The day has finally come , and now the clock is ticking for those of us who are running the beta version of lightroom 3. The beta will expire on June 30th and after that point you will have to purchase a copy of Adobes flagship image organizer to continue to use it. Like a lot of people out there I have been testing LR3 for some time and it is a vast improvement over LR2. Earlier in the winter I tried out Aperture 3 as well, but for me Lightroom’s file organization was much better. I don’t profess to be a Lightroom expert but I know what works well for me. You can also download a trial version of the final release candidate and try it for 30 days to help make the decision to upgrade or not and you can also Get 30% off Lightroom 3 when purchased with Photoshop CS5 software
which is a pretty good deal.
If you have taken more than a passing interest into the video capabilities of your DSLR camera then you will probably have thought about getting some sort of viewfinder for the LCD screen. With the DSLR cameras lacking the ergonomics of traditional video camera design, such viewfinders are probably the most useful accessory to aid video shooting. Not only do they permit easier manual focusing with a clear view of the screen, but they also add stability to hand held shooting with an extra point of contact to your body. Continue reading »
If you shoot video with a Canon DSLR you already know the audio sucks. Or even if you don’t, maybe you have read my guide to audio and microphones for these cameras ! Recording your audio separately is without a doubt the way to get the highest quality audio track but it adds a couple of daunting extra steps to your production. Firstly the simple process of making sure you record the audio and not just the video while you are shooting, 2 record buttons to press! And secondly syncing that audio to your video track in post-production. I guess you could also add in an extra middle process in there of keeping all the audio files organized in a way that you can relate them to the video clips. This all sounds pretty time consuming but for the last year or so lots of people have been singing the praises of a piece of software called PluralEyes from Singular Software. Available as a plug-in for Final Cut, Premiere and Vegas, it takes your the audio track that is associated with your video track and automatically analyzes the waveform to match it up with your second separately recorded audio track. Great if you have one of those 3 editing programs, but consumer video users were left out in the cold. Not any more though…… DualEyes is a new program in beta testing from Singular. And rather than being a plug-in, it is now a totally separate program meaning that anyone can use it all the way from iMovie makers to pros already using Final Cut , but wanting a more streamlined workflow for audio syncing. Take a look at the demo video that they posted on their website, it really looks very easy and would be perfect to use with the new Zoom H1 audio recorder or the H4N.
Samson Tech stumbled onto something great with the ubiquitous Zoom H4N audio recorder. When the DSLR video craze kicked off, people quickly realized that whilst the video was stunning to look at, the on-board audio sucked. All professional films use separate audio recorders though, and the HDSLR crowd quickly fell in love with the full featured Zoom H4N. Built in stereo mics and 2 XLR inputs meant 4 track recording was possible in a device that was only $300. Samson was in the right place at the right time with the right price, the H4N was and still is everywhere. But many of the features of the H4N were unnecessary to the “run and gun” photo journalist who just want to record some background audio for a multimedia piece, or just use one extra microphone like a shotgun to get slightly more directional pickup. Well the folks at Samson heard your calls and today announced their first piece of audio gear that was actually designed with DSLRs in mind. The Zoom H1. Continue reading »
Manfrotto tripod heads are perhaps the most prolific video heads around. They are easily available and offer a solution for every budget and nearly every type of camera. I have touched on the lightweight, DSLR friendly 701HDV before but I recently had the chance to try out it’s bigger brother. The 503 HDV. The 503 skips over the middle sibling, the 501HDV and adds quite a few extra features and improved weight capacity. Continue reading »
F-Stop gear is having a great sale this weekend on the Tilopa backpack to honor the military (up to and including Monday 31st May). This bag has been extremely popular this year so this is a great opportunity for you to save 25% and also get a FREE F-Stop t-shirt in the deal.
To get the discount simply follow this link to the F-Stop store and then at the checkout enter the promotional code Cap-Nick in the discount code section on the last page of the checkout. I also have a review and more photos of my F-Stop Satori which is a very very similar bag to the Tilopa. The difference being that the Tilopa comes with a slightly smaller internal camera compartment and is also about 2 inches shorter in overall height.
Tomorrow the Apple iPad will finally launch internationally,including in my home country of Canada. I have written previously about what an iPad can do for photographers and now everyone outside of the US can find out for themselves. To mark the occasion I have decided to offer up a FREE wallpaper for your brand new iPad. Wallpapers for the iPad need to be 1024px X 1024px. This is somewhat unusual, and only a portion of this picture will be able to be seen at one time, depending on whether you have the iPad in vertical or horizontal mode.
The wallpaper I’m offering here is a photo of the Peak 2 Peak gondola at the ski resort of Whistler Blackcombb in my home town of Whistler, BC in Canada. I’m offering it here for personal use only as a wallpaper for your iPad.
