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November 11, 2015

REVIEW : Cameron W700HS Flash and Cameron HSS240 Radio Triggers

November 11, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

My dear friend and fellow tenured photographer, the incredible Joseph Leduc, introduces me as Mister Flash. Sounds great, and potentially creepy but he's right that I love using flash to make better images. Sometimes other photographers find flash frustrating and often very expensive. I recently had a chance to use in production some new Cameron products available exclusively from Henry's, Canada's largest independent photo-video retailer.

November 10, 2015

New from the folks at Macphun - Aurora HDR developed with Trey Ratcliff

November 10, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

Photographers everywhere place the words HDR and the photographer Trey Ratcliff in the same wheelhouse, because Trey's work is synonymous with HDR. Coming November 19, 2015 is a brand new application from the great people at Macphun called Aurora HDR and it was built in conjunction with Mr. HDR himself, Trey Ratcliff.

November 05, 2015

REVIEW : Nikon's D5500 - Is This Your Best Choice for Your First DSLR?

November 05, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

You want a camera. Or you want to give someone a gift of a camera. The decision is to go with a DSLR and now it's time to shop. Then you go to the big box store, or the dedicated photo shop, or you sit in the kitchen shopping online, but in the end you come away frustrated because there are so many choices and when you find something that looks decent, you immediately find a review from someone who hates the thing. Arrgghhh! I cannot promise that this article will make your life easier, but if you are seeking a DSLR for the starting or growing photographer, you should take a look at the D5500 from Nikon.

November 03, 2015

Lightroom Tip - Dealing with Sensor Dust Spots

November 03, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

One of the banes of digital photographers who have to change lenses in less than ideal field conditions is the potential to collect dust on the sensor. This dust turns to dark spots on your image and if you have a lot of images shot at the same time, you have a lot of spots to deal with.

In this tip, I'm going to show you a tip using a basic Lightroom function to find and clean spots on a single image and then remove the same spots in all the images shot at that event.

October 19, 2015

Canon and Mirrorless : Two Roads Seemingly Doomed Not to Meet

October 19, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

The saga of Canon mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras is a sad one. The M1 was not successful. The M2 never came to North America. The M3 made it here after long delays. On October 13th, Canon announced the M10. After looking at the specifications, and Canon's state target market, I really think that they have to stop dropping acid.

October 13, 2015

ON1 Photo 10 - Looking at what's coming - Start with Browse

October 13, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

ON1 will ship Photo 10 at the end of October 2015. I'm one of the folks that has been asked for early release reviews and information sharing so this is the first of a series of posts on what you can expect starting with the Browse module

October 10, 2015

An Open Letter to the Adobe Lightroom Team

October 10, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

I've been an Adobe Lightroom customer since the first release. Every release since then has been evolutionary, some stronger and richer than others but steps forward. Having spent a large part of my professional life in software, I became nervous when Adobe adopted a subscription delivery model, and I fear that very model is what is hurting Lightroom today.

October 06, 2015

Preorder Now! Macphun Creative Kit 2016

October 06, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

Photographers like to be creative. Some of us like to extend our creativity into the digital darkroom. Some of that group have chosen a Macintosh as their platform of choice. For these people, the Macphun Creative Kit is an excellent toolset.

October 05, 2015

Looking at Corel ParticleShop

October 05, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

Many digital photographers want to add special effects to their images. It would be cool to add flames, superhero powers, lightning, smoke and other effects easily without a lot of pain. That's what Corel's ParticleShop is designed to do.This is the first release of the product and is built using Corel's well respected physics engine.

September 12, 2015

Portrait Perfect with Lindsay Adler - A Review

September 12, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

I spent today, September 12th with a group of interested photographers including my friends Isabel, Laurie and Joseph. We had all signed up independently for the Portrait Perfect session put on by Henry's Learning Lab featuring renowned New York City based fashion photographer Lindsay Adler. It was a most informative and interesting day.

September 09, 2015

ON1 PHOTO 10 is Announced!

September 09, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

The good folks at ON1 have announced the October availability of their new software suite called PHOTO 10. It's an update to the current Perfect Photo Suite 9.5 that boasts much faster performance and increased functionality. You can preorder by clicking on the graphic above or the one in the sidebar. There are some cool bonuses for those who preorder including getting the complete Perfect Photo Suite 9.5 to use while you wait for PHOTO 10.

