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Cheap Seats: Sculptural Furniture Showroom Facade Made of 900 Black Chairs

19 Jul

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

Using cheap and repetitive materials sounds like a recipe for kitsch, but this furniture-oriented facade clad in generic black chairs (at around $ 5.00 USD a piece) manages to pull off an elegant and refined look.

The clients, MY DVA (a furniture company), were looking for something additive, layered onto the existing bland building, but also reflecting their function (to showcase office and school furniture). The ideal solution would promote their wares while also entertaining visitors. It also had to be inexpensive.

Versed in product and urban design, Ondrej Chybik and Michal Kristof of studio CHYBIK+KRISTOF, took these concerns into account when designing the facade. Tapping into their respective backgrounds, they came up with cladding literally composed of product designs that also fits a neighborhood theme of repetition (filled with identical blocks of flats).

In total, the team used 900 Vicenza seats, a regular offering of the company, to form an undulating black box around the showroom, which functions well with the reduced light provided by these exterior shading elements.

Inside, the space was pared down to expose a raw concrete ceiling, from which suspended curtains hang to create little galleries — adjustable lights in these zones simulate different lighting conditions for furniture client spaces.

Staff offices are located along the edges, off to the sides and out of the way behind translucent partitions, leaving a large, open, blank-slate showroom for furniture buyers.

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

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This Olympus OM-D E-M5, lenses and accessories are made entirely from paper

18 Jul

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Japanese paper artist Kamihasami (his artist name means ‘paper-scissors’ in Japanese) has recreated the Olympus OM-D E-M5, a few lenses, and accessories using nothing but paper and paste.

The faithful recreation is identical to the original models, and includes things like an SD card, battery and battery charger, underwater housing, and flash. In fact, the models are so precise that the paper lenses can be attached to and removed from the paper camera body!

According to Kamihasami’s website, the entire creation process for this artwork took more than three months. Fortunately, his effort was not a waste, the paper OM-D E-M5 earned Kamihasami an award in the prestigious Kamiwaza Grand Prix competition.

To see more of Kamihasami’s paper artwork, visit his website or follow his page on Facebook.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Defiant Democracy: Parthenon Replica Made of 100,000 Banned Books

08 Jul

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

Standing on the site where Nazis burned 2,000 books by Jewish and Marxist writers, this Parthenon is not made of marble, but of 100,000 books that have been or remain banned by various governmental entities around the world. The Parthenon of Books by Argentine artist Marta Minujin faithfully recreates the historic Athens landmark in Kassel, Germany with various editions of 170 banned books, all wrapped in plastic and donated by the public.

Why the Parthenon? Because Athens was one of the world’s first democracies and the Parthenon was built as a negotiation between the government and the Athenian public, with each element voted upon. Today, it stands as a potent symbol of democracy itself. Minujin aims to make a statement about censorship.

The titles include Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Cecily von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and George Orwell’s 1984. The books are wrapped around a metal frame like a shingled facade with their covers visible, proving that despite efforts to keep their contents from the public, they have endured.

The Parthenon of Books was erected as part of the Documenta 14 art festival, and maintains the same dimensions as the original. It’s also the second time Minujin has installed the piece; in 1983, she erected a similar installation of books to condemn censorship imposed by the military dictatorship after the falling of the junta in her home country of Argentina.

The artist will keep accepting copies of the banned books and adding them to the structure until Documenta ends on August 4th, and then the books will be distributed to anyone who wants them.

Photos by: Rosa Maria Ruehling, Ictanner, Alex Gorlin, ahoisparky, rachelmijaresfick

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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You mean they made cameras, too? A tribute to the Samsung NX10

06 Jul

When Samsung left, it left quietly. I was reminded recently by a senior executive that the company never announced that it was officially exiting the camera industry, but even so, right now the chances of us ever seeing an NX2 seem pretty slim. Which is a shame, because the NX1 was a great camera, and a rumored full-frame NX2 might have been just the shot in the arm that the camera industry badly needs.

