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LensRentals constructs a C-4 Optics 4.9mm F3.5 Hyperfisheye Prototype lens

20 Feb

Lensrentals is known for its in-depth teardowns of the latest and greatest camera gear, but not everything has to be about destruction. For a change of pace, Lensrentals has decided to build a lens rather than destroy it.

In particular, Roger and his team have shared the above video and an accompanying blog post highlighting the construction of the the widest fisheye lens in existence, the C-4 Optics 4.9mm F3.5 Hyperfisheye Prototype.

Photos kindly provided by Lensrentals

Much like the 1970s Nikkor 6mm f/2.8 fisheye lens, the C-4 Optics 4.9mm F3.5 Hyperfisheye Prototype is so wide that it can actually see behind itself. It takes it a step further though; Instead of the 220-degree field of view of the Nikkor lens, the C-4 Optics fisheye, of which only two have been made, has a 270-degree field of view. Not only is it wider though, it’s also sharper and has less distortion and vignetting.

An individual element is stacked on top of another during the construction of the lens.

The entire construction is a doozy from beginning to end, with individual elements costing as much as $ 5,000, but as always Lensrentals manages to get it down with impeccable results. The final result is an unusual-looking lens that has legs and a backplate to help support the massive hunk of glass and metal.

‘For those of you who are curious, a smaller Sony camera (A7xxx) fits nicely protected within the legs,’ says Roger in his blog post. ‘For larger cameras the bottom platform can be removed, the legs extended or removed, and various apparatus (rods, follow focus, aperture control, etc.) mounted directly to the cheese plate.’

Roger notes the lens won’t be available to rent, so don’t get your hopes up. To see the full build and soak up the details, head over to Lensrentals.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Apple has turned ‘bokeh’ into a verb (and taken a stance on how it’s pronounced)

20 Feb

According to Merriam-Webster, bokeh is a noun that means ‘the blurred quality or effect seen in the out-of-focus portion of a photograph taken with a narrow depth of field.’ Apple, however, has different plans.

In a recent video advertisement, Apple has turned the word bokeh into a verb, ‘bokeh’d.’ Not only has Apple turned bokeh into a verb, it’s also taken a stance on how the Japanese term is pronounced, a widely debated topic. Based on the video, Apple’s pronunciation of choice is ‘bok-uh,’ a departure from the Japanese pronunciation which sounds more along the lines of ‘bow-kayh.’

The advert itself is humorous regardless of your pronunciation preference and, for better or worse, Apple’s ‘verbing’ of the word bokeh may very well become a universally accepted.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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‘Kissing sailor’ George Mendonsa featured in iconic 1945 photo dies at 95

20 Feb

The kissing sailor featured in the iconic ‘V-J Day in Times Square’ photo, George Mendonsa, has died at the age of 95, according to his daughter. Mendonsa suffered a seizure at the Rhode Island assisted living facility where he resided and passed away two days before his 96th birthday.

The photo, which was first published by Life Magazine in 1945, was captured by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt at the end of World War II. Mendosa, a sailor in the U.S. Navy, had been on a date with Rita Petrie, his eventual wife of 70 years, when he heard news of Japan’s surrender in August 1945. Overcome with excitement, he grabbed a stranger and kissed her.

The identities of the two people featured in the photo remained a mystery for decades, spurring multiple false claims from individuals who alleged they were the pictured subjects. The issue was laid to rest in 2012 when the U.S. Naval Institute Press published a book title ‘The Kissing Sailor’ by George Galdorisi and Lawrence Verria.

A combination of expert analysis and facial recognition technology confirmed the image features Mendosa and Greta Friedman, the woman in the nurse’s uniform. According to Verria, Mendonsa had been struck by the sight of nurses treating injured sailors during the war. When news of the war’s end arrived, Mendonsa saw Friedman in her uniform and pulled her into a kiss.

In a 2005 interview, Friedman explained the experience from her side, saying that she had been working that morning in a dental office when rumors of the war’s end began circulating. Later that day, Friedman walked to Times Square and saw a billboard confirming the news.

