Tilt lenses open up great possibilities for getting creative with your images. But because of their high prices, they’re out of reach of many photographers budgets. Lensbaby, however, have been making affordable alternatives for a few years now. I recently got to play with the newest addition to the range, the Tilt Transformer for Sony’s new NEX mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras range. As is customary with most of Lensbaby’s models, the internal optics are intechangable, allowing one to swap the desired glass inside the body of the lens, thereby changing the focal length or affect. But Lensbaby went one step further than they did with the regular composer by allowing the element body section of the lens to be completely removable, opening up the mount part of the lens. On the remaining part still left attached to the camera is a tiltable Nikon F-mount adapter allowing you to use any D generation Nikon lens, be it fixed or zoom, as a tilt lens, opening up a vast amount of possibilities.
The best camera is the one you have on you. Increasingly that statement is referring to the smart phone in your pocket. It was because of this that I made my new phone decision based on the quality of the camera and the functionality the phone would offer relating to the photographs I would take with it. The answer, the Samsung Galaxy S II. Here is why it was the choice for me.
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I feel really bad that I am only writing this book review now. “Focus: Found Faces” was sent to me a few months back and with moving and other events of the time it went missing until today. It is a fantastic book and deserves better. Enough of that, lets dive into the book.
The idea of having an almost unbreakable camera you can take virtually anywhere appeals to me greatly. It opens up so many possibilities of getting a shot that would have been restricted by the elements otherwise. The Olympus Tough TG-810 is the top of the range camera in the Tough range and is dust proof, 10 meters water proof, 2 meters drop proof, resistant to temperatures of -10 degrees Celsius and 100kg crush proof. So when given the camera to test, my imagination immediately went wild with ideas I’ve long wanted to recreate with my DSLR but was unable to because of it’s “allergies” to water.
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Review by Armani Quintas
When I was still a student studying photography, I learned about the Bang Bang Club in photographic history. For some reason I was strongly drawn to this story of four South African photographers covering the last days of township violence before the 1994 elections. My lecturer strongly recommended I go to the school library and read the book. I did and quickly fell in love with the book. Long story short, it is a great read. I’d go so far as to say it’s one of my favourite books, not because it’s local, or because it’s photography related. But because it really is that good. It’s action packed, full of drama and hard to put down. Marinovich and Silva tell a compelling story well. When reading the book, I thought to myself, “this would make an amazing movie.” Imaging my excitement when I heard it was going to be turned into a full length feature film.
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I have to start off by saying that I am not a big fan of small video cameras. They are generally either too small to hold comfortably and are always too basic for my liking. Enter the Samsung Q10BP. At first I thought this would be just another small video camera that is going to annoy me, but I was pleasantly suprised. This Samsung camcorder is comfortable to use and has just enough manual functionality to keep me happy.
My brother is 5 years younger than me and, since finishing matric not long ago, has been thinking about what he wants to study after high school. After much thought (and changing he’s mind countless times) he’s decided to follow in my foot steps and study photography and so asked me what I’d recommend for his first camera. Continue reading »
This is by no means a final review, it is more of a fun post so take it in the manner it is intended please. I have a thing for camera bags, its an addiction really and many photographers suffer from it. Many journalists and ‘hard-core’ photographers will tell you that for some of the toughest assignments there has only been one bag for the job, a Think Tank. I have an assignment that perhaps the people at Think Tank did not intend there bags for…
In this eBook,* duChemin explains how to achieve greater depth in ones photos. In photography, depth can mean many things but he makes it clear of what type of depth he’s referring to. He isn’t referring to emotional depth, conceptual depth or, in his own words, “rich symbolism that illicit the “”Whoa man, that’s deep,” responses from the black-turtleneck, art-nic crowd.” He discusses spacial depth and 3 dimensionality in the physical world. In essence, how to take a 3 dimensional world and portray it the way you want to in a 2 dimensional medium. Continue reading »
So what makes one SD card better than another one. The brand? Is the brand name just something you pay extra for like in many other cases? Speed? What makes one card faster than another one? Reliability? Is one card more reliable than another one? What about the effect on your camera’s battery life?
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The last couple of weeks have been terrible since we got samples of both the NEX-C3 and Alpha A35 but were sworn to secrecy as – at the time – there was no official release date for either camera. Now the news is official and we can share our first thoughts and begin our reviews a little more publicly.
I admit, I am one of those photographers who has tried my hand at making money by selling (trying at least) to sell my images through stock libraries in an effort to pay for my terribly costly camera snapping habit. Sadly, while I have sold one image, I need to sell another 100 before I can get paid out what I have earned. Not really successful. Now I have gone through Nicole S. Young’s new book, published by Craft & Vision called (micro)STOCK: FROM PASSION TO PAYCHECK. What a wow moment.
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The June issue of PhotoComment Magazine is out. You can either get to your local stockist for the print version or you can read it right here on PhotoComment.net.
Here is a taste of what to expect in this issue.
- We feature Catherine Hall in our Pro Portfolio, a wedding photographer from America who talks to us about what it is like to be a pro photographer and gives advice on how to survive in the business.
- Tamara James a Student from VEGA is featured in our Student Portfolio, find out what inspires her.
- Our reader’s portfolio this month is by Mack Magagane
- The reader’s portfolio for the July issue will be sponsored by Outdoor Photo, a Wacom BambooTouch is up for grabs check page 29 for details of how to submit your portfolio.
- Armani Quintas reviews the Fuji X100 which was used to shoot the cover of this issue, a more in depth review of the X100 is available here.
- We also review the Sony H70
- Plus all the regular features
Sony have launched a very nice LCD screen that can be used as a monitor screen while shooting HD video with any camera that has an HDMI output. This 5” monitor comes with 2 mount adapters to allow you to fit it onto a Sony Hotshoe or onto the Standard type Hotshoe that the other camera manufacturers use. The mount attaches to the screen via a standard ¼” tripod thread so that the screen can be mounted to any tripod, stand or bracket that has this standard screw attachment.
I was recently emailed about an interesting concept that may have definite applications to the work I do. Curious, I followed the link and gazed at the screen.
Was I really seeing what I thought I was seeing? After pinching myself, I hit the “order” button. With a price point of only $149 I had to give it a try.
The Peregrine is a left-handed glove equipped with sensors that execute keyboard commands. It is actually recognized as a keyboard by a computer’s operating system. In order to activate keyboard strokes, the user touches sensors on the glove. No more reaching for the keyboard to complete redundant shortcuts.













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