Pentax recently sent me the WG-2 rugged camera to test. In the period of the next month, I will be conducting various tests and shooting videos of them to see if the camera survives the hell that I try to put it through.
For the first test, I simply drowned it in a sink in both underwater video mode and normal video mode. Check out the video after the jump as well as one of the first stills I shot with the camera.
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Look through YouTube, forums, and other websites asking people about some of their favorite wide angle prime lenses: and you’ll probably find out about a little known gem to many: the Rokinon 14mm f2.8. Following along with Rokinon’s tradition of creating an affordable, manual focus, manual aperture, and optically sharp lens: it is a lens that takes some getting used to. To boot, I don’t often shoot this wide: so it forces me to not only get creative with my angles, but also get super duper close to my subjects.
As a note of reference: Rokinon is the same company as Samyang (their European and Asian version of the lens). They’re also sometimes known as the Vivitar, Bell and Howell and Pro Optic brands depending on the country it is sold in.
Regardless of what name the lens masquerades as, you all want to know one thing: how does it perform?
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Adobe’s Lightroom series of products have often been championed as the best software out there for photographers to use for most jobs. Indeed, most of the staff uses Lightroom. When the Beta came out, I sat there at a cross-roads. I’ve used Capture One Pro before, and loved it. The color rendering engine blew my mind away. It still does in many ways. But Lightroom has the advantage of quicker updates for various RAW files types from newer cameras.
Then Adobe provided a review copy of Lightroom 4 for me for evaluation; and I started to compare the two much more.
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The Yongnuo 560 EX II speedlite wasn’t announced too long ago, as so is a relatively new speedlite flash. The company is known for making excellent flashes at a super affordable price that makes them attractive to various photographers: including Todd Owyoung.
As a proud owner of Canon’s current flashes, this little light intrigued me; so I actually went out and purchased it. And after various shoots with it, it is perhaps the one flash that I can recommend to the both the amateur and experienced group of users: but not the middle ground of strobists.
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Around CES 2012, Sigma announced their 19mm f2.8 and 30mm f2.8 EX DN lenses for Micro Four Thirds and Sony NEX. As the first third party company to create autofocus lenses for the mirrorless camera segment, fanboys on both sides were ecstatic about the fact that their systems both grew. On Micro Four Thirds cameras, they both amount to 38mm and 60mm respectively.
I’ve had them for around two hours now as I write this post, but I’ve held off on publishing until I shot the Pillow Fight in NYC recently.
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This is a clever little desktop tripod. The UltraPod II, from Industrial Revolution, was not sent to me by a vendor to test; it was purchased by accident. This little tripod was a pleasant surprise. It’s built to hold cameras like the Nikon D7000 or the Canon 60D this is a well designed tool. Small, nimble, and light, the UltraPod II is a fine American made product. When you have to shoot a stable image, but don’t have room for a full size tripod, this is a product to keep in mind
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