[Photography] The Canon 1D X Mark III Will Debut With 20 FPS and Enhanced Autofocus

The post The Canon 1D X Mark III Will Debut With 20 FPS and Enhanced Autofocus appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

 

Just last week, Canon announced the long-awaited 1D X Mark III, a flagship DSLR tailored to action and wildlife photographers. The new camera comes as a successor to the Canon 1D X Mark II, which set the tone for sports photographers everywhere.

But what can you expect from the Canon 1D X Mark III? Is it a camera worth purchasing?

First, the Canon 1D X Mark III is a professional action photographer’s camera. So while it will undoubtedly offer the latest and greatest technology, this will come at a price that most enthusiast photographers will be unwilling to pay. The Canon 1D X Mark II debuted at an MSRP of $5999, so you can expect something similar (if not more) for the Canon 1D X Mark III.

That said, for those who can afford it, the Canon 1D X Mark III is looking to be one of the best action cameras money can buy. Let’s check out its specifications:

Specifications

According to the Canon press release, the 1D X Mark III will offer incredible autofocus capabilities. This includes “exceptional precision, reliability, high-performance…and subject tracking.” For any photographer who shoots moving subjects, the Canon 1D X Mark III’s tracking is bound to be better than any previous Canon DSLR.

And these capabilities extend into Live View, where the 1D X Mark III’s Dual Pixel autofocus features 525 AF areas for lightning-fast focusing and accuracy.

Of course, no action camera is complete without a high continuous shooting rate. Here, the Canon 1D X Mark III won’t disappoint; using the optical viewfinder, you can expect up to 16 frames per second of continuous shooting. In Live View, you can shoot up to an incredible 20 frames per second.

Also, the 1D X Mark III promises “more than five times the RAW burst depth of its predecessor,” thanks to a new DIGIC processor and dual CFexpress card slots. Considering the deep buffer of the 1D X Mark II, you can expect extraordinary capabilities that will please any action photographer.

Unfortunately, Canon has not yet announced the sensor details on the Canon 1D X Mark III. We don’t know its resolution (though rumors indicate it may be around 28 megapixels). However, Canon has announced the addition of the HEIF file format, which should allow for better colors and enhanced dynamic range over JPEGs.

Finally, the Canon 1D X Mark III is designed for high-speed transfers and flexibility in the field. The camera features Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE, as well as a built-in Ethernet connection and an optional wireless file transmitter. This is a nice set of features for pros who need to quickly transfer photos.

There is currently no set release date for the Canon 1D X Mark III. However, you can expect it sometime before mid-2020, and possibly as early as February (if it mirrors the path of the Canon 1D X Mark II, which debuted in February of 2016).

That should give you plenty of time to decide if the camera is right for you.

What do you think about the Canon 1D X Mark III? Does it meet your expectations? Will you be purchasing it? Share your thoughts in the comments!

The post The Canon 1D X Mark III Will Debut With 20 FPS and Enhanced Autofocus appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

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[Photography] Lens Hoods: What Are They Really For, and Do You Need Them?

The post Lens Hoods: What Are They Really For, and Do You Need Them? appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.

Most camera lenses come with something called a Lens Hood, which looks like a short circular tube that attaches to the front. These diminutive devices seem a little strange, but they can serve several very useful purposes. While some people might be tempted to toss them on the shelf and never give them a second thought, knowing what lens hoods are and how to use them can have a significant impact on your photography.

Why use Lens Hoods?

Imagine this: it’s a bright, sunny day and you are outside for a stroll. The sun is beating down hard and you’re having a bit of trouble seeing clearly, so you hold your hand up to your forehead in an effort to block the light. Congratulations, you’ve just made your very own lens hood for your face! I know this is a bit of an oversimplification, but the lens hood on a camera is about the same as using your hand or a ball cap to block a bit of light when it’s bright out.

It’s kind of like putting a ball cap on your camera, but a lot more effective.

