I got a replacement iPhone 6 and here is a list of everything I needed to get it working just the way I like it. My priorities are definitely different than yours but if you're into photography and backups, maybe you'll find something helpful!
Stay organized
Medium format can be an intimidating jump for photographers used to 35mm DSLRs, but Pentax is bridging that gap both in price and usability. Thanks to The Camera Store I was able to take the Pentax 645Z for a spin, and I was extremely impressed.
It's using the new 51.4 megapixel CMOS sensors, also found in the new Hasselblads, which takes care of previous limitations of large sensor cameras at high ISOs. I found it's low light performance to be at least as good my Canon 5D mkIII, and all the extra resolution really let's you clean up the image a lot in post.
For the full review, watch the video. I can speak a lot faster than I can write!
If you enjoy making movies then NAB is the conference for you. It has everything for small indie filmmakers and major Hollywood studios, all in one giant convention center in Vegas. This was my second year attending and there were more amazing things then I could possibly have time to see.
There were plenty of new camera announcements. The Canon C300 mkII was hard to care about. It's a very expensive camera is not even on par with cheaper competition like Sony's FS7 or Black Magic's new URSA Mini.
The Mini on the other hand might be a significant product, with a similar feature set to the Canon and Sony, but a price point as low as $3000. This could be a sign that black magic is finding their footing with camera design, although it really could use some internal ND filters.
Black Magic Design also went Micro, with most of the features of their Pocket Camera in something barely larger than a GoPro. 16 stops of dynamic range in this little thing makes me really resent the files I get out of my 5D mkIII.
Gimbals, drones, and full body support rigs mounted on Segues, the robots are finally taking over camera operation. My favorite was the DJI Ronin M, which is in update of the larger Ronin. It's a lighter weight stabilizer meant for lighter cameras, and it was a joy to play with. They also have a new little thumb controller making a single operator set up incredibly easy. This little rig felt extremely refined.
The dropping price of this and other gibles mean that they will become a more and more standard piece of the indie filmmaker kit.
There was also a very small hand held stabilizer from ISEE from Shape, that was interesting concept for small cameras. It worked really well and I could see this being really powerful for documentary style shooting when you don't want to draw attention.
One little piece of kit that really caught my attention is the Small HD 502. A phone sized monitor with a razor sharp screen and innovative interface, and it has an optional viewfinder that clips on to it for extra versatility. Unfortunately looking through the viewfinder felt more like looking at a mirror box (which it is) than direct into an EVF, but still that image beautiful.
Another device I didn't hear about until I got home is the Black Magic Design Video Assist, which is just slightly bigger and also offers internal recording capabilities for a similar price.
If this quick and lazy summary of the show wasn't enough for you, you can hear what I really think on our Cameras or Whatever podcast, episode 18.
We had precious little time to explore the city on this trip to San Fransisco, so I made the quickest little video I could of it. I shot it on my iPhone 6 at 240 fps and edited in iMovie as we walked around. When we got back to hotel I through an Impulz Lut filter on it for color.
We don't usually record our Cameras or Whatever photography podcast in video, but I would really like get more active in the YouTube community again.
Putting some work in upfront can payoff big time. Kirk Mastin, of Mastin Labs joins Cameron and I to talk about the value planning before you shoot, looking ahead at the longterm with bigger projects, shooting film and the power of constraints in photography.
If you haven't tried Mastin Labs, you should. I use them constantly.
A number of years ago I published a podcast called Stalman Talks Photography. It was just me and a microphone talking about cameras and photography. It was fun but I wasn't sure where to go with the show, so gradually it fizzled out.
Now I'm back with a brand new show and help from some friends. Cameras or Whatever is casual conversations with photography professionals talking about gear, technique and the business of taking pictures.
The show assumes a pretty firm grasp of photography concepts, so if you're just getting started it might be a bit dense. I'm hoping there are other photographers out there like us. You already know your way around a camera and want to talk about the ways we get things done.