But there’s no point wishing on what might have been. Samsung may only have been in the mirrorless interchangeable lens camera business for a little over five years, but it achieved a lot in that short time. And it all started with the NX10.

Traditionally, the camera industry has been a bit dismissive of Samsung. Even after the premium-priced NX1, the company never entirely managed to shed its ‘they make fridges, don’t they?’ image. A slight hint of cynicism towards Samsung’s attempts to be taken seriously as a camera maker can even be detected in DPReview’s coverage of its first mirrorless model, the NX10. In retrospect, that tone is hard to justify.

The NX10 was the first mirrorless model from any manufacturer to offer an APS-C sensor (Sony’s NEX system was launched later the same year), and the ~50% increase in sensor area compared to Micro Four Thirds was a pretty significant technical achievement. The NX10 also offered a fairly high resolution (for the time) electronic viewfinder, a fixed OLED rear screen, and excellent build quality. This – ahem – ‘little Korean camera’ (in the words of our announcement coverage) packed a lot of technology into its impressively compact body.

Samsung NX10 Samples Gallery (2010)

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The NX10 was announced immediately before CES 2010, and we took a working sample to the show. I had recently joined the DPReview team, and Richard, Lars and I added a couple of days of vacation in LA’s Koreatown to the trip.¹

Our plan was to get some sunshine, enjoy some of the area’s famous food, and shoot enough images on the NX10 to create a samples gallery.² During that time, the NX10 was mostly in my possession, and I ended up really liking it. Samsung’s lens lineup was paltry at the point of announcement, but the tiny 30mm F2 pancake was (and remains) a lovely lens for casual everyday shooting with such a small camera.

The Getty Center, in the hills overlooking Los Angeles. It’s worth visiting LA for the Getty Center alone. I certainly wouldn’t go back for the breakfasts.

Flashback to the mid 2000s: Back when it was still rebadging Pentax DSLRs, Samsung used to run private brainstorming sessions in the UK (and I assume elsewhere) with technologists and industry journalists to come up with ideas for the future of camera design over dinner. It also used to sponsor competitions in design schools, to the same end. Possibly as a result of the prodigious consumption of free booze³ the results of these consultations and design experiments invariably ended up looking something like the famous Luigi Colani concepts for Canon, which eventually became the delightfully curvy (but still basically SLR-shaped) T90 in the early 1980s.

Another shot from the Getty Center. I really like the Getty Center.

Having attended a couple of those brainstorming sessions in 2007/8 (hey – I enjoy a free dinner as much as anyone) I remember being a bit surprised that the NX10 ended up looking so conventional. Like the contemporary Panasonic Lumix DMC-G2, it looked and handled like an unusually small DSLR. That said, the NX10 was a perfectly pleasant camera to use, with very few significant frustrations.

Overall, the NX10 offered very good image quality, fast, responsive AF (‘DSLR-speed’ as we admitted in our review) and for the time, an excellent rear display. We complained about its Auto ISO implementation and aggressive noise-reduction⁴ and the video mode had some kinks that needed to be worked out, but for a first attempt, it must be said that Samsung got a lot right.

In pretty short order, the NX10 became the NX20, which became the NX30. Then in 2015 came the NX1. And the rest is (sadly) history.

Read our Samsung NX10 review (2010)

1. I’m pretty sure the location was just a coincidence, but Richard’s boundless enthusiasm for puns may have extended to the trip planning – my memory is unclear on this point.

2. Barring one memorably unpleasant Denny’s breakfast, we succeeded in all three aims, despite what sounded like a near riot in the early hours of the morning at our very cheap and not at all secure hotel.

3. On the part of the industry insiders, I mean, not the design students. Although let’s be honest, we’re talking about design students here – they were probably even more hammered than we were.

