Oups moment about the Baby Primes…

June 7, 2011 By

Just got this email from a Zeiss rep. I guess that I have to repost the whole email if I dont want some bad guys knocking on my door tonight.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

We would like to address a report that has been released by the company Kelvinkamera+ on June 5th regarding Carl Zeiss as an e-mail press release. This report contains several statements that need to be clarified for the benefit of our customers. We would be very grateful to receive your support in this undertaking.

In the report, the company Kelvinkamera+ has announced a new line of lenses to be called “Carl Zeiss babyPrimes.” It also states that the company has reached an agreement with Carl Zeiss. Furthermore, the report declares that the manufacturer has already worked on an earlier project at Carl Zeiss (DigiPrimes). This gives the impression that the babyPrime lenses were created together with, or with the approval of, Carl Zeiss.

However, these statements do not reflect the truth. Since Carl Zeiss enjoys a very good reputation in camera lenses of high quality and performance we would like to clarify the situation for the benefit of our customers:

  • Carl Zeiss is in no way involved in the babyPrimes project or product of and does not maintain a relationship to the manufacturer.
  • The company Kelvinkamera+ or the quoted persons were not and are not in any form involved in the DigiPrime project or other projects at Carl Zeiss.
  • Carl Zeiss cannot confirm that the optics used in the advertised product line are from Carl Zeiss, nor can we confirm that these optics meet the typically high standards of a Carl Zeiss lens
  • All Carl Zeiss lenses are subject to extreme specifications, tests and measurements to ensure the respected Carl Zeiss Quality from their development to production to use. In this case, it is not permitted to label these products as “Carl Zeiss” lenses.
  • We would like to emphasize that Carl Zeiss cannot accept any liability for products that have been altered through unauthorized modifications. Therefore these products cannot be covered under the international warranty of Carl Zeiss.

For 120 years, Carl Zeiss lenses have been known for their outstanding performance, quality and reliability. In manufacturing these lenses, we take advantage of everything that is optically and mechanically possible to create an extraordinary product experience from development to production to use of the lens. This is just one of the many reasons for the outstanding reputation enjoyed by the name ZEISS among photographers and moviemakers around the globe.

What this means

Basically, someone at Zeiss did not like how kelvinkamera is piggybacking on their reputation and brand. And it is understandable since who would buy the CP2 lenses if these were the same level of quality? Note that I am not saying they are not, I have not tested them yet.

It is all about marketing and legal stuff. But I wanted to make sure the lawyers dont send me any nasty emails.

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Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,

Zeiss quality on the cheap: Baby Primes!

June 5, 2011 By

Just receive this press release from kelvinkamera.com about their new product.

Baby Primes

My career of digital cinematographer started long time ago (1983) and my first ambition was to have serious and creative optics on my analog video cameras.

I convert so many lens to work with Betacam’s SP in tha way I was working before with my Bolexs and Arriflexs.

My experience in mechanical and optical rehousing has thirty years of experiments and creative shooting.

With the arrival of the Canon 5D for me was a real dream to go Full-Frame and enjoy the magic bokeh of the wideangles in the 24X36mm motion-frames, and this is why I decided to go ahead with this complicated and enthusiastic project.

I arrange an agreement with Carl Zeiss AG (was envolved with them in the past with the project of the DigiPrimes) and started the production of a great optical tool for filmmakers looking to purchase and own a set of Carl Zeiss babyPrimes in a real interesting price range.

What does that mean? Put simply:

  • Zeiss optics (= very good image quality)
  • Integrated follow focus gear ring
  • Constant filter size (95mm)
  • Clear marking
  • Cheap…ish..

Basically, these are all the same features as the Zeiss CP.2 line but at a cheaper price point. How cheap? I have not been given any hard number but it should be at around 40% rebate off the similar Zeiss price. This low price will be achieved by selling the lens directly, without any intermediates.

The first batch should be ready by the end of July.

While their website is pretty dull right now, expect updates soon on BabyPrimes.com.

 

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Filed Under: Video Tagged With: ,

Site review: ZapLife

June 3, 2011 By

I have been contacted by Michael from ZapLife, he asked me to look at his site and give him some feedback. Seems like I am getting a request like this every week now. And I love it!

