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  • Zeiss launches new lineup of lightweight and compact ‘Supreme Prime’ lenses

    Zeiss has announced a new lineup of 13 ‘Supreme Prime’ lenses for large format cinematographers who want smaller and lighter glass that still produces top-quality results. The kind of lenses that’ll make your salivary glands work… and your wallet groan.

    The Supreme Prime range will comprise focal lengths from 15mm to 200mm, and Zeiss says that most of those lenses will have a maximum aperture of T1.5. In fact, ten of the focal lengths will offer a maximum aperture of T1.5, while the 15mm and 150mm will be T1.8, and the 200mm will be a T2.1.

    Despite their diminutive size, Zeiss stresses that the Supreme Primes are designed for high-end advertising work and movie production; consequently, they will be compatible with large format (full-frame) movie cameras such as the Sony Venice, ARRI Alexa LF, and the RED Monstro. Zeiss says the lenses will be versatile and able to create different looks because of their “gentle sharpness, the aesthetic focus fall-off, and elegant bokeh” which the company claims makes them suitable for a wide range of production styles.

    Communication between the lenses and the camera will be performed via the Zeiss eXtended Data and Cooke’s /i metadata protocols. These record optical characteristics and lens settings to every frame recorded to assist post-production processes, especially when visual effects need to be added to the footage.

    The 25mm, 29mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm lenses will be released in August 2018 and the 100mm will be ready in December. All six can be purchased together as a set for $ 108,000, but you’ll have to wait until 2019 for the 15mm, 18mm, 21mm, 65mm, 135mm and 150mm focal lengths to finish drip-feeding into the range. The 200mm T2.1, meanwhile, will arrive in 2020.

    To see the new Zeiss Supreme Prime lenses in action, check out the sample film below shot with these lenses on the Sony Venice, Phantom 4K, and RED Monstro VV. And if you want to learn more about the lenses, head over to the Zeiss website.

    Press Release

    New High-End Cinema Lens Family ZEISS Supreme Primes

    With its 13 high-speed, full-frame, prime lenses for high-quality film productions, ZEISS is focusing on maximum quality, low weight, and significant versatility when it comes to creating superb visual imagery.

    ZEISS has introduced a new family of high-speed lenses for high-end film production: The ZEISS Supreme Prime family consists of 13 lenses with fixed focal lengths between 15 and 200 millimeters, the majority with a maximum aperture of T1.5. “The lenses are designed for film productions of an extremely high quality,” says Christophe Casenave from ZEISS. “They are perfect for high-budget advertising or feature films, for example.” ZEISS Supreme Primes are designed to cover cinematic large format camera sensors and are compatible with all of the latest camera models, such as the Sony Venice, ARRI Alexa LF, and RED Monstro. According to Casenave, the versatility of the Supreme Prime lenses to create different visual looks is due to the gentle sharpness, the aesthetic focus fall-off and elegant bokeh. The lenses are extremely flexible and can be used equally well for science fiction thrillers as well as for dramas.

    Compact and Lightweight

    “Weighing an average of 1600 grams (3.5 pounds), ZEISS Supreme Primes are significantly lighter and smaller than comparable lenses on the market,” says Casenave. With these compact and lightweight lenses, ZEISS is responding to many camera operators’ desire for compact equipment that still meets the highest standards of quality. “ZEISS Supreme Primes are unbelievably rugged and reliable. Regardless of whether filming in the desert or in the Arctic, the lenses perform flawlessly. And in the event that something should ever break, our worldwide service network provides fast and professional help.”

    ZEISS eXtended Data Metadata Technology

    The ZEISS Supreme Primes are equipped with the ZEISS eXtended Data metadata technology. Introduced in 2017, ZEISS eXtended Data provides frame by frame data on lens vignetting and distortion in addition to the standard lens metadata provided using Cooke’s /i technology1 protocol. This greatly speeds up the entire film production’s workflow. When using visual effects for example, with only a few clicks, the lens properties can be removed so that computer-generated effects imagery can be accurately applied to the captured imagery. The lens properties can then be reapplied with the same click of a button and combined with the film material to create a realistic image. Previously, all of the data had to be measured manually so that it could be corrected in post-production. But ZEISS eXtended Data eliminates this time-consuming job.

