Just getting started with your first interchangeable lens camera? Don’t be intimidated – we’re here to help.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
The Fujifilm X-T3 is still our pick for the best camera under $1500
25
Dec
We’ve updated our guide to the best cameras under $ 1500 and despite some serious competition from newer models, Fujifilm’s excellent X-T3 remains our top pick in the price bracket.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Sony’s semiconductor business is working around the clock keep up with image sensor demand
25
Dec
 |
Sony is working around the clock to keep up with the demand for its image sensors, Bloomberg reported on Monday, but it’s still not enough. According to the report, Sony is running its image sensor manufacturing business 24/7 straight through the holidays in an effort to keep on top of demand. As well, Sony is building a new facility in Nagasaki to expand its production capacity.
The Nagasaki manufacturing plant won’t go live until April 2021, meaning Sony’s current operations will remain strained for the foreseeable future. Sony Semiconductor head Terushi Shimizu recently said in an interview that the company is having to apologize to customers for its inability to keep up with image sensor demand.
As well, Shimizu said during the interview, the company has seen such huge growth in demand for its image sensors that the new Nagasaki facility may not be adequate enough once it goes online in 2021.
The rise of double- and triple-camera modules on flagship smartphones is driving this demand, the report claims. Whereas smartphone manufacturers previously needed one image sensor per handset, these same companies are now ordering two or more sensors for each unit (of select models), meaning that Sony has seen demand for its sensors increase even as the overall smartphone market’s growth begins to falter.
Falling only behind the PlayStation, Sony’s semiconductor business has become its most profitable business with image sensors accounting for the majority of the revenue. The company is investing in the semiconductor business to expand capacity, also eyeing new generations of image sensors for budding technologies, including ones involving AR and 3D sensing.
Sony remains in competition with Samsung, which has seen demand for its own image sensors likewise increase. In 2018, Korean publication ETnews reported that Samsung Electronics had announced a plan to increase its image sensor production capacity with the goal of overtaking Sony in this market. Whether it will be able to do that remains to be seen.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
500px combines Terms of Service and Contributor Agreement, confusing some users
24
Dec
 |
Photography community 500px recently updated its Terms of Service, adding its Contributor Agreement into the TOS to provide a single destination for both. As tends to be the case any time a social network or other service updates its TOS, some users have picked through the text and come away frightened. A recent analysis of the changes by PetaPixel, however, finds little to be concerned about.
500px released its updated Terms of Service earlier this month; users were alerted to the change when the service prompted them to read and agree to the latest TOS. A number of users posted concerns about various snippets on social media, questioning the terms and, in some cases, demanding the company make changes.
PetaPixel recently dug into the latest Terms of Service and compared it to 500px’s older archived TOS, finding that the language has remained essentially unchanged. Some users may be surprised by the changes because of the inclusion of the Contributor Agreement within the updated TOS. Those added terms only apply to users who choose to sell images through the platform, however.
Users always retain the option of deleting their 500px account. The latest Terms of Service explains that:
Upon termination (by 500px or you), 500px will remove your Visual Content from licensing within 180 days and will inform all distributors that the Visual Content should be removed during that time period, provided however that 500px (and our distributors) may retain digital copies of Visual Content for archival and record-keeping purposes. 500px will continue to make payments due to you after termination in accordance with these Terms.
Via: PetaPixel
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Photographer Brandon Hill shoots portraits with the Sony Xperia 1 and Xperia 5
23
Dec
Sony’s Xperia 1 and Xperia 5 smartphones offer powerful photo and video features, including advanced face and eye-detection autofocus technologies inherited from Sony’s Apha-series mirrorless cameras. Sony’s Eye-AF works by analyzing the scene in front of the camera in real-time, and identifying and focusing on human eyes. If the camera or subject move, detected eyes and faces are tracked within the frame. A green square shows that an eye has been identified.
