Shutters Inc

This week, could jpeg images soon have DRM embedded to prevent unauthorised use? How do you feel about that? Reg told us about Toshiba selling its sensor manufacturing division to Sony for $165M. Sleazy Sydney-based hands-on 'fashion designer' gets his just desserts, 15 'firsts' in photography, plus some images of the earth from high altitude, Adam told us about the photographers stooping to pretty low-levels for their eagle shots, Go Pro are bringing out their own branded drone, the shooting has started in the wild west of drones and personal air space, and naturally, the insurance companies want to protect your investment for you, and by 'protect', we mean gouge you for some more insurance premiums. Could this have something to do with Canon's 'no-show'at the recent Digital Show in Melbourne? Auto mechanics recreate classic renaissance paintings in this brilliant portfolio, Pocket Wizard comes out with the Plus VI with integrated hot-shoe, where do we draw the line on the potential uses for flags in photography? This guy knows how to make using flash difficult and boring, all while missing the desired outcome! And Chase Jarvis has some tips on preventing your gear from falling out of your bag. The "pass the camera - project #1" book is now available on Blurb, but to be honest, the price is crazy steep. If the price doesn't bother you, go for it. If you'd prefer a cheaper option, I'm going to create a smaller version (7" x 7") this week, and will post details when that one is available for purchase. Comments will be closed after 30 days. Love the podcast? Want to share the love... and keep the servers running? Feel free to make a small donation through PayPal. All contributions gratefully received!

This week, Glynn gives us the run down of the Digital Show, at which neither Sony, Panasonic, or Canon were in attendance. He was only happy with one image he shot for the whole weekend. We were going to discuss a portfolio of images that Carl sent in, but somehow, I managed to skip it. Apologies Carl. I really liked it, too! Adam brought us the story of the photographer who had his image misappropriated by ISIS, and Amazon's new Snowball... terabytes-a-plenty delivered to your door. Reg and Adam both told us about Kono's new 6ISO film. Erin alerted us to Janet Jackson's complete and utter misunderstanding of the value of social media, Reg told us about the story on image manipulation in photojournalism, and about the possibility of JPEG images soon having DRM. Glynn was featured on the Ted's Camera Store's website. The Leica Store in Taipei put an image on their website of one of Glynn's customers. What happens when you ask 12 photographers to work for free? Western Digital announces that it's buying SanDisk. In the continuing tradition of artists limiting the use of photos of their performances, Glynn brought us the story of the newspaper who sent their cartoonist to a Foo Fighters concert. And we forgot to mention the Pass The Camera project! The photobook is laid up, but when I went to export it, InDesign told me the images were all low resolution! And when I checked, so they were. Grr. So, Glynn is sending me the neg strip, I'll get them re-scanned, and then I can simply replace the low res images with the high res versions. Then we can get the book uploaded to Blurb. Hopefully, some progress to report next week. Comments will be closed after 30 days. Love the podcast? Want to share the love... and keep the servers running? Feel free to make a small donation through PayPal. All contributions gratefully received!

This week, a potential breakthrough for low-light photography, Sony to spin off its sensor division, dpreview announces its awards for 2015, Carl chimed in on the educational system/image ownership quandry, as well as sending us a link to this video on some of the new features in Adobe's Photoshop Fix for iOS, Reg Vardy told us about this awesome little tripod on kickstarter... and for when the kickstarter campaign is over, here's the home site, Malcolm's gorgeous Northern Lights image that Glynn mentioned, Adobe throws the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, but at least apologies for it, Steve Peters brought us the B+H scandal, Adam linked us to a video of war photojournalism 2008-style, Glynn got a chuckle out of this site which highlights some truly disastrous kickstarter campaigns, like.... Travel Europe, Barak/Marijuana, Quadcopter, and emoji. Wouldn't you just love to buy an old photo in a junk shop for $2, only to find out it could be worth $5 million? Sony's Rx1R2... basically, an a7rii with a user-switchable built-in low pass filter. Noice! And finally, from the "people we can't stand, 'cause they're so awesome" folder... sunset selfies. Comments will be closed after 30 days. Love the podcast? Want to share the love... and keep the servers running? Feel free to make a small donation through PayPal. All contributions gratefully received!