While a few years ago everyone was trying to copy Flickr now each company has its own vision of what a photo sharing site should be and their implementation are quite different. I am really please to see such creativity and hope to see more!

zaplife

What is ZapLife?

Their tag line is:

Zaplife aims to be an easy to use photo blogging solution with a social twist

What is photo blogging? It is like a blog but instead of writing articles, you post pictures. It is a very healthy way to get out, shoot, share and get feedback from others. To make the whole process even easier, they created a free iPhone app that you can use to shoot/share your picture with. It is a bit like tumblr but you can only share pictures.

What I like

First, pictures are grouped by day, showing only a single picture per day and you have to click on the picture to browse the collection. It makes browsing multiple collection dead simple. As long as the photoblogger daily pictures are all part of the same collection.

As with 500px, the discover page is the best, showcasing the most popular pictures but I think they may have gone a bit too far with the tag clouds.

What I dont like

Like Flickr and contrary to 500px.com, there is a lot of crap pictures. And it is ok, the site does not aim to be a portfolio, it is a place for anyone (owning a camera does not make you a photographer!) to share pictures with others.

The layout needs some refinements but it is still a young site so I expect it to improve with each update.

Should you give this a try?

If Flickr is not your cup of tea, you may want to give Zaplife a try. The feeling is totally different yet you wont get lost in the feature set. They are doing heavy development and features are added regularly so keep your eye on it!

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Filed Under: Photo

A story about pricing

June 1, 2011 By

Since money is always a hot topic and a lot of people ask me for advices about how to price their services, here is a short -true- story.

A few months ago, I received a request from an “acquaintance” asking me to shoot her wedding. She liked my work and wanted me to cover her event. Thing is, she is still a student and was short on budget.

No problem I said, I would give her my rock bottom price (1200$). After all, she was a pseudo-friend and the girl was a cutie so the end result would look great and I could boost my portfolio while getting some cash at the same time.

When I gave her my price, she was a little bit shocked, expecting I guess something lower, and tried to negotiate. Since this was already my lowest price, there was no way I would go down so she replied she would think about it.

Of course, she shopped around and realized how good my price was and came back. We both agreed on everything and I booked the date in my calendar. Since she was somewhat of a relative, I did not ask for a deposit and we had a gentleman agreement.

I am sure you can guess what happened next: a few weeks later she sends me an email saying she found someone cheaper so she would not need my services.

I think I was more frustrated about the fact that she contacted me by email than the cancelled contract since it would mean I would have one more weekend with my family & my BBQ.

This was a few weeks ago and yesterday I had some feedback about the ‘replacement’ photographer who ‘undercut’ me. The guy was of course an amateur shooting his first wedding. He acted like an amateur in every single aspect of his job and while we have not seen the end result yet, expectations are low.

While I would love to feel happy about this, I am not. I am a bit sad for this little girl, and then again it is not like I did not try to help her out.

Here are a few things to remember from this story:

Stick to your price

Whatever your price, stick to it. If you open up the door for price negotiation, the bride will feel it and you will end up doing the same job for less. And how do you feel about doing a job for less than what you think it is worth? It will suck and you will think about it the whole time you will be shooting and editing the picture. Which is not the best creative mood setter!

Stay away from cheap people

People who try to negotiate on price will do the same for everything else. End result: not the kind of grand wedding you want to showcase in your portfolio.

Get a deposit

This is the last time I am reserving a date without a cash deposit. Ever! By getting a deposit, you are making it much more expensive for the bride to cancel. Even a 50% refund should be enough to secure the date.

Don’t try to compete with amateurs

Make sure you price your services according to your skills. There will always be someone to undercut you: people who are looking to get experience at the expense of revenue. There is nothing you can do about it. Try instead to compete with people who are more expensive than you and compete on quality, not price.

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Filed Under: The Basics Tagged With:

New Canon 5DMrkII firmware: nothing new

May 30, 2011 By

Canon Asia just released a new firmware update for the 5DMrkII. According to the documentation it does not do much:

Firmware Version 2.0.9 incorporates the following improvements and fixes.
1. Improves writing/reading speeds when using UDMA 7-compatible CF cards.
2. Fixes a phenomenon where the IS function will not work when custom function C.Fn III-2 is set to [5: IS start] and the lens attached does not have an AF stop button. This is because custom function C.Fn III-2 allows users to assign IS start to the AF stop button on the lens
3. Corrects misspellings in the menu screens displayed in Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, and Thai languages.

