Monthly Archives: July 2011

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follow-focus

While the RJ Follow Focus prices have been inflating, and the orders are on very long waiting lists, another Follow Focus system appears. These auctions appeared to have been listed yesterday, so fairly new stuff here. A smart design using a riser to make sure you're hitting all the right spots on your lens gear unlike the other low profile FF's.

Designed to mount using 15mm (60mm center to center) industry standard rods, which is basically everything under the sun including Gini DSLR Rigs (you'll need a set of rails). The gears 'look' standard, but no mention if it's the same as the RJ. [Update] Someone caught printed on the drive gear: M0.8 – 43T, and that's the most popular standard to turn most lens gears. This is really looking like an FF to get. The design does not look like the gears can be reversible, if that's a big thing for you. So if you've been on the hold for a cheap FF, or want to add a second FF on your rig for the Zoom ring, here's another option. Glad to see more of these budget FF's showing up. More images and information can be found at the store (click here).


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find-price-button Fotga DSLR Follow Focus with lens Gear

Can be mounted on inexpensive Gini DSLR Rigs
Screen shot 2011-05-28 at 5.33.23 PM
find-price-button Gini DSLR Rig Stabilizer Kits

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Earlier I posted some big savings that SanDisk was offering of it's Compact Flash media and SDHC cards. You can find that article here: http://cheesycam.com/sandisk-media-huge-deals/. Lexar is now offering a Buy Two and save type deal on many of their media cards, so if Transcend wasn't good enough, Sandisk doesn't meet your needs, then Lexar might be up your alley. Found below.

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find-price-button Lexar Buy Two Deal

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When Four thirds or Micro Four thirds cameras were first announced, they were quite limited in native Auto Focus lenses. Sure you can adapt other lenses, but the size and speed of having an actual four thirds lens can't be substituted. In the last few years, the MFT camera lineups have grown and so has the availability of different lenses.

Two new micro 4/3 Prime lenses that people are anxious to grab is the new 12mm F/2.0 (about 24mm) and the 45mm F/1.8 (about 90mm). If you're not too familiar, these lenses also work on the Panasonic GH1, GH2, GF2, G3 type cameras. It's all Micro Four Thirds. These new lenses fill in some of the gaps that have been missing in the lens lineups, and further reiterate that small mirrorless cameras are in demand. (Rumor is that Canon already has one in the pipeline).

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find-price-button M. Zuiko Digital ED 12 mm f/2.0 Lens

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find-price-button M. Zuiko Digital ED 45 mm f/1.8 Lens

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Future mods on the J.G. Pasterjak's DIY ladder type dolly make it much more functional than before. The new materials used to assemble the dolly allows for it to be used on flat surfaces (when flipped upside down), or on a variety of track widths. The ladder dolly design allows you to use almost anything for tracks such as two conduit pipes, two square tubes, or even one solid wooden plank (as seen in the video). Personally I really like this design, as it's still a DIY, but has a much more professional look to the build. The extra heavy bars probably add more stability to the rig too. J.G. Pasterjak mentioned that these units might soon be available on the big auction website, so stay tuned for that. [Thanks J.G. Keep us posted on those units]

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images-fireworks  long-shutter
(images from ChicagoFreeInfo.com)

4th of July is tomorrow, and i'm sure many of you are planning on tackling some fireworks photography. There's a couple of ways to go about this, but in either case I suggest going with a tripod. One method is to try and capture what you see. Open up the Aperture, speed up the shutter, and boost the ISO. You'll get a few images, but this is not really the preferred method for cliche Fireworks photography.

The better method is to drag the shutter. Let's start with the some basic settings. If you're shooting with a DSLR or Point and Shoot that offers manual controls, go Full Manual. Throw that sucker on a solid Tripod, you'll need it. If you have a shutter remote, use it for even sharper images. Bring a good wide lens or at least a lens that can offer both wide and zoom. You don't need a fancy lens, since you'll set the aperture to at least F/8-F/11 to make sure things fall in focus and the image will look sharp. Next keep the ISO low so that you don't introduce too much noise. Final and most important piece is to try long exposures by setting your shutter to stay open for at least 2 seconds or maybe a bit longer. Think of Fireworks in the same manner as Light Painting. For light painting you'll keep your shutter open for at least a few seconds so that you can capture the path of light being traced into the sky.

Want to try something a bit more advanced? Leave your shutter open for 30 seconds (or use bulb mode for longer exposures). Leaving your shutter open will continue to bring in light, so to keep your image from being too overexposed, place a black piece of cloth or cardboard over the lens 'in between fireworks'. Very important to cover up the lens while there isn't anything happening in the sky. What will happen is you'll end up with a full image of various fireworks all captured in one. The image samples above are probably representative of that technique. If I get to a spot with a good view, i'll try my hand this year and post it. Let me know what you guys come up with.

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(above) Just testing out my new Sony HX9 point-and-shoot camera. What an amazing little thing. Besides the ability to capture full 1080 60p at it's highest resolution (much more than Canon DSLRs), there's a plethora of very cool features to make sure your photos come out perfect. Imagine that not very long ago we paid several thousands of dollars for high end video cameras that don't even come a quarter to the quality we have today in a tiny inexpensive point and shoot.

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Remembering the VX2000

The new HX9 has built in HDR mode that will take three pictures and balance out the shadows and highlights. Sure that's something we've seen before. It also has a built in Anti-Shake mode which will take about 6 images together, takes all the best ones, removes all the motion blur and leaving you with one very sharp image. This is especially helpful when going hand held using the full 16x optical zoom. There's also built in image stabilization which keeps both photos and videos incredibly stable.

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Taking an image in low light and worried about ISO noise? There's a feature for this too. The HX9 will take about 6 images in fast succession, merge them one on top of the other, and apply a very subtle noise reduction. Macro modes, shooting in high key lighting, sports, landscape, and more. The HX9 can make any amateur a seasoned photographer in a few minutes. Of course I believe Sony has 'the best' algorithm for taking panning Panoramic images too. Just sweep your hand across a scene (even in a small room) and the Sony HX9 will automatically stitch it together into one long panoramic. Guess what? You can also do these sweeping Panoramics while the camera is in Portrait position (tall wise), and the camera has a fast enough processor to stitch these 43MP images in about a second. (Yes about 43MP).


(above - My sample slow motion from Sony Vegas when played back at 40%).

Several others have already owned this camera since it's release, and I've only had the camera for the past few hours still learning the features and menu. There has already been some excellent footage shot with this camera like the one below from Vimeo member Jeen de Vos Producties.

I won't say it's better footage than a Canon 5D Mark II, but a fun test from Vimeo member Ryan Czaplinski shows you what it looks like in a side by side comparison. (Below)

The DSC-HX9 can use both Memory stick and SDHC cards, and a few things i'm not a fan of is limited Manual Focus (only in certain modes) and that you need to charge the battery with the camera. This would be just a bit troublesome to carry a spare battery and have it charging on the side. Of course, for the quality that this new camera provides and for the cost, i'm super happy with it. If you're not into interchangeable lenses, the HX9 with it's full 1080 60p features (good for slow motion) are hard to pass up.

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find-price-button Sony DSC-HX9 Digital Camera Full 1080 60p