DIYPhotography.net -DIY Photography and Studio Lighting

The Ultimate Custom Firmware For Any Camera Roundup

udijw — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:15:02 +0000

With Magic Lantern recent 24P raw video hack I thought it may be a good idea to go over each of the big manufacturers and review are the options for anyone who is trying to use a custom Firmware on their camera

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Spyder4 Elite - Monitor Calibration Hardware Review

udijw — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:35:54 +0000

Recently I started adding monitor calibration to my workflow and I am grateful that I did. I am using the Spyder4 Elite to do my calibration and I am going explain what it is and how it can help save your butt.

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Advice From J.J. Abrams: "It's More Important You Learn What to Make Movies About Than How to Make Movies"

udijw — Sun, 19 May 2013 12:50:52 +0000

Here is a great inspirational interview from writer / director / producer J.J. Abrams (Lost, Star Trek reboot, Armageddon).

BAFTA Guru sat down for an interview with J.J. Abrams which gives a little insight into the director's thoughts.

My biggest takeaway from the interview, and something I feel is deeply relevant to photographers in particular and any story tellers in general are one advice Abrahams got from his dad and one that he passes on as his own:

"It's more important you learn what to make movies about than how to make movies"
"Your voice is as important as anyone else’s. You may not always be right — you shouldn’t be cocky about it…I felt like I needed to learn that the ideas that I had were as good as anyone else’s ideas."

And his parallel advice to go out and shoot - "Go out and make your movie!"

[J.J. Abrams: On Filmmaking" | BAFTA Guru via nofilmschool via FilmmakerIQ]

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The Quickest Workflow To Get 24P Raw Video On A 5DmkIII

udijw — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:59:37 +0000

A few days back we reported about the Magic Lantern team hacking a 5DmkIII to shoot 24p RAW video (probably the best thing that ever happened to Canon, even if they did not mean that).

While this was super good news, the process of getting the files out of the camera and convert them to a RAW video was a bit cumbersome involving windows, mac, and after effects.

The good folks at Cinema5D just released a video explaining the fasted workflow to get a 5DmkII ML RAW file stream to RAW video. (movie after the jump)

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Bullettime Effect Created Using 625 Pinhole Cameras

udijw — Sat, 18 May 2013 11:22:18 +0000

London Grammar just released their new video - Wasting My Young Years. One of the most interesting things about this video is that it features several bullet time shots that are not only shot on film, but are shot on 625 pinhole cameras.

So, how do you shoot 625 pinholes simultaneously? See the video and BTS after the jump.

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A Look Into The World's Most Advanced High Speed Studio

udijw — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:01:40 +0000

Even if you've never heard about Hamburg based studio, The Marmalade, there is a good chance you are familiar with their work. They are the studio responsible for many of the fascinating High Speed / Slow Mo footage in many commercials including Lipton Ice tea, Pepsi, Daimler, Dove and many, many others.

The studio specializes in creating incredible, slo-mo footage and they have perfected this into science.

Their main difference from other slow-mo footage is that they are using a robot called spike to control the motion and focus of any standard camera. That enable the team to precisely repeat moves that would not otherwise be possible.

Spike's extended arm has a reach of 1.6 meters. The robotic arm itself weighs 250kg. the base onto which the arm is fastened weighs about 300kg.

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Build A Camera With This Raspberry Pi Camera Module

udijw — Fri, 17 May 2013 05:50:05 +0000

Here are some great news for the photographers/makers out there. Raspberry Pi just released their camera module into the world.

This is a 5MP camera which uses a similar imaging core (though different optics and sensor) to the Nokia N8. The camera module costs $25 and is available to order from MCM or Element 14 (North America) and RS or Farnell (Europe).

The board adds a 5MP camera to the Raspberry Pi board and can take static images with resolution up to 2592X1944, and stream video both 1080p, or 720p and as with any Raspberry Pi project where you take it from here is entirely up to you. Having a fully customizable camera for $60 ($35 Pi board + $25 Camera module) is not a trivial thing.

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Death Valley Timelapse Accidentally Captures A Rare Southern Aurora

udijw — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:11:41 +0000

Death Valley in California is not where you usually expect to find an aurora. Those are usually found way more to the north.

However team Starchasers came across a rare phenomena that caused an Aurora to appear as south as Death Valley, CA while they were shooting March 16th - 18th 2013.

Apparently on March 17, 2013 a rare Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) hit Earth’s magnetic field causing a magnificent and powerful aurora.

Watch closely at 1:36 and 2:22 for the appearance of the corona.

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The Slider World Is Changing, Innovating, Are You Game?

udijw — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:07:30 +0000

I have said it many times before. A slider is probably the first gadget you want to get if you are going into videography. It is one of the fastest ways to add production value to a movie.