Portrait and commercial photographer Brandon Hill took the Sony Xperia 1 and Xperia 5 to House Studios recently, here in Seattle, to see how they performed. During a busy portrait shoot, Brandon worked with model and athlete Krista Armstead to put together several shooting scenarios, including indoor and outdoor lighting, and even a trampoline, to test the phones’ high-speed shooting and 4K video capabilities.
Sony Xperia portraits – pictures by Brandon Hill
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This is sponsored content, created with the support of Amazon and Sony. What does this mean?
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
DPReview TV: The great ultra-wide sunstar shootout
23
Dec
We compared sunstars from eight ultra-wide full frame lenses, including both DSLR and mirrorless lenses, from Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Sigma, Sony and Tamron, including:
- Canon EF 16-35mm F2.8 III
- Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8 IS
- Nikon F 14-24mm F2.8
- Nikon Z 14-30mm F4
- Panasonic 16-35mm F4
- Sigma 14-24mm F2.8
- Sony 16-35mm F2.8 GM
- Tamron 17-28mm F2.8
Who’s the winner? Watch the video and look at the samples below, then tell us which one you think is best in our poll (below).
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get new episodes of DPReview TV every week.
Sample gallery from this episode
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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Gear of the Year 2019 – Rishi’s choice: Sony FE 135mm F1.8 GM
23
Dec
 |
| Photo: Dan Bracaglia |
I love shooting wide. No, really: I made a whole video about how I even shoot portraits with wide-angle lenses. Wide-angles provide a sense of depth, dramatic perspectives, a glimpse into the subject’s surroundings and even provide an intimacy to portraits by giving the perspective of an observer standing very close to the subject. So you may be surprised by my choice of Gear of the Year: the Sony FE 135mm F1.8 GM.
Perhaps it’s just that I needed something different. Spice up my life, venture beyond 35mm, you know, my favorite ‘telephoto’ lens. Or, maybe Sony just made an amazing lens in the 135mm GM. Perhaps it’s a bit of both.
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| 135mm F1.8 allowed me to focus on my backlit subject, and nothing else. Look at that creamy background. |
I took the Sony FE 135mm with me on a recent trip with family and friends, enjoying time together at a cabin and celebrating three years of keeping our daughter alive.
135mm really allows you to isolate your subject, and make it about nothing else, even if some of the environment is included. Rather than jumping around the frame from one point of interest to another, the viewer’s eye can just focus on one story which, below, is a simple one of one sibling looking up to another.
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| The ‘tunnel vision’ a long focal length paired with a fast aperture provides allows you to create simplistic images that tell just one story, like the love shared between these siblings. |
That’s not to say that 135mm doesn’t allow you to portray your subject against its surroundings, it’s just that things are a bit different compared to a wide angle composition. Rather than include an expansive view of your subject’s surroundings with an enhanced sense of depth, the longer focal length allows you to compress your subject against only an isolated – and magnified – portion of its environment.
Take the image below: A wide-angle lens would have included the foliage, the sky, the ground, and other potentially distracting elements, all situated at different depths. This creates a more complex image with an enhanced sense of, well, depth. That can certainly be nice, but sometimes I like the simplicity of the subject and the background essentially appearing at just two different focal planes.
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| The 135mm focal length allowed me to ‘compress’ the scene, bringing the trees in the background closer to my subject(s), and allowing me to frame my subjects against the green foliage. The long focal length allowed me to magnify only a small portion of the background, allowing me to exclude distracting elements like the sky above or the ground below my subjects. |
Technically, the FE 135mm GM lens is superb. Optically, the lens is literally the sharpest lens our friend Roger Cicala at LensRentals has ever tested. That’s at least in part due to the XA (extreme aspherical) element designed to minimize spherical aberration.
The Super ED and ED glass used in the elements in the front group replace traditional large and heavy negative elements commonly used to suppress longitudinal spherical aberration. The result is very little, if any, longitudinal chromatic aberration, commonly seen as purple and green fringing in front of, and behind, the focal plane, respectively.
