There's no point to introduce Industrial Light & Magic, one of the leaders in the field of visual effects. ILM is well-known for producing cutting edge visual effects work for many great feature films and the studio has been awarded 15 Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects and 24 Scientific and Technical Achievement Awards by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And we're just scratching the surface. But what's quite interesting is that the company just revealed the promotion of John Knoll to Chief Creative Officer of the company. It is worth mentioning that Knoll, who joined the company in 1986, is not only a renowned Visual Effects Supervisor (he worked, among others, on the Star Wars prequels), but also one of the two brothers who created Adobe Photoshop! Here's an excerpt of a very interesting article on this matter, published many years ago by Photoshop News:

"In the summer of 1988, John thought they might have the basis of a commercially viable product. Thomas was reluctant: “Do you have any idea how much work it is to write a commercial application?” he asked John. But with his naive optimism, John convinced Thomas it would be worth the effort. “I’ll figure out how to make money with this,” he told his brother. Well, John was right, but so was Thomas. It did take a lot of work.

Thomas changed the name of their software several times. Each time he found one he liked, it had already been taken. ImagePro, and even PhotoHut were considered. Then, during a program demo, he confided to someone that he was having problems naming the program. The confidant suggested PhotoShop, and that became the program’s working name.

John started shopping around for a company to invest in Photoshop. Thomas remained in Ann Arbor, Michigan, fine-tuning the program, while John traveled all over Silicon Valley giving program demos including a company named Adobe Systems, Inc. Russell Brown, Adobe’s primary art director, was blown away by the program. He had just signed an NDA disclosure agreement with Letraset, to view their new image-editing program, ColorStudio. He was convinced that Photoshop was better. Timing is everything. With a great deal of enthusiasm, Adobe decided to buy the license to distribute Photoshop."

If you want to read the whole story, follow this link - you won't be disappointed!

Anyway let's move back to ILM. In 1996 Knoll founded the Rebel (Mac) Unit at ILM, a creative incubator for fine artists and software developers to define working methodologies and advance the state of the art. This lead to the development of a variety of breakthrough techniques including some of the earliest examples of digital compositing for The Abyss, a tool to recreate optical lens flares in the digital realm first used on Hook and a host of advanced digital camera projection techniques used on such films as Mission Impossible, Star Trek: First Contact and many others.

In 2012 Knoll was elected to the Academy’s Board of Governors representing the visual effects branch and is a four-time Academy Award nominee. In 2007 he won both the Oscar and the BAFTA for Best Visual Effects for his work on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Source: http://photoshopnews.com | http://www.ilm.com

Adorama, one of the world’s leading photography, imaging, video and electronics retailer is now offering a smart and versatile kit: Flashpoint 180 Monolight Kit. This anytime, anywhere kit will allow you to set up the perfect lighting conditions for shooting.

Here’s the description of the kit provided by Adorama:

Using two readily available NP-F960 batteries for power which provide up to 700 flashes at a full 180w/s the Flashpoint 180T gives you fine control for your lighting needs with its step less power output control over a 5 stop range. The Bowens compatible relector mount allows for the use of advanced light modifiers such as the Adorama 21" Beauty Dish and via the Flashpoint Bowens Speed Ring Adapter soft boxes and other light modifiers from manufacturers such as Flashpoint, Chimera and many others.

The kit includes:
• Flashpoint 180 Mono Light w/ Reflector
• Batteries & Charger
• Small Umbrella
• Cords
• Carrying Bag-Handle

Source: http://www.photographyblog.com/

What you’re about to see below is like a car crash test with real people instead of dummies inside. Dropping a precious piece of equipment like a DSLR may be what you see in your worst dreams. Now, why would anybody do that on purpose? Well, that’s called a paint it pink, light it on fire and see what happens approach. The video below shows you Neil Gershman, a B&H employee, with an accompanying photographer estimating the damages of both cameras after a four foot fall.

Judging a camera’s sturdiness on the basis of one fall seems somewhat improper, but well, there you go. Even though the true purpose of conducting this test remains a mystery to me, since it has actually been made, here are its results:

Nikon D5200:
- Damage to lens: rendered unusable
- Damage to body
Canon T5i:
- Damage to lens: rendered unusable

After the test, the lenses were replaced, and both cameras worked just fine. Conclusions? Try not to drop your DSLR.