4. Remember that we’re talking about DPReview in 2010 – when complaining about Auto ISO systems and noise reduction represented a large portion of our total site output.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Wreck: Replica Mercedes Benz S550 Made of Faceted Mirrored Stainless Steel

04 Jul

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

Life is tenuous and luxury easily lost, as illustrated in brilliant glittering fashion by this perfect replica of a Mercedes Benz S550 that has seen better days. Can arbitrarily assigned status be maintained even once an object has been used, abused and discarded for newer and nicer things? Artist Jordan Griska ruminates on these questions and contradictions with ‘Wreck,’ a crushed vehicle reproduced in faceted mirrored stainless steel.

Though its appearance intimates violence and destruction, the car remains undeniably beautiful thanks to all of those individual panes reflecting light at a slightly different angle, making it look like an oversized gemstone. Philadelphia Contemporary, which premiered the sculpture last fall at the city’s Pier 9, notes that the sculpture touches on the ways in which debauchery and decadence can spin out of control.

“Wreck is based on a computer-generated model of a luxury sedan, in a video game, which was manipulated to look like it was involved in a crash that resulted in a fatality,” says Griska. “I crafted 12,000 individual pieces of mirror-finish stainless steel, over the course of almost two years, in order to transform that model into a full-sized three-dimensional monument.”

“The perfect geometry and flawless materiality of the piece reflect the inspiration of idealized digital design, in stark contrast with the grimness of the reality it represents. Beauty, technology and engineering collide with death and reality.”

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Water Splash Photography Made Easy

22 Jun

How exciting is it to freeze things in action? High-speed photography and water make the perfect recipe to get stunning images – and creating them is incredibly fun and easy too! Here are some tips for doing your own water splash photography.

Water Splash Photography Made Easy

What will you need to do splash photography?

You will definitely need an assistant. He/she will make your life much easier. It’s true that you can do everything by yourself but it’s way more productive if you have some help, a person who can throw the objects into the water, get them out and then throw them again. And again. And again.

Water Splash Photography Made Easy

Next you want a glass aquarium with a minimum size of 24x12x16”, preferably made of transparent glass.
Set up a table covered in black fabric.
Use a black background (paper or textile) standing at a minimum of six feet away from the aquarium.

Setup

Fill the aquarium with tap water, half or 2/3 full, depending on how deep you prefer the subjects to fall. Please keep in mind that if you fill the tank too high, every splash will probably result in water spilling. Please be careful with both flashes and your camera, when working with water.

Gear

Setup Water Splash Photography Made Easy

Any decent camera will be okay, but to obtain better quality you would probably like to use a crop-sensor or full-frame DSLR – or a mirrorless camera, with a good lens. Shooting from a distance, I used a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens at 200mm in order to obtain as much depth of field as I could.

As subjects you can use anything you like. I personally prefer fruits and vegetables because they vary in size, shape, and color.

Water Splash Photography Made Easy

Always use a tripod for your camera. Set the camera at a position where you have the desired framing of the aquarium, leaving enough space up, down and on both sides to capture most of the splashes. After you have positioned the camera, set the focus manually.

Focusing

For this step, ask your assistant to hold the subject in the water approximately where you want to make the splashes happen. Leave the camera on manual focus (or use back button focus). This way, the camera won’t need to refocus every time you make a picture, and you’ll know that the subject will be in focus every time the object is thrown into the same location.

Freezing the water splash

You have to know that freezing the motion (in this case) is done by the flash and not by the camera. Here’s a little bit of theory to explain this.

You have probably already made pictures where you stopped a human or an animal in motion. You’ve achieved that result by using a really quick shutter speed, somewhere between 1/4000th or 1/8000th of a second. But in the studio, where you use flashes or strobes, things change.

Water Splash Photography Made Easy

Your camera has to be in sync with the flashes (sync speed) and in most cases, this results in a shutter speed of 1/125th – 1/200th which is way too slow to freeze fast action. Luckily, there is this magic word called “flash duration”. This is the short period of time when the flash emits light which, if short enough, gives you the freezing effect you wanted.

