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Removing Reflections and Other Unwanted Elements in Photoshop

The post Removing Reflections and Other Unwanted Elements in Photoshop appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darina Kopcok.

Photoshop gives you a lot more options for retouching than Lightroom because it’s a pixel editor. This means you can manipulate the individual pixels in your image file to refine your images. It allows you to make complex adjustments, such as removing reflections and other unwanted elements in your photo.

You can do one thing in multiple different ways in Photoshop. For the scope of this article, we will focus on two tools: the Content-Aware Fill and the Clone Stamp tool.

Shot at f/7.1 at 65mm IS0 200 Shutter Speed 1/160

How to approach retouching

Before you get started with any retouching, it’s important to assess your image and your end goal for it. Every image is different, and therefore requires a unique approach.

How complex is the adjustment you want to make? Is there a lot of pattern or other detail in the area you wish to retouch? How much contrast is there, and how will that influence your decisions? Will one technique be enough, or will you need to layer various techniques or tools to get the end result you are seeking?

Retouching is a process of problem-solving. It’s important to know where you want to get to before you get started.

Shot at f/8 100mm macro lens at 100 IS0 Shutter Speed 1/160

Content-Aware Fill

Content-Aware Fill is an incredibly useful tool in retouching your photography. It works by analyzing the content in your image to provide a seamless blend in the elements or objects you wish to alter. It allows you to remove unwanted objects or move them to other areas of the image.

To use Content-Aware Fill, you must duplicate your layer to access the information contained within the image. It’s also important to work in a way that is non-destructive, so you can simply delete any mistakes or unfavorable results and start again.

I first created a layer called “Clean” to clean up any dust or small blemishes from the image and then went on to remove the seeds.

To duplicate your layer, hit the shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+J.

For simple edits, like removing small objects from your composition, you can do a quick Content-Aware Fill by using a selection tool to select the object, then hit Shift+Delete.

For example, in the pomegranate image below, I wanted to remove some seeds from the surface, as I felt there were too many causing distraction.

Before Content-Aware Fill

I used the Lasso tool to select the seeds I wanted to remove from my image, then hit Shift+Delete. This can often give you great results, but you might have to blend edges with the Clone Stamp tool.

After Content-Aware Fill

The other way to use Content-Aware Fill is a method that allows you to bring up a Preview window so you can see how your adjustment will look before committing to any changes. This is a good way to work on larger objects or areas.

For the image of the raspberries below, I wanted to remove a couple of the raspberries so the client could add text to it.

Shot at f/3.5 with 100mm macro lens at 1S0 100 Shutter Speed 1/160

To use this method, use the appropriate tool to make a selection of the area you wish to adjust.

Use the Lasso tool to make a selection.

Go to Edit->Content-Aware Fill.

This will bring up the Preview window.

The area in green shows you where Photoshop intends to sample from. However, you may not want it to include all of those areas. So use the brush found in the tool panel in the Preview window to brush out any area you don’t want it to sample from.

Be sure to brush out shadows that may cause your final adjustments to look uneven.

Set the desired Opacity.

Keep in mind that when you’re selecting areas for Content-Aware Fill, that you need to account for depth-of-field throughout your frame, or your image can end up looking fake.

Once you are satisfied with the look of your image, choose New Layer to keep the file size small, or Duplicate Layer for a larger file size. I usually choose the latter.

If your final result is good but not perfect, you might want to use the Clone Stamp tool to finesse it further.

The Clone Stamp Tool

With the Clone Stamp Tool, you’re copying pixels to a new location. This is one of the most utilized tools in Photoshop because it’s a great way to touch up the various elements in your image, especially when your object has a defined edge.

The Clone Stamp tool is perfect for removing reflections in Photoshop.

The shortcut for the Clone Stamp tool is Cmd/Ctrl+S.

Use the softest brush in Normal Mode.

10% to 20% Opacity at 100% Flow is generally a good place to start, but see what works for your individual image.

In the image of the chocolate cake below, I used the Clone Stamp tool to remove the hard reflection on the knife at 20% Opacity.