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| The 135mm focal length allowed me to easily isolate my subject in this otherwise small and busy indoor space. And thanks to the excellent optics, there’s no distracting green fringing in the high contrast ‘Title’ text behind our subject, despite the fast aperture. |
Sony’s 10 nanometer mold precision and other recent improvements ensure smooth aspherical surfaces, meaning that onion-ring bokeh is non-existent. An 11-blade aperture ensures circular out-of-focus highlights, and generally smoother bokeh, even when shooting stopped down. Sure, there’s some mechanical vignetting that leads to a ‘cat’s eye’ effect, but that’s to be expected of a lens of this type, and isn’t severe enough to result in swirly bokeh in the family portrait above.
Just as important as optical quality is the focus performance: especially for candid portraiture. And here the FE 135mm GM is industry leading: focus is lightning fast thanks in part to its four XD (‘extreme dynamic’) linear induction motors. These motors are far faster than the previous piezoelectric design of Sony’s ‘Direct Drive SSM’ system, and are capable of moving larger, heavier elements.
Paired with the excellent autofocus system of Sony’s recent cameras such as the a7R Mark IV, focus is fast enough that I could easily nail focus on the eyes of erratically running toddlers, even with the aperture wide open at F1.8:
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| This boy was running through a wading pool and momentarily smiled at the camera. Real-time tracking (with Eye AF) coupled with the extremely fast autofocus speeds of this lens allowed me to nail this moment effortlessly. |
I’ll admit I’d rarely shot with 135mm primes in the past, typically sticking to a trio of primes (24, 35, and 85) for weddings, or 70-200mm F2.8 lenses for engagement and portrait shoots. I’ve found the 135mm F1.8 to be a different beast, requiring me to think and shoot differently, while often finding myself running further and further backward to get enough space in between my camera and my subject.
The results were, to me, very rewarding. The ‘tunnel vision’ effect of stepping back and using a longer focal length to isolate your subject and compress it against a small portion of its surroundings yields a unique look, particularly when paired with a fast enough aperture so that the background is pleasingly blurred and not distracting. Below, you’ll see my daughter surrounded by others in a park, but by herself in the wading pool happily marching to her own beat.
I couldn’t sum her up any better.
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Marching to her own beat. Note the exceedingly low magenta fringing (longitudinal chromatic aberration) around the water droplets splashing about in front of our subject, despite the magnifying glass the high resolution 60MP sensor of the a7R IV holds up to any lens’ optical aberrations. |
Sony FE 135mm F1.8 GM sample gallery
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* Of course I kid: my wedding kit always includes an 85mm, and I happily use 200mm for compression when I want to isolate my subject amidst its surroundings.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Fun winter photo projects for the long, dark days of winter
22
Dec
 |
With the nights and mornings pretty close together for the next few months, and the sun taking some time out to recoup, many photographers head indoors to escape the dark and the rain. Plenty of us are tempted to hang up our cameras until the Spring, with a brief interlude should a decent amount of snow make an appearance.
Don’t be one of those photographers.
Just because bright light and blue skies are a rarer occurrence in the winter months doesn’t mean we have to stop taking pictures. There’s still plenty you can do, provided you’re prepared to use some imagination. Here are a few ideas to keep you shooting until the better weather returns.
Still life
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| I used a gold sheet of card from a craft store to send a little warmth back into the subject from the left hand side. The diffused flash was positioned on the right, and contrasting the white light from the flash with the gold light from the reflector emphasizes the warm effect |
A good mastery of still life photography should help improve your photography across the board, and the winter months are a very good time to get some practice in. Working with a few objects on the table top with just a single light and a reflector is an ideal way to teach yourself more about lighting, exposure and composition.
If you are new to this area I suggest starting with just an orange and a table lamp, moving the lamp around the orange to see how the direction of the light changes the way the orange looks. Once you’ve done that and looked carefully at the way highlights and shadows control the sense of three dimensions in the image you can move on to everyday objects laying around the house.
