CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

As a landscape photographer a good set of quality filters is just as important as a solid tripod to get a high quality image in camera.  I always have a circular polariser, at least one neutral density filter and a set of neutral density graduated filters in the camera bag everytime I go out on assignment or just for pleasure. When I became a professional photographer I was an early convert to the Lee filter system but then bought into the Formatt Hitech Firecrest system two years ago.  The Firecrest system offers me great quality colour neutral filters but I do find the filter holder a little fiddly and getting the polariser on and off is, quite frankly, a pain.    A couple of weeks ago I was approached by Haida, a filter manufacturer based in the city of Ningbo, 200km south of Shanghai, to see if I would be interested in reviewing their M10 and Red Diamond filter system.   I have to admit that, while I heard of the company...

Over the past couple of months during the Coronavirus lockdown here in Scotland I have been taking a long walk around Belhaven and Dunbar as part of my daily exercise and my iPhone has been my camera of choice during this time.   Since buying the iPhone 11 at the beginning March I have been highly impressed with the quality of the images and video and while it will never replace my Fujifilm X Series system, it means I have a high quality camera in my pocket at all times. To improve the flexibility of the iPhone I bought into the Moment lens system.   QUALITY LENSES Moment are a Seattle based company producing, arguably, the world's best mobile phone lenses.  There are plenty of options to add addition lens options to your mobile phone camera but a lot are cheap plastic or glass that produce low quality results.   On the other hand Moment lenses are proper optical glass in a metal housing that fit into a Moment phone case with a bayonet mount for security....

One of the features on the new GoPro Hero 8 Black that I have been using around my home town of Dunbar is the Time-lapse feature that includes Timewarp 2.0, also known as Hyperlapse. This feature allows me to shoot stabilised 4K time-lapse video while on the move, with a choice of two focal lengths, wide and linear, as well.  It also allows me to slow the recording to normal speed with a tap of the screen and then return to the Timewarp with a second tap.  The effect is amazing! The Time-lapse function is easy to select on the Hero 8, it is selected by swiping the touch screen to the right. Timewarp is selected in the sub menu on the back and this can be altered to suit your requirements and saved as a preset.  The resolution can be set to 4K or 1080P for 16:9 format and two setting for 4:3 of 2.7K and 1440P. You can set the speed of the recording, with 2x, 5x, 15x and 30x options available.  The 2x will give 30 seconds of footage from 60 seconds of re...

One of the improvements that Fujifilm have made with the new X-T4 is the upgrading of the batteries used by the camera to the more powerful NP-W235 which increases the number of images per charge by 50% over the NP-W126S used in the previous generation cameras such as the X-T3, X-Pro3 and X-H1 cameras. However, Fujifilm have decided not to include an external battery charger with the X-T4 because the batteries can be charged in the camera using a USB-C and power adapter included in the box.    Fujifilm do have a battery charger available, the BC-W235 which charges two batteries at a time, but you have to pay an extra £59.99 for this. WHAT'S THE ISSUE? Now I hear some photographers saying they don't need the external charger as the batteries will last them all day, and that is fine if you can manage like that.  However, for many professional photographers, especially for those in my line of work of sports photography, this doesn't work.  Let's take the 24 ...

Today we are unveiling the new theme tune and title sequence for One Man and His Boat. Barry Brunton has been working hard on his new fishing boat, the Lynsey B , since selling the Rockhopper of Percuel at the end of 2018.   Delays in the delivery of the part build Cygnus 21 vessel, and then some significant changes to the regulations concerning the build, have proved to be a challenge for Barry who has been documenting his journey on his new YouTube channel ' One Man and His Boat '. We had produced a new title sequence for his videos in 2019 with a new theme tune bought under licence from Audioblocks.com.   However the music has been removed from the website by the composer and while we were still legally able to use it, we decided to look for a new track to go with an updated title sequence.  The track we found is called "Celtic Trailer" by Valentina Gribanova. Once we had the music, the next job was to update the video clips and match it to th...