This week, Sony has a new patent in the works which could mean even faster focusing for mirrorless cameras, Adam told us about the school which is now making its students sign work contracts before allowing them to use school camera equipment, the rapper busted for stealing someone else's photo to use on one of his posters, a reminder once again of why we should have 3 copies of our images, and that famous iceberg composite image and just how much it has earned for its creator. Glynn likes the idea of the Camera Restricta, which won't let you take cliche photos, and the NFL pro-photographer who covered a game with nothing more than an iPhone 6S. Or how about the half hour TV show shot completely with an iphone? Need to shoot a selfie with your dog? You need poochselfie! Like you even needed to be told. :) But if you want to shoot the moon, you need Tiny Mos. How destroying a lens made for new creative opportunities, PETA suing on behalf of the selfie-ape, and NASA releases hundreds of shots from the moon never seen before. Comments will be closed after 30 days. Love the podcast? Want to share the love... and keep the servers running? Feel free to make a small donation through PayPal. All contributions gratefully received!

This week, Glynn is back from Vietnam (where he managed to produce some really average video... stick to taking photos, mate!)... while Malcolm continues on with ANOTHER tour there! We've got some awesome selfies by a 22 year old Hungarian photographer, as predicted, Sony has just announced the a7sii, although I'm not as excited by it as I had hoped to be (pretty sure it'll still be an awesome beast, though), Rob Coates caught a story about a Brisbane photographer who has Parkinson's AND shoots long exposures hand-held, with some very interesting results. Carl is pretty impressed with the Peak Designs CaptureLens (but I have to say, I'm not seeing the attraction, myself), Adam brought us the story of some dodgy photography dealings here in Australia, and one about some iconic photographers who posed for baseball card portraits. Comments will be closed after 30 days. Love the podcast? Want to share the love... and keep the servers running? Feel free to make a small donation through PayPal. All contributions gratefully received!

This week, Sony announces their community/portal, alphauniverse, I came across this trippy portfolio of images which Glynn reckons would look very 70's if they were printed on black velvet (gotta agree with him, there), Tamron unveils two new primes, but Glynn questions (quite rightly, IMHO) the sense of having them so close in focal length, Adam has given up on us, but on his way out the door left us with this comic from What the duck, building an ultra violet flash for black light photography, and this 1984 Hasselblad photography manual for astronauts. Glynn reminded us of the annual "5 Day Deal" (which is happening this coming week). Should we bother with UV filters or not? This guy has something to say on that matter. There's the Holga Digital camera, ready to unseat your D810, A7Rii and 5Diii any day now! Glynn's maturity naturally drew him to this Super Drone video. He also came across six AMAZING Bird pics ("finally one I can compete with!"), Lastolite have released some new bokeh-rich backgrounds, Photography going to the lowest bidder, the world's most powerful digital camera will see more galaxies than there are people on planet earth, a 50 camera light painting, plus Glynn's two new Tamron videos ( 01 | 02 ). Also, just a reminder that there will be no podcast for the next couple of weeks while Glynn and Malcolm (Spotlight on Asia) Fackender are galavanting around Vietnam. And for the day this podcast comes out... Happy Father's Day to all the Dads (in Australia, at least. Not sure if Father's Day is the same day worldwide). Comments will be closed after 30 days. Love the podcast? Want to share the love... and keep the servers running? Feel free to make a small donation through PayPal. All contributions gratefully received!

This week, a few video-related stories, including the one about the 'model' (she's actually a freediver) who held her breath (whilst tied up underwater!) for 4 minutes, for a single-camera-move music video, Jimmy Nelson (the brains and shooter behind the "Before They Pass Away" series) put together this video of the tribes on Tanna, an island in Vanuatu. Tanna is home to Mount Yassur, the volcano I visited in 2006. There's the 'QuickRelease One' from Edelkrone, which positions itself as the quick release system to rule them all, and when you just want to kill some hours looking at more awesome photos ('cause flickr, 500px and google plus clearly aren't enough!), there's this site. By the way, while we're talking about 500px and flickr, anyone else noticed how eerily similar they look? Carl found this video on youtube about shooting tethered to an ipad with LRCC, Glynn likes the look of Pallette, a loupe-like colour-reading-gadget. I'm sure there's a more technical name for it, but you know how it is... Glynn is the tech-head on this podcast! :) He also found this video about a group of students who went out to shoot the Perseid meteor shower. Have you dropped some serious coin on photo gear and later regretted the decision? Seems you're not the only one. And the comments are worth a read, too. In the vein of last week's portfolio that merged vintage images with surreal surroundings, Glynn came across this lot, which uses 1900’s Detroit in modern ruins. We have just one question. WHY? Adobe wants us to stop using "photoshopped", "photoshopping", et al as verbs and adjectives. Glynn also found this stunning collection of macro-dioramas. From the "too much time on his hands" book, this Japanese man created one of these every day for 5 years!! Anf Glynn discusses his plans for the remainder of the year. I'm seriously starting to think he wants to get out of doing this podcast! :) Comments will be closed after 30 days. Love the podcast? Want to share the love... and keep the servers running? Feel free to make a small donation through PayPal. All contributions gratefully received!

