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  • Canon patents innovative lens adapter with built-in electronic ND filter

    A Canon patent from October, 2017 resurfaced on the Canon rumor mill today, and it describes something pretty innovative from the Japanese camera giant. The patent shows a lens adapter—ostensibly designed for a mirrorless camera—that features a built-in variable-voltage ND filter.

    The ND filter component is “formed from an electrochromic device [or a liquid crystal element] which changes light transmittance on application of a voltage.” That way, you could electronically and silently change the amount of light hitting your camera’s sensor without stopping down the lens.

    As Canon News points out, this would be particularly useful for video shooting, since it’s silent, and it would allow you to separate depth-of-field control from brightness (i.e. shoot with a shallow depth-of-field in bright light).

    We could see this technology more readily appearing in a Cinema EOS system, but Canon has (naturally) written the patent as broadly as possible so that no one else can use the idea for stills. Canon Rumors also speculates that it might be the patent behind a rumored EF/EF-S to EF-M adapter specifically designed to adapt cinema lenses to an EF-M mount camera.

    As always with patents, it’s impossible to know what parts of this idea—if any—Canon plans to bring to market. But it’s a rather innovative design that we wouldn’t mind seeing in action.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • How to capture a classic perfume product shot with a single speedlight

    Dustin Dolby, the photographer behind the workphlo YouTube channel, is great at breaking down product photography into the simplest possible bits. By using Photoshop to mask together multiple exposures, he’s able to capture professional looking product photos using extremely minimal gear.

    In his latest episode, he shows how a single speedlight and some reflecting material can be used to capture a professional-looking photograph of perfume. What’s more, the exercise of capturing these exposures helps explain some basic lighting tenets when shooting products:

    Lighting a perfume bottle in a studio setting, requires the photographer to understand the angles the light is coming from. The substance of a few key lighting techniques can be boiled down into a few tips. Backlighting is a great way to show the volume of a translucent object, which couples nicely with frontal lighting.

    Here’s a look at the high-res final render, composited from a few different exposures you see him capture in the video above:

    Photo by Dustin Dolby/workphlo, used with permission.

    As Dustin explains in the video, you can do a lot more here—both compositionally and with different lighting techniques if you really want to have some fun—but this tutorial is more about explaining the basics and capturing a “classic” perfume shot with very little gear.

    Check out the full tutorial up top, and if you want to see more of Dustin’s ‘workphlo,’ head over to his YouTube channel or follow him on Instagram and Facebook.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • The US Copyright Office is ‘modernizing’ group registration of photos

    Photographers in the USA wishing to register groups of images for copyright protection will find the process much simpler and easier starting on February 20th.

    According to the US Copyright Office, ‘modernized’ practices will let people register either published or unpublished work via a new on-line application system (no more paper applications…) that will allow you to submit up to 750 images at a time. The new rules also re-define the word ‘Author’ to include individual photographers OR groups of photographers employed by the same person or organization.

    The filing process will require those submitting images to title the group and each image, and to create an Excel or PDF list of each image within the group. The group of images can’t occupy more than 500MB, but compression can be used to reduce file sizes, and the registration fee for each group will be $ 55.

    Unpublished and published images can’t be registered together, and all published works in an application have to have been published within the same year (but not necessarily in the same country).

    A key point about the process, according to a detailed explanation by artists’ attorney Leslie Burns, is that under the scheme, each image within the group will be registered individually, so damages will be paid in full for any single image use. Infringers won’t be able to claim that using one image from a group attracts only a fraction of a claim against the registration.

    The new rules go into effect February 20th, and can be read in full on the Government Publishing Office website (PDF). Or, for a more easily digestible take on what’s changing, visit the Copyright Alliance website.

    Copyright Office Summary

    LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
    U.S. Copyright Office
    37 CFR Parts 201, 202
    [Docket No. 2016–10]

    Group Registration of Photographs

    AGENCY: U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress.

    ACTION: Final rule.

