Nikon D4

Not so long ago, I did a post about Canon’s new “Big Guns”, the 600mm f/4 II and the 1Dx. We’re now waiting for Nikon’s newest super-tele, the 800mm f/5.6, to ship, but I thought I’d take the newest flagship camera from Nikon out for a spin with the venerable 600mm f/4 that they’ve had out for a while.

Nikon 600mm f/4

(more…)

Welcome to Cool Stuff, a weekly feature where we post our favorite links from the past week, including our favorite articles and how-tos, videos, images and more.

•  We start with a bit of a blast from the past. One of the editors, Eli Sinkus, at 522 Productions took an audio narrative from photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and overlaid it onto a touching and inspiring B&W film on what inspires him.
  
• Here’s another one from the “blast from the past” department. The guys over at PetaPixel have a really cool piece on Alfred Eisenstadt on photographing Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Propaganda Minister. Worth reading.
• If you’re an ex-Instagram user looking for something to sate your craving, check out Pressgram. This Kickstarter campaign looks to give you the filter-y goodness of Instagram with a self-hosted WordPress-based display solution.
• Shane Hurlbut is one of our favorite cinematographers, not just because he’s really good at what he does, but because he shares his process, thinking, techniques, and inspiration with all and sundry on his blog. Here’s a fantastic piece on lighting for cinematographers.
• And finally, we turn again to Benjamin Von Wong. Put this guy together with either flames, waterfalls, or in this case, colored pigments, and you have some pretty amazing imagery.

 And now, for the BorrowLenses.com Roundup!

• We’re going to be at NAB next week! If you’re around, come by, say hello…
• There’s a bunch of new Zacuto gear to rent; stand by for an announcement tomorrow!
• In case you missed it, we have the hot new X100s to rent. They’re in demand, so book yours now!

That’s it for this week’s Cool Stuff. As always, questions and feedback are welcome in the comments below.

There’s no shortage of lighting modifiers for small flashes like the Nikon SB–910 on the market today. From the Apollo softboxes we rent, to grid kits, snoots, umbrellas, and beauty dishes, small flash has really come into its own, especially for photographers working on location.

Now there’s a new accessory for Strobist-style shooters that will let you use a much wider variety of softboxes with your existing small flashes, including the high-end modifiers from companies like Profoto. I used it with two Profoto softboxes a couple of weeks ago for a portrait, with excellent results.

(more…)

Ben on a greyish-blue background.

The image above was not shot on a white background. It has a minimal level of adjustment in Lightroom to it, mostly to clean up the edges, but that’s about it. It was taken in front of the greyish-blue wall in the lobby of the BorrowLenses.com offices in San Carlos.

The thing about a relatively light-colored background is that it lends itself to a surprisingly large number of options for photographers. Though grey backgrounds work best for this, you can with some tweaking, turn just about any light-colored background — grey, blue, beige — completely black, as I demonstrated in this article on how to kill your background completely.

In this article, I’ll show you how to blow out that background completely to make it look like you’re shooting in front of a white backdrop.

(more…)

Welcome to Cool Stuff, a weekly feature where we post our favorite links from the past week, including our favorite articles and how-tos, videos, images and more.

• The shootout at Gulf Photo Plus is always a fantastic thing to watch. Luminaries such as Greg Heisler, Zack Arias, and David Hobby have been past participants. Here’s the latest one.
  
• Joe McNally talks to Marc Silber about lighting. A good, quick 4-minute video that’s more about philosophy than technique.
• Speaking of Joe McNally, if you haven’t seen his photo from the top of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, here it is.
• Now, we’re not going to be able to provide the castle, the swimming pool, the giant print or the model, but we will soon have the Hasselblad H5 line of cameras in our rental inventory. Here’s what photographer Henrik Sorenson did with one of these gorgeous machines.
  
• And finally, via our friends at PetaPixel, the story behind some amazing portraits taken with an iPhone and a $10 lamp.

That’s it for this week’s Cool Stuff. As always, questions and feedback are welcome in the comments below.

Welcome to Cool Stuff, a weekly feature where we post our favorite links from the past week, including our favorite articles and how-tos, videos, images and more.

• There are a few photographers whose work we love so much, we’ll drop everything to watch them make toast. Or, as we see with a younger Annie Leibovitz here, to watch them talk about their work.
• Ditto for Greg Heisler. There’s no question that we’d close up shop to watch this master talk about his work. As with Annie above, this one’s a flashback, both of them courtesy of our friends at PetaPixel.
• Curious about who’s paying for photography these days? We are. Which is why we’re pleased as punch that someone’s talking about it (kinda) openly. Here’s “Who Pays Photographers.”
• Look, don’t expect us to carry this in our inventory anytime soon, okay? Here’s a photographer using a Nikon 1200-1700mm lens to photograph the new pope. Why won’t we carry it? Because we like our shippers’ spinal columns too much.
• Like them, love them, hate them, whatever. The guys at DxOMark aren’t afraid to be vocal about their choices, and they’ve started a new series of articles about the best lens choices for their top-ranking camera, the Nikon D800.

That’s it for this week’s Cool Stuff. We hope you got a chance to see us at WPPI if you were out there! As always, questions and feedback are welcome in the comments below.

Unlike your computers, tablets, and smartphones, the clock in your camera doesn’t typically do the “Spring forward, Fall back” routine required to keep its clock accurate. If you don’t go in manually to change the time and date on you camera, the EXIF data it stamps your files with will have an inaccurate time/date stamp.

While it’s not the end of the world if your photos show a time that’s an hour off, having your clock accurate is always a good thing. Knowing the exact time an image was taken can help you if you want to replicate the exact atmospheric conditions in a landscape shot at a later time, for example.  Having accurate timestamps is especially important if you’re doing any kind of geo-tagging of your images using a GPS tracker or your iPhone to record a GPS track file and apply it to your DSLR photos in Lightroom or Aperture.

(more…)