Clever Swedish Chameleon rig grows with you

Yesterday we had the pleasure of a meeting with Guffe Funck the inventor and creator of the Swedish Chameleon DSLR rigs. We have featured Swedish Chameleon a couple of times now on the site, firstly here at Focus on Imaging and then also at BVE, but this was our first chance to discuss the rigs and thinking in detail with Guffe.

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Adobe Creative Cloud #CS6

I’m willing to bet that 99% of you own and use Adobe Photoshop to a greater or lesser degree. As you may be aware, the latest release is CS6 and with it, Adobe have switched to a ‘Creative Cloud’ arrangement.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to people buying Photoshop is the cost. It is not cheap. However, Creative Cloud provides a different way to spread it out. Instead of buying a box set (which you can still do…) you buy a subscription to a web service that allows you to download and use all of the Adobe Apps as you need them. It’s still not truly cheap, but it does spread the cost nicely. For those of you using Lightroom, there is another reason to make a switch – Lightroom 4 is now included within the Creative Cloud offering. For £46.88 per month you get access to all the Adobe apps including Photoshop Extended, Premiere Pro, SpeedGrade, After Effects, Lightroom 4, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver and many others. Basically everything you might need for stills and video editing, web building and PDF creation or editing. And if you only want one or two apps – that’s all you install!

Given the shift in the photographic world, with the continued growth of HD DSLR video, this does make a great way to get hold of all the apps you might need, in a cheaper and easier to swallow monthly pill.

What are your thoughts on this? Will you switch to Creative Cloud or not?

Interview with IOShutter inventor James Madelin at Focus On Imaging 2012

One of the best things at Focus on Imaging is the chance to see new products that have either just been released or are just about to make it to market. One of these this year was the very cool looking IOShutter from the inventor of the Orbis ring flash and Frio cold shoe, James Madelin.

Both Brian and myself like the Orbis ringflash effect and find the Frio a very useful accessory for sticking hotshoe things to tripod threads, so we were interested to see what this mad inventor (in a good way!) had been getting up to since last year. It’s fair to say that IOShutter looks very interesting and exciting and will offer some pretty cool functionality for not much money. Final verdicts will wait until we get our hands on one to use, but it’s not long to wait and initial impressions suggest it will be a very awesome gadget that opens up a realm of possibilities. Whether it will replace our long term favourite wireless release, the Hahnel Giga T Pro, or not remains to be seen, but I have a strong feeling they will both find a place in my bag before long.

Watch the video below to hear about it straight from the horse’s mouth, and check out www.ioshutter.com to register your interest and enter a competition at the same time.

Swedish Chameleon, Tiny

At the recent BVE show in London we got the chance to meet up with Mattias Holmer from Swedish Chameleon and check out their latest Swedish Chameleon Tiny shoulder rig for HD DSLRs. For the video we shot two angles with the front, or head-on shot being done with an EOS 5D Mark II fitted to a Swedish Chameleon Tiny rig.

Don’t forget to check out our other Swedish Chameleon coverage from last year.

• Swedish Chameleon at Focus on Imaging 2011
• Swedish Chameleon at the Flash Centre

SWPP 2012 round-up

Brian and I took a trip to the SWPP 2012 show in Hammersmith the other week, with a view to having a look around, catching up with some old friends and seeing what various stands had to display. Most interestingly was the ability to actually put hands on the new Canon PowerShot G1X. While we couldn’t take any pictures with it, it feels nice in the hand and the layout and design look great. I really think it’s a great move by Canon and early reports suggest the image quality really is as good as you’d hope it would be with a sensor that size.

We also got to have a chat with Guy Thatcher from www.hireacamera.com – a really great place if you’re looking to hire cameras and lenses either for a job or to try out before buying. Guy always has the latest stuff in stock and the service has always been great when we’ve used them before.

Colin Woodley from Eizo gave us a quick tour of their self-calibrating monitors and Gary Astill took us through some of the Lastolite Speedlite flash accessories and light modifiers they had on display. We also spoke to Helen Atkinson from Snapperstuff who told us about the updates to the ThinkTank Photo bags they were now shipping. So, take a look at the video and see what you missed.

If you’ve not been to the SWPP before, then male sure you book up to head in next year. While it is very much aimed at Wedding and Portrait shooters, there is always something of interest for people working across the genres.