    SUMMARY: The U.S. Copyright Office is modernizing its practices to increase the efficiency of the group registration option for photographs. This final rule modifies the procedure for registering groups of published photographs (GRPPH), and establishes a similar procedure for registering groups of unpublished photographs (GRUPH).

    Applicants will be required to use a new online application specifically designed for each option, instead of using a paper application, and will be allowed to include up to 750 photographs in each claim.

    The ‘‘unpublished collection’’ option (which allows an unlimited number of photographs to be registered with one application), and the ‘‘pilot program’’ (which allows an unlimited number of published photographs to be registered with the application designed for one work) will be eliminated. The corresponding ‘‘pilot program’’ for photographic databases will remain in effect for the time being.

    The final rule modernizes the deposit requirements by requiring applicants to submit their photographs in a digital format when using GRPPH, GRUPH, or the pilot program for photographic databases, along with a separate document containing a list of the titles and file names for each photograph. The final rule revises the eligibility requirements for GRPPH and GRUPH by providing that all the photographs must be created by the same ‘‘author’’ (a term that includes an employer or other person for whom a work is made for hire), and clarifying that they do not need to be created by the same photographer or published within the same country. It also confirms that a group registration issued under GRPHH or GRUPH covers each photograph in the group, each photograph is registered as a separate work, and the group as a whole is not considered a compilation or a collective work.

    DATES: Effective February 20, 2018.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Weekly Photography Challenge – White on White

    If it is still winter and is blustery and snowy, this one will be easy for you.

    Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

    Your challenge is to photograph a white subject on a white background. The trick here is to use light to your advantage. Usually, with a white subject, you’ll want to create a high-key or all light toned image. But you don’t have to do so, get creative. Use some shadows and create a dramatic image.

    Use directional light to add dimension and show the shape of the subject. You will need some shadows to separate the subject from the background. So let’s see what you can do.

    Weekly Photography Challenge – White on White

    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.

    The post Weekly Photography Challenge – White on White by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.


    Digital Photography School

  • Google teamed up with pro photographers to train its Clips lifelogging camera

    Google debuted its $ 250 ‘Clips’ lifelogging camera to the public during the October 2017 launch event for the Google Pixel 2. Now, with the camera becoming officially available in only a few weeks time, the company has published a blog post that explains how the Clips camera’s underlying algorithms were trained to identify and keep the best shots, and discard the leftovers.

    It turns out Google relied on the expertise of a documentary filmmaker, a photojournalist, and a fine arts photographer to train the AI and feed some high-quality photography into its machine learning model. The group collected and analyzed recorded footage from members of the development team to try and answer the question: “What makes a memorable moment?”

    “We needed to train models on what bad looked like,” said Josh Lovejoy, Senior Interaction Designer at Google. “By ruling out the stuff the camera wouldn’t need to waste energy processing (because no one would find value in it), the overall baseline quality of captured clips rose significantly.”

    The learning process includes basic elements of photography, such as an understanding of focus and depth-of-field, or the rule of thirds, but also some things that are obvious to most humans but less so to an algorithm—for example: don’t cover a lens with your finger and avoid abrupt movements while recording.

    Google admits that there is still a ways to go before perfection. It says the AI has been trained to look at “stability, sharpness, and framing,” but without careful calibration, a face at the edge of the frame will be appreciated just as much as one at the center, even if the focus of interest is really somewhere else in the image.

    “Success with Clips isn’t just about keeps, deletes, clicks, and edits (though those are important),” Lovejoy says. “It’s about authorship, co-learning, and adaptation over time. We really hope users go out and play with it.” More detail on the development and training process is available on the Google blog.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • It’s not the low light king, but here’s why we’re excited about the GH5S

    There’s no getting around physics. The GH5S uses an oversized Four Thirds type sensor – pretty big for a video camera – but still kinda small when compared with the 36 x 20.3mm expanse of silicon the Sony a7S II uses to shoot video. As you’d expect, the GH5S can’t simply leap this vast chasm using only some sensor improvements, better noise reduction and a little moxie. It’s good but, in spite of anything you may have read, it’s not magic.