Before and After of reflection on knife
Shot at f/5.6 on 100mm macro at 100 ISO Shutter Speed 1/160

When using the Clone Stamp tool, you can flip it if your pattern looks too repetitious.

It’s also great when you want to mirror a reflection to make it look more realistic. This feature is one of the key reasons the Clone Stamp tool is the best tool to remove reflections in Photoshop.

To flip your brush, go to the Toggle Clone Stamp icon.

You can also use “T” to transform the clone stamp collection, to adjust its size and placement.

Flips the clone source

Conclusion

To sum up, use the Content-Aware Fill tool when you want to remove unwanted objects or elements by using the surrounding areas.

Use the Clone Stamp tool to copy and paste pixels to areas with more defined edges.

Keep in mind when you want to remove reflection in Photoshop, that you want to keep some of the reflection. Our eyes are used to seeing reflections in glass and similarly shiny objects, so removing all of the reflection tends to look fake.

Try this method for removing reflections in photoshop out, and show us your before and after results in the comments section!

The post Removing Reflections and Other Unwanted Elements in Photoshop appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darina Kopcok.

Digital Photography School

April 26, 2020

Exposure X5 software review: blazing fast and subscription-free

Exposure Software Exposure X5
$ 119-149 | exposure.software

Although we’ve reviewed both of its immediate predecessors – Alien Skin Exposure X3 and X4 – here at DPReview, I’m personally a newcomer to the long-running and retroactively-eponymous Exposure series. Since the last release, Alien Skin has changed its name to match that of its most popular and best-known app, and now goes by Exposure Software.

Exposure’s roots can be traced all the way back to a 2006-vintage film simulation plugin for Photoshop. And while it’s grown vastly across the 14 major updates launched since then, its interface should still prove fairly familiar to anyone who’s used it in at least the past five or six years since the basic UI was defined by the sixth and seventh versions.

Blazing-fast browsing and editing that won’t vanish into the ether if you don’t upgrade every year

An alternative to the likes of Adobe’s category-dominating Lightroom or Phase One’s popular Capture One, Exposure X5 stands out from its rivals thanks to its blazing-fast image browsing and editing. It also boasts a treasure trove of manual adjustments plus a vast library of quick yet professional-looking presets.

Key takeaways:

Very competitively priced, no subscription
Blistering performance in comparison to Lightroom
Interface is a bit rough around the edges
Tons of controls and presets at your fingertips
Good high-DPI monitor support, not-so-good touch support
Fewer profiles for automatic corrections than competitors

Not much more than a Benjamin, with no subscriptions in sight

And yet despite its depth and swiftness, it’s also extremely affordable. Without adding on any of Exposure Software’s other tools, you can get the full Exposure X5 experience for just $ 119, almost two-thirds less than a perpetual Capture One License at $ 299. And even if you add both the Snap Art and Blow Up plugins for artistic effects and easier enlargements, the pricetag still comes in below $ 150.

Adobe, meanwhile, charges you $ 120 every year for an ongoing Creative Cloud photography plan subscription. In fairness to the company, that gets you not just the Exposure X5-rivaling Lightroom but also Adobe Photoshop. But then, Exposure X5’s perpetual license doesn’t vanish into the ether if you decide not to pay for an upgrade in a year’s time.

Results of the new Complementary – Orange and Teal filter.

Great upgrades to masking and lens correction

The step from the Alien Skin-developed X4 to the Exposure Software-produced X5 is very much an evolutionary one, with many features carried over unchanged. But that’s not to say there aren’t any significant changes; on the contrary, there are several upgrades that are well worth having.

The most significant changes are to be found in two main areas: Masking and lens correction. On the masking front there’s a new 3D Color Masking tool which allows you to quickly make complex layer masks based on subject hue, saturation and luminance ranges, allowing other adjustments to precisely target your intended subject.

You can profile your own cameras for better color out of the box

Exposure Software has also added tools to correct chromatic aberrations and vignetting, and extended the distortion correction tool to allow for manual corrections. You can keep aberrations on an even tighter leash with a new Defringe tool, and you can profile your own cameras for better color out of the box.