And so suddenly I was grabbed by a sailor, and it wasn’t that much of a kiss, it was more of a jubilant act that he didn’t have to go back, I found out later, he was so happy that he did not have to go back to the Pacific where they already had been through the war. And the reason he grabbed someone dressed like a nurse was that he just felt very grateful to nurses who took care of the wounded.

Photographer Eisenstaedt detailed the moment he captured the iconic photo in his book ‘Eisenstaedt on Eisenstaedt.’

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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What Your Camera Can’t See

20 Feb

The post What Your Camera Can’t See appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.

For all the incredible technology packed into cameras, there is one missing element that will remain missing perhaps forever. The missing element? The combination of human eyesight and the brain’s image processor called the Visual Cortex.

1 - What Your Camera Can't See

The Visual Cortex

The Visual Cortex is located in the lower rear of your brain. It is here the real color perception magic happens – magic that goes way beyond the analysis capabilities of any camera on the planet. As you understand this human version of the camera’s image processor, your understanding of the photo process will come into clearer focus.

Medical experts tell us that more than 80% of what we experience enters our brain through our vision. Your eyes capture light’s amazing array of colors as the eye’s lens focuses light beams onto the panoramic viewing screen in the back of your eyeball called the retina.

2 - What Your Camera Can't See

Your brain is very forgiving. It focuses light entering through your eyes, and automatically color corrects almost every lighting condition and color cast en route to the Visual Cortex. Within seconds, your eyes and brain adjust to a wide range of lighting intensities and color influences and deliver very believable images to your mind. And it all happens without you even realizing it. No white balance to set, no color shifts to neutralize. Your brain’s magic intuition and forgiving nature do a crazy-good job of color correction for you.

Your camera records colors a bit more objectively. However, even when shooting RAW files, decisions about color still have to be made in the editing process. Your camera simply doesn’t have cognitive or reasoning skills and thus must be tutored to interpret what it “sees” accurately. You might say that your camera sees, but it doesn’t observe.

White balance and memory colors

When you visually observe a white sheet of paper in a daylight lighting (preferably outside, in natural light), the paper looks… white. Even when you observe that same white paper indoors under tungsten light, your brain recognizes that the paper is really white. This is because the human brain possesses what we call “memory colors;” a basic set of colors that are so familiar that even lighting variances cannot confuse.

Your camera cannot remember what color white is when it is captured under different types of lighting. It must be told every time. What your camera calls “memory” isn’t the same “memory” that your human brain possesses.

3- What Your Camera Can't See

When you set your camera’s White Balance to Daylight and take a picture of the white paper outside, it indeed appears white. That is merely the way the camera’s image sensor is biased to record light under daylight (6500° Kelvin) color conditions. However, when you move inside and shoot the same white paper under tungsten lighting (using the same Daylight WB), the paper appears to the camera to be somewhat yellow.

4- What Your Camera Can't See

Auto White Balance (left) and Tungsten (right)

Changing the camera’s WB setting to Auto White Balance (AWB) and shooting the paper under a typical table lamp light, the picture still appears slightly yellow.  Even when you set the camera’s WB to Tungsten, the paper still fails to appear perfectly neutral white, though it appears much closer to white.

5- What Your Camera Can't See

The truth is, there are colors in the visual spectrum that digital cameras record differently than film cameras did in the past. And neither technology captures and records the exact colors that the human eye sees or the mind perceives. This is why most captured images, for all their beauty, still lack the full sense of authenticity and depth that the human mind experiences from light observed in every scene.

Technically (and spectrally), in each case, the camera is telling the truth, just not the “truth” that we perceive with our eyes. This is, of course, a good example of why we shoot in raw format. When captured in raw format, all regimented color categories get ignored. Any color shifts can be corrected and lighting variances addressed in the post-processing stage.

As mentioned earlier, the can’t the camera see the white paper as white (the way our eyes do) regardless of the lighting situation because the camera doesn’t have an onboard reference registry of “memory colors” the way our brains do.

6- What Your Camera Can't See

The brain automatically remaps each scene’s color cast to your brain’s “memory colors.” Think of these memory colors as preference presets in your brain’s color interpreter. These memory colors automatically compensate for variable lighting situations. The infinite Look Up Table (LUT) variables that would be needed for a camera to replicate this basic, natural brain function would have to be both immense and incredibly complex. No matter how smart digital devices become, they’ll never replace the magic of human interpretation.