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Keep things simple by using just one or two objects in your scene, and try lighting with just one source and a couple of reflectors to moderate the shadows. Here I used a single LED panel at the top of the frame, and a couple of mirror tiles to the left and right of the handle to throw some light back in the opposite direction. A wide aperture created a shallow depth-of-field to draw the eye diagonally up the handle to the point of focus. The blueberry doesn’t need to be sharp for us to know it is a blueberry, and it is used as a counterweight to the main area of interest |
Knives, forks and spoons offer interesting shapes and compositional challenges, and natural objects saved from the autumn, like nuts or dried leaves, give you the chance to bring nature into your work. The supermarket is also filled with interesting fruit and vegetables, and home stores and hardware stores stock nice cups, glasses and industrial looking bolts, screws, springs and fascinating sheets of metal/plastic/wood that will make interesting backgrounds.
One of the nice things about still life is that you can take your time and there is usually no rush, so you can look really carefully, try things out and try again when it doesn’t work the first time.
Tips:
- Work slowly and really look at the effect of the light on your subject
- Use silver, gold, white and black cards to bounce/block light
- When used as a reflector, mirrors throw back so much light they can save you having to buy a second flash
Macro
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| Planning ahead for your winter shooting can involve collecting interesting items from the garden during the Fall. If you didn’t manage to do that don’t worry as your local florist will almost certainly thought of it. Here a little light either side is used to demonstrate the three-dimensional qualities of the seed head and the stem, and to lift it from the black-cloth background. I used a pair of hotshoe flash units fired through mini-softboxes attached to an adapter ring |
An extension of still life, macro photography will test your ability to see details and to look more closely than usual. Successful macro photography is all about finding hidden textures, patterns and features of everyday objects as well as capturing tiny plants and animals that might otherwise escape our attention.
Macro does require at least some specialist equipment, whether that’s a reversal ring, a coupling ring to mount one lens backwards on another or an actual dedicated macro lens. Using a lens designed for macro will make your life a lot easier and will deliver the best quality without too much effort, but high-quality macro lenses can be costly.
Extension tubes are very affordable, and can be added to a standard lens to help you get a little, or a lot, closer, and a micro adjustment platform for your tripod head can help when it comes to getting accurate focus in the closeup range without having to move the tripod.
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| Lights don’t need to be expensive. This was lit with a small pocket flashlight positioned to make these pasta shells glow in the dark. A sheet of white paper under the lens was enough to throw a touch of light back to reveal some of the details of side of the shells closest to the camera |
Cable and remote release devices will help to avoid camera shake with dramatic magnifications and tethering software will allow a bigger preview to ensure anything is perfect before you trip the shutter. How about using the long winter months to teach yourself focus stacking so you can control exactly what is and isn’t sharp in your images?
Tips:
- Having a dedicated macro lens will make your life easier
- Use a tripod or support, don’t think you can do this handheld
- Be aware that depth-of-field is tiny in macro work, so add lots of light if you need small apertures
Window portraits
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| Late afternoon light on a winter’s day softly passing through a bay window was all that was needed for this portrait. I kept the sitter well back from the window to produce nice soft contrast but still retaining enough to show the shape of her head and features. Using the white balance in Daylight mode shows the coolness of the light and lets us know this is a winter image |
It doesn’t matter what time of year it is actually – daylight gliding through a north-facing window will always provide some of the best kind of lighting for natural-looking portraiture. On rainy and overcast days the light levels might be lower but that light will also be softer and more flattering.
Position your subject close to the window if you want more contrast and further away for less, and try turning them 3/4 against the light to get a more dramatic effect. Using a black card on the unlit side of the face can help to deepen shadows if there’s more light than you want bouncing around the room. A net curtain or sheet of thin paper across the window can diffuse the daylight on a sunny day or when you only have south-facing windows to play with.