Also new to your toolbox are more presets than ever before, as well as support for more camera and lens profiles. Exposure X5 also gains greyscale TIFF and JPEG support, new horizontal / vertical flip controls and an undockable, resizeable tone curve editor.

Take a look at all 500+ presets at your disposal over at Exposure’s site.

Browsing images in Exposure X5 in the default view. Click through for the full version.

A bit rough around the edges compared to Lightroom

There’s really no escaping the fact that right out of the box, Exposure X5 looks a whole lot like its dominant arch-rival, Adobe Lightroom Classic. Your chosen image or folder of images sit front and center between two columns of informational displays and controls.

If viewing a single image, thumbnails of others from its folder or collection sit beneath. And all panels but the centermost area can be hidden, individually or as a group, to help you focus on the images themselves.

But there are also some important differences for the Lightroom user to consider. Firstly, Adobe’s app has a modal interface, with sections appearing or disappearing from the sidebars as you switch from, say, the Library to Develop modules.

Exposure X5, though, has a non-modal design which means there’s a lot more to fit in those sidebars. Most of what Lightroom fits into both its Library and Develop modules is crammed into the sole interface for Exposure Software’s app, plus a truly mind-boggling number of fun and useful presets.



A selection of some of the new presets in Exposure X5. Clockwise from top left, we start with the original image on which the other looks are based. Next is the Light and Airy – High Contrast filter, then Kodak Recording 2475, and finally Ilford PanF Plus 50 at bottom left.

The sidebars are jam-packed full of controls

Each sidebar is split in two vertically, with each panel in the sidebar being scrollable if needed, and a handle in the center of the divider allowing you to choose how much of the screen height to devote to each panel.

There’s less handholding in Exposure X5 than in Lightroom

I found that with so much stuff in there, I was constantly resizing panels to fit the controls I wanted on-screen, and scrolling up and down within them in search of individual controls I wanted to tweak. Right-clicking on any section header and switching to “Solo” mode helps a lot, though, simply by minimizing all but controls in any section but the one you’re currently browsing.

One other point to note is that there’s less handholding in Exposure X5 than in Lightroom. Adobe’s app can, for example, adjust white balance, most basic exposure settings and even perspective transformations automatically. Exposure, though, offers only presets whose actions are predetermined, and don’t vary significantly based upon image content.



Clockwise from top left, the same image processed with the new Seasons – Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter presets.

The lack of a catalog has pros and cons

The other major difference to consider is where your adjustments are stored. Adobe’s Lightroom is based around managing a library of images, storing its processing information in a single monolithic database. Exposure X5 instead stores its processing information in sidecar files which, in the interest of tidiness, are deposited in a subfolder of that in which the processed image was found. (And if you just browse images without editing them, no sidecar is created at all.)

I was honestly a little gobsmacked by how much faster Exposure feels

One upside of this is that the sidecars – and therefore the processing information – reside in the folder right alongside the images, and so if you share a folder of images, you also share the processing information. But while backing up your Lightroom catalogs is just a matter of backing up a single folder’s contents, if you want to do the same in Exposure X5 you’re faced with tens or hundreds of thousands of files scattered in folders among your photos.

Let’s now take a closer look at Exposure’s performance, as well as some more of its more powerful features on the next page.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

April 26, 2020

Tamron 70-180mm F2.8 Di III VXD sample gallery (DPReview TV)

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What better time to shoot with a telephoto zoom? Chris and Jordan took the Tamron 70-180mm F2.8 and a Sony a7R III into the empty streets of Calgary for some appropriately-distanced street shooting – with a few family portraits to round things out. See all of the samples from this week’s episode right here.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

April 26, 2020
DPReview TV: Tamron 70-180mm F2.8 Di III VXD review
The Tamron 70-180mm F2.8 has its flaws – its sunstars are uninspiring, there’s no built-in IS and the reverse zoom-ring-in-front setup drives us a little crazy. But it’s an incredibly compact F2.8 tele-zoom with weather sealing, and it’s no slouch in terms of sharpness. Chris and Jordan venture into the empty streets of Calgary with the lens – and walk away quite impressed.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get new episodes of DPReview TV every week.
- Introduction
- Sample images
- Size and weight
- Lack of stabilization
- Build quality
- Sharpness
- Teleconverters?
- Bokeh
- LoCA
- Close-up performance
- Video applications
- Focus speed
- Sunstars and flare
- Who's it for?
Tamron 70-180mm F2.8 Di III VXD sample gallery