Listen to Episode 1 for a thorough introduction to the show and my guests Ania B, photographer, style blogger, and my business partner, and Cameron Whitman, veteran stock photographer and Senior Editor at Stocksy United.
There's a new agency in town, and it's called The Nobles. They are a small team of Calgary's best, and we shot the portraits for their website, which we also happened to design. These are the film shots, which unfortunately we don't have of all the girls, but have a really nice feel to them. Shot on Portra 400.
We have been to Vancouver many times over the past few years, but have never had time to explore the city. Kit & Ace invited a bunch of blogger out to be part of their brand launch, and showed us everything in the city we had been missing. They threw a party at their studio in Gastown, took us on a bike ride tour around Stanley Park, and for a boat ride out to Granville Island.
Kit & Ace is all about super comfortable, durable and wearable fabrics. So far they launched a line of cashmere blend t-shirts, with a full clothing line coming this fall.
This was also a perfect opportunity to put my new ultimate-film-point-and-shoot camera through it's paces, the Contax T2. It performed really well and will definitely be coming with us everyone. Click through the gallery below to see it in action, shot on Portra 400 and Kodak Gold 400.
To see the rest of our photos, head over to Ania's blog for more.
The Olympus XA is a cult classic. A simple point and shoot, it hit the sweet spot for a lot of professional photographers. It has a 35mm f/2.8 Zuiko lens, is very compact, and best of all is a rangefinder, which is extremely rare for a camera of this size.
It should have been my dream film point and shoot camera. Unfortunately, I was only able to shoot one roll of film on this beauty before I had to make the tough decision to return it. The shutter would often stick. Sometimes only for a second, and I would ignore it. Other times I left a friend smiling patiently into the lens while I press the button over and over.
This taught me a valuable lesson: before ordering a used camera, do quick search from common problems with it. "Olympus XA shutter problems" is one of the first suggestions in Google, and would have been a useful hint. This camera was designed to be an affordable consumer point & shoot, and wasn't built with longevity as a priority. It's easy to find a lot of positive reviews about it, but that assumes that you are using a functional .
The clam shell design is brilliant and something I would love to see on modern digitals. The lens is safe while it's in my bag, and there's no chance of it accidentally going off. It has a sensitive feather touch shutter button that helps cut down on camera vibration. I've never used anything like it before and really like the feel of it. If only it worked...
This won't be the camera that goes with me everywhere as I hoped, but it was fantastic in most respects. The image quality is except, very sharp and plenty of contrast. The corners vignette quite a bit when shooting at f/2.8, which in most cases look great, and when you open up to f/5.6, it's crystal clear.
The rangefinder style focus is what drew me to this specific camera. It was removed from the later XA2, which only allows you to guestimate the distance. The XA2 is much more common these days, but I think it's worth searching for XA1 just for that difference. In dark conditions, focusing can be a challenge, but the focus ring is marked for distance if you want to estimate.
The tiny A11 flash feels at home mounted to the side of the XA. It simple, small and runs off a single AA battery. If I were to keep this camera, my biggest gripe would be that there is no way to override the light meter when taking a flash photo. I'm a fan of cutting out ambient light when using direct flash, but there is no way keep the shutter speed fast. For example 1/100 sec instead of going down to 1/15 sec.
It takes a single AA battery, and takes a couple seconds to charge up.
If this was a new camera, it would be nearly perfect. Or if I had found it for cheap, I may have tried to fix it. In the end, I need a camera that I can count on to work every time I pull it out of my bag. The search continues...
Lightroom Mobile on iPhone might be Adobe's most useful app yet, bringing some of the desktop application's most important features to my pocket. It might be the bridge professional photographers need to get real work done on the go. Lightroom for iPad has been available for a few months now, but in our house the iPad spends most of its time sitting in the same room as the computer, so it hasn't seen much use in our workflow.
When the app was announced I was traveling, making it a perfect opportunity to test it out with a few collections I had already synced at home.