Why would this be beneficial for photography? Since you need light to make photographs, wouldn’t blocking the sunlight be counterproductive? It might seem so, but in reality, you aren’t making the scene any darker just as putting a cap on your head doesn’t make the sun any less potent.

Indeed, the primary reason to embrace your lens hood as an essential photographic companion is that it makes your pictures look better. Its purpose is to prevent your photos from developing a washed-out appearance that tends to happen under certain lighting conditions. They also offer other benefits mostly related to the protection of your camera gear.

The lack of a lens hood gave this picture a washed-out appearance.

These types of pictures happen because harsh, intense light enters the camera lens and gets scattered across a portion of the image as a result. Lens hoods can mitigate much of this problem by acting as a shade over the front glass element.

Attaching a lens hood gave the shot much more contrast and vibrance. Shadows can be brought up in post-production, but if a picture is too washed-out, it can be much more difficult to fix.

When I first got into digital photography many years ago, I didn’t understand the point of lens hoods. I kept them on a shelf at home because they mostly just got in the way and made my camera take up a lot more space in my bag than it needed to.

Or so I thought.

The nice thing about lens hoods is that they are a low-tech solution to what can often be a fairly major problem. Once you start to see the benefits of having a hood on your lens, you won’t see them as a useless waste of space, but essential components of your camera kit.

I always use my lens hoods for portraits. I never know when I will be shooting a backlit scene, and if it happens, it’s good to have the hood to shade the lens.

One thing I have realized over the years is that you need to be prepared to meet the demands of whatever situation you are photographing. Few things are more frustrating than realizing you messed up a picture because of something you could have easily solved with a little pre-planning.

Lens hoods can indeed be a little awkward. However, it’s better to have one on your lens than realize afterward that many shots appear hazy and poorly-lit because you didn’t shade your lens properly.

Lens hoods are particularly useful when shooting into the sun.

Additional benefits

Aside from protecting your pictures from harsh light, lens hoods can physically protect your camera gear too. This is one of the reasons I leave mine on at all times since I often bump and bang my camera. Having a hood protruding from your lens means it will absorb the brunt of most impacts.

If it does get broken, it’s far cheaper to replace than your lens.

After years of use, my lens hoods are full of scratches and scuffs. I’d rather have these easily-replaceable plastic parts bear the brunt of any impacts instead of my actual camera lenses!

I try to be careful with my camera gear and I don’t intentionally abuse it, and I think the same is true of most photographers. But despite my best efforts, accidents certainly can happen. In the normal course of a photoshoot, my camera gets picked up, set down, bounced around, tossed into a bag, put in the trunk of my car, used, and maybe even abused just a little.

A protruding plastic ring isn’t going to save my camera if it gets run over by a dump truck, but it has helped avoid countless bumps and bruises over the years. Is it inconvenient to have the hood always sticking out of my lens? A little, but it’s a lot less inconvenient than having to buy new gear!

I had to follow this cat for a little while and practically lay flat on the ground, to get this shot. Having a hood on my zoom lens was a little extra peace of mind knowing that it wasn’t going to get scratched or dinged in the process.

If you do feel like your lens hood is a little too much to deal with, most of them have a simple solution. Reverse the hood and screw it on your lens backward. This might cover some of the knobs and switches on your lens, but it will keep the hood handy while simultaneously storing it in a convenient and easy-to-access location.

You can attach most lens hoods backward for easy storage. This helps protect the barrel of your lens but can leave some controls covered up.

Drawbacks

There are a couple things to note about lens hoods that could be a factor in helping you decide whether to use them. The first and most important issue involves vignetting. Some lenses, particularly wide-angle lenses, can result in photos with darker corners with the lens hood attached. This isn’t a huge issue and can often be fixed on your computer, especially if you shoot in RAW, but it is something to keep in mind.

Additionally, there’s no getting around the fact that the added length of a lens with a hood attached can be inconvenient. This is especially noticeable on telephoto lenses and it can be annoying if you’re not used to it.

