HBO’s series Chernobyl took the world by the storm shortly after it was first aired, and if you ask me, it’s no surprise. With the eerie atmosphere and sound effects, moving true stories, marvelous cinematography and directing – this is a series that leaves no one indifferent. Indy Mogul’s Ted Sim had a chat with Chernobyl’s cinematographer Jakob Ihre. In this fantastic video, they take you behind the scenes of this marvelous TV series and break down some of the iconic scenes....

A few years ago, there was a story saying that taking too many selfies means you have a mental disorder named “selfitis”. It turned out to be a hoax, but now it’s actually confirmed – obsessive selfie-taking is a mental disorder and an addictive behavior. The fake news inspired psychologist to actually research the phenomenon, and they came to some interesting conclusions related to excessive selfie-taking. Researchers from Nottingham Trent University and Thiagarajar School of Management studied a group of 400 individuals from India....

Back in 2009, a charity event dubbed the (RED) Auction, containing one-of-a-kind items by Apple’s former Chief Design Officer Jony Ive and industrial designer Marc Newson, was held to raise money to benefit The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. More than 40 items went up for bid, including a Leica M full-frame camera designed by the pair. The (RED) Leica M, the standard version of which retailed for around $7,000 at the time, fetched a hair over $1....

The Accsoon CineEye has been out for a little while now, but it didn’t launch without issue. Accsoon has listened to user feedback, replaced the WiFi chip, updated some code, and essentially re-released it. We paid a visit to the Accsoon stand at IBC 2019 to find out all about it and how it works. It looks pretty impressive, though, taking a standard HDMI input from your camera and streaming it to a tablet or phone with many of the features you’d expect from an expensive field monitor....

For as long as I’ve been photographing, I’ve always had a soft spot for gear and the technical side of photography. In the beginning, I was obsessed with getting the best camera I could afford, which ironically was a refurbished entry-level Nikon DSLR – not exactly the pinnacle of camera technology at the time. For the years following, I shot with Nikon DSLRs and these cameras are the ones that I first started my photography career with....

Shortly after IBC last year, an unknown China-based lens company called Dulens appeared, announcing a new 85mm f/2.0 lens. It’s a full-frame lens for DSLRs and they say it was designed by the same optical engineers behind the Kinefinity Mavo Prime range of cinema lenses. News Shooter got their hands on one to have a play with a couple of months, and it’s been listed as available in China since then....

The Godox A1 has been much talked about since it was announced not too long ago. A flash trigger that could fire speedlights and real strobes… on your phone? They even did a fancy iPhone studio shoot to show off its capabilities. Then it went on pre-order. Many people thought “What’s the point? Why spend so much money on lights to use your phone?”. They’re right, of course, but for me the big draw is behind the scenes photos....

We’ve all seen those adorable photographs of tiny babies wrapped up like a burrito that seem to be ubiquitous with newborn photography. Maybe you’re a grandparent-to-be or expecting a baby of your own and would like to capture those first few days. I certainly did as a new mama, and as a portrait photographer already I couldn’t help thinking ‘how hard could this be?’. Well, plenty hard it turned out, the photography was actually easy compared with calming my wriggly newborn baby and getting him to sleep....

Dora Goodman sure is doing some interesting things with 3D printing. First, there was the Goodman One, announced a few months ago, the 3D printable medium format camera you can make yourself. Now, she’s released a new 3D printing project. The Goodman Art Adapter. The Goodman Art Adapter is a 3D printable depth of field adapter. It basically allows you to mount lenses intended for full frame cameras onto your phone, and still be able to get that full field of view and depth of field....

Pretty much since the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus there have been rumors that the next iPhone will include DSLR-like capabilities. Apple has taken a giant step towards that goal with its recent acquisition of LinX, an Israeli camera-tech company focusing on computational imaging, and rumor has it that the next iPhone (iPhone 7?) will include the “biggest camera jump ever”. Setting new standards for color fidelity, HDR and shutter lag are just a few of the company’s selling points, but it is the shallow depth of field, selective focusing and 3D capabilities that make this technology, aiming to revolutionize mobile photography, so important....

