For those looking to step away from the now generic and ubiquitous aluminum cases that dominate our desktops LaCie offers a new external drive that could very easily find itself aboard the Prometheus or on Deckers desk. If you're interested in having four very unusual terabytes sitting on your desktop, check out the new LaCie Blade Runner drive, designed by Philippe Starck.

The custom-biult 4 TB USB 3.0 drives are being produced in a limited edition of 9,999. The design resembles nothing so much as a metal blob suspended inside a heat sink — which the designer says is, more or less, the point.

Imagined by Philippe Starck

The LaCie Blade Runner is more than just a beautifully designed hard drive – it's a creation by world famous designer Philippe Starck that represents the combination of human and machine. The LaCie Blade Runner's sharp, cage-like enclosure surrounds an almost anthropomorphic, liquid metal interior. Inspired by the mysterious, incredible power of information technology, the LaCie Blade Runner combines an anthropomorphic metal interior with an angular cage-like shell. It begs the question; can we truly confine technology to a cage?

"The warm interior electronics are encased in a mystifying shell, and the blades are the radiator that cools it down," Starck said in a prepared statement. "The suspension gives space for air to circulate around the hard drive, and the metal material increases the temperature conduction."

LaCie tells us the limited edition units are still available, albeit with a wait-list that means it'll be a couple of weeks before you get the drive in hand. For more information, visit the LaCie website.

SPECIFICATIONS

A few years ago I posted a video about the proper way to coil cords to ensure their long life and more importantly ease in packing and storage. I thought that it was time to bring it back to the front of the play list since there seems to be a great many people that are missing this very simple skill.

Now before those people that work on film shoots chime in and tell me that their method of coiling cords and cables which includes a twisting motion during the coiling of the cables, it needs to be pointed out that THERE IS NO ONE RIGHT WAY OF DOING ANYTHING; there are just some methods that are better than others. And the method demonstrated here is the one that I and hundreds of my peers in the commercial photo industry have been using for more than 20+ years.

Below you'll see a selection of my extension cords and that are all 15 years old or more. They have always been coiled using my method so I know that it works.

We have created a fully interactive experience with every item on our Virtual Photo Set.
This has previously been a part of our workshops and offers to our workshops attendees on CD and was first created 11 years ago in the early days of FLASH. As we continual change our lighting workshops and now demonstrate a great many different lighting setups we felt that it was time to offer our Lighting diagrams to a wider audience.

This is a screen capture demonstrating some of the functionality of our lighting diagrams interactivity.

Included is sampling of lighting diagrams we have demoed during our: Photo Assistant Boot Camp, Studio lighting workshops, & even our Digital Tech Workshops. All of the lighting diagrams have been previously complimented on commercial photo shoots that we have worked on. Real world and time tested to produce the results displayed in the included examples.

These lighting diagrams include the use of: Studio Strobes, ARRI lights both tungsten and HMI's, KinoFlo's and a vast array of studio grip equipment including the CHIMERA OctaPlus57 & CHIMERA Video Pro Series light banks.

Check out the Lighting diagrams page here

Go behind the scenes at the lens factory in this video made by Nikon on the 80th anniversary of its Nikkor brand.

Upon request I have pulled together a number of clips show the movement of our Red Wing Boom being used as a Jib for video that would other wise be considered out takes from our Wet Plate Collodian fashion shoot a few weeks ago. You'll have to excuse any jittery moment which is due to my habit of consuming large amounts of coffee on those days when I'm in the studio. Other wise the Red Wing Boom was a really solid performer for what I needed on that day. Note too that only a few times did I use the camera zoom rather than rolling the camera in tight.

Capture One Pro 7.0.2 is a service release providing a number of bug fixes, in particular for stability, and camera support. Full release notes are attached:

• Improved stability.
• Canon tethering now supported on OS X 10.8.
• Improved support for pen tablets on Windows 8.

• Aligned use of image counts in the library tool: No counts for smart albums on Mac, no counts for groups and projects on Win.

• File support for Fuji X-Pro1, X-E1, XF1 (all preliminary).
• File support Canon EOS M (preliminary).
• sRaw and mRaw file support Canon EOS 1D X, 5D Mark III and 6D (preliminary).
• File support for Olympus XZ-2 iHS (preliminary).
• File support for Sony SLT-A57 (preliminary).
• Tethered support for Canon EOS 6D.
• Tethered support for Canon EOS M (does not support remote capture).

Download here from Phase One.

Last week I was helping out a friend with his editorial fashion shoot that he shot using Wet Plate Collodian process; by recording it on video.

I used a Red Wing Boom as a camera jib in order to get a few more camera options which is something I've been meaning to try for sometime.

As you can see it was easy to do simply by adding some basic grip equipment that most photographers would usually have on hand in their studios.

I used a: Bogen super clamp, a Manfroto magic arm, a knuckle and a 6" wall plate which I had previously drilled and tapped and attached to my Cannon HD video camera. Although anyone could just as easily use any combination of grip equipment to achieve the same thing rather than spending money on an additional piece of equipment just to perform jib movements.

For those wondering why I didn't just attach the magic arm to the end of the Boom pin by adding another knuckle, that because I use this same combination of grip as a steady cam set up so having a quick release option to from 1 to the other is a nice option.

This setup proved to work extremely well and afforded great stability; and also because the boom was on a rolling stand it allowed me to move around the studio and change elevation in nice smooth motions. A short edit of the video from this shoot will be posted in the coming days.

This week I was hired for an advertising shoot to: "Create slightly diffused southern daylight" with strobes in a rentals studio here in NYC. for a pharmaceutical campaign.

This was a fun challenge as most of the time people want straight daylight duplicated in the studio; or they hand me a tear sheet and say: "..make it look like this...". More often than not photographers and assistants will bring in HMI lights (4K or larger) onto a set and call it "Good-nuff" when attempting to duplicate a day light type of light source in the studio.

More...

The following is from Vincent Lafort's blog, and as he is probably the most well informed when it comes to motion capture these days I feel it is well worth the read.

Canon just announced the EOS C100 today – the little brother to the C300 if you will – and it is scheduled to be available in November.    

I think this camera will likely put a noticeable dent in the use of mid- to upper- range HDSLRs for video production such as the Canon 5D MKIII and Canon EOS 1DX given that the C100 meets a lot of the ergonomic needs of filmmakers that HDSLRS lack (EVF, LCD, Built in ND) and a superb sensor behind it that generates an extremely sharp, wide dynamic range, and low noise image at high ISOs,  off of a super-35 size 16:9 sensor.

We now have 3 Canon  "C" bodies to choose from and here’s a basic recap of where each camera stands:

At the top of the food chain is the Canon C500  - 12 bit, 4K, 4:4:4 MXF Codec or Full RAW up to 60p  (via external recorder) EF and PL versions, HDMI and HDSDI (x2) out, Canon Log Gamma, Records to dual CF Cards or external recorder – $30,000  (Now scheduled for an October release.)

In the Middle the Canon C300 – 2K 50 Mbps MXF 4:2:2: Codec format up to 30p (from the same sensor above) EF and PL Versions, HDMI and HDSDI out, Canon Log Gamma, Records to dual CF Cards – $15,999

And now the Canon EOS C100 – 1080p 24Mbps up to 30p  AVCHD MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec,  4:2:0, 15% smaller than the C300, EF mount version only, locking HDMI out, Canon Log Gamma,  Records to dual SD Cards – can also output uncompressed digital HD to an external recorder… $7,999 (Note: some sites are already listing the price at under $6,700.)

Please follow this link to read the full article.