I’ve slowly been evaluating some of my manual focus lenses with the NEX-7. It’s important to get a good feel for how a lens handles on a new camera body because the whole “previsualization” thing isn’t just a buzzword. It’s important to understand how depth of field, colors, overall rendering, sharpness at various apertures, lens flaws, etc. all work with the marriage of a camera and lens. Then you can intuitavely make decisions when it comes to shooting time without having to do much conscious thinking.
May 12
2
Sigma 19mm f/2.8 EX DN Gallery
The NEX-7 Needed a Friend
Sony kind of soiled the bed with its early lens lineup for the NEX system. Producing the NEX-7 with only one lens at the pro/enthusiast level was much like making a Ferrari and providing bicycle wheels. That’s where the Sigma 19mm f/2.8 EX DN comes in. Consider it a nice set of All-Season tires for your NEX body. Not racing wheels, but not bicycle wheels.
At $199 – the Sigma 19mm f/2.9 sits right between the truly awful 16mm f/2.8 pancake and the pricey Zeiss 24mm f/1.8 offerings from Sony in terms of focal length and was clearly designed to provide a steady performance at a great price.
I’ll skip ahead… this is a no-brainer purchase for NEX users. Given early reviews with the 30mm as having slightly higher image quality, I’d say buy the set.
Product photography can be quite a challenge. With megabrands paying for daylong shoots and hundreds of thousands of dollars of gear to get a single shot of a beer bottle… what can the rest of us do? In this video tutorial, I will take you step-by-step through the making of a product photograph:
Some of the key concepts of this video include:
- How to layer light sources to create depth in an image
- How to use modifiers to control light form your strobes
- What is a monolight?
- Using reflectors to reduce shadows
- DIY reflector from a piece of paper
- Backlighting to create depth
- Maintaining a “3D” look to product photographs
The Leica BOSS summary:
Product photography is complex. How do you give personality to a small inanimate object? How do you add interest without distracting the viewer? A product photo also is trying to accomplish a few things at one time. On one hand, it must represent a brand, a philosophy and an image. On the other hand, it also must provide accurate and actionable information to the consumer. With good planning and knowing how to use the tools at your disposal, you can create great product photos – even if you don’t have studio lights. Happy shooting and take care!
Posted in BOSS Blog Tutorials & How-To Video by .
Mar 12
19
NEX-7 Review Coming…
So, I got a Sony NEX-7 for a 4 day run and shot the hell out of it – review forthcoming. I tested mostly with M mount lenses and largely ignored the lackluster 18-55mm E-Mount OSS lens. For now, here are a few scaled down and processed (duh) samples:
Sony NEX-7 & Voigtlander 21mm f/4
NEX-7 with Leica Summicron 50mm @f/4
I’ll give you the bottom line on this one. I’m ordering the camera. Yep, Leica Boss.
So,
So, there’s always a lot of debate about the image quality of the new mirrorless interchangeable lens systems and cameras like the Sony NEX-7 and Fuji X-Pro vs. DSLRs like the Canon 5D Mark III. This video is a simple tour of what the main differences are between the traditional DSLR systems and the newer mirrorless sytems.
Posted in BOSS Blog Tutorials & How-To Video by .
Mar 12
10
/p/ Book Update – In layout
Ok – so the /p/ book is being finished. This little postie will provide some details as to what happens next.
Ok. The Eagle has landed. The Canon 5D Mark III is here.
For photographers it appears to be a kind of a modest, incremental improvement to to tune of $1,100.
- The 5DIII
Right off the bat… here are 3 cool things about the Canon 5D III
- They didn’t mess around with a stupidly high pixel count and opted for better, bigger photosites. They picked a magic number for video and at high ISOs, the pixel peepers will be thrilled.
- Awesome viewfinder. It says the viewfinder is “intelligent.” Sure, you get a fancy TRON-Style overlay… but… BUT… you can shut it off. This is the genius. For a more pure, distracted and focused-on-the-image experience, you can shut the crap off in the viewfinder. Leica figured this out in the 1930s. Good job, Canon
- Dual memory slots. Finally. You got the memo. Good! Enough said
Right off the bat… here are 3 UNCOOL things about the Canon 5D III
- Looks like they didn’t include an oversampling feature for either lower-resolution stills or video. DO THIS, CANON!
- The Canon Executives still believe that nobody focuses on things that are not in the middle of the frame. All the AF points are crammed into the middle. What happened to creative control? Ah, yes. Only if you rule of thirds. Boo.
- Now, this is not confirmed – but I hear they may not offer interchangeable focusing screeens. FFFFFFFFFffffffffffffffu
So, the announcement came with two new Strobist toys…
Speedlite 600EX-RT
- Great power -197 ft./60m at ISO 100
- 20mm to 200mm coverage. This is awesome. Any sports or even wildlife/bird photogs can appreciate having 200mm vs. 105mm coverage on a flash unit
- Radio triggering – well, let’s see how Canon implements this vs. Pocketwizards.
Speedlite Transmitter ST-E3-RT
- Newly designed wireless system
- 2-way radio wave communication
- Up to 5 groups, or 15 individual flashes can be controlled via 1 transmitter
- Supports E-TTL II flash, manual flash, stroboscopic and external flash metering
External flash meter support? This can be big. Nothing is worse than wonky ETTL metering in the studio… has Canon figured out how to make working with speedlights easier in the studio.
More questions than answers at this point.
Promo Image for the 600EX
Posted in Gear by .