We all assume that a mirrorless or DSLR camera is going to pulverise an iPhone concerning image quality, but, there are degrees of pulverisation. Questions my dear reader come into play, like… Are we talking about shooting in good light or poor light? Are we comparing a fixed focal length lens to the equivalent on the iPhone X? How big are we going to print? ……and so on. It’s not a straightforward comparison to make....

What if you had a lens so strong, it could compete with a microscope? The Laowa 100 mil F2.8 CA-Dreamer is a 2 to 1 macro lens which is quite an interesting option. It is a manual lens, with a portrait-friendly 100 millimeters. It’s built kinda weird, with the front element moving inside the lens barrel. It’s the first I’ve seen this weird lens design. More on that later. It is also a macro lens with an amazing two to one magnification ratio....

I see a lot of new products come through my inbox. There are a lot of people out there right now really pushing to try to create something new and interesting. Something that makes us rethink everything we thought we knew about a particular type of product or process. They don’t always work, but sometimes something comes along that challenges the norm. I’m not suggesting that the new Lumapod tripod sits in one particular camp or the other, though....

MIOPS, the company that brought you the Mobile trigger, Capsule360 Motion Box and the Splash trigger, is back with a new project, the MIOPS FLEX, launching through Kickstarter. It’s essentially the next evolution of the company’s Smart trigger, but it’s also so much more, having expanded its functionality greatly since the previous triggers. The MIOPS FLEX is a device that bridges the gap between your camera and your smartphone. Naturally, it lets you shoot timelapse, but it also lets you do those Holy Grail day-to-night (and night-to-day) sequences....

Gudsen has launched its first camera. It’s the tiny gimbal stabilised Moza Moin Camera with a big 2.45″ flippy out touchscreen LCD. The lens offers a nice wide 120° field of view with a 1/2.3″ sensor. It shoots 12-megapixel photos, shoots 4K video at 60 frames per second, or offers 1080p slow motion at 200 frames per second. Designed to shoot both what you see as well as for vloggers, the Moin Camera’s view can face either forward in the direction you’re looking or back towards yourself when you want to speak to the camera and keeps it steady whichever way it’s pointed and it can also track your face to ensure you’re always the centre of attention....

A few days ago, an apparently leaked press release from Capture One indicated that the price of their software would be going up. And now, it’s official. The prices of Capture One for Sony, Fuji and Nikon have all increased from their previous price of $129 up to a $199 – a whopping 54% increase. While the price has indeed gone up, it apparently comes with the benefit of “2 seats” (meaning you can install it on two machines), but from looking at the Capture One website a few days ago, they’d already implemented that at the lower price....

In this article, I look at what LEDs actually are, how they started out and where they sit in the world of photography now. Many photographers have switched over to using LEDs, but do they have a place in your kit and why aren’t we all using them? To avoid making this one article ginormous, I aim to separate it out into three parts. Part 1will be the pros and cons of LEDs, part 2 will be testing a variety of coloured LED bulbs in our strobes and part 3 will cover using them on a model shoot including advice and lighting diagrams....

No camera out there is perfect. No camera can ever be perfect. There are just too many different needs out there to be able to pack them all into a single camera, as a lot of those needs are mutually exclusive. Every brand, and even different camera models within a single brand, all have their pros and cons that make them more or less effective for whatever it is that you want to shoot....

The Purge is a horror series that takes place in dystopian America of the future, where all crime is made legal once a year. And in this future, it looks like DJI Osmo gimbals will be turned into eye scanners. Someone caught an interesting frame of the series, where a DJI Osmo is being used as a “futuristic” eye scanning machine. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2340301362651246&set=gm.1952294101506901&type=3&theater Matt Goodband‎ noticed this while watching the series and shared a photo on Facebook....

Rode recently released their new Rode VideoMic GO II, replacing the VideoMic GO in their lineup. But this isn’t simply an update, it’s a complete overhaul, redesigned from the ground up. So, it presents a pretty major upgrade over its predecessor that inherits a number of features from its more expensive big brother the Rode VideoMic NTG, including the new holey design as well as USB connectivity. I’ve been using one for a little while now and have done some tests and comparisons on the camera and when it’s plugged into a computer as a digital USB audio device....