This week, Sydney-siders have an opportunity to learn shooting HD video on their DSLR's at a two day workshop next weekend at the Australain Film Television and Radio School. Carl shared this feel good story about the winner of a Net Geo traveller photo contest.... or something like that. Don't ask ME for the story! I have no idea. Rebecca Dunstall shared this on Facebook, and I thought it was worth sharing here. A photographer took a bunch of old b+w photos and gave them a new lease on life. Adam alerted us to an MIT project that's aiming to produce a camera which will never overexpose an image, plus here's a second link, and to the story of the guy who developed the first digital camera whilst working at Kodak. And in true stoicism (brownie points if you know where I picked THAT word up from this week), his bosses didn't want a bar of it. “Print had been with us for over 100 years, no one was complaining about prints, they were very inexpensive, and so why would anyone want to look at their picture on a television set?” Glynn has spent the week playing with new gear. His new Tamron lenses (one of which has just been awarded lens of the year) produced these two images [ 01 | 02 } His international events are selling out fast, and he'll be launching another one soon! Pesky drones over your airspace? Deal with them! But this one looks bigger! But only shoots images, not drones. 10 portraits at different focal lengths, the self portrait with a meteorite. Need a bluetooth iPhone shutter release? Perhaps you'd like one shaped like a roll of film, or perhaps a twin lens reflex? The Samsung 16TB SSD, and in the "why didn't someone do this sooner" category, dpreview has the story about PixBuf – social photo sharing made easier. Comments will be closed after 30 days. Love the podcast? Want to share the love... and keep the servers running? Feel free to make a small donation through PayPal. All contributions gratefully received!

This week, congratulations to Mike Hollman for picking up ANOTHER 10 nods at this years NZIPP Awards, the crazy stuff you can see with an 83x optical zoom, Sony kicking some on the dpreview top 10, Glynn talks about my last shoot, David Marland reminds Victoria listeners about the Ballarat International Foto Biennale which runs from August 22 - September 20, 2015. Carl sen us to Karen Hutton's blog for her story about how she shed 7lb just by changing camera systems, plus the video of the guy who's using the Pallette system for tactile control of Lightroom and Photoshop. Glynn told us about the Photoshop World 2015 keynote introduction, with its Wayne's World parody, and then we got David DuChemin on Skype for a chat about your photographic 'vision'. Comments will be closed after 30 days. Love the podcast? Want to share the love... and keep the servers running? Feel free to make a small donation through PayPal. All contributions gratefully received!