Conclusion

So what have we learned? Your camera, for all its sophistication, cannot automatically correct color casts. It simply isn’t human. That means that your camera ultimately benefits from and makes use of your understanding of the behavior of light and color. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll produce images that more closely replicate color as your mind perceived it. Photography is a two-part process that requires the camera to do its job and for you to do yours. What is defined by the clinical term as “post-processing” is merely finishing the job that your camera started.

Moreover, this is a good thing. Your judgment and interpretation of the colors your mind saw when you captured the image can guide you as you tweak and make minor adjustments to your images. Don’t think of this as a burden. Recognize this as a gift. You, the photographer, are the producer of the image. Your camera is merely a tool that provides all the “raw” materials you’ll need to share what your mind observed when you captured the scene.

This is why photography is an art, and why this art requires an artist. You are that artist.

Celebrate the partnership you have with your camera. Together, you produce visual beauty.

The post What Your Camera Can’t See appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.


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Luminar update brings improved performance and new features

19 Feb

Skylum Software has announced an update to its Luminar image editing software. Version 3.0.2 comes with new features as well as improvements in performance and stability.

The latter includes faster import of images and folders to the catalog and faster launch times on the Windows platform as well as faster image moving between external and internal drives and better imports of native Luminar files for Apple Mac computers.

On both platforms the software now offers a new ‘Locate Folder’ command, allowing users to find misplaced or moved folders on their system. There are also new dedicated toolbar buttons for Gallery and Single Image views.

New features for Windows users include nested folders, offline file alerts and new shortcut keys for several functions. On a Mac you can now enjoy automated database backups, new preferences for cache, catalog and backup and Aurora HDR integration among other new functions.

The new version also comes with an updated list of supported cameras to which the following models have been added:

  • Nikon: D3500, P1000, Z6, Z7
  • Panasonic: Lumix DC-LX100 II
  • Fujifilm: GFX 50R, X-T3
  • Sony: RX100VA, RX100VI, DSC-HX99, DSC-HX95
  • Leica: M10-D, M10-P, D-Lux 7

A full list of supported cameras is available on the Luminar website. Luminar is available as a 30-day free trial. A full license will set you back $ 69 and allows you to install the software on five machines in your household. More information is available on skylum.com/.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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How to Move Your Lightroom Library to an External Drive

19 Feb

The post How to Move Your Lightroom Library to an External Drive appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.

Many photographers put their pictures on their computer’s internal hard drive. This can be a great solution since even laptops now have fairly generous storage options compared to their counterparts in days gone by. It may take you a while to fill up a 1TB or larger internal drive even if you shoot in RAW, but at some point, you’re going to run out of space, and you’ll have to address this problem. Cloud storage is a good solution but often involves a monthly or yearly fee, and upgrading your internal drive can be expensive and time-consuming. One perfect solution is to migrate your entire Lightroom library to an external drive. While this might sound difficult and intimidating, it’s quite simple and is something that anyone can easily do.

Choosing your storage

Storage space is fairly inexpensive, but not infinite. There are always going to be physical limitations when it comes to how many images you can store on a single piece of media. This is true whether it’s a traditional hard drive, a solid-state drive, or a mix of both such as Apple’s Fusion Drives.

Thankfully, external drives can offer vast amounts of storage space for relatively little money. With the fast transfer speeds of USB-3, which is common on most computers today, you won’t lose anything in terms of editing efficiency by having your pictures stored externally.

The first step in migrating your pictures to an external drive is to buy an external drive, and you have several options:

• Traditional hard drive made with spinning platters. If you take this route, I recommend one with a transfer rate of 150mb/sec (megabytes per second) and an RPM speed of 7200. As I write this in early 2019, a four-terabyte drive, which can hold around 200,000 RAW files or half a million JPG files without breaking a sweat, can be found for US$ 100 to US$ 150.

