News

When I realized that this column would be in the magazine’s lighting focus issue, I looked at the data for the photos I’d taken earlier this year during a nearly month-long combination of safari workshop, assignment, and stock shoot in Africa. What I found surprised me: I’d used flash on about one-third of the 13,000 photos I’d made on that trip. I had no idea I’d used my Speedlights as often as I had.

Sometimes an old fashioned recipe and the latest modern technology don’t mix: zap-blasting your grandmother’s vegetable soup ingredients in a 10,000-watt microwave instead of slowly simmering them for six hours, for example. But other times strange bedfellows bring out the best in each other. Such is the case with Lensbaby optics on modern digital cameras.

Epson’s Eddie Murphy walked us through the important features of the new 13-inch Epson SureColor P400 printer at PhotoPlus Expo this week in this short take video.

The trend of using continuous light sources for portraiture that I saw at last year’s WPPI show continues unabated with Westcott’s Two-Light Daylight D5 Softbox Kit being the latest offering. The kit uses fluorescent bulbs as a light source, although that word barely appears in Westcott’s early press material for the kit. Part of the reason may be that when it comes to photographs of people, fluorescent has a negative connotation but nothing could be further from the truth.

Two of the photography industry’s most tenured women—Lily Fisher, a senior camera bag designer and Deanne Fitzmaurice, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer—recently collaborated to create the ideal camera bags for female photographers. After a decade of research and a year-and-a-half of development, the result is the Lily Deanne shoulder bag line from Think Tank Photo.

Fujifilm just announced the Fujinon XF 35mm F/2 WR lens and XF 1.4x TC WR teleconverter. Both new optics will be on display at PhotoPlus Expo in New York City this week where visitors will be able to “kick the tires” on the new glass with a free loan program during the show

Phase One just rolled out a major update to its XF Medium Format Camera System, which was only introduced last June. The Copenhagen, Demnark-based company also announced three new Schneider Kreuznach leaf shutter lenses to add to the arsenal.