This week, a great DIY project which will give you a Gorillapod-style monopod that you can wrap around a fence, a tree or whatever, Google and MIT developing an algorithm which will remove reflections from photos, Fuji's new X-T1-IR, a mirrorless infra-red body, through the week, David Foggin asked (on Facebook) about Lightroom workflow. This was my rather lengthy response: Well, obviously everyone has their own preferences, but my workflow looks like this: * import images into LR using YYYY-MM-DD as the folder structure. * I personally don't rename images, as once the metadata is added, everything is searchable. * Next step is metadata. I'll add heirarchial keywords for location (Australia > New South Wales > Central Coast > Gosford, etc). This means that even though when you look at one image, you'll only see "Gosford" as a keyword, that image will be included in the search results if I was to search for "New South Wales". * Add metadata for any people I care about, or may later want to search for. * Depending on what the shoot is, I generally then take a quick run through the images in grid view, but with the thumbnails enlarged so that I can see about 4 rows of 5 images (roughly). This means they're large enough for me to get a reasonable idea straight away about whether or not it's an image I want to spend some time on. * Those I think I want to look at further (for processing), I'll press the 3 key to rate them 3 stars. * Next, I'll hit the "metadata" button and sort by ISO. * I have already created Noise Reduction profiles for my a850 for 800, 1600, 3200 and 6400iso. * If present, I'll select all images shot at 800iso and process with my 800iso NR preset. * Same for any images at the higher iso settings. * Once I've done that, I'll hit the "attribute" button and select '3 stars or greater' (still in grid view). Now, I'm only seeing those images that I've rated. * I generally never shoot in AWB. I always assign correct WB at the time of capture, so I rarely have to alter the WB in post. Sometimes though, the camera gets it wrong. So WB is my first 'development' stage. * Once any/all WB issues are sorted, I'll look at images on an individual basis. * First stop is to review the histogram. Did I nail the exposure? I generally "shoot to the right", so I may have to bring exposure DOWN a smidge. * While doing this, I'm watching the histogram. What I really want to see is my highs extending to the right side of the histogram without clipping, and my shadows extending to the left without clipping either. * If I bring the exposure down so no highlights are off the right hand edge of the histogram, but the shadows AREN'T reaching the left edge, then it's time to INCREASE contrast. * Now it's a balancing act between exposure, contrast, and the 'whites' and 'blacks' sliders. Getting the histogram to extend the full width without clipping. * Next, I'll add a bit of 'clarity' (usually somewhere around 50%). This may push whites or blacks over the edge, so a quick revisit to the "whites" and "blacks" sliders may be in order. * Sometimes, you just know when you shoot that you're going to need to tweak certain areas of an image because the contrast is beyond the camera's ability. In these images, I'll generally hit "K" (adjustment brush) and paint in negative exposure on the highlights. Here, be adventurous with the 'density' control. I'll set the 'exposure' of the brush to be quite severe, the flow at 100%, but back the density off until I get just the right amount of control.

This week, Bruce's Western Digital woes, bridge cameras as travel cameras (I like the look of Sony's RX10 mk11), 8 pros give their advice for survival, a speedlight case with a difference, 20 signs you're doing ok, and the guy who doesn't want a handout. Adam told us about the dodgy website that wants to steal your images, Carl gave us a suggestion for a tripod head, plus pointed us toward a video on using your ipad as a monitor extension for your desktop. A couple of Glynn's images from the week just gone... 01 02 Glynn is interested in Sigma's new 24-35mm zoom, the Apple watch and its uses for photography, Adobe releases the final RAW update for CS6, Intel and Micron have developed a new form of data storage which promises great things, Toyota to release off road truck with gopro mount included, Movietone and Associated press have uploaded half a million minutes of historic video content to youtube, scuba diver find gold, and heaps more! Comments will be closed after 30 days. Love the podcast? Want to share the love... and keep the servers running? Feel free to make a small donation through PayPal. All contributions gratefully received!

This week, Glynn critiques Bruce's images from his recent Borneo holiday. The modified versions (as per Glynn's suggestions) are attached as an image gallery at the end of the this blog post. And while we're on the topic of travel photography, there were a couple of good tips in this post at lightstalking. A shoutout to Craig Wetjen on having his Men's Shed Photography project picked up for a TV segment. "Over the weekend I had a film crew accompany me as I recreated 7 shoots of local men in their sheds, which I have photographed for my book. The filming will be made into seven segments across 8 episodes, that will air as a series on Manspace TV (channel GO!) in November this year" The Digital Show returns to Melbourne 16th-18th October, 2015. Rock up at the door and it'll cost you to get in, but pre-register here for free entry. Glynn usually knows exactly how each image is going to look before he presses the shutter. This image however, was one where he had no idea what he was going to get. Also, Glynn and Malcolm are about to formally announce their third collaborative photo tour, this time to Myanmar (Burma) in July 2016. Here are a couple of examples of what you'll have the opportunity to shoot should you decide to tag along ( 01 | 02 ). And one small item of housekeeping. After this episode is published, I will be changing a setting regarding the RSS feed. Now, all things being equal, this SHOULD NOT affect the listeners. But if for some nasty reason, you DON'T see an episode next Sunday, please sing out! Comments will be closed after 30 days. Love the podcast? Want to share the love... and keep the servers running? Feel free to make a small donation through PayPal. All contributions gratefully received!