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Positioning the subjects directly in front of a sunny window gives them this stark and very direct frontal lighting. I stood with my back to the window and pulled the shutters across to create the stripes on the groom’s jacket. The light on his face is reflected from the white top-side of the shutters. As he is close to the window the light drops off quite quickly, leaving his friends visible but much darker. This helps to express who is the most important player in the scene, and who are the secondary elements. |
Extra diffusion will also cut down the light making it easier to achieve a wide aperture if you want shallow depth-of-field.
Try experimenting with white balance too, so you can create a warm or cool effect whatever the conditions outside.
Tips:
- Try the sitter at different distances from the window to vary contrast
- Move your sitter between each end of the window to alter how the light wraps around their face
- Use net curtains, bubble wrap or paper to diffuse the light even more
Home studio
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Using quite a small soft light creates strong direction but avoids razor-sharp edges to the shadows. The small light also allows a rapid fall off, so the subject’s head is lit more brightly than her body, and positioning the light just slightly behind illuminates the front of her face while leaving the side closest to the camera dark – drawing attention to her closed eyes. A small direct light from behind her lifts her shoulders from the background and helps to create a sense of depth in the picture. Opera singer Golda Schultz for the BBC Proms Magazine |
When there’s not too much natural light coming through the windows, or we need more for smaller apertures and lower ISO settings, it’s a good time to think about alternative light sources. Domestic lights can be very useful for lighting in a home studio but they don’t always deliver enough power, so sometimes we need to look at flash.
There have never been so many flash units available for photographers so we have plenty of choice. Big studio monoblock type studio flash offer the advantage of power and a modeling bulb so we can see what we are doing, but they can feel expensive for the enthusiast. A useful alternative is to use one of the host of hotshoe flash units that are available – either from the manufacturer of your camera or from one of the many independent brands that have sprung up over the last ten or so years.
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This is the set-up for the shot above. You can see that I believe in keeping things simple. The lights are Rotolight Annova Pro on the left and the Neo2 on the right. I used a Veydra Mini Prime 35mm T2.2 cinema lens – for a softer feel – on the Panasonic Lumix DC-G9 |
Modern hotshoe flash units are remarkably powerful, flexible and easy to use, and with auto and TTL modes they can be set to do all the work for you. In manual mode they offer more straight forward options and with wireless control becoming the norm you don’t have to leave the camera position to make your changes – or to check the results of any adjustments you’ve made.
What makes hotshoe style flash units so useful now is the mass of accessories and modifiers that can transform their light to be indistinguishable from that of a professional studio flash. I use adapter clamps so that my flash units can fit inside the softboxes, dishes and snoots that I use with my main studio units, and enjoy the convenience, the shorter set-up time and that they fix in smaller spaces.
Tips:
- Keep the flash/light source away from the camera for a more three-dimensional effect
- Bounce light from a white wall/ceiling to create a larger/softer light
- Use an adapter that allows you to use soft-boxes and accessories with your flash head for a wider range of lighting looks
Summing up
I’d find it easier to hold my breath all winter than to keep my lens cap on between the end of November and the middle of February. In fact, shooting in the winter months is exactly as exciting as shooting when the sun shines all day, we just have to think differently and to create shooting situations rather than relying on nature to do it all for us. Indoors we can still enjoy the wonders of natural light but just through a window, and when there’s black clouds we can use normal domestic lights or a pop of flash to do the same thing.
All that’s required for winter shooting indoors is a little imagination and sometimes a tripod to support those longer shutter speeds. So take a look around your home to see what/who you can aim your camera at, and perhaps take a trip to a florist/hardware store or secondhand shop to see what treasures you can find. The cold weather and shorter days are no excuse – keep on shooting and keep those creative juices flowing until Spring.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
iPhone 11 models may soon support new line of third-party MFi lighting accessories
21
Dec
 |
Apple’s latest line of iPhone handsets may soon support photography accessories launched under Apple’s Made-for-iPhone (MFi) program. According to 9to5Mac, Apple has shared new specs with manufacturers who are part of the MFi program, ones that pave the way for lighting and strobe devices that connect with the iPhone using the Lightning port rather than Bluetooth.
