Here’s a great short film written and directed by Mumbai-based photographer Martin Prihoda that pays a touching tribute to photography. As he explains it, this short amounts to a “love letter to Bombay and to the good old ‘film’ days.” Read more…

Dublin, Ireland-based photographer Maciej Pietuszynski was doing a bit of spring cleaning recently when he decided to upgrade a plastic box he has been using to carry his camera and flash unit. His idea was to give the box an extra job as a makeshift softbox in addition to its storage/transportation/protection duties.
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Photographer Váncsa Domokos created a neat do-it-yourself camera accessory that uses optical fibers to control the direction and intensity of a flash unit’s light. Instead of having light come directly out of the flash unit, the accessory redirects it through a thick bundle of optical fibers, allowing you to point the light in any direction — and in different directions if you’d like.
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Faced with another birthday party at Chuck E Cheese, a place my daughter loves but low ISOs do not, I decided to get creative. I shot a collection of photos with a set of three Yongnuo YN-560 and YN-560 II flashes with a diffuser cap/”omni bounce” inside of small lampshades placed along the table.
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Typically, the folks over at DigitalRev are the ones doling out the challenges. Be it a Buzz Lightyear camera or a sub-par tilt-shift replacement, they like to put the pros through their paces.

But in this video, they’ve turned the tables on themselves by trying to recreate Strobist David Hobby’s famous profile picture without knowing anything about the lighting set up. What’s more impressive, they attempt it all using only a banged up Canon T3i and a couple of Family Jewels FUQ 690 flashes. Read more…

Our pal and fellow photo blogger David Hobby of Strobist is currently over in Dubai for Gulf Photo Plus 2013, and yesterday he had the privilege of purchasing the first Fujifilm X100S to be sold on planet Earth. Hobby tells us he’s in love.
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The world of camera gear is getting really into this whole touchscreen thing. Touchscreen interfaces appeared on a bevy of cameras at Photokina this month (especially when paired with Android OS) and even on a new light meter, the Sekonic L-478D. The latest guest to crash the party? The flash.

The new Metz 52 AF-1 is the world’s first hot-shoe mounted flash unit to offer a touchscreen interface. Granted, the screen isn’t as flashy as the touchscreens found on the devices mentioned above — it won’t be winning any beauty contests anytime soon — but it gets the job done.
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Announced this morning, Nikon’s new D600 is a powerful little full frame DSLR at an unprecedented price point, and should be quite popular among photographers looking to upgrade from a crop sensor camera. At $2,100, it’s more than a grand cheaper than Canon’s lowest-level full frame: the Canon 5D Mark III. However, the camera isn’t geared towards every kind of photographer. David Hobby of Strobist states that Nikon has completely overlooked one segment: photographers who are serious about off-camera lighting:

The first thing, and given recent history something not unexpected, is the lack of a sync jack. I was pissed off surprised when the D7000 didn’t include it. But a full-frame body without a sync jack? That’s just a little weird.

It has a 1/200th sync. Game over. [...] True, it is only a third of a stop as compared to 1/250th. But with speedlights and daylight, that is a critical third of a stop. To be clear, this camera makes every single flash you own less effective.

Also, the difference between 1/250th and 1/200th sync is deadly when it comes to stopping action when balancing flash and ambient. 1/250th is dicey enough. 1/200th just doesn’t work.

There are currently rumors floating around that Canon may be gearing up to launch a cheaper full frame DSLR as well, possibly to be called the Canon 6D. If it does materialize in the next month or two, it’ll be interesting to see how the price point and feature set stack up against the D600.

Nikon D600: Think Twice Before You Jump [Strobist]

If you’re interested in the subject of lighting, check out Guess The Lighting. It’s a website by professional portrait photographer Ted Sabarese through which he shares photos he finds — including iconic images, advertisements, magazine covers — along with his guesses and sketches regarding how the images were lit.

This idea came to me after I had shot this photo in the daytime. I had been seeing a lot of celestial-type shots on the Internet, but most were just landscapes with no action. My main focus is action sports, and I love a challenge. I figured I would give it a try. To start my photo, I knew I needed to light up the interior of the arch, the arch itself, and the rider. Hot shoe flashes have plenty of power at this time of night, so I brought three Canon 550EX flashes. A lot of photographers use spot lights or flashlights to “light paint” photos like this, but to keep my exposure time short enough to not have the stars moving in the photo, plus capture the action, it was necessary to use flashes to expose the arch and rider.
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