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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
April 26, 2020
10 Creative DIY Photo IDEAS when Stuck at Home (video)
The post 10 Creative DIY Photo IDEAS when Stuck at Home (video) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

In this video from Nicolas Doretti, he gives you 10 creative DIY photo ideas for when you are stuck at home. They are fun, interesting, and best of all, they may teach you some new techniques you hadn’t thought to try.

So try some of these ideas out, and share your results with us in the comments section!

10 Creative DIY Photo IDEAS when Stuck at Home
1. Use everyday props to play with the light while making portraits. Play with colanders, cut shapes into cardboard, or use pieces of material to filter the window light or other artificial lighting.
2. Use glass and ice as a foreground for some cool portraits.
3. Use fairy lights for some great portrait effects, or if you have no model, just photograph the lights themselves and create bokeh.
4. Do some food photography. Make a seamless DIY backdrop using a pillowcase or similar.
5. Do some Ninja photos using oranges or similar. Cut them in half and use skewers to make them look like they are floating. Photograph yourself making a Ninja move, so it looks like you have just cut it in half. Or, if you don’t want to be in the photo, simply make them look like they are floating.
6. Duplicate yourself in photos by placing your camera on a tripod and taking multiple photos of yourself in different positions. Then composite the photos together in a program such as Photoshop by using Layer Masks.
7. Try levitation photography. Use masks again to remove your chair (or whatever you have used to make it look like you or the person you are photographing are levitating).
8. Try some birds eye photography by attaching your phone to the ceiling and taking some shots of the room below.
9. Make some cool lighting effects using reflections! Or shoot using objects that refract or diffract the light, such as reading glasses, crystal, drinking glasses, CDs, or knives.
10. Create your own neon background. Do a search for colorful or neon backgrounds, and place the image on your TV or screen. Then photograph your subject in front of it.
You may also like:
- The dPS At-Home 7-Day Photography Challenge – Week One
- Next-Level Selfies – 7 Tips for Creative Self-Portraits (video)
- How to Make a Cool Double Exposure Effect Using Photoshop (video)
- How to Create Dramatic Portraits with Shadow Photography
- 5 Ways to Use a Piece of Glass for Unique Portraits
- How to Take Floating Photos – Levitation Photography
- Challenge Yourself by Photographing One Object
- Easy to Create Fake Underwater Photography Hack
The post 10 Creative DIY Photo IDEAS when Stuck at Home (video) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

Digital Photography School
April 25, 2020
Weekly Photography Challenge – ICM (Intentional Camera Movement)

The post Weekly Photography Challenge – ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

Since many of us are still limited to where we can go, this week’s photography challenge topic is the ICM (intentional camera movement)!

I focused the camera then as I pressed the shutter button, moved the camera following the direction of the grass blades. f/16, ISO 100, 1/15th sec.

This is a fun exercise you can try inside your home or out in your yard (if you are lucky enough to have one). If you live in an apartment in the city, you may want to try capturing the night city lights with ICM instead.

You’ll want to use a relatively slow shutter speed – something slower than around 1/15th of a sec. Then you will want to physically move the camera in the direction you want as soon as you hit the shutter button.

I moved the camera horizontally to follow the line of the water © Caz-Nowaczyk

You may want to follow the direction of the lines in your compostition or go against them – the creative decision is yours!

You can even make the exposures so long that we have to guess what photograph is actually of (you can probably tell what mine are, though!).

I look forward to seeing your shots.

Intentional Camera Movement ICM by Caz Nowaczyk f/16, ISO 100, 1/15th sec.

To create this Intentional Camera Movement, I followed the direction of the blades of grass. I also shot into the sun to get some nice bokeh balls on the image on the right. © Caz Nowaczyk.