You can use hot shoe flashes (speedlights) as they generally have pretty short flash duration, but only at very reduced power settings of 1/32 or 1/64 of full power. That results in low light, but you can compensate for that by increasing the ISO and opening the aperture.

The other option I prefer is using strobes with short flash durations. Most manufacturers make the flash duration of their strobes public information and the power at which you get the shortest flash duration. For the pictures of this article, I used Elinchrom ELC Pro HD 500 strobes, which have the shortest flash duration – 1/4000th of a second – at power 3.1.

Setting up the flash and camera

For your water splash setup, you will need two flashes, one on each side of the aquarium, aimed directly at your subject. I prefer to use light shapers which restrict the light to hit only the subject, so it doesn’t spill all over the scene, thus avoiding unwanted reflections and highlights.

For this shoot, my camera settings were ISO 100, 200mm, f/16, at 1/125th of a second.

Water Splash Photography Made Easy

Taking the pictures

This is the fun part! If you an assistant you’ll have to synchronize your movements. As he drops the objects in the water you’ll need to capture the perfect moments. In practice, this means that you will count to three, after which he’ll drop the object while you press the shutter release and pray to get the moment just right!

I sincerely suggest you repeat these four steps for a few hours. I prefer to set my camera to continuous or burst mode (my flashes recycle very fast) and record three or four pictures per drop. That way I increase the probability of capturing the subject and the splash of the water.

Water Splash Photography Made Easy

Some quick tips:

Use subjects with vivid color, this way you will have good separation of the subject from the black background and the white/blueish splash. This makes your pictures really pop.
If you photograph small subjects, try to use a minimum of 6-10 pieces at once.
Try to combine subjects of different sizes, colors, and shapes.
The heavier the subject, the faster it will fall, making it harder to capture at the right moment. So take that into consideration.
To get larger splashes, use subjects with a larger surface are, or let them fall from a higher position.
Wash the fruits and vegetables well before you use them, this way you can keep the water cleaner for a longer period of time.
If the water starts becoming dirty, change it. It’s pretty unpleasant as the tank is heavy and you’ll have to do that a couple of times. But the good news is that by doing so, you’ll have to work less in the post-processing phase, while also getting sharper, more cleaner images.
Frequently clean the front glass of the tank to get rid of the water drops that tend to accumulate on it.

Water Splash Photography Made Easy

Post-processing tips

This part is crucial! Despite all the efforts you have made to capture the perfect splash, the raw images you’ll get will definitely still need a little bit of polishing and processing.

Raw unprocessed image.

I only use Lightroom and Photoshop for post-processing, but you can achieve the desired effects in any preferred image processing application.

Clean up the water

After you’ve selected the image you want to retouch, you’ll first need to clean the water. I suggest that you use the Adjustments Brush, with Blacks set to -100. Apply this brush everywhere on the image except the subjects (that would make the subject too dark).

Adjustment Brush settings to apply to the water.

You can use the brush even on the splash itself, because this will make it cleaner and sharper, but be careful not to over do it because you can lose some details on the splash.

After the Adjustment Brush has been applied.

Final touches

Now open the image in Photoshop, create a new empty layer, select the brush color black, and start painting the new layer black. Be careful near the subjects, to avoid painting them also. This way you can achieve a clean black background around the subject. You can even paint away small drops of water that you consider unnecessary. Try to preserve a little bit of the surface of the water though.

If you like the painting you applied, it’s time to add sharpness to the image using the Unsharp mask at the level of your taste. You can also add some contrast or saturation depending on the final look you want to get.

Water Splash Photography Made Easy

Your turn

Are you ready to give water splash photography a try? Here’s another dPS article that can give you some more splash tips, How to do Creative Water Splash Photography with Off-Camera Flash.

If you have any questions please post them in the comments section below, and also share your images so we can see your results.

Bio

Stefan Mogyorosi is a photographer based in Oradea, Romania. He works mostly on commercial projects for the beauty industry, but also likes to do personal projects photographing still life, macro, fashion, portraits, or glamour. Experimenting with freezing motion and working with liquids are his top priorities right now.