    Read our analysis of our side-by-side shooting with the Sony a7S II

    And yet, the more we test and use the camera, the more excited we are by it.

    For a start, our shooting suggests that GH5S can outperform the a7S II whenever you require a depth-of-field that the Panasonic can offer. That alone means the GH5S will perform better than the Sony in some circumstances and can work across a greater range of lighting conditions than its IS-enabled sibling, the GH5.

    But that’s not the end of it. The ability to shoot Log footage in 10-bit means that it can retain a lot more subtle tonal information than the 8-bit output of the Sony. So although the deep shadows might be more susceptible to noise than the a7S II, the quality of the midtones in the final footage may well be better preserved and more tolerant of grading.

    That’s before you consider the features such as waveforms and vectorscopes that the GH5S inherits from the GH5, features that really aid setting exposure when shooting Log. Add to this the existing ecosystem that’s grown up around the GH series and the full picture reveals itself. We’re currently shooting the GH5S with a 0.71x SpeedBooster and a Sigma 18-35mm T2.0 CINE lens and can’t wait to show the results. If only Seattle would drop out of Log mode for a moment…

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Tips for Using Your Wide-Angle Lens Better

    One thing I see beginners make mistakes doing when they first get into photography is using a wide-angle lens. Many think it’s just for getting more stuff to fit into your image, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

    Here are three videos to help you understand wide-angle lenses and use them better so you can create more dynamic and effective images.

    #1 – 5 Reasons you need a wide-angle lens

    First up is this video from DigitalRev TV. It’s a few years old now but the information is still good, and the tips are solid.

    Kai can be a bit unorthodox, but the tips here are good. Here’s a quick summary:

    1. Get closer
    2. Push things away and pull other things near
    3. Cool lines
    4. Expand spaces
    5. Reality distortion field (as he calls it)

    #2 – How to use a wide-angle lens

    In this video from Tom Greenwood, learn how using a wide-angle lens can help you tell a story and create a powerful connection between the subject and the viewer. Plus get tips on shooting wide angle portraits, action shots, and landscapes.

    #3 – Three tips for using a wide-angle lens

    Finally, three more tips for using a wide-angle lens from Matt Wallace in this video from Adorama TV. The one he emphasizes the most is to get close to the subject – that a wide-angle lens is for close-up photography. I personally could not agree more!

    1. Make sure you have an obvious and predominant subject in your frame
    2. Get closer to the subject
    3. Use leading lines

    If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.– Robert Capa

    Need more help?

    If you still need more help and tips for using your wide-angle lens try these dPS articles:

    • How to Use a Wide-angle Lens with Wildlife for a New Perspective
    • 10 Tips for Photographing Wide-Angle Landscapes
    • How to Create Compelling Wide-Angle Portraits Using One Off-Camera Flash
    • 7 Ways to Get More Out of a Wide-angle Lens

    The post Tips for Using Your Wide-Angle Lens Better by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.


    Digital Photography School

  • Samsung promises to ‘reimagine the camera’ on the Galaxy S9

    We’ve been expecting the upcoming Samsung flagship smartphone Galaxy S9 to be launched at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (the last week of February) for a while now, but today the Korean manufacturer has made things official by sending out invitations to the launch event.

    The event will take place on the 25th of February, the press day before the official start of MWC, and mobile photographers should be particularly excited. That’s because, according to the invite, this phone is all about “The camera. Reimagined.” There have been rumors about variable apertures and super-slow-motion video, and it seems like there’s a good chance at least the larger Galaxy S9+ will come with a dual-camera setup, similar to the Note 8.

    As usual, there’s no way of knowing what exactly to expect, but we’ll keep an eye on the rumor mill, and we’ll definitely be in Barcelona to report from the show as well. If you can’t be there, no worries—Samsung is planning to livestream the ‘Samsung Unpacked’ event.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • How one photographer built the ‘ultimate’ PC for Adobe Lightroom

    The finished product, a computer designed to be as fast as possible in Adobe Lightroom.