This week, we're live from the virtual coffee shop, as promised! Glynn's happy with his new space, plus he's a little bit impressed with these 3 images from a 'one-on-one' day he did with a client, We've got the follow up on Sydney Photographer's Meetup #28, this is the image I "cartoonified" from that shoot, David Marland wrote to say: 1) that he liked Glynn's live critique of my dud dinghy shots from episode #, 2) Glynn's big umbrella has given him G.A.S., and 3) to remind us of Aurora Service, a website that gives you realtime updates on auroral activity. Rob Coates and Adam Davidson both told us about DxO's One, a 20MP sensor that attaches to your iPhone. We're introducing a new feature to Shutters Inc. We want YOUR images to critique. Details in the podcast. For some weird reason, Adobe has decided to hide half the filter plugins in Photoshop CC. If you find yourself scratching your head (as I was for a while!) looking for a plugin you just KNOW exists, but can't seem to locate, go preferences/plugins/, and check 'show all filter gallery groups and names'. Randy got in touch to tell me about his startup, Snapizzi. The idea is that you use small business card-sized cards, each with a unique QR code, to identify customers in event photography. This simplifies the ordering process for your customers. Randy has set up a complimentary account for me, but to be honest, I just don't do that kind of work. If any of our listeners genuinely do this type of work and you'd like to try out the service and report back to us, give me a holler. Details in the podcast. Glynn, in his usual larrikin fashion, completely took the mickey out of QR codes, and sent us off to this flowchart about when to use them. Rob Coates wrote to tell us about Adrian Alford, the pro wedding photographer who shot his own wedding! Like David Marland, Rob was equally impressed with Glynn's live critique on the last episode. It's old news now, but there was Jason Sheldon's response to Taylor Swift, followed up by Taylor's people responding to that. There's the exhibition highlighting the altering of images in photojournalism, Diana from Artsy got in touch about their page dedicated to the Vivian Maier archive, Glynn came across a tiny RC helicopter with VGA camera attached, he also found this story about native ISO vs extended ISO. He also found a 7min short film shot entirely by moonlight, VenusLens hasve brought out a 15mm macro/tilt shift lens which we're both rather excited by, and

This week, at the risk of sounding mildly informative, Glynn does a real time critique of Bruce's crappy dinghy photos. Meanwhile, Bruce is looking forward to heading off to Borneo, and contemplating storage options for photos whilst on the move. Glynn is organising a photo tour to Vietnam for September 2015 (yes, in addition to India in March 2016!), he's loving his new XLite 165cm deep parabolic umbrella, We've got more animals riding on the backs of other animals. Hasselblad is coming out with a mirrorless too, but is it really anything new... or just a rebranded (soon-to-be-superceded) Sony A7R? Trevor Mahlman is a young kid with his heart very much in the stars... and his images are awesome! He just earned a spot on our "people we hate" list. :) Glynn also had a link on his list which we didn't get around to talking about. The page is all in Russian, but from the pictures, I gather it's a story about a building which houses a mothballed Russian knockoff of a U.S.-designed space shuttle. If you're working with models, make sure you have investigated your shoot location thoroughly and are aware of any potential risks to you or your model (or both of you). The phoblographer would like us to believe that some cities are better than others for street photography. Personally, I think you can make images anywhere if you know how to look. I think Glynn just liked this because Melbourne got a mention! And just as Bruce is contemplating storage for travel, Strobist comes up with a story on just that! There's a new Kickstarter project aimed at setting up a lens-sharing-rental kind of business, called (amazingly)... LensShare. And could this be the worst Kickstarter project ever? But wait! There's more! Comments will be closed after 30 days. Love the podcast? Want to share the love... and keep the servers running? Feel free to make a small donation through PayPal. All contributions gratefully received!

This week, in honour of our 300th episode, the show notes are in completely random order! We really know how to live on the edge here at SIP! We've got inspiring photography quotes, volcanic eruption photos, Bruce is pretty fired up over Sony's A7R ii, Canadian camera chain, Blacks, closing its doors, the PocketSkater2... the dolly that fits in your pocket, the Sonder keyboard, with e-ink screens in each key! Adam sent us out to find out how many colours we can see, Glynn thinks this might be the Tric (if the kickstarter campaign gets moving), and he's having a lot of fun with Film Emulator, a free website for real time 'photoshopping' of your images to look like film, plus there's the website that identifies birds in your photos, National Geographic's user-submitted travel photos, the essential Selfie Stick, the guy who photographed Napalm Girl returns to Vietnam armed with an iPhone, the Leica Q, the (NSFW) family portrait photo session, Glynn's photo 'purple haze', the SpaceX video of the rocket falling back to earth, and heaps more!