Personal page – http://www.mogyorosistefan.ro
Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/mogyorosistefanphotography/
Instagram page – https://www.instagram.com/mogyorosistefan/

The post Water Splash Photography Made Easy by Stefan Mogyorosi appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Pixel Peeper lets you check the Lightroom edits made to a JPEG

20 Jun

Pixel Peeper is an EXIF viewer that will show how a JPEG was edited in Lightroom – provided it was, you know, edited in Lightroom. This photo wasn’t.

Freelance web developer Piotr Chmolowski is the creator of Pixel Peeper, a simple web application that displays EXIF information and any Lightroom edits made to an image. By uploading any JPEG image (the site’s fine print states that photos are not saved to a server) you’ll see the camera and lens used to make the image, exposure settings, and the positions of each Lightroom adjustment slider – provided the owner of the image hasn’t chosen to hide that data.

I made a little website that takes a JPG image and shows you how it was edited in Lightroom (+ camera settings)https://t.co/EFG3UhMdTS pic.twitter.com/P8EaienbZ2

— Piotr Chmolowski (@p_ch) June 19, 2017

The site is quick and certainly easy to use. Chmolowski mentions that he’s looking to add an option that would use an image’s URL rather than requiring the user to download an image they’re curious about. If you’ve often wondered how a particular image was edited, it might be worth bookmarking Pixel Peeper for future reference.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Avoid These 5 Common Camera Setting Mistakes Made By Beginners

31 May

Over the years, I’ve taught many new photographers and observed how they used their cameras. I have noticed a handful of common mistakes that many of them make. While there is a lot more to learn about photography, if you can avoid or fix these issues alone, you will find that your photographs will be much sharper and of much better quality.

Avoid These 5 Camera Setting Mistakes Typically Made By Beginners

1. Not raising the ISO high enough

It used to be commonly taught that you always needed to go as low as possible with the ISO for digital cameras. This was because early digital cameras had horrible noise at higher ISOs. These days, that has completely changed. Newer digital cameras can shoot with incredible quality at ISO 800, 1600, 3200, and even 6400 for higher end cameras. The noise is much less noticeable than it used to be, and it is much more pleasant looking.

Avoid These 5 Camera Setting Mistakes Typically Made By Beginners

This has changed how we can shoot. While your ISO should still be as low as possible when the camera is on a tripod when you’re shooting handheld you will often want to raise your ISO up much higher. Unless I am purposely shooting with a very large aperture such as f/2.8, I typically keep my ISO at 400 in sunlight, 800-1600 in light to dark shade, and 3200 and 6400 when handheld at dusk or at night. This allows me to use a faster shutter speed to offset handheld camera shake or motion in subjects, along with a decent depth of field. My shots are much sharper because of this.

Unless you are shooting in Manual Mode, I suggest taking your camera off of auto-ISO. You never want to let your camera choose two of the three settings (shutter, aperture, and ISO) because it will mess up your photographs a lot of the time. The camera should only be choosing one of those three settings for optimal use.

2. Using a shutter speed that’s too slow

Avoid These 5 Camera Setting Mistakes Typically Made By Beginners

To offset the handheld camera shake, the shutter speed always needs to be ONE over the focal length of your lens. So if you are shooting with a 50mm lens, your camera will need to be at 1/50th of a second (or faster) to make sure the image is sharp. This comes even more into play with a zoom lens because a 300mm lens will need a 1/300th of a second shutter speed in order for the image to not look blurry. This is because slight vibrations are much more noticeable when you magnify a small area in the distance. This is also why I will often raise my ISO when zooming at far distances.

For subjects in motion, you will need a fast enough shutter speed to freeze them. I prefer a minimum of 1/250th of a second to freeze people walking. You will need an even faster shutter speed as you get to subjects such as cars.