If you are interested in creating your own iPad wallpapers I have also created a photoshop template that will help you visualize exactly which parts of your photo will be visible when the iPad is in a particular orientation. You can DOWNLOAD THE IPAD WALLPAPER TEMPLATE by clicking the link. It is a .psd file which you can open and overlay as a separate layer on top of you image in photoshop. Make sure you lower the opacity a little bit on the template layer to reveal your photo underneath. Then you can move your image around until you have it in just the right spot so it will look good in both orientations ! The areas covered by the red squares will never be seen, in either orientation. The center square will always be seen, and the yellow strips will be seen depending on whether you have it horizontal or vertical.
I picked up a HD Helmet HERO helmet package back in January and have taken it with me in my camera bag for most of the winter. The Hero camera is available in several different packages depending on what you want to document. I picked the Hero Helmet package as I primarily wanted to have it with me when I was skiing. But you can also buy an HD Motorsports Hero if you want to record some laps at your local track day, an HD Surf Hero if you want to show your off your surf skills from your summer holiday. Or simply get the HD Naked Hero which forgoes any possible mounting options and allows you to pick and choose the mounts that best suit you from the web store. All of the packages contain the same GoPro HD HERO Camera
and the fully waterproof housing that you can see in the photo on the left here. On top of that the Helmet package contains multiple methods to attach it to your helmet, and also a head strap that allows you to wear it without a helmet. Continue reading »
Users of pocketwizards and Elinchrom or Alien Bees flashes rejoice! A couple of days ago Pocketwizard announced a couple of pretty cool sounding new products. The PowerST4 and the AC9 adapter for Elinchrom and Alien Bees strobes respectively. They both work in different ways so let me break it down differently…
Firstly if you have just purchased the new Paul C Buff Einstein lights let me break your heart now and let you know the AC9 does not work with those lights (though intriguingly Paul himself has hinted that there is something else in the works that we dont know about yet). The new AC9 works by connecting a TT5 transceiver to the RJ11 jack on the Alien Bees and White lighting strobes, the Einstein lights do not support the RJ11 and instead communicate using a transceiver.
The recommended pricing for the AC9 is $55 BUT you need to pair it with a TT5 transceiver for it to work. These currently sell for about $230 so if you don’t already own a TT5 the system is going to set you back $285 which is pretty steep but it has potential to save you a lot of running around during a shoot. Thankfully the Elinchrom solution is much cheaper but I’ll get to that in a bit. Plugging the AC9 into the hot-shoe on top of your TT5 and connecting it to the RJ11 jack on your Alien Bess light enables you to remotely control the power on your strobe so long as you are using a MinniTT1 transmitter or a FlexTT5 transceiver as the transmitter on your camera.
By adding a Pocketwizard AC3 Zone controller to the transmitter on the camera, you can actually control the power of up to 3 groups of flashes. Very cool. If you do not wish to use the zone controller you can simply use the flash exposure compensation dial on your camera to control just one light or one group of lights. Pretty clever implementation. But it doesn’t stop there, the clever boffins at LPA designs have gone one further by introducing a sort of pseudo TTL functionality to the whole affair. They call it power tracking. Basically what you have to do it get the initial exposure correct yourself. Once you have done that you can have the pocketwizard automatically compensate for any changes you make on the camera, to create the same final exposure. If you change your ISO or aperture, the AC9 will automatically send a signal to the flash and adjust it’s power accordingly to produce the same exposure on your image.
A final party trick for the AC9, it requires no batteries and simply takes its power from the TT5 which is sweet because there is nothing I hate more than forgetting to turn off a receiver and finding it flat when you show up to your next shoot! One less thing to worry about.
Now on to the new receiver for Elinchrom Strobes. You’ll notice I called this one a “receiver” and that indicates the first bit of good news. The Power ST4 does not require you to use it in conjunction with a TT5 transceiver, it can handle the receiving all on its own. RRP for the ST4 is $120 but not needing a TT5 makes this solution half the price of the Alien Bees one. That’s good news for me because I shoot with Elinchrom gear. Much as I smashed the dreams of the Einstein strobe owners though, I’m afraid I have to do something similar again. The Power ST4 will not work with your shiny new Elinchrom Ranger Quadra RX that you just bought. The ST4 works by plugging into the remote socket that is found on many Elinchrom flashes, unfortunately the the new Quadras have a built in skyport receiver and as such, do not have the needed remote socket for this to work.
If you have any of the other Elinchrom strobes though you can do a little dance now as you will be just fine. The ST4 is backwards compatible with all previous Pocketwizard transmitters so even if you just want simple triggering from a standard PW PLUSII on your camera then the cheap ST4 provides a good solution.  If you want to have the remotely adjustable power options you will need a TT1 or TT5 on the camera as with the AC9, and things are run the same way by using the flash compensation dial or adding an AC3 to control multiple flashes all at once. You can also set the zone of the receiver so a Multimax zone system can be used too.
The ST4 is powered directly by the battery pack and the firmware is totally upgradeable using the USB port. The low profile of the ST4 is another appealing feature. Hopefully the usable range on the receiver is good enough to make this as useful a product as it sounds. As an owner of a couple of Elinchrom products (and a big bag full of pocketwizards) i’m going to try my hardest to get hold of one of these PowerST4s for review so stay tuned.
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