus a depth-sensing camera. The idea is that it enables some computational...

 

 

The Sony A5000 -- or more specifically 'Alpha 5000' -- is Sony's first compact, crop sensor, E-mount camera to forego the 'NEX' moniker. However, this new entry-level, pocketable mirrorless camera is more than just a name change. The A5000 sits in their lineup primarily as the successor to the Sony NEX-3N, although...