3. Not using exposure compensation (+/-) or the right meter mode

Avoid These 5 Camera Setting Mistakes Typically Made By Beginners

If you are using Aperture or Shutter Priority mode, Exposure Compensation is your best friend, particularly in scenes with tricky lighting. Your camera’s light meter is not creative – it wants to make everything look a neutral gray, but that is problematic in images with lots of dark or bright tones. Maybe you want those tones to look gray for creative purposes, but most likely, you will want them to be true to the scene. This is where Exposure Compensation (+/-) comes into play.

For instance, in scenes with lots of bright snow or a bright sky, this could trick the camera into thinking that it needs to overly darken the image to make those white areas look gray. Or if you are shooting at night, or in a dark alleyway, the camera’s light meter will try to make those dark tones look like a lighter gray, thus brightening the image too much. Similar problems can also appear when shooting in areas with both bright highlights and dark shadows, or if your subject is backlit.

On a related note, many photographers keep their camera on the wrong metering mode. There are three main metering modes; Evaluative, Center-weighted, and Spot metering. Evaluative will expose for the entire scene, Center-weighted will expose based on the spot that you focus on and an expanded area around it, and Spot metering will measure the light based on only the spot that you point to. I personally find Evaluative to be too broad and Spot to be too focused, so I mostly use Center-weighted metering mode.

Read more here: Cheat Sheet: Understand Metering Modes On Your Camera

4. Not getting the focus point right

Avoid These 5 Camera Setting Mistakes Typically Made By Beginners

Some photographers leave their focusing completely up to the camera. This is a terrible idea as the camera will often focus on the wrong point, ultimately ruining your image. You need to be in control of your focusing and put the focus on the most important subject in the image.

On a similar note, it is common for photographers to get that new 50mm f/1.8 or f/1.4 lens and immediately think that they need to shoot everything at f/1.4 because they can. Some situations will be good for f/1.4, but it’s important to realize how shallow the depth of field is at that aperture.

If you are shooting with a really shallow depth of field, the focus needs to be perfect and exactly right on the most important subject. If you are photographing a person and you put the focus point on the person’s ear or nose instead of their eyes, it will be noticeable and it will mess up the photograph. Often, I prefer to shoot portraits like this at f/4 instead of f/1.8 or f/2.8. There is still a beautiful background with bokeh, yet more of the person is in focus. This minimizes any focusing mistakes as well.

5. Using image stabilization when using a tripod

Avoid These 5 Camera Setting Mistakes Typically Made By Beginners

The image stabilizer in your lens or camera will make your photographs sharper when handheld. However, it can also create minor vibrations while keeping the camera steadier, and these vibrations can actually backfire when you are on a tripod. Sometimes they will introduce blur. So always make sure to turn the image stabilizer off when you are using a tripod. If you ever notice your photographs on a tripod are slightly blurry, this issue and wind are the most likely culprits.

Conclusion

There you have it. The bottom line is that if you can learn to conquer and avoid these five common beginner mistakes, you’ll be on your way to better photography.

The post Avoid These 5 Common Camera Setting Mistakes Made By Beginners by James Maher appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Moving Miniature: Tiny Landscape Made of Sugar, Spices, Salt & Sand

11 May

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

Nothing about the hazy sunlight, languid motion of a tire swing, branches blowing in the breeze or puffy white steam pouring out of a factory chimney gives you any idea that the scene you’re looking at fits on a tabletop. Not only is this landscape a miniature – it’s made out of ordinary household objects and materials. Artist Matthew Albanese uses salt, sugar, flour, sticks, moss and other easily procured items to craft stunningly realistic tableaus, but for the first time, he’s incorporated movement, sharing a video.

‘The North Jersey Din’ is a moving version of a tree that Albanese has frequently used in a series of images called ‘A Tree in My Backyard.’ The attention to detail that went into this work is pretty incredible. In order for the miniatures to look realistic in the final images, Albanese employs a mix of techniques perfecting the scale, depth of field, white balance and lighting.