MFi is a licensing program that enables manufacturers to make third-party accessories compatible with Apple’s mobile devices. According to this new report, Apple recently provided these manufacturers with new MFi specs as part of a developer preview that make it possible to create lighting and strobe accessories for the iPhone.
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Unlike the Lume Cube and other existing products, MFi-compatible lighting accessories will use Lightning instead of Bluetooth in order to sync with the iPhone’s flash and to deliver or draw power to/from the handset. As well, MFi lightning and strobe accessories will likely better support third-party camera apps and will likely be able to sync with the iPhone’s native camera app shutter button.
According to 9to5Mac, these new specs only support the iPhone 11 line of smartphones, meaning older iPhone model users would still have to use less capable Bluetooth-based accessories. Manufacturers will be able to launch their own MFi mobile lighting products once the specs are officially released beyond the developer’s preview.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Gift ideas for photographers with too much photo junk
21
Dec
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| The tripod standing desk, just one way to repurpose an old clunky three-legged friend. |
By now you’ve pored over photo holiday gift guides that include everything from that $ 1500 lens no one will buy you to the ubiquitous camera lens mug you already have. Those lists are helpful when you’re searching for gifts for a photographer. But what about the unfortunate people around you, the ones who don’t understand this photo obsession and yet still call you first when they need ‘some pictures taken with a good camera, like the one you have?’ Isn’t it your duty to help them share your love of photography?
Not entirely unrelated, since you did end up buying that $ 1500 lens for yourself after all, perhaps you need gift ideas that don’t cost a lot of money. Well, friend, you’re in luck! Because if you’re like us, you already own scads of photo equipment, most of which is probably in a closet or on a shelf or piled haphazardly in a corner next to five camera bags you’ve used once.
We’re here to help you repurpose those gear gems into gifts that every non-photographer on your holiday list is sure to accept politely (and then ask someone out of earshot if maybe you’ve taken this photography thing a little too far).
That’s no light stand, It’s a coat tree!
Send your rickety old light stands to the hallway, because those coats have to go somewhere.
Everyone can use a good coat tree, but few people want to buy one. Coat trees are some of the most useful and ignored furniture pieces around. All that anyone will see is the bottom two feet. That’s pretty much how we think of light stands, right? So why not turn your discarded stands into coat trees?
Grab a handful of S hooks from the hardware store, pop them into the top of that neglected light stand and viola! You’ve got a useful coat tree that will do more than keep clothes off the floor. To ensure that the gift is ready to serve its new purpose for years, be sure to tighten up all of the knobs and joints and peel off those dingy strips of gaffer tape. At the top of the stand, unscrew the post so the open tube will accept the S hooks. If you’re crafty, you can whip up some alternative hooks using any old Manfrotto posts, clamps or pins.
Chef’s helper
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| They can always use an extra hand in the kitchen, and with some grip gear they’ll have one! |
For the chefs on your list, dig deep into that box of old lighting equipment for some creative helping hands. Join a clamp to a gooseneck or Magic Arm then finish with another clamp or clip and you have a cool kitchen tool that’s as unique as it is useful. When cook books and iPads need holding, it will be there to remind your loved one that you care. For the outdoor grillers on your list, a clamp and arm setup that holds a battery-powered light will keep them cooking late into the night. For the bakers in your life, a small clamp that can keep a beloved recipe card in sight and out of the fray will bring a smile to their flour-dappled face.
Lens-friendly fashions
Turn a few dozen of your tired microfiber lens cloths into useful fashion accessories.
