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YouTube Now Officially Hosts 8K Videos
Watch the 8k “Ghost Towns” video below. WARNING: 8k may or may not crash your computer (100% guaranteed that statement will look dated in about five years).
Some of you may have heard of 4k video, well you’re now officially outdated. YouTube now supports 8k video. That’s right, “8k”, as in four times the size of 4k. When will the madness stop? I demoed an 80+ inch 8k television at Photo Plus Expo in October of 2013 and it was amazing! It had an $80-something-thousand dollar price tag too so I wasn’t taking one home, but it was a sight to behold. Imagine one of those newer Samsung OLED Smart TV’s, but massive and with high fidelity! That, as they would say, is #Crispy.
New Instagram Layout
Instagram rolled out a beautiful and clean new web UI this week. It’s everything that new web design is; flat, responsive, big, and simple. I does still lack the ability to upload and manage via the web, but Instagram has done very well being a mobile app-centric service. More power to them! Follow tutvid on Instagram now!
The New Leica Q
The iconic brand, Leica, has launched a brand spankin’ new camera called the “Leica Q”. It’s beautiful, it’s got a full frame sensor, and it’s got the Leica “red dot” to let people know that you’re serious about your photos. The camera appears to be targeting street photographers with it’s non-detachable f1.7, 28mm lens. It also appears to be the only full frame, fixed lens camera on the market other than the Sony RX1/R. It’s simple and powerful. Check out PetaPixel’s quick hands on review of it.
Here is a quick run down of the specs:
24 MP CMOS full-frame sensor
Leica Maestro II Image Processor
Leica Summilux 28mm f/1.7 ASPH Lens
3.68 MP LCOS Electronic Viewfinder
3.0″ 1,040k-Dot Touchscreen LCD Monitor
Contrast-Detect AF System
Full HD 1080p Video at up to 60 fps
ISO 50,000 & 10 fps Continuous Shooting
Aluminum & Magnesium Alloy Body Design
Built-In Wi-Fi Connectivity with NFC
$4,250.00
Notes:
Lens appears to be amazing in quality (as Leica usually are)
Focusing looks incredible and very sharp
Dynamic range is very, very good
The noise at higher ISOs look questionable. Find reviews and check it out.
There appears to be a reasonable amount of moire on fine patterns/fabrics.
Can I justify spending that kind of cheese on a camera that has features that many other cameras on the market have? It is top notch quality and the sharpness looks great, but $4,250 buys a lot in this world. Not yet, Leica, not yet. I am a step closer to considering you though.
Sony a7R II: The World’s First Back-Illuminated 35mm Full Frame Sensor and 4K
The new camera features the world’s first back-illuminated full frame CMOS sensor, which shoots 42.4 megapixel photos at up to ISO 102400.
40% faster autofocus response time compared to the a7R, thanks to the help of 399 phase detection AF points and 25 contrast points. Sony says the backside illumination allows the camera to have both high resolution and high speed/sensitivity, instead of having to choose one or the other.
4K video in multiple formats, including Super 35mm and full frame.
Will be available starting in August 2015 with a price tag of $3,200.
Sony RX100 IV and RX10 II Boast Stacked Sensors and 4K Video
Along with the a7R II, Sony unleashed a pair of 4k capable cameras OTHER THAN the a7R II. These two little beasts are really curious to check out. They both shoot 4k video on decent sensors for less than $1,500. The RX10 II looks nice and you can pick one up for about $1,300. The camera that really intrigues me though is the Sony RX100 IV.
This is THE point-and-shoot camera. It may also be the ultimate vlogging camera. It has a flip out screen, great optics, smooth and fast menus and UI, it shoots 4k video, and even has super-slo-mo up to 960fps. Wow! All that for an MSRP $948. That’s a crazy camera and a pretty decent price. I would love to get my hands on this camera and put it through its paces.
Top 10 announcements of WWDC
For the general list and rundown that we covered from WWDC you can check out the nice article assembled by the good folks at the Verge. Stay current, my friends.
Apple OS X El Capitan to Improve the Performance of Adobe CC Apps
OS X El Capitan will include Apple’s Metal framework, which makes graphics rendering 40x more efficient than OpenGL, reducing CPU load and improving battery life. The real news is that name. That name though. That name tho. That name.
Apple made an Android app that helps people switch to iOS
Shots fired! Apple has launched an app that wirelessly transfers the content from your Android mobile device to either iPhone or iPad in Apple’s continued effort to get more “Android converts” as they push their ever-growing market share to new heights–well, at least as they try to.
Spotify vs. Apple Music
With the new Apple music announcements, we have monthly subscriptions for a few major music services at our fingertips: Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, and Pandora. Which is your favorite? Will you keep subscriptions to all four? Would you rather save the monthly subscription costs and just buy music outright? The growing and ever changing world of streaming music is incredibly complicated and getting deeper and deeper everyday.
Uh-oh: Apple Watch Sales Don’t Last Long
Apple Watch sales started with a bang, tailed off into a whimper! Check out these charts and graphs that show just how drastic the drop off is in terms of numbers for the Apple Watch sales. They’ve still sold over 2 million of them, which is amazing, but there is some serious drop off. You also have to wonder why Apple did not show off the gaudy Apple Watch sales numbers this WWDC like they normally would do with products that are selling well. Some have said that Apple has sold over 7 million of the watches! (We talked about this is last week’s podcast)
Tric is the World’s First Professional Flash Trigger for iPhones
Built-in flashes on phones suck. Tric looks to change this for on-the-go photographers. They’ve introduced a flash that looks very similar to an external flash that you may mount on your dSLRs. Patent pending technology to help sync a wireless flash to your iPhone via Bluetooth.
Limitations:
Shutter speed is limited to 1/30s (apparently limited by iOS)
The system is also X-sync only, not TTL. “This means that output power needs to be controlled on the flash unit side, and we may need to try several shots to obtain the perfect exposure.”
Only available for iPhones
Available to support on Kickstarter. $75 will get you one of the units (hopefully) in December.
Kate Middleton Shot Her Own Royal Baby Portraits
Kate Middleton is allegedly a fairly decent photographer to go with everything else that she’s got. While taking a break from her royal duties, she found the time to sit her two children down for a portrait session with her 5D MK II. The photos has a nice naturalness about them, none of the strange “newborn photographer” stuff that you see on magazine covers and at the local photo studios. These are photographs of a brother and sister just hanging out. You would think the royal family would be ready to spring for the new 5DSr or some newer camera though. Just remember, “it’s not the camera, it’s the photographer.”
Adobe Photoshop CC may soon have ARTBOARDS!
Adobe revealed one of the new features of the upcoming Photoshop CC update. Artboards! Not really the most exciting feature, hence the mock enthusiasm, however, artboards can be an incredibly useful feature for a design application. I highly encourage you to take 5 minutes and check out the YouTube video below and see what these artboards are all about!
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