    Price and Availability

    The first ZEISS Supreme Primes lenses with focal lengths of 25, 29, 35, 50, and 85 millimeters will be available starting on August 1, 2018. The ZEISS Supreme Prime 100 millimeter will be available in December 2018. The set of six lenses, consisting of the focal lengths mentioned above, is available from ZEISS Cinema lens dealers for 108,000 USD. The remaining focal lengths will be released successively until 2020.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Nikon D5 firmware update adds useful ‘recall shooting functions’ feature

    Nikon has released firmware version 1.30 for its D5 professional DSLR, and the new camera software offers a new feature that’s potentially very useful: recall shooting functions.

    The “recall shooting functions” option is now available for Custom settings f1 (custom control assignment) and can be configured so that pressing and holding specific controls will recall previously saved exposure settings (including shutter speed and aperture). The function is designed to allow for quick changes of shooting parameters in variable light conditions.

    The function can be assigned to the Preview button, Fn1 button, Fn2 button, AF-ON button, Sub-selector center, AF-ON button for vertical shooting, or Lens focus function buttons. If you are using a WR-1 or WR-T10 remote control, it can also be assigned to the Fn buttons on those controls. An addendum to the camera manual that explains the new function in more detail can be downloaded on the Nikon website.

    All other changes in this update are fairly minor. The focal lengths of some AF-S and AF-I lenses that are displayed with a teleconverter attached to the camera have been updated, and the time zone display in the Setup Menu only shows the names of major cities in the currently selected time zone. There are also a couple of minor bug fixes.

    To read the full change log or download the new firmware for yourself, head over to the Nikon website.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • SLC-0L-02: Shiny Object, Using an iPhone and the Sun

    Whether photographing people or objects, how you approach your lighting is far more important than what camera and lighting gear you use.

    To illustrate, today we are going to photograph a complex, mirrored surface—an alto saxophone—using just an iPhone for our camera and the sun as our light source. Read more »
    Strobist

  • Weekly Photography Challenge: Sunsets – With Prizes from ViewBug

    Who doesn’t love a good sunset? It’s colorful and makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, right?

    Think you can take a great sunset photo? It’s not as easy as just pointing your camera at the sun. In this week’s photography challenge it’s time to get out and shoot some sunsets and share your images with us.

    Need some tips? Try these dPS articles:

    • 5 Reasons Why Your Sunrise or Sunset Photos Don’t Look So Stunning
    • How to Take Better Sunset Photos
    • How to Plan and Take Killer Sunset Photos on Your Next Vacation
    • How to Shoot Stunning Photos at Sunrise and Sunset
    • Tips for Location Scouting to Get the Perfect Sunset Photograph
    • Tips for Doing More Spectacular Sunset Photography

    Weekly Photography Challenge – Sunsets

    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. Sometimes it takes a while for an image to appear so be patient and try not to post the same image twice.

    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.

    Win Prizes from ViewBug

    We’re excited to introduce a sponsor and prizes for this week’s challenge. ViewBug is the World’s biggest photo contest community with over 70 contests always open for submissions. Win prizes, exposure, and the bragging rights. It’s FREE to join! This week, ViewBug will be awarding three winners prizes!

    One Challenge winner will receive 1 year of ViewBug PRO ($ 139 value) plus a free photography logo bundle ($ 59 value). Two Runners Up will receive a 1 year of ViewBug Premium ($ 59 value) plus a free photography logo bundle ($ 59 value).

    To Enter

    Participate in the challenge as you normally would (as described above) by posting your photo. To be considered for a prize you just need to complete the entry form below (or via this link) and submit your photo.

    The Contest is open continuously from 05:00 am Australian Eastern Standard Time (“AEST”) on May 26, 2018 (03:00 pm United States Eastern Daylight Time (“EDT”) on May 25, 2018), through June 2nd 2018, 04:59am AEST (June 1st, 2018, 02:59pm EDT) (the “Contest Promotion Period”).

    Full Terms and Conditions Digital Photography School Weekly Challenge Sunset – ViewBug T&C

    Winners are announced on the Weekly Challenge Winners page on 9th of June.

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    The post Weekly Photography Challenge: Sunsets – With Prizes from ViewBug appeared first on Digital Photography School.


    Digital Photography School

  • Sigma announces price and ship date of 105mm F1.4 ‘bokeh master’ Art lens

    Sigma’s special ‘bokeh master’ 105mm F1.4 DG HSM Art lens made quite a splash when it was first announced back in February, and now Sigma is finally revealing when it will ship and how much it will cost. If you’re in the market for this behemoth of a lens—seriously, we got a hands on at CP+… it’s huge—for either Nikon, Canon, or Sigma mounts, you’ll have to pony up $ 1,600 USD and wait until “late June” to get it.