    When professional designer and hobbyist photographer Paul Stamatiou got back from his last trip to New Zealand and set about culling and editing his photos from the trip, he quickly realized that his 2-year-old 5K iMac was just not keeping up with Adobe Lightroom Classic CC and the high-megapixel Raw files he was importing. In fact, he spent over a year of spare time editing the 848GB worth of 42-megapixel RAW photos and 4K videos to create the resulting nine photosets.

    And so Paul decided it was time to build his own computer. Specifically, his goal was to:

    Build a fast, yet quiet and understated desktop PC with a healthy overclock aimed at improving my photo workflow while giving me the ability to upgrade parts of it later on.

    Fortunately for all of us, he chronicled the entire journey to this goal in a massive, 32,000-word blog post filled with footnotes and links to all the parts and incredibly detailed descriptions of exactly why he picked the parts he did, how he put them together, and how he optimized it all once it was set up.

    This is, I’m comfortable saying, the most comprehensive custom photo-editing computer build breakdown I have ever seen. If you’re at all considering building your own editing PC, bookmark it. If not, we spoke to Paul yesterday and have penned a bit of a TL;DR summary below.

    For the Mac lovers out there, note that Paul did consider building a dual-boot Hackintosh, but ultimately decided the annoyances wouldn’t be worth the time. His experience in the past—”randomly have bluetooth stop working and have days where the machine just won’t boot,” he told me over email—just wasn’t worth risking. It was time to build a PC.

    This beautiful piece of technology is what he came up with:

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    What’s impressive about this computer isn’t its sheer power. The parts he used (full list here) won’t make it the most beastly desktop PC you’ve heard of this week… or maybe even today. What makes it impressive is how Paul designed the PC so that it would run Lightroom’s Develop module and his personal workflow as efficiently as possible.

    As Paul explains in his post:

    As you know, there are a few main levers that affect the majority of a computer’s performance: storage, RAM, GPU and CPU. To be more precise: storage throughput, RAM size, RAM speed as well as the number of CPU cores and clock speed. In the case of Lightroom, CPU plays the most important role in overall application performance and to a much lesser extent GPU.

    […]

    For my needs Lightroom loves the highest clock speed it can get, as opposed to a ton of lower clocked cores.

    So rather than spend money on a chip with a crazy number of cores, all of which would be running at a lower clock speed, he picked a 6-core Intel i7 8700K, then had it ‘delidded’ and set it up to be water-cooled so he could overclock it safely to 5.2GHz on all cores.

    We spoke to Paul about the build yesterday, and he was kind enough to offer this little summary for those of you who aren’t keen on reading all 32,000 words of the full article:

    I was most concerned with performance in the Develop module of Lightroom as opposed to other actions that are more efficient with multiple cores and are not GPU accelerated. For me that meant that instead of opting for a machine with a ton of cores at a lower clock, I’d do better for Develop module tasks with fewer cores that were clocked higher, much higher.

    With this build I wasn’t particularly concerned about cost and decided to make a full-blown project out of it (along with a high-end graphics card I could use to try out some 4K gaming and Oculus Rift as a side benefit—I’m a designer by day and lots of my friends have begun designing for VR so I was curious to learn more about it). I definitely recognize the build is overkill in many aspects, including having the CPU delidded and running an aggressive overclock.

    While the build definitely sped up the Develop actions I was used to—it’s important to note that much of the future improvement will need to come from Adobe optimizing their software even more. […] Until Classic CC gets some performance optimization updates, I think my next step will be integrating something like Photo Mechanic into my culling workflow to do some of that outside of Lightroom so I end up importing, generating previews and managing fewer shots inside Lightroom itself.

