kai

Expectations Vs. Reality: Getting Your Very First DSLR

Purchasing your first DSLR is a big, important moment in your photographic journey, whether or not you ever intend to make photography more than just a hobby. However, the reality of purchasing and owning your first DSLR is often a lot less exciting than what you imagined while you were saving up to buy it.

35mm or 50mm: Deciding On Your First Prime

In one of those rare more-informative-than-funny Top Gear DigitalRev episodes, Kai tries to help beginners decide what they should buy for their first prime: a nifty 50mm, or a more versatile 35mm.

How Well Can You Learn Photography Without Getting Up Off Your Butt?

Photography is a hobby that generally takes plenty of hands-on experience to nail down. Sure, the basics of photography, such as composition and the exposure triangle can be learned through reading and research, but to truly improve on your photography, you need to get out in the field and just shoot... or do you?

10 Cheap & Clever Tricks for Getting More Out of Your Mobile Photography

If you’re looking to get more out of your smartphone’s camera with minimal financial investment, look no further. Kai and the DRTV team have created a short little video that goes over ten cheap, clever tricks that'll help you get the most of your mobile photography.

Kai specifically uses an iPhone throughout the video, but a number of these tricks can be used on any mobile device.

Video: DigitalRev Shows You that DSLRs Under $100 Can Still Get the Job Done

Photography can be an expensive hobby to get into. With most DSLRs nowadays coming in at around $400 for even the lowest of consumer level cameras. By the time you add in accessories, the financial aspect can be a bit demanding for a newbie.

But just because it can be financially demanding doesn’t mean it has to be, as our friendly neighborhood DRTV stars explain in the useful video above.

Not All Bokeh is Created Equal, DigitalRev Explains Why

Defined by Google as, “the visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photographic image, especially as rendered by a particular lens,” Bokeh is a term that has become much more prominent in the past ten years or so than ever before, thanks to the photography community.

Kai Gives Phillip Bloom a Barbie Camera in New DigitalRev Cheap Camera Challenge

Editor's Note: There is a bit of strong and suggestive language used in a few of the scenes.

The Pro Photog Cheap Camera Challenge is one of our favorite segments that the folks over at DigitalRev put together. Beyond just proving the point that it's the photographer, and not the camera, that makes great pictures, the episodes are fun to watch and often very educational.

In the past they've put everyone from David Hobby to Vincent Laforet to the test, but this time they decided to up the ante. The victim this time around is world-class cinematographer Phillip Bloom, who will be embarking on this challenge with a not-so-capable Barbie camera in tow.

DigitalRev Pits Film Vs Digital in a 36-Hour Photo Tour of London

For their most recent international foray, the DigitalRev producers decided to send Kai, Lok and Alamby on a 36-hour trek across London to take photos. They were tasked with travelling to and photographing 10 of London's best known landmarks, using old film SLRs on day one, and digital cameras the next.

Zack Arias Attempts Pro Photos with a Cheap Camera

The idea that the camera doesn't make the photographer is, most will agree, a sufficiently dead and overly beaten horse of a subject. It's nice, however, to actually see the concept in action and taken to an extreme. Of course you could give an enthusiast a several thousand dollar camera and see what effect it has, but the people over at DigitalRev take the opposite approach: they give a crappy camera to a pro photographer.

Pro DSLR with Cheapo Glass versus Cheapo DSLR with Pro Glass

It's a pretty common question: if you had to choose, would you rather have a top-of-the-line DSLR with a cheap lens or an entry-level body with pro glass? Kai of DigitalRev attempts to answer the question through a hands on experiment in this humorous and educational video.

DigitalRev Durability Test Cameras Tested

DigitalRev has posted a followup to the destruction tests video they published last week. After abusing two entry-level DSLR cameras in all sorts of random ways (e.g. dropping down an escalator, using them as stilts and hammers, pouring hot liquids on them, etc...), many of us were left wondering to what degree the cameras were still functional. This video answers those questions.

Canon Versus Nikon Destruction Tests

This is a 17 minute video showing Kai over at DigitalRev (the same guy that painted a Nikon D90 pink) putting a Canon 400D and Nikon D70 through various torture tests. The tests include stabbing them with knives, dropping them down escalators, smashing them with elevator doors, using them as stilts, and more.