Storage is inexpensive and prices are falling all the time. This 4 terabyte hard drive was only $ 90 when I bought it in the spring of 2019. (Guitar pick shown for scale.)

• Solid-state drive with no moving parts. These aren’t as cheap as traditional drives, and they don’t hold quite as much data. However, with prices falling all the time, it won’t be long until solid-state drives are the norm and traditional spinning platters become redundant. Transfer rates on these drives are going to be plenty fast enough for any photo editing.

• RAID array or Drobo. These are much more expensive than traditional storage options but offer redundancy in case of data failures, but they might be overkill for non-professional photographers. Besides, no matter what external storage solution you use, you should always have at least one off-site backup even if you do use a RAID array.

For most people, I recommend a simple USB-3 external drive, as it’s the most cost-effective solution and easy to backup onto another drive as well.

Once you have an external drive, there are two methods for getting your photos in Lightroom copied over to it. I’ll walk you through each of these methods as well as the positive and negative aspects of each so you can decide which is right for you.

Method 1: Use Lightroom

This process works well if you don’t have a large photo library. It doesn’t involve a lot of heavy lifting on your part because you can do everything within Lightroom. If you have a lot of images (a few thousand or more), I’d recommend against this because I’ve read reports that it can become a little unreliable when working with that many files. Your mileage may vary though, but know that you ought to proceed with a bit of caution when using this method.

First, locate your Folders pane on the left side of the Library module of Lightroom. Then click the + button in the top-right corner and choose “Add Folder…” This is going to let you create a new folder for storing your images. In this case, navigate to your external drive and create a new folder at that location.

Navigate to your external drive and create a folder on it that you can use to store your pictures. In the screenshot below my external drive is called “Untitled” and my folder is called “Lightroom Pictures.”

Once done, you should see the new folder show up in Lightroom, but it will be empty. This action also creates a new folder on your external drive, which you can see if you navigate to the external drive using Finder or Windows Explorer.

The final step in moving your images from the internal drive to an external drive is to drag-and-drop them from Lightroom. From the Folders panel, click on a folder that you want to put on the external drive and drag it from your internal drive to the new folder you just created.

Click the Move button and Lightroom transfers everything over to the external drive, with no extra effort required on your part. If you have thousands of pictures, this could take a while. So be patient. In the end, your images will be on the external drive and also removed from your internal drive.

Method 2: Copy files manually

If you don’t mind doing a little bit of work yourself using Windows File Explorer or the Macintosh Finder, this is the option I generally recommend. That’s because it not only gives you the most control over the copying operation but helps you understand exactly where to locate your pictures. This method also lets you decide when to delete the original images on your internal drive because you copy them to your external drive instead of moving them. The first thing you need to do is navigate to your Library module within Lightroom and look for the Folders pane. This module tells you where to locate your image files on your computer.

I’ve got images in Lightroom going back to 2013, and each year’s pictures are stored in a separate folder on my hard drive.

Right-click, or control-click on a Mac, on the name of one of the folders in your Folders pane and choose the option that says “Show in Finder.” If you are using Windows, this says “Show in Explorer.” This takes you to the location on your computer where your images are stored.

If you have multiple folders with images in them, do this operation one at a time for each folder. In this example, I started with the 2013 folder in Lightroom, and selected “Show in Finder.” Then it brought up the actual folder on my computer labeled 2013 that contains my images from that year.

When you get to this step, right-click (or control-click) the folder and choose Copy. Then navigate to your external drive and choose Paste. This makes an exact duplicate of the folder on your external drive which might seem redundant, but this is only temporary. A bit later in the process, you can delete the original folder on your internal hard drive once you are sure that everything worked with the copy operation.

Repeat this copy/paste process for every folder listed in your Lightroom Folders pane. After you are finished copying everything to your external drive, rename the original folders by giving them a suffix such as “2013-Original” or “2013-Old.” Again, this is only temporary, and you end up just deleting these folders entirely. But for now, you don’t want to get ahead of yourself and start deleting folders before you are confident that everything has worked properly.

