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.

• It’s become kind of rote now, but every time photographer Jay P. Morgan posts a tutorial, we have an automatic knee-jerk reaction to report it. This one’s no exception.
• Landscapes shot in infrared are often surreal and otherworldy. PetaPixel highlights the work of photographer David Keochkerian, who’s got some fantastic examples of this photography.
• Look, we’re going to be honest with you – DON’T DO THIS TO ONE OF OUR LENSES! That said, it’s both terrifying and cool how Canon Pro Services recommended one photographer get a stuck filter off his lens.
• The Canon 6D is out now, and photographer Don Marcotte did some noise tests relevant to high-ISO nighttime photography, then had Planet5D post the results. The results may surprise you.
• Canon fans may have something to rejoice about, as rumors of a 50mm f/1.4 image stabilized lens (along with a possible 85mm f/1.8 stabilized optic) continue to abound.
• And finally, one more for you lighting geeks out there. Jared Wieczorkiewicz of Aurum Light Studio has a great tutorial on mixing light sources of different temperatures.

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

Holiday events have a way of filling a room. Being tasked with running a party photo booth for friends and family can be daunting, especially if your budget isn’t big and your space isn’t, either. We put together a simple, fun photo booth using portable items that you can rent from BorrowLenses.com.

Off-camera strobes and other forms of lighting have become remarkably approachable over the past few years. The knowledge and information that were once the sole province of pros working with tens of thousands of dollars of equipment in studios or on location is now all over the internet for the taking.

We carry a fair amount of lighting gear, and given that we cater to the novice as well as the pros, we also answer a number of questions about one particular piece of lighting gear: the softbox. Over the phone, via email, and through our social networking outlets, we respond to queries ranging from the number of stops a box’s diffusion fabric will eat, to “What’s a speedring?”

This article is designed to help you understand the various pieces of a softbox and how it is used with a studio light like the Einstein E640 or the Profoto D4 heads we rent.

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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.

• This week, we start with the trailer for an upcoming documentary on Alexandre Deschaumes, called Ethereal Photographies. Have a look at the trailer and you’ll see why.
  
• From one French photographer to another and from the wilds of the earth to the streets of France, we next bring you the work of photographer Philippe Echaroux, who came up with an awesome project to photograph strangers on the streets as though they were celebrities.
  
• Back here in the US, one of our absolute favorite photographers rediscovers that most humble of lighting modifiers – the umbrella. Joe McNally tells us of the return of said umbrella – and once again, schools us mightily.
• Winter is coming. And while that Game of Thrones reference might leave some scratching their heads, here’s a great little tutorial from our friends at Digital Photography School that won’t leave you scratching your heads about how to create great snow photographs.
• And finally, from our friends over at Profoto comes a truly magnificent collection of lessons from some of photography’s masters. Masters like Gregory Heisler, whose Time Magazine cover of Rudy Giuliani is an absolute marvel of contextual lighting (see the embedded video below). Other masters in this series include Jeremy Coward and Matthew Jordan Smith, to name a couple. Go check this collection out – it’s worth every second of your time.
  

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.

• We start with something that, admittedly, is pretty relevant to us because the person at the heart of this story is a former employee. Apparently own Jess Nichols found one of her images being repurposed by fashion designer Chris Benz. You can get the scoop on this story on Jess’ blog.
• A new music video by Grammy-nominated artist BT features the time-lapse work of one of our customers, Randy Halverson. Congrats, Randy! This is a stunning video.
  
• We love photographer Jay P. Morgan’s lighting tutorials. Here, he looks at depth of field as a creative tool. Awesomesauce!
  
• Sony’s been on a tear with their digital cameras lately, but it’s easy to forget how long they’ve been in the game. From our friends at PetaPixel comes this look back at one of the grandaddies of the digital camera world, the Sony Mavica.
• Photographer Lindsay Adler is making quite the name for herself with her work as an instructor. Here, she shows you how to achieve a liquid black look to skin with a combination of lighting and Photoshop.
  
• And finally, because there’s so much eye candy here, Goldpaint Photography’s Within Two Worlds time-lapse. We like pretty things.
  

 And now, for the BorrowLenses.com Roundup!

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

 With autumn upon us, daylight hours are fewer and further between. I don’t stop shooting (later sunrises mean I can actually drag myself out of bed at a better hour), but I do take more time to catch up on my reading. Accordingly, I spend some time to put together a list of the best photography books that I want to go through each year and will bring you reviews of the ones I liked the most.

My (virtual) bookshelf is full of titles I’ve read or plan to read for reviewing or for personal edification. Some, like Brian Smith’s book on portraiture, which I reviewed earlier this week, are for personal edification and review. Some, like Light, Science, and Magic, are on there because the subject matter is of interest. And some are on there because I’ll read even an obituary by one of these authors.

Authors like Joe McNally, for example, whose books like Sketching Light and The Moment it Clicks make for fantastic and entertaining reading. Others write books so chock full of information that they become indispensable reference material that I find myself going to pretty often. My friend Syl Arena is an author and teacher who falls into the latter category, and his latest book, Lighting for Digital Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots is something that I think should be more appropriately titled “Light: The Missing Manual”.

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One of the newest lighting rigs we have here at BorrowLenses is the Celeb 200 LED from Kino Flo. The Celeb features 100 watts of lustrous, soft white light, which can be programmed to display a range between 2700K to 5500K, without changing the light output.