“This video is my first attempt at creating a moving miniature. Everything is designed for movement. The tree itself is made from brass tubes soldered together with springs at every joint. The leaves were die punched and machine cut, each threaded one by one. This video was filmed with just an iphone set to slow motion at 240fps. The audio is a set of recordings I made in my backyard capturing the sounds of the typical North Jersey Din.”

On his YouTube channel, Albanese also shared a video that captures four months of work in 33 seconds. ‘Making of a Promised Land’ is a time lapse of stills documenting the construction of another diorama, giving us an idea of just how much work goes into creating a single one of these photos.

Some of the scenes use materials you’d never expect, like faux fur standing in for the fields and sifted tile grout for mountains in ‘After the Storm,’ above. Among the items used in ‘Wildfire’ were cooked sugar, Scotch-Brite pot scrubbers, yellow glitter, clear garbage bags and party bulbs. Click on individual works on his website to see more behind-the-scenes images.

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Breakthrough Photography’s GND and ND filters are the first made with tempered glass

06 May

Breakthrough Photography has launched what it claims are the first-ever neutral density and graduated neutral density filters made with tempered glass. The new X4 GND, X4 ND Square, and Dark CPL filters are being funded through Kickstarter, where both 100mm and 150mm versions are detailed. According to Breakthrough, the X4 GND is the sharpest GND filter ever, while both the GND and ND filters are the ‘world’s most color neutral.’

Both the X4 GND and X4 ND filters are made with Schott B270 tempered glass which, says Breakthrough, results in ‘an incredibly durable filter’ that can withstand drops onto hard surfaces. Both sides of the tempered glass are refined with an MRC16 coating and a nanotec coating, the combination of which cuts down reflections and makes cleaning easier.

Joining the two X4 filters is the Dark CPL, a filter that combines X4 ND and X4 CPL filters. Breakthrough explains that while stacking these two filter types typically produces a vignetting effect at about 19mm with a full-frame sensor, the new Dark CPL version gets rid of that vignette down to 16mm on the same full-frame sensors. The company is offering Dark CPL for Fuji, Leica, Carl Zeiss, Canon, Sony, Nikon, and Schneider Xenon lenses, among others that weren’t specified.

Breakthrough plans for the Dark CPL 46mm – 86mm to retail at up to $ 199, the Dark CPL 95mm/105mm at up to $ 259, the X4 GND 100x150mm at up to $ 199, the X4 GND 150x170mm at up to $ 249, and the X4 ND Square at prices ranging from $ 149 to $ 219 depending on both density and size. The company is offering various discounts on these filters to those who back the Kickstarter campaign. Shipping to backers is estimated to start this upcoming August.

Via: CanonRumors

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Posts Tagged ‘made’

Cheap Seats: Sculptural Furniture Showroom Facade Made of 900 Black Chairs

This Olympus OM-D E-M5, lenses and accessories are made entirely from paper

Defiant Democracy: Parthenon Replica Made of 100,000 Banned Books

You mean they made cameras, too? A tribute to the Samsung NX10

Samsung NX10 Samples Gallery (2010)

Wreck: Replica Mercedes Benz S550 Made of Faceted Mirrored Stainless Steel

Water Splash Photography Made Easy

What will you need to do splash photography?

Setup

Gear

Focusing

Freezing the water splash

Setting up the flash and camera

Taking the pictures

Some quick tips:

Post-processing tips

Clean up the water

Final touches

Your turn

Pixel Peeper lets you check the Lightroom edits made to a JPEG

Avoid These 5 Common Camera Setting Mistakes Made By Beginners

1. Not raising the ISO high enough

2. Using a shutter speed that’s too slow

3. Not using exposure compensation (+/-) or the right meter mode

4. Not getting the focus point right

5. Using image stabilization when using a tripod

Conclusion

Moving Miniature: Tiny Landscape Made of Sugar, Spices, Salt & Sand

Breakthrough Photography’s GND and ND filters are the first made with tempered glass

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