This was a really long exposure (13 sec). I moved the camera around slowly, while hand-holding. The light was from the house lights on the coastline. Their reflection is caught on the water. 13 sec f/2.8 ISO 100 © Caz Nowaczyk

Check out some of the articles below that give you tips on this week’s challenge.

Tips for photographing the ICM

How to Take Creative Landscape Shots using Intentional Camera Movement

Creative Reasons to use Intentional Camera Movement

Intentional Camera Movement and the Landscape

Intentional Blur- How to Create it and Why it’s Awesome

How Mark Rothko’s Paintings Can Inspire Your Photography

5 Great Ways to Create Abstract Wave Photography

Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see. Or, if you’d prefer, upload them to your favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge.

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

You can also share your images in the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.

If you tag your photos on Flickr, Instagram, Twitter or other sites – tag them as #DPSICM to help others find them. Linking back to this page might also help others know what you’re doing so that they can share in the fun.

The post Weekly Photography Challenge – ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

Digital Photography School

April 25, 2020
Camera strap manufacturer Lucky introduces new quick release system

Australian accessories manufacturer Lucky has announced a new line of camera straps that feature new alloy clips that allow the strap to be taken off in a matter of seconds. A hoop of webbing is passed through a sprung clip and hooks on to the new clip and a safety latch is activated to ensure the clip doesn’t open by accident.

The company says the idea was to produce a quick release system that doesn’t need any attachments that have to be left on the camera when the strap isn’t in use. Users can then fit the camera into underwater housing for example without having to remove attachments from the camera’s lugs to make it fit.

Lucky has manufactured the webbing on the straps from a non-woven material called Dyneema that is claimed to be very strong and which makes the Lucky straps cut resistant. The company says the webbing isn’t cut-proof but demonstrates in a video that it can withstand rough treatment from a pair of scissors with only minor damage.

The straps are designed to be worn across the body and feature leather shoulder grips which can be personalized or there’s a choice of cotton. As well as regular and long length straps the company has introduced a wrist strap that uses the same quick-release system and webbing.

It’s worth noting the quick-release system bears a striking resemblance to that found on Peak Design’s Clutch hand strap, which also uses a carabiner-style quick-release system for attaching and detaching the strap from the camera.

The straps with the new quick-release system cost up to AUS $ 140/US $ 91, while the wrist straps are AUS $ 95/US $ 62.

For more information see the Lucky Straps website

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

April 25, 2020
Aputure’s Light Storm system gets adjustable color with the new LS 300X continuous light

Lighting company Aputure has announced a new studio light for still and movie shooters that offers color temperature settings of between 2700 and 6500K. The LS 300X joins a system of lights in the Light Storm range, but is the first to offer bi-color controls as the other lights in the series are designed with a daylight color balance.

The LS 300X uses both cool and warm balanced LEDs in its head and mixes the two sources to achieve the desired color temperature. As such the head is at its brightest in the 4000-5500K temperature range, and the company claims that when combined with its Fresnel 2X lens adapter an output of 65,000 LUX can be reached. The output is a little below that of the company’s daylight-only LS 300d ll, which can produce 80,000 LUX at 1m with the same adapter.

The LS 300X has two modes for color adjustment that allow users to prioritize color accuracy or maximum output, and oft used color temperature can be pre-set into the main control wheel to make switching easier and quicker. Dimming is possible between 0-100% and color temperature can be adjusted in 50K increments. Nine special effects are built-in to the head, including flicker to emulate flash bulbs, fireworks and a TV.

A series of lenses can be used over the LED, as with the other LS series heads, to modify the light and a Bowens S mount fitting around the front panel allows softboxes and accessories to be used. Power comes from either V-Lock or Gold Mount battery on the control box and mains electricity, and a smartphone app can be used to control the head’s settings.

The Aputure LS 300X retails at $ 1199 and is available now. For more information see the Aputure website.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

April 24, 2020
Blackmagic Design’s Pocket Cinema Camera 6K now costs $1,995 after permanent price drop
Blackmagic Design has announced it’s dropping the price of its Pocket Cinema Camera 6K (BMPCC6K) by $ 500, bringing the retail price down to $ 1,995.

