Canon 200-400 Review
Over on Shutter Muse I have posted an in-depth review of the Canon 200-400 f4 L IS. Is this the worlds best wildlife photography lens as many predicted? Find out what $12,000 can get you...
Read MoreMonth: October 2013
Backup Routine Revisited
I’ve just had another drive failure here in the office and this always causes me to stop and think about my backup routine. I haven’t lost any data in the incident but I like reviewing things every now and again and reminding you guys how important this stuff is. The drive that failed was my primary boot drive for my 27″ iMac. In fact it was a $600 SSD which in theory should last much longer than a regular spinning disk drive. In reality it lasted less than a year before catastrophic instantaneous failure. Never trust a drive. SSD or HDD. My current backup system is as follows: My boot drive is (was) the aforementioned SSD and that backs up daily to a 4TB G-Tech USB3 drive with Time Machine. I also have an internal 3TB drive in the iMac which is used for data, documents and temporary files. This also backs up to the Time Machine. There’s a further G-Tech drive connected which actually serves as the Time Machine for my laptop. When I switch it on, my laptop connects with it over the WiFi network and backs itself up. Connected to the iMac via Thunderbolt is a Drobo 5D and daisy-chained to that is another 5D. Drobo A mirrors itself to Drobo B using Carbon Copy Cloner every single night while I’m asleep. Whilst the...
Read MorefotoQuote and fotoBiz Review
I’m excited to share with you this review that I just did about fotoQuote and fotoBiz. These are some incredibly useful programs to help you run your photography business and fotoQuote helps you to answer the age old question, “how much should I charge?”. I’ve been using fotoQuote for much of my career and I’ve just been introduced to the fotoBiz tool as well. Check out my fotoQuote review here on ProPhoto...
Read More$4000 Carl Zeiss Otus 55mm f/1.4 Launched
Carl Zeiss have finally launched the much talked about 55mm f/1.4 lens previously described by them as ‘no compromise’. It marks the beginning of a new lines of lenses for them, to be called Otus, and it comes in a Canon or Nikon mount for the hefty price tag of $4000. I’ve had my hands on one of these lenses in New York last year and even though that was a very pre-production model the results appeared impressive. Moreover, the build quality was like nothing I have ever seen on a DSLR lens, it certainly felt more like a cine lens so I’m not surprised about the $4000 price at all. If anything, I expected it to be even more than that. Designed to meet the needs of cameras with ever increasing resolution like the Nikon D800, the Otus certainly won’t be found in the bags of many photographers, partly due to cost and partly due to its size and weight. This thing is a monster lens, far bigger than any other 50mm lens out there right now. I expect that it will predominantly be used by fine art landscape photographers since the manual focus only nature of it doesn’t lend it to studio shooting. Pre-Order the Zeiss Otus 55mm f/1.4 The lens should be available across the world at the end of October 2013 Canon EF Mount...
Read MoreGoPro Launches New Hero 3+ Black and Silver
GoPro has launched an update to their awesome Hero 3 Black and Silver cameras today and there’s some interesting updates across the board. Before we delve into the differences, take a look at the video below and have your mind blown! Order the GoPro Hero 3+ B&H Photo Amazon What’s New? This is more of a bump than a jump, and those looking for a proper 4k mode will be disapointed as we still just get 15fps in 4k BUT there are some nice tweaks that are worth looking at and certainly if you’re still using a Hero 2 then this would be a prime time to upgrades. Size Whilst the size of the actual camera seems to have changed very little, the size of the waterproof casing has been shrunken by a considerable 20% and the housing is now rated to 131ft deep for the divers out there. Battery Life 30% increase in battery life due to new LI-Ion battery pack. This is an awesome change that will make a significant difference to a lot of people. Sharpness GoPro claim a 33 per cent increase in image sharpness and a 2x reduction in artifacting. Having watched the new demo reel in full HD and compared it to the (still awesome) Hero3 reel, it’s hard to argue with this. Everything does appear to be a little crisper...
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