Reviews on gear and software

Products of 2011

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I already gave you my products I love for the holidays but today some of the products that I found this year and fell in love with, the list is not that long but I think you will find some products that you will also love and can’t live without….

ExpoImaging Rogue Diffusion Panel (Large)

Not really a surprise when you read this blog regularly. We found the Expoimaging products by accident when a local dealer send me a test package, and to be honest when I tested them the only thing that hit me was…. “wow, if you would describe the perfect product, this would be it” At the moment we have several flash benders in different sizes and I love them all, the bigger ones are great for portrait work or lighting a small group, the smaller ones are wonderful when you need a big of diffusion but still want some edge to the light.

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Elinchrom 1.50 Deep Indirect Octa review part II

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This is the second part of the mini review on the Elinchrom Deep Octa.
In the previous part   I talked a bit about shooting with the new Deep Octa without any diffusion and using it for full body shots. The shots you find in this part were all shot during the workshop the day after Part I and feature Marie. In this case I installed the middle diffuser and used it as a sort of “beauty” light for the first series.

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Elinchrom 1.50 indirect Octa

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In a country far far away…. (well actually it was Germany) I first saw a proto type of the Elinchrom 1.50mtr indirect Octa. From that first contact I fell in love with it. Some modifiers you see and you immediately become enthusiastic, the light had to be awesome. I love the 1.90mtr indirect Octa and my most used soft box must be the Deep octa which I advise to every photographer. However with the 1.90mtr you are getting a beautiful soft light but it misses some “bite”, the Deep Octa gives you that “bite” but it’s just a bit too small for some applications. When shooting full bodies I always remove the translucent material from the 1.90mtr to give it a bit more “edge” but it’s still a huge soft box with beautiful light but sometimes you just want something more…..


The moment I saw the 1.50mtr indirect octa I knew it….. this thing will rock.

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Some tips for the video users….

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Just a small blog post today with a tip for all those photographers out there that are also doing motion.
As you may already know I’m a strong supporter for everything motion, the reason I updated my 5D was not because I needed the MKII, I was already shooting with MF by then, but I ran to the store because it did video. At first it was not that good with support for different apertures etc. in fact if you wanted to really use it you would have to use Nikon or other brand lenses, but very soon Canon changed the firmware and ever since I’ve been in love with video from the 5DMKII and can’t wait to see what the future brings. And it’s not just me, a lot of people are filming with the 5DMKII and much more active than me, so probably for those this blogpost will contain some old news, however for the ones starting out, or if you did not already know this, this can be an interesting blogpost.

 

To be honest I’ve been doing video for a long time, it started for me with tapes and in the PC the old FAST capture cards, talk about a hassle to get the video into the PC, later with the firewire cameras it became a bit better but still it was not like today, it really took some knowledge and most of all patience to get a nice video. We almost forget those old days of 24 hour renderings for a simple effect, today we just throw everything in a timeline and the software will just run it without rendering and most effects are real time or almost realtime.

 

On the Mac I started with Final Cut Pro and was one of the first I think that was really into Final Cut ProX, well let’s say I was one of the only ones that did not have a lot to complain, I did miss however multi cam support, and when Apple “forgot” to put this in the latest update and the possible delivery date is somewhere in 2012, it was time for me to switch to Adobe Premiere 5.5 and to be real honest I never looked back ever since. As a Final cut pro user it’s a bit of getting to know the interface but after that it’s like the update that Final Cut Pro X had to be (although I do miss the magnetic time line at times).

 

Because I made the switch to video more seriously I’m of course also looking into software that can support the things that I do, and I found the following companies that really rock and I want to introduce them in this blog post with also a small review of the software plugins.

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