Everyone has lenses that could use some cleaning. As photographers we hoard lens cloths and it’s likely you have more than you need. Repurpose some of those little microfiber squares into useful items with a little needlework, and the bespectacled on your list will thank you every time they clean their specs. Sew several into a soft and colorful scarf or get really clever and stitch one into the inside of a jacket or shirt’s hem for a more discreet approach. If you are up to your neck in lens cloths, go crazy and sew a quilt! No matter how you put them together, anyone who has had to clean their glasses on the bottom of their t-shirt will appreciate your thoughtful gift.
Camera Straps as Fashion
That strap you wouldn’t be caught dead using can become a killer fashion accessory.
Your kids, nieces, nephews, and possibly even grandkids love to repurpose old things into fashionable accessories. If a tangled mess of old camera straps is hiding in your closet, it’s time to turn something you will never use into Instagram gold. Your younger VSCO Girl relatives will absolutely love their CANON EOS 40D camera strap belt with body cap/lens cap buckle! Why not turn those garish Nikon D700 straps into suspenders? And don’t forget the wrist straps: that old Fuji wrist strap will look dope dangling a HydroFlask.
Whatever they come up with as they transform your cast-off camera box clutter, you will surely end up being GOAT – the Greatest Of All Time. But you knew that, right? Yes, you are lit.
Hip Beverage Porter
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| If it will safely cradle thousands of dollars worth of lenses, it’ll do dandy keeping some beer cold. |
Never mind that a soft-goods designer spent days obsessing over the dividers in that old camera pack sitting in your closet. Your hip friend or relative will be overjoyed to see how well your retired camera bag holds a six pack of cold brews and some nosh in style. Those carefully crafted padded pockets will keep the chillest of beverages pleasingly cool as your bud rides their electric scooter or one-wheeled contraption to the beach. Larger camera packs can handle growlers, while those dedicated tripod pockets snugly pack gluten-free baguettes for the trip. Why spring for a $ 200 Yeti cooler when your old Think Tank bag will do the trick?
SAD no more therapy lamp
Any daylight-balanced light table or continuous light can make a SAD person very happy.
For those of us in Northern latitudes, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is no laughing matter. The winter months bring less sunlight and moods suffer. Fortunately, daylight-balanced light sources, especially really bright ones, can serve as therapy for those stricken with SAD. Locate that long-forgotten light table from your film days and dust it off. Peel off any labels that give away its former life and replace them with fun stickers of cartoon suns. Prop it in a corner, turn it on, stare into its captivating glow, and feel the dreariness of winter melt away. You can do the same with any continuous light sources that reach daylight color temperatures (5,000 degrees Kelvin or higher).
If the light table as therapy lamp no longer does the trick for your beloved gift recipient, they can repurpose it as a trendy place to display their craft liquor bottle collection. The uplighting will lend an air of sophistication and style to the expensive craft whiskey that many turn to when winter’s dark chill becomes too harsh.
Read anywhere with a GorilLED-Pod
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| Print books aren’t dead, and neither is that adjustable-legged piece of sculpture in your camera bag. |
We remember when the coolest-looking piece of electronics was the book-mounted reading lamp. (Yeah, we were nerds.) You could read a book late into the night without disturbing others, and the light illuminated just the pages.
Except… the size of the book heavily influenced whether the lamp was too heavy or not. And the light bulbs heated up and burned out quickly. And you had to either string a cord to a power outlet or deal with replaceable batteries. Although we still spy reading lamps sold in discerning mail-order catalogs, we rarely see them in use anywhere.
Clearly, the solution is to uncouple the light from the book. And you no doubt have just the pieces to do it: attach a small LED panel to a flexible GorillaPod tripod and your favorite bookworm can place that light anywhere. Wrap it around a bedpost. Perch it on the edge of a side table. Heck, clamp it to your skull and you’ll be the coolest, most literary miner in history.
Le Tripod Lampe
Nothing says hip more than a tripod working as a lamp.
We know the sad, all-too-familiar sequence of events: You need a tripod, but the initial sticker shock of most models pushes you into the cloying arms of the Best Buy camera section, where tripods can be had for roughly the price of the latest discounted Adam Sandler movie. But hey, it holds a camera, right? Who needs it to be all bougie and carbon fiber?