    For Canon and Sigma shooters, this is a whole new speed of lens that you’ve never had access to before. For Nikon shooters, it’s an opportunity to save $ 600 on the Nikon 105mm F1.4E ED lens, which is currently going for $ 2,200.

    To learn more about this lens, check out our hands-on coverage from CP+, read the full pricing and availability press release below, or visit the Sigma website.

    Press Release

    Sigma Announces Pricing and Availability for Its 105mm F1.4 DG HSM Art Lens

    The “Bokeh Master” will begin shipping in Canon, Nikon and Sigma mounts in late June for a retail price of $ 1,599.00 USD

    Ronkonkoma, NY – May 25, 2018 – Sigma Corporation of America, a leading still photo and cinema lens, camera, flash and accessory manufacturer, today announced that its 105mm F1.4 DG HSM Art lens will be available in Canon, Nikon and Sigma camera mounts in late June for $ 1,599.00 USD through authorized US dealers. The Sony E-mount availability will be announced later.

    The “Bokeh Master” with Longest Focal Length Among Sigma Wide-Aperture F1.4 Art Lenses

    The Sigma 105mm F1.4 DG HSM Art is the ninth lens in the Sigma F1.4 line-up designed for full-frame cameras. To combine outstanding wide-aperture, mid-telephoto performance with F1.4 brightness at maximum aperture, this lens incorporates 17 optical elements in 12 groups, including three FLD glass elements, two SLD glass elements and one aspherical lens element. This optical setup minimizes axial chromatic aberration to deliver ultra high resolution along with ample peripheral light volume, which minimizes vignetting. As a result, the area in focus is extremely sharp, while the out-of-focus area features a beautiful bokeh effect with highly natural colors, making this a desired lens for portrait photography. The optical design also minimizes sagittal coma flare, making it an excellent choice for capturing starry skies.

    Featuring the Sports line level dust- and splash-proof design, this lens can be used in varying weather conditions. The high-speed, high-accuracy autofocus helps photographers react in an instant to capture those special moments.

    Other lens highlights include carbon fiber reinforced plastic hood for durability and compatibility of the Canon mount lens with the Canon Lens Aberration Correction function.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Video: How Tony and Chelsea Northrup won $40,000 in image theft lawsuit

    Well-known photography educators Tony and Chelsea Northrup have published a new video that details the saga of a stolen photograph, and the eventual $ 40,000 settlement they received as a result of going after the offending party.

    The image, a portrait of Chelsea originally taken for a book cover, was used by an Australian company to promote a smartphone selfie case with built-in LEDs. According to the duo, they became aware of the unauthorized usage in 2016 after someone who recognized the image alerted them. Tony sent the company an email requesting information, he explains in the video, but instead received a letter from a lawyer hired by the company.

    The lawyer’s letter claimed that a graphic designer hired by the company to design the product packaging had acquired the image “from a website” and used it as a stock image without the company’s knowledge. As the Northrups note, a high-resolution version of the image is the first result on Google when searching for “ring light portrait.”

    The company, via the lawyer’s letter, had stated that it would recall all of the products with that packaging and cease use of material containing the image. However, Tony explains that the duo continued to receive images from followers showing the cases—complete with the pilfered portrait—being sold in Australian and New Zealand stores.

    That ultimately set in motion a long legal tussle that involved hiring an Australian attorney willing to deal with an international copyright case. The duo explain everything that went into this process and the eventual $ 40,000 in settlement payments that resulted, with Tony estimating the company spent around $ 60k total when including fees.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Apollo app for iOS uses dual-cam depth map to create impressive lighting tricks

    Apple’s dual-camera setup can create a depth map to simulate background blur – but now, someone’s figured out how to simulate lighting effects with an impressive level of control.

    Apple’s dual camera devices (the 7 Plus, 8 Plus and X to be precise) generate a depth map to create the effects of Portrait Mode and Portrait Lighting that we’ve all come to know well. Whether you love, hate or feel generally ‘meh’ toward fake background blur, things get interesting when Apple makes that depth map information available to third party app developers. Enter Apollo: Immersive illumination, a $ 1.99 iOS app with an unusual name and a few interesting tricks up its sleeve.

    Apollo uses the depth map not for background-blurring purposes, but to allow users to add realistic lighting effects to photos after they’re taken. Up to 20 light sources can be positioned throughout an image, with the ability to adjust intensity, color and distance. With the depth information provided, light sources interact with subjects in a three-dimensional fashion, and can even be positioned behind a subject to create a rim light.