    And that last bit, really, is the disappointing epilogue to what is a really fun computer build: even with a great system built specifically to run Lightroom well, any major performance improvements will have to come from the Adobe side of the equation. Not that it doesn’t make us want to build something similar…

    The final build cost Paul $ 5,931, including all of the peripherals and accessories—$ 1,500 27-inch Dell UltraSharp 4K display, Logitec mouse, Apple Magic keyboard, Bose bluetooth speaker, and Vesa monitor mounting arm.

    For a full parts list, or if you want to dive deep into how this computer was built and optimized, check out Paul’s massive article at this link. But don’t be surprised if you find yourself sourcing parts for your own custom-built photo editing PC once you’re done.

    All photos by Paul Stamatiou and used with permission.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • The VEGAS Pro video editor is now available by subscription, costs $17 per month

    In an attempt to attract new videographers and video editors, Magix is making its VEGAS Pro video editing software available on a subscription basis. The program, which Magix bought from Sony in 2016, costs $ 600 (£500) to buy outright, but the subscription model gets you access from just $ 16.67 (£12.42) per month under the moniker VEGAS Pro 365.

    The company is offering the new VEGAS Pro 365 application on a 3-month or 12-month subscription contract, with access to all the features of VEGAS Pro 15 and SOUND FORGE Audio Studio 12—the company’s latest audio editing application. The VEGAS Pro 365 model also comes with access to online educational materials, to help newcomers understand how the program works.

    Magix says that the 365 version won’t replace its perpetual license option—imagine the uproar if it were—but is simply a way to make the application more accessible to a wider range of videographers. A 12-month commitment will get you the $ 16.67 per month price quoted above, while a 3-month subscription works out to $ 20 (£15.00) per month.

    For more information, read the full press release below or visit the Vegas software website.

    Press Release

    VEGAS Pro 365 subscription now available: Get started with professional video editing at only $ 16.67/month

    January 18th – VEGAS Creative Software adds a first-of-its-kind video and audio production package to the award-winning VEGAS Pro product line. The subscription-based-offering VEGAS Pro 365 is priced from $ 16.67/month.

    Focused on the first-time users, this new version offers a complete video and audio editing solution with all the features of VEGAS Pro 15 and SOUND FORGE Audio Studio 12, along with online training courses to learn VEGAS Pro.

    The existing versions and 30-day trial version of VEGAS Pro continue to exist.

    “With VEGAS Pro 365, we want to make it easier for aspiring video creators and enthusiasts to access professional video and audio production software. With flexible terms and additional services, we seek to fulfil a long-standing demand of our VEGAS Pro fan base” says Gary Rebholz, Product Owner.

    For video editors, the new software package includes all the latest features of VEGAS Pro with high-end plug-ins and online training courses to learn to use VEGAS Pro. Users now also have full access to the audio editor SOUND FORGE Audio Studio to add high quality sound to their projects. Video projects can be edited offline within the subscription just like with the perpetual license. Projects also remain fully accessible to users even after expiration and can be easily imported and edited by other versions of VEGAS Pro. All components of the package stay up-to-date with the latest feature and product updates.

    After taking over the video editing software VEGAS Pro from Sony Creative Software in 2016, MAGIX has since then released two new versions, VEGAS Pro 14 and 15. The additional offer of VEGAS Pro 365 now makes the product even more accessible. “We will continue to offer and update perpetual licenses of VEGAS Pro. What we want is an additional complete package customized to the needs of first-time users” says Rebholz.

    More detailed information can be downloaded here:
    http://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/gb/vegas-pro-365/

    About VEGAS Pro:

    In May, 2016, MAGIX acquired the VEGAS Pro product line, along with other video and audio products. The choice of video and audio professionals the world over, VEGAS Pro continues to provide the essential tools needed to edit and composite video, record, edit and mix multi-channel audio, and render and convert to a variety of formats for streaming or delivery via a DVD or Blu-ray disc. From independent filmmakers, to YouTube artist and broadcast video producers, VEGAS Pro stands ready to be your creative partner.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)