Last week I received a much awaited package. The contents? Something that Ive been longing to get for a very long time, and after putting money aside here and there for the duration of that time, I finally had the opportunity to invest in some studio strobes.
The decision landed on a pair of Visico Excel VC300 plus stobes, outfitted with a set of softboxes, umbrellas and stands.
Im really excited to finally have the opportunity to get more control over my lighting, and I’m looking forward to be working (hopefully a lot) with these in the time to come.
Yesterday I got together with a couple living in my area for a somewhat spontaneous photoshoot. At the beginning of the shoot we had no plans really. Just rig the equipment up and see what happens.
Here are three of my personal favorites from the shoot:
All three shots used almost the exact same setup. For the middle one I moved the fill light directly in front of the model, and angeled it downwards at her in a 45* angle.
The setup for these was a basic two light setup with fill light coming in from the left using a 90x100cm softbox. The other flash was set up as a ‘kicker’ from the right and slightly behind the models, also with a 90x100cm softbox attached to it. Triggered with a sync cord directly from the camera (Left light) and an optical slave. (Right light)
There’s a lot to learn, and I sure know I learned some lessons during last nights shoot, something that makes me even more motivated to keep on shooting.
I’m already bubbling with ideas for upcoming projects, and I can’t wait to try to realize them. All in good time though. All in good time.
At approximately 11.00 pm today, the eyes of the world’s instant photography enthusiasts were fixed towards a room in an office building in New York city. A long awaited event amongst these ranks of photographers was about to take place.
For those of you still out of the loop, Polaroid announced in 2008 that they were halting production of their widely beloved instant films. Not long after, a core group of former factory workers from the last remaining film production plant came together to form The Impossible Project. Their mission? Nothing less than to save, and in the process reinvent instant film for vintage Polaroid cameras.
Today, they announced no less than 6 brand new films, the first of which to hit the market this week!
The new film is a black and white integral film which comes in two flavors: PX 100 and PX 600. These are Impossible’s own brand of films, and 4 more are on the the way: Two color films and a set of type-600 b&w and color film. According to Impossible, the color films are planned for this summer. PX 100 and 600 will run for $22 and €18 for a pack of 8 exposures.
So, how does it look? Well, the image below speaks for itself, but in my point of view, it looks absolutely timeless, gorgeous and as analogue as you get!
Image © Boris Zuliani / The Impossible Collection.
The official press release, along with other materials such as packaging designs and the Impossible Collection is available for download over at Impossible’s new site. Also, be sure to check out the video they currently have up on the front page!
I guess this means a certain someone has to step up the hunt for an original SX-70 camera. ;)
Today the Impossible became Im Possible.
Lets face it. I’m a film geek. I love relaxing while taking in a good movie, and I get really excited about hearing of new movies long before the premiere date even has been announced. (Max Manus would be a prime example of this)
Like many others I’ve been enjoying the beta version of Voddler lately. I’ve previously written a short blurb about Spotify, so It only seems natural to type a little something something up about this as well.
Voddler can pretty much be summed up as Spotify for movies, but to quote voddler themselves:
With Voddler you can watch movies and TV shows the way you want, anytime. Voddler is easy, legal and available around the clock – with great image and sound quality.
After using it for a little while Im not so sure about the quality bit, but it is legal, easy and available around the clock. Right now the selection of movies feels kind of small, but I would expect this to change when they move out of beta.
The very first thing which struck me when first booting up the application was that it was kind of odd that you couldn’t use your mouse to navigate the GUI. But, when you read why Voddler decided to make it this way, it makes a little more sense. Voddler is designed not only to run on your regular computer, but also on your living room media center setup, provided that you have one… which I for one do not have.
So, apparently, the reason for rendering the mouse unusable was to enable the application to be navigated via a regular infrared remote, which I guess would correspond to the arrow keys on your keyboard.
Clever, but I still don’t get why we just couldn’t have our cake and eat it too, just this once.
And then there’s the issue with a constant flow of communication with Voddler’s servers, even when you’re not using the application. Always sitting there, eating bandwidth, unless you deactivate the voddler service of course. I suspect quite a few will find this to be a huge turnoff. Especially if you’re on a bandwidth quota or have one of those mobile broadband deals.
But it’s not all complaints! Let’s take a closer look at the user interface and features after the jump!
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