    It’s hard not to be a little taken aback the first time you drag a light source around your image and see how it interacts with your subject

    It’s essentially an interactive version of Apple’s Portrait Lighting, which applies different light style effects to images. Apollo’s effects are highly customizable, and with so many parameters to play with it’s naturally quite a bit more complicated to use than Apple’s very simple lighting modes.

    In use

    We’ve been messing around with the Apollo app (for an admittedly short period of time), and have to say we’re impressed with what it’s capable of – but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a few requests for the next version.

    $ (document).ready(function() { SampleGalleryV2({“containerId”:”embeddedSampleGallery_7103999524″,”galleryId”:”7103999524″,”isEmbeddedWidget”:true,”selectedImageIndex”:0,”isMobile”:false}) });

    Click through to see the images full-screen and see how many lights were used in the Apollo app.

    It’s hard not to be a little taken aback the first time you drag a light source around your image and see how it interacts with your subject(s). You are able to adjust the color, brightness and spread of your source, which are all fairly self descriptive.

    You can also change the ‘Distance’ of your light, or it’s position in Z-space; this means you can move the light to be closer to you, the photographer, or further away into the background of your scene.

    Lastly, there are two global adjustments, ‘Shadows’ and ‘Effect Range.’ Shadows essentially controls overall image brightness, though it biases toward the darker tones. Effect Range adjusts the brightness of all of your lights simultaneously in the image, though keeping the brightness ratios between them constant as it does so.

    Along the bottom are the parameters you’re allowed for each light source you create (up to 20). Two global adjustments are ‘Shadows’ which adjusts overall brightness and Effect Range which adjusts the brightness of all lights simultaneously.

    Overall, it’s an incredibly neat – and kind of addictive – first effort. But there are a few things that we’d like to see addressed in future versions.

    Currently, every new ‘light’ you create starts out with a certain set of default parameters. This is alright, except for the fact that the default color is a yellowy tungsten sort of thing; it should really just begin as ‘white.’

    Also, if I’ve already tuned in a ‘light’ and just want another one based on those, it’d be nice to be able to duplicate one that I’ve already created instead of having to start from scratch each time.

    And once you’ve finished with your new creation, you can save it out as a JPEG – but there’s no way to save the lights themselves so that you can come back and tweak later. Each time you exit to tackle another image, the app asks you, ‘Close photo and discard all changes?’ Well, I’d rather not discard them, but if I have to, then I suppose that’s that.

    Lastly, it doesn’t look like there’s any way to preserve the blurriness of the background once you’ve added your lights. It’d be great to be able to still take advantage of the depth map and progressive blurring while adding in your own lighting sources.

    Wrapping up

    Okay, so those are some fairly major requests on our part. But we make them because we’re really blown away by what the app already offers, and are excited to see how it evolves. It wasn’t so long ago you’d need a powerful workstation and some serious software skills to manipulate lighting in the same way that this app does with a few taps and drags.

    If you have a dual camera iPhone and want to give the Apollo app a try, head on over to the App Store yourself and take it for a spin.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • How To Get Bitcoins Without Mining

    Why am I talking about Bitcoin here? Because everyone is? Not exactly. For one, you can now exchange bitcoin into dollars and that can buy some nice photo gear. If only there was a way to get bitcoin without spending thousands of dollars building a rig that sounds like an airport runway in your basement and destroys your electric bill. Continue Reading

    The post How To Get Bitcoins Without Mining appeared first on Photodoto.


    Photodoto

  • Real Estate Photography Tips For Beginners

    Some amateurs think that photographing real estate is as easy as walking into a room and taking a photo. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. It’s a skill you must practice so you can master it. That is if you want to succeed in this competitive field.  In real estate photography, one of the questions asked by amateurs is the Continue Reading

    The post Real Estate Photography Tips For Beginners appeared first on Photodoto.


    Photodoto

  • You can now favorite images in Google Photos

    Google Photos is the default online image management platform for many mobile and desktop users, but until now, it’s been lacking one pretty basic feature that is available in most comparable applications: the ability to favorite photos.

    Today Google closed this glaring gap in the Photos feature set, announcing via Twitter that it is rolling out a feature that allows users to tap a star in the upper right corner of any photo in their library. This automatically adds the image to the new Favorites album, making it easier to manage your most cherished images.

    Additionally, you’ll soon be able to “heart” photos that have been shared with you. This is essentially the Google Photos equivalent to a Facebook-like, and adds a social network element to the service.

    These features come in addition to improvements announced at Google’s recent I/O developer conference, and should help develop Google Photos into a service that has something to offer for everyone—from casual shutterbugs to seasoned enthusiast photographers.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)