 

You can download it here.

Thanks to Canon Rumors for pointing this out, almost missed it!

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Add layers in LightRoom!

May 22, 2011 By

When working with still images, I am a big layer user. And that is actually something that really annoyed me when using Aperture or Lightroom: both of these apps require an external editor to use layers. This basically means firing up Photoshop and working on huge TIFF files.

Well, this is a problem of the past because On One Software just announced their public beta of Perfect Layers. It is a free download but require a #$%#$% registration (name, email and phone number???) and be warned: they will send you weekly email about special offers. The beta app expires on June 30 which is probably their target release date since they said it will be launched mid 2011.

Before reading further

All the content below this point is based on what I saw on the On One Software website because I did not manage to make the plugin work. It is installed but I dont see the menu option in LightRoom. Anyone having this issue?

How it works

At first I thought it was a real plugin in the sense that it was used within Lightroom. Actually, it seems like the plugin exports the selected pictures to an external editor, Perfect Layers, which is a tool specialized in layer editing. Basically, this looks like a trimmed down version of Photoshop with only layer related feature (masking & blend modes) available.

I still have to figure out what is the picture format when it is getting edited but this is not really important (as long as it is a lossless format!) since the returned image is a PSD file.

Verdict

I know Photoshop quite well, at least as long as picture editing is concerned, so Perfect Layers has nothing to offer me on the feature side. On the workflow side, I think it could have its uses, but I need to make it work first!

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Photo Tagged With: ,

RedRock EVF delayed – vaporware?

May 18, 2011 By

Seems like my prediction that we would not see the RRM electronic view finder in 2011 is coming to reality. While I love to be proven right, I am a bit sad since I really wanted to see more competitors in this market segment.

The thing I don’t understand is RRM justification (over at planet5D). Basically they want to slash the price in half while maintaining all the important features. What about just delivering the thing at the same price as the Zacuto EVF? The interest generated by the Zacuto EVF proves that demand is there and needs to be satisfied. HDSLR manufacturers are not social enterprise. People who care that much about the price are not the type of client you want anyway.

Given the choice between getting it now at full price or next year at half the price, I think it is clear what people will pick.
This sounds like the only excuse they could find to justify delaying the product once more.

Speaking of delays, anyone wants to place a bet about the delivery date of the RedRock microRemote? It still says Spring 2011 on their website and they publicly committed for mid-June. Let see how it goes.

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Filed Under: News

Introducting HDSLR101: your Q&A regarding HDSLRs!

May 17, 2011 By

Earlier this week, I released my latest website: HDSLR101.com.

This is a very simple site: each post starts with a question and finishes with an answer.

Questions touch both video and stills and the goal is to cover all the most popular ones in the next few months. We are currently publishing one question per day, so you can either visit the website every day or subscribe to the RSS feed and get a new hint every morning.

Questions are submitted by you, the visitors, and can range from the very basic to the super technical. There is something for everyone. So please pay us a visit, add your voice to the answers or submit new questions!

We are also looking for people willing to help us manage the content. If you are interested, contact us.

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Filed Under: News, On the web Tagged With: , , ,

Technicolor released the Color compatible LUT file

May 13, 2011 By

Thanks again to my friend Robert Cato for pointing to me that Technicolor has added an Apple Color compatible LUT file for their S-Curve LUT. It means you no longer have to use the LUT buddy plugin. It makes using Technicolor picture style even easier which adds another reason why you should be shooting with it!

You can get the file here.

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Filed Under: On the web, Video Tagged With: ,

Almost DIY Ring Flash

May 11, 2011 By

My friend Udi from DIY Photography announced today something he has been hinting me about for a while: a DIY Ring Flash where the only thing you have to do is assemble & glue the various parts. No need to look for the perfect components at the store. Udi did the job for you!

If you have ever tried to build your own ring flash, you know how time consuming it can be to get the perfect light. And if you value your time at anything over 5$/hour it should be clear how good this deal is at under 25$! He even made a video to show how easy it is to build:

Udi did not only released the DIY ring flash, he also announced a double flash bracket which look quite cool. Go over and take a look.

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Filed Under: Photo Tagged With: , ,
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