My solution has been to treat the hood as a normal part of any lens in my kit. If it means I need to find a larger camera bag or be a little uncomfortable shooting in tight spaces, so be it. For me, the tradeoff is worth it, but your opinion might be different. Regardless, it is something to keep in mind.

Hoods on telephoto lenses can stick out quite far, but I have just come to accept this as a normal part of my kit. I don’t see it as an inconvenience in the same way that I don’t treat a seat belt in my car as an inconvenience.

Conclusion

Despite a few downsides, lens hoods can be an important part of your camera collection. I recommend using one at all times, even if you’re not entirely sure you will need it. I have found myself in more than a few frustrating situations where I know I would have gotten the shot if only I had a lens hood. As such, I rarely take them off my lenses now.

What about you? Do you use lens hoods, or have you learned to live without them? What other advantages or disadvantages do they have that I might have missed? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

The post Lens Hoods: What Are They Really For, and Do You Need Them? appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.

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[Photography] Canon Reveals the RF 70-200mm f/2.8L and the RF 85mm f/1.2L DS Lenses

The post Canon Reveals the RF 70-200mm f/2.8L and the RF 85mm f/1.2L DS Lenses appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

 

Canon has announced two new lenses for its mirrorless lineup:

The RF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM and the RF 85mm f/1.2L USM DS.

Let’s take a closer look:

The Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8L Lens

The Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8L offers a classic focal length that’s useful for pretty much everything.

You’ll find a 70-200mm in practically every landscape photographer’s bag for those tight shots that require a longer focal length. Portrait photographers like 70-200mm lenses for their headshot capabilities. Sports photographers love the focal length for powerful action shots. And event photographers appreciate the way a fast 70-200mm zoom lets them shoot without getting in the way.

Up until now, Canon hasn’t produced a lens in this focal length range, unless you count the RF 24-240mm, which is nowhere near as fast as the RF 70-200mm f/2.8L, nor does it have the ‘L’ lens designation. Therefore, many of Canon’s serious mirrorless shooters will jump at the chance to add such a powerful lens to their bags.

Note that the RF 70-200mm f/2.8L seems specially designed for low-light shooters: A combination of an ultra-wide f/2.8 aperture and Canon’s image stabilization technology makes this a formidable piece of kit for any low-light shooting scenario.

The Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8L will debut in November 2019 for $2699 USD.

The Canon RF 85mm f/1.2L USM DS Lens

Canon already offers an RF 85mm f/1.2L lens, so what makes this lens stand apart?

The new RF 85mm lens is designed with a brand new DS coating, known as Defocus Smoothing. The DS coating promises a smoother bokeh effect when shooting at wide apertures by darkening the edges of lens elements. While this serves to create a beautiful background quality, it also decreases light transmittance, so you do lose a bit of the light-gathering capabilities that you generally expect from an f/1.2 lens.

That said, the RF 85mm f/1.2L DS is bound to be appreciated by portrait photographers. With the DS coating, you’ll be able to capture some of the creamiest bokeh you’ve ever seen, while the f/1.2 aperture is perfect for creating a beautiful shallow depth-of-field look.

The Canon RF 85mm f/1.2L USM DS will debut in December 2019 for $2999 USD.

Do these lenses excite you? Will you add them to your line-up? Share with us in the comments below.

The post Canon Reveals the RF 70-200mm f/2.8L and the RF 85mm f/1.2L DS Lenses appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

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[Photography] Set Up Your Own Cloud System and Avoid Using Commercial Services

The post Set Up Your Own Cloud System and Avoid Using Commercial Services appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.

If you’re anything like me, you have taken way more photos than you can access at any given time, especially if you’re away from your home system. In this article, I’ll show you why you should set up your own cloud system so you can access your image files all the time, and avoid monthly fees with commercial providers.