Locating your missing folders

After you rename the original folders, Lightroom may have a bit of a fit because it suddenly won’t be able to locate all your images! With the folder names changed, it won’t know where to look for your pictures even though they are all still intact. The next step is to tell Lightroom where to find your images on the external hard drive instead of looking on your original internal hard drive. As soon as you rename the original folder, the icon in Lightroom changes to a question mark since it no longer knows where to locate your pictures.

Right-click on the folder with a question mark and choose “Find Missing Folder” to rectify the situation.

In the screen that pops up next, navigate to the folder on your external hard drive where your pictures are. This is the folder you copied over at the start of this whole process, and its name should be unchanged. Select it, to make it show up in Lightroom. All your photos should be fully intact.

Repeat this process with all your folders. When finished, your images will have successfully migrated to the external drive. You can verify this by scrolling through your Lightroom library and looking for any images with a question mark. If you don’t see any, then everything is fine. If you do, then Lightroom is having trouble locating the original image, and you might need to double check that all your pictures have copied to the external drive successfully.

When you are satisfied that you have completed the operation without error, you are free to delete the original images on your internal drive. However, I’d recommend keeping a backup of them just in case. When it comes to photos, you can never have too many backups!

Catalog vs. Photos

It’s important to know that your Lightroom pictures are not the same as your Lightroom Catalog. The latter is a reference file which keeps track of all your edits to your pictures, leaving the originals fully intact and unchanged. I recommend keeping your Catalog on your internal hard drive since Lightroom uses this for all your editing operations and internal drives are likely to be faster than external drives. However, it’s up to you. If you’re not sure what to do, just don’t even think about it, since moving your Catalog to an external drive is an entirely separate operation altogether.

The Catalog stores all the changes to your images and only takes up a few gigabytes of space. Your actual images can take up hundreds or even thousands of gigabytes.

Remember to Backup

A final step in moving your pictures to an external drive is to make sure you have a good backup plan in place. If you are on a Mac and have your computer backed up via Time Machine, it will not automatically back up your external hard drives, and you might also find yourself quickly running out of space on your Time Machine backup drive. I recommend keeping a separate backup of your external hard drive and using a program like Carbon Copy Cloner to make sure you sync everything correctly.

Windows has options available as well, but the bottom line here is that you can never be too safe when it comes to backing up your images. Hopefully, this tutorial helps you understand how to go about reclaiming some of the space on your internal drive and setting yourself up for success in the long run when it comes to external storage options. However, all will be for naught if your images aren’t properly backed up and your computer fails.

Once you have all these pieces in place, it’s time to get off your computer, start shooting photos, and know that you’ve got plenty of storage space for years to come!

The post How to Move Your Lightroom Library to an External Drive appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.


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The progenitors of GFX: A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format concepts

19 Feb

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

At Dubai’s recent Gulf Photo Plus event, Fujifilm gave us a good look at a couple of its forthcoming products, and also allowed us a peek back in time, into the design of existing GFX cameras.

What you’re about to see is a collection of mockups of concept GFX designs, dating from before the launch of the GFX 50S and 50R. Some of these mockups appear very familiar, some less so. Click through to take a closer look.

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

First up is the camera that got most of the X-Summit audience talking – the very earliest concept mockup for what became the original GFX 50S. As you can see, there are a lot of similarities to the camera that eventually shipped in 2017.

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

Top-mounted dials, a central pentaprism-style EVF, lots of controls, a nice big sticky-outy grip…

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

But in fact, the camera is fully modular. The EVF and grip are optional accessories to the core body of the camera, which consists of the mount, sensor and controls for the key exposure parameters.

Fujifilm’s representatives confirmed that the ‘Omega’ concept was directly inspired by Hasselblad’s iconic 500-series square format film cameras. Note the distinctive annular shutter speed dial, positioned around the lens mount itself.

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

As originally envisaged, the Omega had a direct control for aspect ratio, and unusual ‘roller’ style controls, rather than the final GFX’s more conventional dials.

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

Here are the three main modules – a grip component, the main body of the camera, and a removable EVF. The spirit of the Omega lives on in the design of the GFX 50S’s viewfinder, which can be removed to make a slightly smaller, lighter camera.