Source: http://petapixel.com

For some time already Magic Lantern RAW videos shot with Canon 5D Mk III are popping up on every video and photography blogs causing, undoubtedly well-deserved, awe. Those videos received a lot of positive feedback and the work of Magic Lantern team deserves some big thumbs up. However, it seems that the time to ask some questions about the real usefulness of the hack has come. That question was raised by Dan Chung, and here are some of the conclusions he made.

First of all, he admits that the quality of such videos are substantially better, but the hack is more of an opportunity for those who already have Canon 5D Mk III, rather than the reason to buy one.

You don’t have to run the hack the whole time, so if you are a 5D shooter then it is a useful trick to have that doesn’t add any weight to your kit bag.

According to him, there is no chance that 5D RAW can replace cameras like the C300, F3, F5 or FS700.

A 5D mkIII shooting 1080P RAW will give you only a few minutes of recording time on a 64GB card (...) For the 5D mkIII hack to record 1080P RAW requires a super fast CF card to prevent dropped frames (...). Even with the fastest cards there are reports of occasional recording and image errors.

Although Chang believes in the bright future of RAW videos, he admits that he has never been asked by any of his clients for image of a better quality than compressed HD. He also suggests that before RAW videos have some commercial utility a lot of improvement needs to be done concerning recording, storage and post-production.

Changs says:
Right now I will only shoot RAW if I need the best possible image quality or need the extra latitude for a specific shot that would be hard to expose for any other way. Just what sort of latitude RAW on the 5D mkIII buys you is well demonstrated in this video by Riky Johnson:

To find out more check out his blog.

Source: http://www.newsshooter.com

Matthew Allard of the News Shooter posted a video review of the Rode SmartLav. We all know how important the sound is and if you record many interviews and own and iPhone, this mic can be your perfect choice! Why? Because this omnidirectional lavalier microphone, when combined with the Rode Rec app (you can grab your copy here), creates a virtual field recorder! As simple as that! The mic uses a standard TRRS connection, which plugs directly into your smartphone or tablet's headset input, so its really easy to set-up. It is also compatible with all iPhones, iPads and iPods running on iOS 5.1 or later, however using an iPad as a field recorder might not be the best idea ever;). Oh, the mic is compatible with Android devices as well (for the full list head over to this site).
 

As for the app it's pretty cool as it allows you to output your recordings in multiple formats including WAV, AIFF, AAC, Apple Lossless, FLAC and more and it features real-time waveforms, a suite of non-linear editing capabilities and nice EQ and gain controls and it even allows you to direct publish to SoundCloud and Dropbox or to upload the files to your FTP server. The only downside is the fact that you need to buy the app for $5.99 - the mic costs around $60.00, so really, the app could be distributed for free. On the other hand the mic gets mostly positive reviews, however I came across one with some interesting remarks (written by customer & video editor Ben McGinley):

"The audio on its own leaves more to be desired. For someone doing more than screenshot tutorials, the audio consistently (after tests) needs editing. The bass is very heavy and over powers the treble very notably. This is why I opted to supplement a camera-mounted boom to pickup some treble for mixing. The SmartLav is also fussy in that you need to be specific and tactical about how close you clip the mic on your subject. If you go too close, the audio clips, but if you clip it too far it is quickly susceptible to all background noise. The space between close and far is the matter of a few inches. Usually I mix audio with music so this is less of a problem; however, for a REAL pro job and not a run-and-gun budget job, obviously I'm going to put the money into a sound op with pro gear. But that's not the point of this mic. It's supposed to be better than a camera's built-in mic - and it is."

But oh well, let's not expect too much from a mic for $60.

And what about Matt and his opinion?

"One other thing to bear in mind when using this setup is that there is no way to monitor the audio when it is on your subject. Make sure your levels are set correctly and that there is no clothing rustle or excess wind noise before you start recording.

So the smartLav is a great solution both for budget minded shooters and also for shooters on bigger budgets who want the ability to quickly mic up additional subjects."

Make sure to watch the video for all the tasty details!

Source: http://www.newsshooter.com | http://www.bhphotovideo.com