Welcome to The Photo Video Guy. I share training, ideas, opinions and tips to help you make better photographs and videos.
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Last week Daniel Zhang over at Fotor pinged me to see if I would be willing to have a look at what they do over at Fotor. With such a gracious request, how could I say no? I had not been familiar with Fotor, and offer this quick look as they do some very cool things over there.
Read MoreI accept up front that paper cutters don't fit a need for everyone. But if you print, at some point you will need a good paper cutter, and I want to save you some pain and money by helping you buy your last cutter first.
Read MoreThe demand for fast, high quality video increases every week. Youtube and Vimeo libraries continue to grow as more and more people and companies use mirrorless and DSLR cameras to create video content for friends, communities and customers. We also know that the thing that destroys good video fastest is bad audio.
Read MoreThe space of long reach zooms at affordable pricing has long been the realm of third party lens builders such as Tamron and Sigma. And, they've done a really great job producing very good glass at pricing that serious amateurs can afford. Nikon surprised the marketplace this past fall with the announcement of their entry in this space, that is priced very competitively with the third parties, so folks want to know, is it good, and is it better than the alternatives.
Read MoreWhy do we back up? For security? For confidence? For redundancy?
We back up because we are smart enough to understand the science of storage. It's not a question of WHETHER storage will fail, it's a question of WHEN.
Read MoreEpisode Two of Make Better Photos and Videos is now live. Join guest Bryan Weiss and I as we discuss the challenges and options of autofocus
Read MoreI was one of those people who supported this project via Kickstarter. I received my bag earlier this week, about two days before it showed up in retail stores. Not exactly the early preview I was expecting, particularly given that some folks have had theirs for well over a month. I liked the concept online very much and paid my money to support a company whose products I really like and recommend highly. Sometimes, expectations and reality don't end up in the same place and this is what happened to me.
Read MoreNikon decided to use the Consumer Electronics Show as the vehicle for their first product announcements of 2016. CES is best known as the debut site for new electronics and another four million iPhone cases, not so much for photography and video. Still, Nikon made some pretty distinctive announcements that tell us about the company direction and give us a sense of what they see coming up.
Read MoreIn this video I look at what goes into the whole concept of tilt / shift, starting with examples on the view camera and then moving to the popular style of tilt shift lenses available for digital cameras.
Read MoreIt's 2016 and while we spend a couple of weeks misdating cheques and other paperwork, let's fix one thing right now.
Read MoreEvery year at this time, folks make resolutions. Some are successful, some are not. Here are some you may choose to adopt as creatives. The choice dear reader, is yours entirely.
Read MoreWhen you're working to a deadline, or with a client who needs to see the work quickly, tethering is a huge asset. No one is scrambling over a miniscule image on the camera, you aren't looking at some JPEG rendition, you see the converted RAW on a large screen in real time. Fortunately, most cameras can be tethered. Let's look at some options to make that work.
Read MoreHooray! You received a new camera for Christmas! Or you went out on Boxing Day and got yourself a new camera. Good for you! But now you have a box of stuff, you want to get started and aren't exactly sure where to start. You want to be making photographs, RIGHT FREAKING NOW, but are concerned about what could go wrong, what got missed, and what you forgot. Relax, I'm here to help!
Read MoreLet's say you are out shopping for Boxing Day, or are so crazy to be shopping today (the 24th) and just aren't quite sure which focal length prime or zoom range to choose. I was out doing some test work with Nikon's new 200mm-500mm today (more on that in it's own review) and put together this simple sequence to give you a sense of what different focal lengths will deliver with the same camera position.
Read MoreI am very pleased to let folks know that the podcast model will return in 2016. It's going to be different from what I did years ago as there are more than enough newsfeeds in the photo and video marketplace and people don't really need another one.
This round, the audio podcast will focus on tips, tricks, problem solving and simple how tos that can be conveyed in audio format. I will also talk briefly about new gear I've seen and tried, while full reviews will appear as articles on the site.
Read MoreLook, I get it. Apple wants users to find it really easy to access images on memory cards from their cameras. Maybe the average user only has one card. Not I, he said, I have many and use them in different cameras, and always reformat each time I install one, so Photos ALWAYS thinks every card is brand new. The mode to stop the auto-launch has been to try to tell Photos not to launch for each card individually. Which only works so long as the card does not get reformatted. This is, a pile of crap, considering it used to be possible to tell the Image Capture function to never auto-launch. There are dozens of posts on Apple Support Communities since the inception of Photos and Apple has done NOTHING. I however, have an answer that works.
Read MoreHotshoe flash is wonderful, except when shot direct from the hotshoe. There are myriad modifiers in the marketplace but many of them don't deliver the light that you really want. Rogue's Flashbender lineup is different so have a look and you'll see why.
Read MoreUsing the right batteries in your speedlights shouldn't be a hassle. In this video, I show you what to look for and share a couple of recommendations that I know work awesomely.
Read MoreAs many of you know, Squarespace is my platform of choice for web hosting and I typically use Safari as my default browser on all my Macs. Apple has continually enhanced Safari, and while they have a Safari Dev channel, sometimes other developers cannot always keep up, or a change is not clearly documented and this causes problems, hence the current issue between Safari and Squarespace.
Read MoreI've written in the past about using Piccure+ to correct microshake and to correct for lens aberrations, two services it does wonderfully. I was recently finalizing some images of some High School football game shots to share with the coach when I discovered on zooming in that some of my selects weren't quite as clear as I had thought in the initial culling process. Sometimes, in excitement we might stab the shutter rather than squeezing, or even with the great tools in image stabilization be pushing things a bit in terms of focal length, shutter speed, physical location and weather effects.
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