Although Blackmagic Design doesn’t explicitly say the price drop is due to the current COVID-19 pandemic in the press release, it does suggest the decision was made alongside the release of its ATEM Mini switchers to help the current demand for at-home livestreaming efforts, saying ‘With the current demand for multi camera live streaming from home broadcast studios, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K makes a perfect studio camera when combined with the recent studio camera software update!’

The BMPCC6K offers 6K30p recording on its Super 35 sensor (6144 x 3456 pixels), up to 13 stops of dynamic range, built-in SD UHS-II and CFast card slots, HDMI output, an expandable USB-C port, a built-in 5” touchscreen and Blackmagic OS to run it all. All of that is packed inside the carbon fiber polycarbonate composite frame, which comes with a built-in Canon EF mount.

You can find the new price live at retailers around the globe, including Adorama and B&H.

Press release:
Blackmagic Design Announces New Low Price for Pocket Cinema Camera 6K

Fremont, CA, USA – Friday, 24 April 2020 – Blackmagic Design today announced a new lower price for the popular Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K of US$ 1,995. This is a reduction of $ 500 which will help make this camera more affordable for users working on digital film as well as live production with the new ATEM Mini switchers. With the current demand for multi camera live streaming from home broadcast studios, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K makes a perfect studio camera when combined with the recent studio camera software update!

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K is available immediately from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide for US$ 1,995.

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera now works as a studio camera for live production when used with ATEM Mini. Video and control is via the HDMI connection, which is available as soon as customers plug the cameras in. The record light becomes a tally light so customers can see which camera is on air. The ATEM Software Control camera page has a camera control unit (CCU) style interface for adjusting and matching their cameras. Move the CCU control vertically for iris and left to right to adjust black level. It’s the same as a broadcast CCU. There are also controls for color tint to balance camera as well as focus, gain and shutter speed. Customers can even ISO record Blackmagic RAW in the camera for editing later.

The elegant design of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera packs an incredible number of high end digital film features into a miniaturized, handheld design. Made from lightweight carbon fiber polycarbonate composite, the camera features a multifunction handgrip with all controls for recording, ISO, WB and shutter angle right at their fingertips.

Featuring a larger 6144 x 3456 Super 35 sensor and EF lens mount, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K model lets customers use larger EF photographic lenses to create cinematic images with shallower depth of field, allowing creative defocussed backgrounds and gorgeous bokeh effects.

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Cameras have an incredible 13 stops of dynamic range which means they preserve more detail in the lightest and darkest areas of an image than simple video cameras can. This allows customers to set exposure for an indoor scene and still retain the details of bright outdoor light coming through a window.

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera features built in CFast and SD UHS-II card recorders, and a USB-C expansion port for recording direct to an external media disk. Customers can use regular SD cards for HD or higher performance UHS-II and CFast cards for native 4K or 6K when using Blackmagic RAW. Imagine capturing over an hour of full resolution 6K images on a single 256GB SD UHS-II card. The ProRes and Blackmagic RAW files work with all video software.

Blackmagic RAW is a revolutionary new format designed to capture and preserve the quality of the sensor data from their camera. Video formats such as H.264 are highly compressed, plus add noise and artifacts, causing original sensor detail to be lost forever. Blackmagic RAW eliminates this problem and gives customers stunning images with incredible detail and color throughout the production pipeline from camera to edit, color and mastering. It also saves camera settings as metadata so customers can set ISO, white balance and exposure in camera or override them later while editing, all without any loss of quality. Blackmagic RAW files are also small and fast to use making them easy to work with.

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera features a large, bright 5 inch touchscreen that makes it easy for customers to frame shots and accurately focus. The touchscreen displays critical information while users are shooting, menus for setting up the camera and intuitive touch to focus controls. On screen overlays show status, a histogram, focus and peaking indicators, levels, frame guides, playback controls and more.

With the advanced Blackmagic OS, customers get an intuitive and user friendly camera operating system based on the latest technology. The interface uses simple tap and swipe gestures to adjust settings, add metadata and view recording status. Customers also get full control over advanced camera features such as on screen focus and exposure tools, 3D LUTs, HDR, metadata entry, timecode, Blackmagic RAW settings and more.

