Last Sunday morning thick fog greeted me at the lake. Despite the bad visibility (actually because of it), we sailed out to enjoy one of the best foggy shoots of my entire life.
Foggy Sunrise
Shot with the Zeiss Otus 1.4/55 lens on the Canon 5DS R. Boy, this lens is magical. No chart or numeric test result will tell you that. You’ve gotta do yourself a favor and try one.
More to come.
My better half made a bunch of soaps today and asked me whether I have a little time to help her make some photos.
Sitting in front of my desk coding for who knows how many days, I smiled, and pulled out the Canon EOS 5DS R with my beloved Zeiss Apo Sonnar T* 2/135 ZE lens. A tripod, a few sheets of colored paper, a flash to open up the deep shadows created by the afternoon sunlight, and a MacBook Air 11″ to run Kuuvik Capture rounded out the rig.
Roses in Soap
The above is my favorite from the shoot. The Zeiss – as always – amazed me with its wonderful, clean, airy drawing. This was shot at f/2.2. Everything in the plane of focus is tack sharp, and the bokeh is lovely. Both in front of and behind the focus plane.
And this is a bit dull sRGB version, at least compared to the original having the usual brilliant colors the Zeiss with the 5DS R can produce.
Earlier this week I have received both the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus – the latter of which is the phone I’m using now. So immediately started working on updating the Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder. I find the 3D Touch feature a great addition, especially home screen shortcuts speed up my everyday life with the phone. And as you can see below, Viewfinder 4.4 will sport a home screen shortcut menu.
3D Touch shortcuts in the upcoming Artist’s Viewfinder 4.4
The menu includes the three last recently used virtual cameras (and the option to create a new one if there are less than three recently used cameras), and a shortcut to quickly access the album.
I’ve also completed the bench measurements of the two phones plus the iPad mini 4, along with olloclip 4-IN-1 and Moment wide converters on the two phones.
More to come, so stay tuned!
The latest update to my Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder app is now available on the App Store. The highlights of this update are improved iOS 9 compatibility and new wide converter lens support. While the former doesn’t need more explanation, let’s dive into the latter.
This is a screen shot made on my iPhone 6 Plus. You can see that Schneider iPro lenses are now supported, but the bigger news is Moment Wide lens support across the board.
The Moment Wide lens is a high quality 0.65x-class converter. It’s so well corrected that there’s no need for distortion correction in the software. It’s not a surprise that support for this lens was the most often requested feature.
The only thing that prevents it from becoming my favorite is the rather crappy attachment plates. The lens bayonet is simply sub par, and I don’t want to glue anything to my phone. So gaffer tape was used extensively during measurements and testing of this converter. Their case is light years ahead of the plates, but only available for the iPhone 6 at the time of writing.
The Moment Wide lens is now supported on iPhone 4/4s/5/5s/5c/6/6+, iPad Air 1/2 and iPad mini 1/2/3.
The complete release notes is available here, and through the “What’s New in This Release?” menu item from within the app.
Version 4.3 is a free update for existing Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder owners. Users of former Viewfinder Basic/Pro/Cine editions can upgrade for a reduced price.
What about the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus?
Since version 4.1 new devices are supported automatically using iOS provided angle of view data, so you don’t have to wait for us to complete the bench measurements. Sure, measured angle of views provide better precision, but you need to wait for that – as well as for wide converter support.
We have no early access to new hardware and must wait for general availability like everyone else. In our country the new phones just became available yesterday – and I had already ordered both. They are expected to arrive by the end of next week. Olloclip and Moment declared their clips as 6s/6s+ compatible, Schneider promised to say something by mid-October.
So you’ll have to wait for wide converter support on the new phones until the dust settles and we complete all the measurements.
When I was a kid, I had a dream of viewing the night sky through a telescope operated from the warmth of my room. Now I’m not doing just that, but also capturing the images of the current lunar eclipse.
Unfortunately clouds are eclipsing the eclipse… But this resulted in a rather unusual image of the partially eclipsed moon seen through the moving layer of clouds.
Eclipse Through the Clouds
The Canon 5DS R with my 500mm f/4L IS II lens sits atop an Astrotrac in lunar tracking mode. The above image was exposed for 15 seconds at ISO 1600. The camera is controlled with my Kuuvik Capture app.
And still waiting for the clouds to part…
Update: they finally did part! Seeing is still less than favorable, but fortunately the camera captures more light than my eyes.
Blood Super Moon
After shooting from the balcony, we headed out with my better half to the local cemetery. Yes, you read that correctly… Some may find shooting blood moon during the night in a cemetery somewhat intimidating… I had a specific image in mind, and although was not able to photograph that, the following image is a great one to close this eclipse session.
Eclipse Ends at Dawn
The next time a total lunar eclipse will coincide with a super moon will be in 2033, but don’t worry, there will be three total eclipses during 2018/2019.
Version 2.1 of Kuuvik Capture is now available on the Mac App Store. This update brings a handful of new features and a few fixes. Let’s start with the new features.
First, a new preference is added to control whether the camera’s LCD is turned on when you start live view from within Kuuvik Capture.
If you turn this preference off, the camera’s LCD will remain turned off to conserve battery. But you can turn the LCD on any time with the live view button on the camera.
When you start live view directly on the camera, it’s LCD will turn on regardless of this preference (chances are that you engaged live view on the camera because you want to look at the LCD).
Upon user request, the number of focus bracketing steps had been increased from 30 to 100. And I’ve added hot keys to the Purge Unrated (Cmd-P) and Purge Unrated and Decrease Rating (Shift-Cmd-P) culling commands.
The bug fixes are the following:
Version 2.1 is a free update for existing Kuuvik Capture 2 owners.