September 07, 2015

A Fast and Powerful RAW Viewer

September 07, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

How many times have you heard that Lightroom is a great tool except that its RAW rendering is glacially slow, and it takes a long time to import files only to go through the culling process and end up discarding the ones you don't like and that didn't work out. For the last few years, I have been using Photo Mechanic to do the fast view and cull process. I'm hardly getting the full benefit of that amazing software but it does this particular job with speed and power. Not everyone is willing to pay the price for Photo Mechanic though and I am asked very frequently for an alternative. I couldn't recommend one until now.

September 03, 2015

Filters For Protection?

September 03, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

A photographer and educator whom I respect and I got into a conversation on the web about the viability of filters on lens for purposes other than creativity. His contention is that a filter for protection is unnecessary and will degrade image quality. I found that I agree. Mostly. Let me explain why.

September 01, 2015

Get a Head Start When It Comes to Shooting Portraits

September 01, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

For many photographers, shooting people is where it's at, or at least where we'd like to be. Even if we prefer nature, or landscapes or wildlife, we all need to be able to make great portraits of people, even if only our friends and family. After all, we do have a really good camera, right?

August 31, 2015

A Superior Tool for Cutting Masks

August 31, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

I recently taught an Introductory workshop for Photoshop on Layers and Masks. While most of the attendees found the workshop very useful, the general consensus was that making selections for masking would take a lot of practice and that while Photoshop does a good job, the user interface can be complicated and some of the tools cumbersome. I tend to use a third party tool for this myself and was reminded of its efficacy by a webinar delivered by my fellow educator #BlakeRudis. The tool I advocate is called Remask and until recently was available only as a plugin for editing applications from the folks at Topaz Labs. That changed with the recent update to Remask 5.

August 22, 2015

REVIEW : Limelite Mosaic LED Panel by Bowens

August 22, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

Over the last couple of years, some peers have started referring to me as the Light Whisperer. I choose to take it as a compliment because I love working with light, be it the big source in the sky, flash or continuous light. I started doing this stuff back when continuous light meant tungsten bulbs that were hot and somewhat unwieldy. Later came fluorescents, either in the form of the big curlicue bulbs such as those used by Westcott in their excellent Spiderlite systems or the non-flickering perfectly balanced tubes in my beloved Kino Flo lights. LED panels were initially super expensive and fairly dim so you needed a lot to get a little. That's changed and a killer offering in the LED space comes from Bowens in the Limelite Mosaic.

August 19, 2015

Quick Look : Canon 5DS - Current Megapixel King (35mm Full Frame at Least)

August 19, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

Despite reasonable arguments to the contrary, there's still a very strong perception that more megapixels are better, even when comparing on the same size sensor. It means that each individual photo receptor is smaller, and that means less light sensitive but the theory is that this is balanced out by increased detail and sharpness. Canon, as of this article, currently rules the megapixel roost in 35mm full frame with the Canon 5Ds and Canon 5Dsr cameras. The questions to ask are what does 50 megapixels bring you, and what do you give up?

August 16, 2015

Book Review - Shooting in Sh*tty Light

August 16, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

No, I'm not kidding, That's the title, or more correctly the first part of the title, "Shooting in Sh*tty Light : The Top Ten Worst Photography Lighting Situations and How to Conquer Them". The book is written by Lindsay Adler and Erik Valind. Both are professional photographers, Lindsay known for fashion and Erik for lifestyle. Both are respected educators and I have taken classes with both of them. Given their expertise, I was curious about what the book would reveal

August 04, 2015

You Need This Book in your Photographic Library

August 04, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

Folks who know me, know that I support my friends. They also know that I don't "spin" stories to suit a desired outcome. Those things clear, I am writing this post to tell you that you WANT and NEED to get my friend Rick Sammon's book called Creative Visualization for Photographers.

August 04, 2015

ANNOUNCEMENT : Nikon expands lens lineup. Again

August 04, 2015/ Ross Chevalier

It seemed for a while that there was no new glass coming out of Nikon. That's definitely changed this year and today Nikon announced three new lenses. Check them out below.

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