The main reason why this even more modular design never saw it to production is simple – the shutter mechanism for such a large sensor was simply too large for the concept. That doesn’t mean we’ll never see a modular GFX, but we might have to wait for global shutters to become a practical reality first.

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

Next up is ‘Gamma’, a design which takes a lot of cues from contemporary XT-series APS-C format cameras.

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

Essentially a scaled-up XT, the Gamma would have offered a larger sensor, in a body very familiar to Fujifilm’s existing APS-C shooters.

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

It’s unclear why this design didn’t make it beyond the concept stage, but it’s possible that Fujifilm wanted to draw a cleaner line between the APS-C lineup and the (inevitably) more expensive GFX range. Also, notice that there’s no room for a top-plate display screen in this design.

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

A second, unnamed XT-style concept removes the exposure compensation dial and combines shutter speed and ISO into a single (arguably still unnecessary) dial, reducing the amount of bulk on the right hand side of the body. Again, there’s no top-plate mounted status screen either.

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

Of the two XT-style concepts, this is my personal favorite. The narrower body and simple control layout, with such a large grip is lovely to handle.

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

Finally, a glimpse at what the eventual GFX 50R could have been. This is an early concept mockup for a rangefinder-style GFX, but minus the viewfinder. As such, the ‘SP-X’ actually resembles a cross between the X-Pro 2 and the X70 and XF10 compacts.

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

From the rear, the angular SP-X looks fairly familiar – sub-dial ISO control notwithstanding – but with this concept, Fujifilm’s design team wanted to experiment with a rear screen that truly blended in to the back of the camera. You can’t really tell in this shot, but…

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

…the screen is designed so that when the camera is held in a shooting position, it reversed against the camera.

A closer look at Fujifilm’s medium format GFX concepts

To use the screen, it must be folded out, which suits waist-level shooting and image review (but in this position, not much more than that). It’s not clear whether Fujifilm envisaged a more complex reversing hinge for the final design, but either way – this is definitely the most conceptual of the concepts. Still though, put put an EVF in there and I might be interested.

What do you think? As always, let us know in the comments.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Panasonic announces new Lumix ZS80 (TZ95) compact, FZ1000 II superzoom camera

19 Feb

Panasonic has announced it’s adding two new zoom cameras to its Lumix lineup: the Lumix ZS80 (TZ95 outside of North America) compact camera and the Lumix FZ1000 II superzoom camera.

Lumix ZS80/TZ95

First up is the Lumix Z80, the latest camera in Panasonic’s travel zoom series. At the heart of the ZS80 is a 20.3-megapixel 1/2.3-inch sensor. Beyond stills, the ZS80 can capture 4K/30p video. In front of the sensor is an optically stabilized 24mm (35mm equivalent) Leica lens with 30x optical zoom, giving it a maximum focal length of 720mm (35mm equivalent).

The ZS80 can capture Raw photos and features a maximum burst rate of 10 frames per second (fps). On the rear of the camera is a three-inch 1040K-dot tilting touchscreen and a 2,330K-dot equivalent Live View Finder (LVF).

Panasonic’s signature 4K Photo mode makes an appearance in the ZS80 and adds a new Auto Marking feature that makes it easy to pick out individual frames within a 4K video file.

TheZS80 includes both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for connecting to and transferring images to smartphones or tablets and tagging the GPS location information within images.

Panasonic says theZS80 can capture approximately 380 shots per charge and in the event the battery does die, USB charging is possible.

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The Panasonic Lumix ZS80/TZ95 will be available at the end of April 2019 in black and silver for $ 449 / £399 / €449.

Lumix FZ1000

The new Lumix FZ1000 II features a 1-inch 20.1-megapixel sensor behind a 16x optical zoom Leica lens with a 25-400mm (35mm equivalent) focal length range and F2.8-4.0 aperture range. The lens features Panasonic’s 5-axis hybrid Optical Image Stabilizer (O.I.S.+) with a Level Shot function that automatically detects horizontal lines within an image and keeps it level while shooting.

In addition to stills at up to 12 fps, the FZ1000 II can capture 4K/30p video in the MP4 format at 100Mbps with the option for 120 fps recording at 1080p. Like the TZ95, the FZ1000 II features Panasonic’s 4K Photo mode with the new Auto Marking feature.

