Reviews on gear and software

Tethertools, video

Some companies have products that before you did not know about them you probably did some “freaky” DIY solutions. For me this was the case with Tethertools. I love to shoot tethered in the studio and on location, but one of the most frustrating problems is that if someone (or yourself) stands on your cable it will be disconnected from your camera, in the best case scenario you loose your images, reconnect and continue shooting. But in most other cases you destroy your USB/HDMI/Firewire port which means “end of the shoot” and a very costly repair. I made some DIY solutions for this which worked ok, but never 100%. Enter the Jerkstoppers from Tethertools, to make a long story short “THEY ROCK” and are so cheap that you actually can’t afford not to have them, trust me it’s a very expensive repair when your port is defective.

 

I was so enthusiastic about Tethertools that my wife’s company decided to take up the distribution of the Tethertools products for the Netherlands (and far beyond :D), and I was not alone, it’s been a huge success, and not only the jerkstoppers. All the Tethertools products are well thought out, and….. well I don’t want to spend much words…. they just work, if you know what I mean.

Because a lot of people ask me about it and a moving image is always nicer than a still image in this kind of cases we shot a very quick video about the Tethertools products I use myself, we shot this in between photoshoots yesterday, the audio is not the way I want it, normally I use a voice over *my own voice* but I decided to go “live” this time because it simply is nicer I think while explaining things, we already ordered some better mics so the next videos will be much better, however I still think it’s a fun piece to watch, so here we go.

Mini review LEICA M9 by Purpleglas studio

Today a special guestblog by Purple glass studio.
They have done a review for the Leica M9, a camera I would one day also love to check out 😀
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The LEICA M9, a camera that carries the legend of Leica M cameras into the digital age.
Leica Singapore and RedDotPhoto were kind enough to lend us the New Leica M9-P for one (1) day.
At first I was a bit hesitant knowing that I will be holding a total of S$27,400 camera system (body + lens) in my hands and I am totally responsible for it.Basic specifications:
Sensor: 18.5 Megapixels, CCD type
Image type: Raw (Adobe DNG) or Jpeg
Storage media: SDHC up to 32GB
Sensitivity: ISO160 to 2500 (in 1/3 increments)
Shutter speed: 32s to 1/4000s
Weight: M9 585 g, M9-P 600 g (with battery).
Dimensions: (length, depth, height): Approx. 139x37x 80 mm.
Body Price: SGD$11,400 Read more

Grid for Maxilight from Laserlight grids/Honeygrids

I love the maxilight from Elinchrom, I’ve already mentioned this a few times.
It’s a modifier that gives you a lot of extra light from a Quadra and any other strobe you put it on, but as an added bonus the light quality is also very nice. For  a while I was looking for a good grid for the Maxilight and could not find one, so I decided to buy a standard Mola grid and use duck tape to fit it to the maxilight….. well it worked (and I loved the results) but let’s be honest, it’s not the way to work.

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Working with one light source……and some Rogue magic.

Friday it was time for the small flash workshop with Nadine as my model.

During the small flash workshop the main thing I teach the students is how to work with both E-TTL and full manual mode. The thing I focus up at the start of the workshop is that E-TTL can be easily “fooled” or in other words is not perfect. By explaining this and also explaining how to solve it (and throwing in manual mode with a light-meter) the students are beginning to recognize the problems in a scene and most importantly learn how to counteract the problems.

The fun thing is that you will see that after the first setup most students already pick this up with the next setup.
And to be honest it’s not difficult, but you have to see it to understand it 🙂

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