Image storage

For most of us, home is where we maintain massive drives full of images, both edited and unedited. Most of which are only loosely cataloged or organized too. When I need to find a particular photo, I perform a pretty detailed metadata-based search spread over my multi-drive setup.

The operation is neither efficient nor pretty.

Particularly when the photo I’m looking for was taken years ago and could be anywhere on my system. It’s far from the tidy professional setup I would like it to be. I’ve been adding to this collection daily since the mid-1980s.

Now multiply this dilemma by being away from home much of my life, armed only with a laptop and maybe a thumb drive or small USB pocket drive. If I haven’t uploaded all my images to one of several cloud storage systems I use, this exercise is over before it starts.

Even if I can access my desktop system, the chances are slim that all those pesky permissions doorstops will let me search all my drives remotely.

Hard-drive mania. Repaving the parking lot

Recently, I counted more than a dozen hard drive carcasses stacked on shelves in my home office.

They have served as photo and file storage depots over the years. Some contain images taken twenty years ago that I didn’t transfer to my newest, latest, largest storage device.

There are some great images that I simply haven’t had the time to weed through and sort out. It’s all pretty discouraging.

For those files I have stored online, many times I have to “qualify” them with a password often deemed incorrect (aargh!). Perhaps I’m simply getting older, but there are too many passwords for too many storage sources for this to be fun anymore.

Frustration and anxiety sets in every time I leave the house with my laptop in hand. I know I’ll need to get to something that I won’t be able to access.

Two months ago, I faced the recurring problem of needing more file storage space. What to do? Yet another even larger hard drive? More online parking space? Where does this cycle end?

Flying the friendly skies

This time I took the time to seriously investigate the commercial cloud systems available.

If you think you’re not using cloud storage, think again.

If you have an Adobe account, you are a member of the Creative Cloud. If you are a Mac user, you have an iCloud account. If you are on Google, you probably are a member of Google cloud. Most likely, you use Dropbox – yet another cloud system.

All these systems provide file access from remote locations, but you certainly don’t have all your files on a single cloud.

While these clouds are wonderful, to some extent, there’s a significant downside to each. There’s also a lot of common problems with each. The restrictions, privacy, cost, access, limitations, and vulnerability involved with each is significant when all the facts are in.

Enter the personal cloud system

What I have discovered is the surprise upside of installing my own personal NAS (network-attached storage) system, which is basically a full access file server.

A NAS is a standalone Linux or Windows processor (computer operating system) acting as a full-service librarian attached to host one or more hefty hard drives and providing a significant variety of server services. Each server is available only those to whom the server’s owner (typically known as Admin) gives permission, and accessible from virtually everywhere around the globe.

You can configure each personal multi-drive cloud server as either a single massive drive system or as one of several RAID configurations. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives and consists of two identical hard drives recording mirrored copies of your files. Each drive stores identical backups for near-bulletproof security.

These NAS RAID arrays provide from two to twelve terabytes of online storage and backup.

Cloudy skies and bumpy rides

But you should take great care to investigate ALL customer reviews of the various private cloud systems available.

Read beyond the marketing talking points and glitzy advertising and read the comments of current users.

The technology is proven, but not all products are quite as user-friendly as they seem. Lower-priced units sometimes indicate entry-level and basic features. Also, sometimes, the lower price indicates a lesser-quality product.

You can’t judge either books or NAS systems by their appearance OR brand popularity.

The system I originally purchased was manufactured by a highly-rated and respected hard drive company. It consisted of two four-terabyte drives set up as a RAID type 1 system that provided immediate access to virtually all my photos, videos, music, and files.

The server worked wonderfully, as long as I was on my home WiFi network. However, when I attempted to set up access away from home, some air escaped from the balloon. This lack of remote access led to me renaming my server “Fogbank” in protest.

After re-reading, reinstalling, and re-configuring the system as best as I could understand the ambiguous installation instructions, I first contacted customer support via email. Detailed explanations of my failed attempts were responded to by references to endless generic PDF documents in their “knowledge base” and forum discussions.