The app's most powerful feature is its ability to access huge amounts of your photo library from your phone, make useful changes to those photos, and then sync those changes back to your desktop photo catalog.
Making all your photos available online is something that everyone has been trying to get into. Apple, Google, and Dropbox have some great solutions for causal photographers and Adobe dabbled in professional tools with Revel, but with so many of us depending on Lightroom already, integrating our existing library into our mobile workflow is very useful.
Sometimes you need to refer back to an old image for a client, or send a proof while away from a computer, or just post something to Instagram. Now you have access to those images at anytime, without having to downsize or compress them. Previously we would export a folder of images as large jpgs to Dropbox, but the images are not full quality and there is no easy way to sync the work you do on them back to your Lightroom catalog.
You can also use the app to sync your iPhone photos back to Lightroom, which I find much more useful than what Google, Dropbox and Apple offer because Lightroom is the final destination for everything.
One question I have, is how storage limits will work for Lightroom syncing? Creative Cloud currently offers 20 GB of storage with their basic subscription, but since this will be syncing a smart preview of the images it's hard to be sure how many images you can have synced at a time. Adobe also announced a Creative Cloud bundle for photographers that is $9.99 per month, which I think is absolutely worth it.
Often the most time consuming part of a photo shoot is just sorting through everything to find your best images. At our studio, we use star ratings as the basis for all our selections so I'm happy to see they have added that since the iPad version. Flags alone are not enough, and we typically only use them to reject the junk.
On an iPhone it's not really possible to judge critical focus, so you may want to save that for the desktop. The app is better suited for identifying stand out images in a series. I suspect we will primarily use it to do a first pass of editing, and will select the finals on a larger monitor.
If you were excited about Lightroom Mobile becoming your new favourite photo editing tool, you will be disappointed. It has important adjustments like white balance, exposure, shadows, highlights, cropping, etc. which use the same amazing Adobe processing engine as the desktop. It's great for correcting problems in an image, but useless for giving your image a "look".
It's worth noting that when you sync a collection to Creative Cloud, it automatically generates smart previews which is Adobe's own compressed format that include some basic raw functionality. The images can handle big adjustments much better than a standard jpg, especially in regards to white balance.
Adobe really missed out here, offering only Adobe adjustment presets and no ability to use your own. Maybe it's because the rendering engine on the phone can't work with all the same parameters as on the desktop, but it means that images will still need another app to give photos a colour treatment before they go live. If they could give us access to all VSCO and Mastin Labs presets from home, we could get a lot more done from within the app.
The Lightroom mobile app is very strong for version one. Image syncing with Creative Cloud works seamlessly, and their "only the basics" approach is great for getting a few important tasks done. It did lock up on me briefly a few times, but I'm confident that is just a kink to be worked out. I've heard that it can be painfully slow on some phones, so if you have anything older than an iPhone 5 it may not be for you.
It should not be thought of as a photo filter app, but a powerful link to your desktop catalog, and a sign from Adobe that they understand what is important in a professional workflow.
After returning from Japan it was time to shoot some street style in Korea, and the best place in Seoul is the super trendy Gangnam. We found hundreds of incredibly stylish people and the best of them can be seen in our post in Fashion Magazine.
We also went to the top of the Seoul Tower, which was really incredible. Unlike observation decks in other cities, it sits on top of a mountain in the middle of the city. A spectacular view in all directions.
Just like in the first Korea on Film post, most of these were shot with the 50mm f/1.8, and a few with the Canon 85mm f/1.8 on the Canon Elan 7e on Kodak Portra, Kodak Ektar, and Fuji Superia. They were processed at Caribou Lab in Toronto.
<img src="http://static1.squarespace.com/static/53503f2be4b066e96f6eabda/53503f3be4b06b13869c2173/5392a440e4b0066454a30774/1402119237856//img.jpg" alt="We left our hearts in Seoul We left our hearts in Seoul <3 - Kodak Portra 400