Both Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera models feature a mini XLR input with 48 volts of phantom power for connecting professional microphones such as lapel mics and booms. The four built in microphones have an extremely low noise floor and are shock and wind resistant, allowing customers to capture great sound in any location. There’s also a 3.5mm audio input for connecting video camera style microphones, along with a built in speaker for playback and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

“We have worked very hard to build this camera at lower cost, and we think even more people will be able to take advantage of this price reduction to move into a more advanced and much higher quality digital film workflow,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “This has become more important with COVID-19. Many broadcasters have been setting up home studios for presenters, which have used ATEM Mini switchers and Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Cameras. We think with the recent software updates for switcher control of the Pocket Cinema Cameras from the ATEM Mini switchers, combined with this more affordable price it will greatly help this workflow.”

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Features
- Works as a studio camera when connected to ATEM Mini.
- Designed from carbon fiber polycarbonate composite.
- Wide 13 stops of dynamic range for film looks.
- Built in SD, UHS-II and CFast card recorders.
- Features incredible quality Blackmagic RAW recording.
- Built in 5″ touchscreen allows accurate focus when shooting 6K.
- Blackmagic OS as used in URSA Mini and URSA Broadcast cameras.
- Professional mini XLR input with 48 volt phantom power.
Availability and Price

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K is available now for US$ 1,995, excluding local duties and taxes, from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
April 24, 2020
Film Fridays: 9 analog photography ideas for isolation

Introduction

Whether you’re stuck indoors due to the global pandemic, or other reasons, there are plenty of ways to keep busy and to keep your photographic senses sharp. We’ve already covered some general photographic ideas for isolation as well as ways working photographers can keep busy. But what about old school analog shooters?

What follows are nine ways film photography lovers can stay occupied and have fun, all from the comfort and safety of your own home. Activities range from building your own cameras, to making your own strange film stocks, to learning to develop and print at home. Let’s dive in!

Build a pinhole camera

Building a pinhole camera is a classic Photo 101 exercise, but one that truly conveys the beauty and simplicity of “painting with light.” The Internet is filled with tutorials about making pinhole cameras from everyday materials. The most basic generally employ an aluminum can as one’s light-proof container, a piece of photo paper as the light-sensitive material and a small hole in the can as the aperture and lens. A simple piece of gaffer’s tape can function as the shutter, controlling when exposures begin and end.

For a more refined pinhole experience, many brands offer build-your-own kits ranging in their sophistication and complexity. Also a brand called Lensless offers a very cool line of wooden pinholes with different focal lengths, image size formats and made of different wood types. We’re also big fans of the Solarcan (above), a single-use pinhole meant to capture multi-day exposures of the sun’s path in you guessed it, a large can.

Learn to develop B&W film at home

Whether you’re new to developing B&W film or you have some experience, home developing is a fun, easy and reasonably inexpensive hobby. It’s also the kind of activity that’ll likely help you better appreciate the magic of photography and the nuances of chemistry.

We’ve put together a complete guide with everything you need to known to get started, including which supplies and chemicals to buy, how to clean up, how to digitize your negatives and other best practices. Read it below:

Developing film at home: everything you need to know to get started

Set up a home darkroom and make some prints

While we’re on the subject of developing B&W at home, why not make some B&W prints with your freshly-dried negatives while you’re at it? Home printing is almost certainly easier and cheaper than you might think.

Our pals over at the analog blog 35mmc.com have put together a handy guide to home printing on a shoestring budget. They even address concerns like: printing in a small space (such as an apartment) and how to best source equipment on the used market. You’ll also find some very handy tips for improvising darkroom gear with ordinary household items.

Read: How to build a darkroom for cheap

Digitize old negatives / experiment with sandwiching negatives

Whether you’re a former film shooter sitting on a box of aging negatives, or a modern analog maverick with current work in need of digitizing, scanning film can be a very rewarding, though often time-consuming activity. It can also be approached in many different ways. One of the most popular methods involves digitizing using a flatbed scanner and film holders. Epson’s V600 series is one you’ll hear mentioned often by film shooters because it is both affordable and fairly easy to use.