The rear of the camera features an articulating three-inch 1.24M-dot touchscreen as well as an OLED 0.39-inch 2.36M-dot EVF.

The FZ1000 II includes built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for wireless connection to mobile devices. The rechargeable lithium-ion battery is rated for 440 shots per charge when working with the rear LCD and 290 shots when using the EVF (430 shots per charge when using the EVF in the ‘eco’ setting, which limited it to 30 fps).

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The Panasonic Lumix FZ1000 II will be available at the end of March 2019 for $ 899 / £769 / €849.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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EyeEm, Fotolog and other photo sites affected by security breach

19 Feb

Turns out the 500px data breach we reported on last week wasn’t an isolated incident. According to The Register the data breach affected not only 500px but a total of 16 websites, including mobile image sharing platform EyeEm, Animoto, Artsy and Fotolog.

Overall the details of 617 million online accounts were stolen and offered for sale on the dark web.

EyeEm sent an email out to its user base, saying 22 million of its accounts had been compromised but no payment or payout data had been affected. The breach exposed users’ names, email addresses, and encrypted versions of passwords, however.

The company also writes that it only recently become aware of the hack, despite the fact that it happened back on July 5th 2018. Upon discovery of the issue all passwords were disabled and emails went out to the EyeEm community.

EyeEm also asks its users to not reuse old passwords, not use the same password on multiple websites, use multi-factor authentication whenever possible and use as password management tool. This is sensible advice, no matter if you’re affected by any of the hacks or not.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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How to Quote Commercial Photography Jobs: A Few Important Line Items to Consider

19 Feb

The post How to Quote Commercial Photography Jobs: A Few Important Line Items to Consider appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darina Kopcok.

There are a variety of ways to quote on a commercial photography job. Every photographer has their own approach.

If you’re new to working with clients, or even if you’ve been at it for a little while, putting together a formal estimate can be a daunting process. The bigger the scope, the more variables there are to consider.

Here are some line items to consider.

Quoting Commercial Photography-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Creative fee

When you’re putting together an estimate for a commercial photography job, I recommend charging a Creative Fee for your labor. This creative fee is the time you spend shooting, but it can also include some post-processing.

Some photographers charge a day rate or a half-day rate. I don’t advise charging by the hours, but I determine how many hours you think you may need to execute a job and multiply it by the hourly rate you would like to receive for it. You may want to top that up by up to 25%, as you’ll find most jobs take longer than you think they will.

As a new photographer, I tried a variety of ways of estimating jobs. When I charged a half-day rate, I often found that there was no such thing. By the time I set up, did all the project management to pull the shoot together and hire the help I needed, it was a full day of work and then some.

Think about how much work you have to do behind the scenes and factor that into your creative fee as well.

One thing I don’t recommend is lumping all your expenses together and presenting it to the client. Giving them one big total can lead to sticker shock and confuse your potential client. They won’t know what they’re paying for exactly.

Breaking it down for them is a good business practice and helps the less experienced clients – say, those with a small business – understand all the work that goes into producing a commercial photo shoot.

Equipment

Quoting Commercial Photography-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Some photographers like to have their own equipment they bring to photo shoots. This not only means a couple of cameras and Speedlites, but it can also mean monoheads, stands, and a variety of other gear.

You may have everything you need to bring to smaller shoots, but on bigger productions, you may need to rent extra gear, like several lights and lighting modifiers. You should not absorb this cost. It goes into the estimate.

Therefore, you need to get all the pertinent information up front about what the shot entails, so you know what to take. Make sure you get a shot list and ask all the necessary questions up front.

If you do have your own gear, you can include it in your creative fee and mention it as a footnote on the estimate that it’s included. Alternatively, you may decide to separate it.

You should charge at least a nominal fee for the use of your equipment. This way you can put money aside for any replacements and upgrades you need to do over time.

If a client were to go to a rental house and rent the equipment needed to pull off a commercial production, they would pay hundreds of dollars. And that is just for the tools. What about the skill of the person to handle those tools?

Don’t be afraid to charge appropriately for your services.

