Our friend James Weber who when not shooting fashion and beauty, has become a serious Wet Plate photographer. And like every American he too wants things bigger. To achieve that James did a great deal of research and came up with the idea of using an "Indoor Grow Room" as a camera.

check out his full story with more images videos and details here.

This video made the rounds a few years ago and it seems to be making a resurgence once again on several photography & creative blogs. It may be long and the speaker presents his view from the point of a creative at a design company, but it's really worth the time to watch as most of what they talk about will apply to commercial photographers too.

2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me. from San Francisco Creative Mornings on Vimeo.

Our speaker at the March 2011 San Francisco, CreativeMornings (www.creativemornings.com) was Mike Monteiro, Design Director, and co-founder of Mule Design Studio (www.muledesign.com). This event took place on March 25, 2011 and was sponsored by Happy Cog and Typekit (who also hosted the event at their office in the Mission).

Mike's book "Design is a Job" is available from A Book Apart (www.abookapart.com/products/design-is-a-job)

A big giant thank you to Chris Whitmore (www.whitmoreprod.com) for offering to shoot and edit the video. Photos were graciously provided by Rawle Anders (twitter.com/rawle42).

The San Francisco chapter of Creative Mornings is run by Greg Storey (twitter.com/​brilliantcrank).

Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/​SanFrancisco_CM

Another in our series of: Photo Assistant Basics _ Pentax 6x7 120& 220 film loading

Carl Zeiss Lenses - High-end SLR lens Distagon T* 1,4/55

A few years ago I posted a video about the proper way to coil cords to ensure their long life and more importantly ease in packing and storage. I thought that it was time to bring it back to the front of the play list since there seems to be a great many people that are missing this very simple skill.

Now before those people that work on film shoots chime in and tell me that their method of coiling cords and cables which includes a twisting motion during the coiling of the cables, it needs to be pointed out that THERE IS NO ONE RIGHT WAY OF DOING ANYTHING; there are just some methods that are better than others. And the method demonstrated here is the one that I and hundreds of my peers in the commercial photo industry have been using for more than 20+ years.

Below you'll see a selection of my extension cords and that are all 15 years old or more. They have always been coiled using my method so I know that it works.

Capture One Pro 7.0.2 is a service release providing a number of bug fixes, in particular for stability, and camera support. Full release notes are attached:

• Improved stability.
• Canon tethering now supported on OS X 10.8.
• Improved support for pen tablets on Windows 8.

• Aligned use of image counts in the library tool: No counts for smart albums on Mac, no counts for groups and projects on Win.

• File support for Fuji X-Pro1, X-E1, XF1 (all preliminary).
• File support Canon EOS M (preliminary).
• sRaw and mRaw file support Canon EOS 1D X, 5D Mark III and 6D (preliminary).
• File support for Olympus XZ-2 iHS (preliminary).
• File support for Sony SLT-A57 (preliminary).
• Tethered support for Canon EOS 6D.
• Tethered support for Canon EOS M (does not support remote capture).

Download here from Phase One.

This week I was hired for an advertising shoot to: "Create slightly diffused southern daylight" with strobes in a rentals studio here in NYC. for a pharmaceutical campaign.

This was a fun challenge as most of the time people want straight daylight duplicated in the studio; or they hand me a tear sheet and say: "..make it look like this...". More often than not photographers and assistants will bring in HMI lights (4K or larger) onto a set and call it "Good-nuff" when attempting to duplicate a day light type of light source in the studio.

More...

The following is from Vincent Lafort's blog, and as he is probably the most well informed when it comes to motion capture these days I feel it is well worth the read.

Canon just announced the EOS C100 today – the little brother to the C300 if you will – and it is scheduled to be available in November.    

I think this camera will likely put a noticeable dent in the use of mid- to upper- range HDSLRs for video production such as the Canon 5D MKIII and Canon EOS 1DX given that the C100 meets a lot of the ergonomic needs of filmmakers that HDSLRS lack (EVF, LCD, Built in ND) and a superb sensor behind it that generates an extremely sharp, wide dynamic range, and low noise image at high ISOs,  off of a super-35 size 16:9 sensor.

We now have 3 Canon  "C" bodies to choose from and here’s a basic recap of where each camera stands:

At the top of the food chain is the Canon C500  - 12 bit, 4K, 4:4:4 MXF Codec or Full RAW up to 60p  (via external recorder) EF and PL versions, HDMI and HDSDI (x2) out, Canon Log Gamma, Records to dual CF Cards or external recorder – $30,000  (Now scheduled for an October release.)

In the Middle the Canon C300 – 2K 50 Mbps MXF 4:2:2: Codec format up to 30p (from the same sensor above) EF and PL Versions, HDMI and HDSDI out, Canon Log Gamma, Records to dual CF Cards – $15,999

And now the Canon EOS C100 – 1080p 24Mbps up to 30p  AVCHD MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec,  4:2:0, 15% smaller than the C300, EF mount version only, locking HDMI out, Canon Log Gamma,  Records to dual SD Cards – can also output uncompressed digital HD to an external recorder… $7,999 (Note: some sites are already listing the price at under $6,700.)

Please follow this link to read the full article.

Free Webinar

Two sessions are available:
Wednesday, January 11th

Session One - 9 AM Pacific Time Register Here
(10 AM Mountain, 11 AM Central, 12 PM Eastern, 5 PM GMT)

Session Two - 11 AM Pacific Time Register Here
(12 PM Mountain, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern, 7 PM GMT)

Join Vincent Versace, best selling author and internationally recognized pioneer in the art and science of digital photography for this webinar co-sponsored by X-Rite and Nik Software. "Oz to Kansas: The Black and White on Black and White Conversions" is the evolution of thought that began with the chapter in his first book "Welcome to Oz: From Oz to Kansas. How to convert an Image to Black and White Without Ever Leaving the RGB Color Space." This webinar takes a practical applications approach to when, why and how to convert an image. In it, you will learn which methods give you the best results and when to choose a simple or a complex solution.

Some of the topics covered in this class are:
- The only soup to nuts overview of the Silver Efex Plug-in. How to use it and when.
- The importance of color management particularly to black and white.
- When and why you should and should not use global de-saturation.
- Split Channel conversions - what they are good for and a way to get the same effect with a file two thirds the size.
- When to use the Black and White adjustment layer to bring out and separate the tones in a color image.
- Multiple Channel mixer black and white conversions that replicate the physics of film.
- What is "Faux-infrared" and a look at how to convert files to black and white from digital cameras that have been modified to shoot Infrared.
- When and how to most efficiently use the Gradient tool for black and white conversion.

Who should attend this webinar:
- Photographers who enjoy black and white photography
- Digital photographers who want to understand black and white conversions
- Anyone who wants to print black and white images

Learn more about Vincent Versace at versacephotography.com.
We hope to see you there!