Oh Red, how I want you…

I’ve been hovering and waiting, and following the rumours and the forums, and literally hanging off every word Jim Jannard deems us mere mortals worthy of hearing (too over the top perhaps? hmmm…). I’ve been a follower of Red Cameras for years – the original Red One has been picked up by film-makers like Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) and other heavy hitting Hollywood producers. I won’t got into the tech here, but when a camera nut like Jim (who is better know as being the founder of Oakley) decides he wants to spend some of his fortune building a camera like no other, he certainly doesn’t hold back!!

But I digress – it is not Red One or even the new Epic sensors that I’m really interested in (although, if you want to see sensor insanity, check out the Epic 617 sensor, coming in at a very physical 168x56mm – yes, actual size!). My interest lies in Scarlet, specifically the Mysterium Monstro FF35 (Full Frame 35mm) – an amazing piece of kit, you’ll need to read all the specs yourself to fully grasp the shift this kind of tech will make in the photography space. No longer will people think of film and stills as separate – that’s the coolness of DSMC (and we’re already seeing that convergence in the half-hearted attempts by Nikon and Canon to get film quality onto a still body – just try and film a high speed train or car with these new 1080p bodies and then lift stills from the footage, and you’ll see why I say “half-hearted”).

But I digress – Red crushed me today with the early pre-release pricing and release schedule! The FF35 didn’t even make it onto the release schedule, and the S35 (the sensor below) starts at $US 7000 just for the “brain”. By the time the rest of the camera is added (viewfinder, storage, power, monitor, triggers, lenses), it’s suddenly in the league of the ‘Blads and less in the world of the Canons and Nikons… Gizmodo was the first to shatter my hopes and dreams…

I saw another rumour too – word on the street is that when the FF35 is finally released (in at least 3 years, based on their prior release schedules), it could have a starting price of $US 28,800!! Yikes!!

You can read more on the Red User Forums where you can find the latest news, updates, and lamentations…

iPhone professionals

Apparently the iPhone is here to stay – I didn’t think it would last, yet here we are! OK, I’m lying, I was on the band wagon just after the grey market importers, and just before the Telco’s signed on. I’ve been extremely happy with my iPhone – it makes calls, it has calendar entries, I can even play a few games!! I’m heavily into pretty much everything tech, but I certainly never viewed my iPhone as being any more than a converged organiser – this lack of lateral thinking is probably why I’m not rich or famous, or doing new and cool things in photography!

Check these out – there are now HEAPS of people doing amazing things with converged devices (including iPhones):
Koichi Mitsui, a Japanese Pro photographer, is into shooting with the iPhone 3GS and getting great results!
Chase Jarvis got on board the iPhone so early he had time to build an app and establish a thriving community full of amazing images!
Greg Schmigel is right into the iPhone and produces some great work
Bhautik Joshi thought the iPhone had potential if only it had a better lens (madness!)

There are even dedicated websites, including iPhone Photography, iPhonephoto.us and the Flickr iPhone group among others! And plenty of resource sites as well, just Google for it

Dusk Moth Designs

Another great day spent with the crew from Dusk Moth Designs – great clothes, great people, always a top day for me!!

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Tilt shift Disney amazement

I know there are PS filters to achieve this look, but there’s something uber cool about some genuine tilt-shift lens action! For those of you not familiar with these lenses, tilt-shift lenses are realistically intended to be a corrective lens – architecture photographers often use them to straighten the edges of buildings so it doesn’t look like the walls are curved (like you get if you use a wide-angle to shoot a very tall building like the Empire State).

There’s also an excellent article in the tech behind tilt-shift on photo.net

However, tilt-shift lenses also have a pretty cool side effect – it’s easy to get an extremely shallow depth of field that is shaped along a plane!! What does this mean? Well, instead of a shallow DoF you get with a normal lens (which is a circle at the centre of the lens, and the bokeh appears more pronounced as you move further away from the centre to the outer edges), tilt-shifts have a horizontal or vertical DoF plane – which results in some amazing effects!!

A long explanation I know, but tilt-shift is the original method used to turn big, well known city scapes into images that look like model railroad miniatures. And finally one photographer has gone one further, and made some stop motion videos of Florida Disney World.

Check the full article here and watch the video too!!

I’ll take 3…

Just wanted to let everyone know I won’t be posting for a while – I’m off to be first in the queue to get my hands on a new, cheap gigapixel camera!! You’ll find me waiting outside my local computer store – that’s where you get cheap flash memory, right?

This is a really interesting article that hints at the possibilities in the future world of photography!! Megapixel wars? Gone!! Instead, everyone will have cheap, amazing capability in their hands – and suddenly, it will be the good photographers (or at least, those with good business models) who will survive!!

This is a very interesting (tech) read, check it out!

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