Hipstamatic in the Wild

Shot with my little iPhone and the Hipstamatic app.

Great snapshot setup, back to the 50/60/70′ties i say.

Messed up colors, burned edges and nothing is controlable…

Love it

Hipstamatic and the new iPhone

Finally we’re moving into serious snapshot territory with the new iPhone. While it’s all nice and new (and quicker, with higher res. screen), the best part of this is that i finally discovered Hipstamatic.

I thought i have to move to Williamsburg to truly enjoy it, but the stuff i shot so far are dangerously fun by themselves. Thanks Steven for the intro on my birthday…

I promise i’ll post more snaps in the future

Hand held rig for the Canon 5D Mark II

After doing research online and reading all the reviews I could get my hands on, testing equipment from Fotocare and Able cinema we got around to put a nice and small system together for better camera handling while shooting moving images with the Canon 5D.

What I do find interesting is that the Movie Directors of Photography keep the cameras and accessories small, with prime lenses and very little other equipment, maybe a loupe, maybe a small LCD.

But the still photographers try to add everything possible to the unit, large Matt boxes, a separate audio recorder with shotgun mics and huge shoulder rigs in addition to the loupe and monitor.

The last resulting in the most comical contraption that’s unwieldy and takes up huge amount of space to transport, rig and move around. Kind of defying the purpose of the small unit with incredible image quality.
The solution that I prefer is a simple Redrock rig with two handles upfront and a simple gun stock, while the camera gets a Zacuto loupe mounted on the small LCD.
I could see adding a 7″ Marshall LCD at some point, especially when shooting from a tripod.
But I really like the feeling of the handheld shooting, conveying and more engaging with an immediate point of view.

A great addition to the still image, i can see this mixing well on the iPad and web editions of stories all the while keeping the feel and perspective very close.

iPad optimized website is up

studio news — Tags: , , , — mschafer @ 06:10

Love it or hate it, but the iPad is here to stay (and it’s fabulous)…
The website is now also available in a iPad friendly layout, not quite as slick as the standard site but quick and efficient.
In the meantime, my portfolio just made onto my new little friend and looks great

Video kills the …

Wasn’t there something like this not too long ago. Radio survived and that’s a good thing.

Now video is again at it, and the photo world seems to discover a new calling. Only, isn’t there something like a Director of Photography (who are great photographers themselves) on every film set. Nobody is waiting for the still photographers to come and reinvent the wheel. The DP’s are taking the small DSLRS and shoot footage previously unable or only obtainable with very difficult rigging. Maybe that’s the convergence of technologies. And it will be interesting finally and really incorporating editorial photography with video, at least to an extend…

My prediction: Still photography will come out of this even stronger than before. It’s hard to hang a movie or video on the wall, and moving images will enhance and add to the still portfolio in any publication (once we all have an iPad).

People will go back to actually capturing a moment rather than spending days reviewing, developing and editing RAW RED footage… In the end it’s all about the efficient method to get to the final product.

Photoshop turns 20

digital — Tags: , , — mschafer @ 13:20

20 years of exponential improvements of post production (Whatever happened to Quantel??).

I thought i loved photography when the final image was “only” an 8×10 slide and everything had to be in that frame, exposure, contrast and color where you needed it.

I remember when the first rounds of Photoshop hit, i so desperately wanted a Mac and play around with black and white pictures. But at the time it was really a low quality tech geek with very little if any artistic or high end vision involved. Am i happy this changed and the artists were able to take over and claim photography once again for the art form with all the possibilities once the image is recorded electronically.

Today I feel i can push the picture much quicker, more precisely and repeatably to exactly what i want and feel about the subject and situation. And i don’t need a lab or digital technician. I’m still not a fan of artificial constructed visions of never occurred events (that’s called CGI and not photography) but i’m warming to this as well…

Anyhow, thanks to the Knoll brother’s and the team at Adobe to enhance Photography, making it a much more popular art form along the way and bring on discussions of relevance, reality and our image of beauty and distortion.

(c) 2012 mark/studio | powered by WordPress with Barecity