It is also great for doing motion timelapse and almost all the time lapse movies we feature on the blog have some sort of sliding motion. And while getting a set of wheels on a rail may seem trivial, there has been a lot of innovation with this over the last year. It seems that even a triviality like a slider has ample space for innovation.

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Hotel Keys Don't Work? Make An LCD Hood! A Pictorial

udijw — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:29:00 +0000

Have you ever got stuck out side of your hotel room with the plastic keys not working and decided to go on a photowalk, but it was too sunny to read the LCD? Have you? Really wanted an LCD hood, but could not find one.

Well, you're in luck because master pictorial maker Maciej Pietuszynski has just what you need - a Hotel Room Key to LCD hood pictorial. It has little text and great step by step pictures for you to follow.

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Why Magic Lantern Raw Video Is The Best Thing That Happened To Canon

udijw — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:12:02 +0000

If you are living anywhere on this little planet of ours and are subscribed to any of the blogs about photography, videography, HDSLR, or cinematography you are probably aware that the Magic Lantern team has a firmware that can shoot RAW video on a Canon 5Dmk3 in up to 3592x1320 resolution.

While this is not an official release by Canon, and so far I have not seen any response from their PR department or from other reps, I think that this is the best thing that Canon could have wished for.

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Saying No To Jobs And Getting Paid

udijw — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:14:20 +0000

This post by Andreas Bergmann explores some of the business aspects of being a photographer. Mainly, Should you work for free, and should you accept under paid jobs

One of the hardest lessons to learn, and not only learn but accept and incorporate into your way of doing things, is that sometimes you just need to say no to jobs. For your own sake, for your client’s sake, and for your career’s sake. I think this is proportionally harder the earlier you are in your career as a photographer, and making these decisions can feel like walking a tightrope, but I sure would have benefited from someone sitting me down and telling me this a looooong time ago. So today we’re going to talk about saying no to jobs, and getting paid.

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Magic Lantern: Canon 5DmkIII Raw Recording Up To 3592X1320 + Double Buffering

udijw — Tue, 14 May 2013 07:19:35 +0000

Yesterday we shared that the Magic Lantern team managed to pull a RAW HD stream from the Canon 5DmkIII and today EOSHD shares some hands on with this mode achieving good quality 2.5K (2880 x 1320) and even 3.6K (albeit with some frames dropped).

This is in addition to a new announcement on the ML facebook page, where they share that they implemented double buffering on RAW for the mkII and mkIII.

This double buffering will reduce screen tearing on shot footage.

Screen tearing is "glitch" that shows up when two frames are mashed up in a video stream. An artifact that ML's double buffering seems to reduce.

A few videos and more info after the jump.

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Pictures Of Computer's Insides Show Who's Really Taking Care Of Our Data

udijw — Tue, 14 May 2013 06:20:41 +0000

Portland based Photographer, Mark Crummett, explores the internals of modern calculus machinery... His pictures explore the relations between men and machine, depicting the possible world that may live inside them.

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Magic Lantern Pulls RAW Video at 24FPS From Canon's 5D mkIII

udijw — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:38:05 +0000

Here are some great news to start off the week. The team at Magic Lantern - Canon's unsupported firmware just shared an interesting bit of information. They were able to use the firmware to pull uncompressed RAW video from Canon's 5DmkIII.

Usually, the video that's coming out of the 5D is a compressed H.264 stream which both reduces the resolution and the dynamic range of the data coming from the sensor. But the RAW video provide more resolution and more dynamic rage, just like a RAW file provide those over a jpg file.

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Introduction To Tethered Shooting

udijw — Mon, 13 May 2013 06:57:01 +0000

Tethered shooting is connecting a computer to the camera when you shoot so the pictures you take a downloaded to the computer rather than (or in addition) to a memory card.

Usually, the camera and computer are connected by cable, hence tethering.

In this tutorial, I am going to go over tethered shooting, why (or when) you should shoot tethered, how it is done and what is the gear involved.

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2,000 Water Drops Were Used To Create This In-Drop Animation

udijw — Sun, 12 May 2013 13:33:45 +0000

While this short movie looks like was taken inside a single drop of water, it was actually taken with 2,000 distinct drops each carefully shot in a slightly different location with a slightly different background.

Physalia Studio created Entropy - this stop motion - high speed hybrid as a logo animation for IdN magazine. It shows a droplet falling while a card is placed behind it and lit. 320 different cards were rendered and then printed. and as the drop fell to create the animation. This is how you do it for one drop. Imagine 2,000.

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Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo Possibly The First Movie To Use Computer Animation

udijw — Sun, 12 May 2013 12:29:21 +0000

Vertigo, Hitchcock's 1958 classic just celebrated its 55th anniversary and rhizome released an interesting bit of information about the movie.