And then one of the tripod’s legs slowly and consistently loses its fight with gravity. Or it gets dented because you laid it gently on a soft surface. So you buy another, slightly more expensive tripod, that doesn’t quite do the job either. And then you gradually move up to one you’re mostly happy with, having spent far more than you could have spent in the first place.
Call them “shame-pods” or whatever helps you sleep better, but we all have a few old tripods we shouldn’t have bought but we did. Instead of leaning them against a dark corner of your basement, upcycle them into trendy lamps.
Attach a fixture to the top (we’re sure you have some clamps lying around) and a stylish lampshade (lighting umbrella perhaps?), and you’ve got yourself a lamp with photographic character. The warm light it will bring to a friend will help you feel better about buying that piece of junk in the first place.
iMonoPod walking stick
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| Pair an old monopod with an iPhone mount and you’ve got a walking stick with a kick. |
We photographers tend to accumulate monopods as well as tripods. Turns out, those not-so-handy one-footed unstable camera stabilizers make great walking sticks. Throw a smartphone mount on the top and anyone with a decent wireless plan can stream their favorite shows while they rack up some steps. Now the trekking aunt or uncle on your list can keep up with Downton Abbey while strolling their favorite scenic valley. If you really want to up the wow factor, add a Lume Cube or GoPro rig for live streaming fun.
A Three-Legged Table that Stands on Its Own
Did we say “lamp” earlier? Go with a less-complicated option that can hold a beverage.
When you bought that old tripod, you scrutinized the load limit to make sure it would hold a DSLR and a 100-400mm lens. But did you properly factor the weight of a beer, phone charger, and assortment of TV remotes? Attach a plank of wood to an Arca Swiss plate and snap the whole thing to the half-stuck ballhead on the tripod to create a simple side table. As a bonus, you can pop that tabletop off when you need to press the tripod into service. And if your house or apartment’s floor is uneven, no problem: with three legs, a ballhead, and the little level bubble built into many tripods, you can ensure that your drinks stay slosh-proof.
Adventurous Standing Desk
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| Mount a small table on a tripod for the ultimate adventure desk. |
For those who must use computers for work, it can begin to feel like a ball and chain dragging them into lives of sedentary stupor. Standing desks can help, but standing in a cubicle or a basement office is only going to elevate one so far. Why not take the standing desk outside? Way outside! By screwing a base plate onto a simple plywood platform, you can turn any old sturdy tripod into a miracle of modern technology. Be sure the platform or table you create is large enough for the user’s laptop and the tripod reaches the proper height for comfortable use. When you give someone a portable standing desk you give them freedom, and that’s a gift they will never forget. If it turns out they don’t like it, they can always use it as a tripod. Or a tripod lamp!
Repurpose for a good purpose
Being a photographer usually comes with a serious case of GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). One of the complications the syndrome brings is a feeling of guilt as you accumulate shiny things and deflate your bank account. The holidays are a wonderful time to rid yourself of some of that guilt and a lot of the stuff you shouldn’t have bought. Think of this time as a kind of GAS therapy, because everyone knows it is better to give than to receive (unless you’re talking about that sweet little prime lens no one will ever know you snuck into your cart).
In this world of digital gift cards and two-day shipping of the newest photographic gear, people increasingly value homemade, analog gifts. And by ‘people’ we mean ‘the folks still on your list for whom you have no idea what to give.’ They’ll surely appreciate the time, effort, and sacrifice (‘if only they knew how much I paid for this originally’) that goes into your upcycled creations.
And if they balk at your offerings, remind them that the holidays are times for selflessness, for bestowing upon them the richness of photographic history and the ongoing lineage of Chinese injection molded design. As the old adage goes, ‘One photographer’s old garbage is… someone else’s new, slightly adapted garbage.’
Happy holidays.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)