Studio rental

Photo shoots can take place in a variety of locations, but if you need to shoot in a studio, make sure that you put a cost for the studio rental in your estimate.

Be familiar with at least three studios in your area that can be rented out and what they charge per hour or day. If at the time that you write your estimate you’re not sure which one you’d be shooting in, put the most expensive one as the cost.

Once you get the go-ahead you can see what is available on the date you’ll be shooting and book the available studio.

Editing & post-production

Quoting Commercial Photography-Darina Kopcok-DPS

When working on a commercial level, you may not be the person responsible for editing the photos. If you’re working with an ad agency or sometimes even a magazine, they may have someone in-house to do editing according to specific parameters.

Alternatively, you may be expected to do the basic editing, but someone else may be responsible for further refinement. Be clear on the outset about the expectations around post-production.

The Photoshop required may be complex and require the expertise of a professional retoucher. In this case, you must get a quote from a retoucher and put that as a line item in your estimate.

Quoting Commercial Photography-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Archiving fee

Some photographers charge an archiving fee as part of their post-production process.

There is the time associated with uploading and storing images and the process required to back them up. Since you should be charging for all the time you spend on a project, it makes sense to include it in the scope. You can have it as a line item or include it in your creative fee.

Digital Imaging Technician

Depending on the genre of photography you shoot and the nature of the production, you might want to hire a Digital Imaging Technician. Also known as a DIT, they are responsible for backing up everything as you shoot, and for doing quick color treatments or composites on set.

For example, as a food and still life photographer, I always shoot tethered to my computer so I can see a large, more accurate rendition of my image than I can get on the back of my LCD screen. I also sometimes have to work with overlays if I’m doing product packaging, so I can see how the image fits with any text or artwork. A DIT can help with this process.

Photo assistant

I have used a photo assistant since the day I started shooting professionally.

A good photo assistant is indispensable and worth every penny. A photo assistant can help you carry all your gear, work your lighting and run out on errands. Having one on hand saves you time, which in the end is saving you money.

There are professional photo assistants whose sole work is assisting other photographers. However, there are plenty of photography school grads that start their careers assisting and have a lot to offer in terms of technical knowledge and eagerness to gain experience.

Many of them are not even that expensive, so if you can’t get the extra expense approved, I suggest taking a cut for yourself to have one help you out.

Stylists and makeup artists

Estimating Commercial Photography-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Depending on the niche you’re shooting in, you may need a stylist. This may be a wardrobe or fashion stylist, or a food stylist.

Food stylists are responsible for shopping for the food and ingredients required for any food shoot and preparing it for the set. Food styling requires particular skills and are an essential part of any team producing food photography. It is not the photographer’s job, as it’s a different occupation and should be treated as such.

Food stylists usually charge by the hour or a day rate, as well as for prep, and often have their own assistants.

Similarly, wardrobe stylists are responsible for the clothing and related props on fashion shoots.

Makeup artists are required for fashion shoots as well, and sometimes on commercial portrait shoots.

Image usage

Image usage is the trickiest part of a photography estimate.

There is no right or wrong answer for how much you should be charging for usage.

When you are hired to shoot for a brand, you still own the copyright to those images. The client does not own them. The creative fee is for the labor to execute the commission, the usage fee is a license that allows them to use the image in a defined way for a specific time period.

How much you should charge is dependent on your market, the visibility of the brand, and how they want to use them.

The Getty Pricing Calculator is a free tool that can give you some idea of what to charge for usage.

However, I have found that there is what photographers should charge, and then there is reality. There is no point in charging a client hundreds of dollars per image if the client is small and cannot pay that.

I always recommend separating image usage from the creative fee. However, often you need to educate the client up front about copyright and what usage refers to. This can be tough if you’re dealing with a small business owner who thinks they own the images because they hired you to shoot them.

Give them an agreement that outlines the usage and make sure they are clear on how and where they can use the images.

In Conclusion

If you’ve been struggling with how to price your photographic services, hopefully, you now have a better idea of the types of things you can charge for.

The post How to Quote Commercial Photography Jobs: A Few Important Line Items to Consider appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darina Kopcok.


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