As with the other "late" Hitchcock movies, the opening sequences (designed by Saul Bass) correspond with motifs from the movie itself. For Vertigo there is a strong spiral element in the opening sequence, spirals that correspond to the staircase that triggers Scottie's Vertigo.

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Bullet Time Rig Made With a Ceiling Fan

udijw — Fri, 10 May 2013 11:22:28 +0000

Back in 1999 the Wachowskis and Keanu Reeves introduced a something new with The Matrix - Bullet time effect. The idea was to show the time flow from a bullet perspective. Since time is relative, bullets moving in mundane speeds meant everything else really slows down. This trick allowed Reeves to dodge bullets, and to ponder about the existence of spoons.

In the matrix the effect is achieved with tens of cameras shooting in succession or simultaneously, and in the final edit a sequence is made by grabbing a frame from each camera. Even today making a full 360 bullet time can be really expensive.

but for smaller objects Mark Rober found a way to spin a camera really fast to get a similar effect. Mark hooked a rig to a ceiling fan using its high speed rotation for swift camera placement. A set of lights was placed on the rig so they are stationary in relation to the camera. the last ingredient was a GoPro Black set to shoot 240fps slow-mo. Mark was able to capture some amazing bullet time footage.

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Quick Tip: Using USB Outlets For Accessory Charging

udijw — Thu, 09 May 2013 18:41:58 +0000

How many of your devices are charged via USB? Probably your at least a smartphone, maybe a tablet, a GoPro, remotes, audio gear and the list goes on. Each of those devices have their own charger that most likely connects to a USB cable or ends with a micro USB connection.

Photographer JP Danko sent in this great tip about using a wall socket with an integrated USB charger. JP suggests using a Leviton T5630-W 2.1-Amp USB Charger but there are other brands out there. Here is JP's plan:

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The Tasty Ice Cream DIY Softbox Container Pictorial

udijw — Thu, 09 May 2013 12:45:07 +0000

When it comes to how to pictorials I guess no one does it better than Maciej Pietuszynski. (If you don't think so, just check his Tilt-Shift Lens From A Shower Head, How To Instasuqare Your Camera's View Finder and How To Give An Old Nifty-Fifty A New Life pictorials) This time Maciej shares how Spring cleaning drove him into making an ice cream softbox that doubles as a camera case.

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The "Nice Shot" Comment Myth

udijw — Thu, 09 May 2013 05:17:28 +0000

Don't Let The Comment Haters Slow You Down

Most people appreciate and maybe even crave feedback, especially positive. When it comes to photography, there are those who are very comfortable providing constructive, well crafted critiques. These paragraphs of personal opinions are often (at least hopefully, always) provided with the best intentions in mind, to help the photographer understand what works, and what doesn't, in a particular photograph.

But there has been a growing trend of fellow photographers withholding their positive encouragement for the most silly of reasons: embarrassment and shame.

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I Took Headshots Of 80 People In One Day. It Hurt

udijw — Tue, 07 May 2013 10:44:12 +0000

You know that moment when you agree to do a favor for a friend and it turns into something a bit... well, more? This weekend I ended up taking headshots of 80 people during six non-stop hours of shooting. Here is the story, what I learned, and some random thoughts on the experience.

I'm not a professional photographer (I don't accept payment for my work), but I do enjoy it and spend quite a bit of time on it. A few months ago a friend planning a single day DC area startup networking event asked if I'd be willing to spend two hours doing simple headshots of people who wanted updated pictures to use on their Linkedin profiles or bio pages.

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Introduction To 6 Photographic Processes By The George Eastman House

udijw — Mon, 06 May 2013 10:29:43 +0000

Today, most of us shoot digital which is an electronic process, but not that long ago, the photographic process was chemical in nature.

The George Eastman House created a series of short movies explaining the history and context of each of the major chemical processes. Starting with the Daguerreotype, through Collodion, Albumen Print, The Woodburytype, The Platinum Print, and finally the Gelatin Silver Print which is similar to the process used in black and white movie reels and modern 35mm film.

It is a great resource if you are seeking to learn a bit more of how photography was just ten years ago (but also 200 years ago). It is packed with interesting facts like the usage of eggs for producing Albumen Prints.

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How Seeking A Free Hire May Look Like From The Other Side

udijw — Mon, 06 May 2013 09:53:39 +0000

Doing a late jump on the should-I-work-for-free-question wagon, I was this insteresting post over at Reddit, which shows what seeking fro free work may seem from the other side. I hope this can spark an interesting debate.

It shows a somewhat cynical ad posted (just look at the email) over at the craigslist San Francisco Creative Services section. The crew posting the ad are super talented and seeking a job offer. Specifically a non paying one (click image for bigger view):

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