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Category: Photography

How to get amazing camera shots

How to get amazing camera shots

Luke Edwin shares this video collection of cool and often very simple tricks to get some interesting effect shots. Motion controlled greenscreen, shots that zoom in and out through objects, slow-motion effects, product shots and lots of little effects used in many modern videos. It’s pretty incredible these techniques and equipment are achievable by just about anyone for a very limited budget.

Equipment demonstrated:

Render using a virtual lens onto film – in Blender

Render using a virtual lens onto film – in Blender

Sirrandalot is not the first person to use a film-grain/film-like shader effect to give a certain feel. He is, however, the first to use Blender’s Cycles path-tracing engine to create a highly detailed physical modeling of a 3D camera body, simulate the various properties of a glass lens (then multiple lens system), the properties of chemical film, and then render scenes through this highly complex setup to generate real film-like images. Check out the final not-photos here or on Imgur.

You can download the camera and play with it yourself.

Manual Cinema

Manual Cinema

Manual Cinema does shadow puppet shows in Chicago. They do some amazing shows such as Frankenstein, A Christmas Carol and many others. They use combinations of puppetry and live acting. Here’s a video on how they produce some of their effects and shows.

Here’s another video of how they create their effects:

Here’s an example of what they can produce in a short film called Eighth Blackbird

The future of the Space Industry in 15 images

The future of the Space Industry in 15 images

Fast Company did a fantastic job collecting images that represent all the amazing work going on in the space industry. From 3d printed rocket components, to new battery development methods, to innovative star tracking navigation units, etc. Give the article a look to learn more.

Peak Fall Foliage Tool

Peak Fall Foliage Tool

My favorite season is fall. The air turns cool, there are hay rides and pumpkin patches, one curls up with a good book in front of a fire, reading scary tales, and, of course, watching the leaves change.

Japan has some very good, live updating of fall colors on a few websites.

The folks over at this website have a nifty little tool that predicts when fall colors will change this year. How do they predict the trends this year? With a little bit of data (and possibly a touch of pretentiousness):

The company uses a model that ingests a multitude of data sources including historical precipitation, NOAA precipitation forecasts, elevation, actual temperatures, temperature forecasts, and average daylight exposure to develop a baseline fall date for each county in the continental United States. Next, the model consumes hundreds-of-thousands of additional data points from a variety of government and non-government sources and layers this data over its own historical data from past years and, finally, with a high degree of accuracy, the algorithm produces nearly 50,000 date outputs indicating the progression of fall for every county in a graphical presentation that is easy to digest.