For quicker results, you can try photographing negatives with a macro lens on a digital camera with a diffused light source behind the negative; there are quite a few solutions out there for how to best mount/flatten one’s negatives when using this method. We personally think Nikon’s ES-2 film adapter works fairly well, and we’re also fans of the Pixl-later.

Another way to breathe some fresh creative life into old (or new) negatives is to experiment with sandwiching them together when digitizing. This can lead to some fun and funky results.

Turn your house/apartment into a camera

Photo: Brendan Barry

Sure, can-sized pinhole cameras are fun, but why not turn an entire room in your house or apartment into a giant pinhole? Photographer Brendan Barry is no stranger to turning odd things into picture-making machines and in the tutorial below, he’ll show you how to create a larger than life camera and capture the results, all without leaving the confines of your home.

Considerations like which room to use, what kind of lens to employ and how to create a positive print are all covered at length. We just hope you’ve got some extra cardboard lying around to cover your windows!

Build a 35mm film camera

So we’ve covered making pinhole cameras both from household items as well as turning your house itself into a camera. Both these methods look to capture an image on light sensitive paper. But what if you want to build a camera that can capture images on film instead?

Given the complexities of any working film camera, there aren’t many useful tutorials out there for how to build one from scratch. But worry not. For a hands-on experience that’ll teach you the basic mechanical functions of how a film camera works, look no further than Lomography’s Konstruktor Camera. This affordable kit will take a few hours to put together and the final product is a fully-functional 35mm camera that’s actually pretty fun to shoot. There’s even a flash-compatible model.

For more on the Konstruktor, including samples, check out this review on Popphoto.com from several years back.

Hunt for a new analog companion

Gear acquisition syndrome is real and we in no way are trying to encourage those with enough cameras to add to their collection. However, if you are genuinely in the market for a new analog friend, we’ve put together two guides listing 20 of our absolute favorite film cameras.

These two lists include both medium format and 35mm cameras. It’s also worth noting we’ve tried our best to only recommend cameras that have a reputation for reliability and that are fairly priced on the secondhand market. So get ready to hunt through Ebay, here are the 20 best film cameras worth buying right now…

Analog gems part 1: 10 excellent, affordable film cameras

Analog gems part 2: 10 additional film cameras worth buying right now

Track down some unusual film or make your own

It may seem somewhat counterintuitive, but in many respects, we’re living in a golden age of film experimentation. For starters, the second-hand market is awash with tons of expired film to shoot with, often for very cheap. And brands like Lomography offer an impressive catalog of strange film stocks (we personally enjoy the Lomochrom Purple). There are also plenty of smaller, boutique brands making fun and whacky films.

For those of you already with a freezer full of film, try soaking a few rolls in everyday household liquids. For instance, the image above was from a roll soaked in pickle juice. Just be sure to give said roll a thorough soaking in fresh water and dry it before running it through your camera (and keep those processes light-tight). It’s also a good idea to give your film handler a heads-up about how you’ve treated the film, or better yet, develop the rolls yourself.

Give your well-used gear some TLC

It’s important to keep your analog cameras in tip-top working order. And while there are many repairs we would never suggest you try, like anything involving wiring or disassembly, there are plenty of smaller repairs and bits of maintenance you can do to increase the life span of your cameras.

One of the simplest repairs involves replacing the light seals and bits of foam inside the film door. You can pick up a generic pack of light seals / foam off places like Ebay for very little money. Another simple repair involves using rubbing alcohol to de-corrode electronic contacts and/or remove stuck-on grime from the camera body. And for those who are a bit more confident, cleaning or replacing a film SLR’s focus screen can go a long way towards improving usability.

The wrap

And there you have it, nine fun ways analog shooters can continue to keep busy in these strange times. Think of these activities as forms of self care, because for many of us, photography and photography-adjacent projects help us tap into a sense of calm and peace. Sure, shooting film won’t end the global pandemic. But at least nurturing your love of analog can help distract you while you remain safely at home.

Got any more fun film photography ideas for isolation? Drop them in the comments below and we’ll consider adding them to this list.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

April 24, 2020