Unfortunately, my phone calls were handled by friendly technicians whose English was so challenged that I simply could not get a direct answer to my questions.

Multiple attempts to put this Humpty-Dumpty server back together failed over and over. Further reading on the company’s forums revealed hundreds of other frustrated users who had given up on the hardware. I will not name the product or the manufacturer. Instead, I’ll just encourage you to do your diligence and read the reviews of actual users before you buy.

Clear skies ahead

I believe totally in both the concept and the technology of NAS personal cloud servers and have since purchased a quality, value-based product. I’ve spent a bit more than I did for my initial system, but I am rewarded with the amazing freedom and power behind this amazing technology.

I now enjoy speedy access to all files in my vast image library. My personal cloud server system provides file sharing and syncing, and personal multimedia services for streaming video and TV shows. It has a bulletproof backup, home security system monitoring, and many more amazing features.

I can even upload images directly from a photo session (through the camera’s WiFi) to my personal server – no waiting to get home!

And best of all, this secure server system is fee-free. Once you own the equipment, your only cost is Internet access. If you have an Internet account, you’re good to go. Monthly fees and service restrictions are only distant memories.

You no longer have to rent the rare air on someone else’s cloud. You can collaborate with other users and photo club members, share and download huge files via FTP, all while being entertained. And they actually call this work!

Check into these devices, ask a lot of questions, and open up a whole new communications experience for as little as a $500 investment.

Have you set up your own personal cloud system? Share your thoughts on the process with us below!

The post Set Up Your Own Cloud System and Avoid Using Commercial Services appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.

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[Photography] New Loupedeck Creative Tool: Smoother Editing for Creative Professionals

The post New Loupedeck Creative Tool: Smoother Editing for Creative Professionals appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

Do you ever feel like you want more control over your photo editing?

If so, you’re in luck.

Because Loupedeck has just launched one of the most innovative editing products out there: a console that’s designed to speed up your editing workflow and give you a smooth editing experience.

It’s called the Loupedeck Creative Tool, and it’s truly unique.

How exactly does it work?

The Creative Tool is a photo editing console. It hooks up to your photo editing program of choice, and allows you to use many buttons, touchscreens, and more to achieve the photo editing workflow that you desire.

Note that the Creative Tool itself doesn’t work in place of a computer and monitor. Instead, it works alongside your computer to provide an efficient editing experience like the Loupedeck+, another Loupedeck product.

Currently, the Creative Tool is compatible with Adobe Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Ableton Live, Adobe Illustrator, and Final Cut Pro X. The company promises to integrate Autodesk Fusion 360 before the year is out, and you can certainly expect additional compatible programs as Loupedeck update the Creative Tool.

Here’s a video explaining how the product works with Lightroom Classic:

Who’s it for?

Now, while the Loupedeck Creative Tool seems like an intriguing option, who should actually consider the product?

First, I’d recommend beginner photographers stay away from the Loupedeck Creative Tool. It’s a lot to handle, and doesn’t offer much benefit to anyone who doesn’t have a consistent editing workflow and very specific needs.

On the other hand, for more serious photographers (including professionals), the Loupedeck is a great choice. You’ll use the Creative Tool to enhance your editing. And it’ll enable you to edit faster without compromising quality.

As explained by the Loupedeck CEO:

The rise in popularity of professional editing within the digital workspace has sparked a new generation of creative professionals who require absolute precision, versatility, portability and endless customization possibilities in the tools they use, which was considered in the design and development of the Loupedeck Creative Tool.

If you’re one of these serious creative professionals, then you should seriously consider the Loupedeck Creative Tool. It’s available for preorder on B&H Photo Video, and the company will begin shipping on November 11th.

Now I’d like to know your thoughts:

Would you be interested in a product like the Loupedeck Creative Tool? Are you looking for increased customization in your editing?

Let me know in the comments!

The post New Loupedeck Creative Tool: Smoother Editing for Creative Professionals appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

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