I Tried the ATEM Mini Extreme ISO

The folks at Blackmagic Design were kind enough to send me an ATEM Mini Extreme ISO* to play with for a couple of weeks. MAAAAAAN this device. . .I won’t say much here. Just watch my video below. But before you watch the video, check out the tech specs:

• 8 inputs

• 2 USB-C outputs

• Supersource

• ISO recording

• Camera controls for BlackMagic Design cameras

*Affiliate link used. Affiliate links allow me to earn a small commission as a content creator if you purchase items using the affiliate link. Thank you for your support.

The Harder They Fall, Dune and Fancy Beers

I had a fun time hanging with my friends back in Atlanta that do a great job of creating informative, yet entertaining content for the masses. The podcast is called Tha Blessin’ Gone Audio and no it’s not a religious show. Trust me on that. Ha! But yeah, it’s a fun topical show. I’ve been on before but was recently asked to hangout with them for the holiday week. This week we get into the popular cowboy flick on Netflix, The Harder They Fall, Dune, other movies and topical things of today. Give it a listen below and subscribe to them on Apple Podcasts are wherever you enjoy your podcasts. It’s worth it. Thanks, yall.

Black Friday Discounts for Photographers

So it’s holiday shopping season and time for #BlackFriday deals. I just got an email from my friends at Lensrentals* which I think is a pretty good deal for photographers and content creators. I’m sure some of you are working shoots and projects for the holidays. So now is a good time to take advantage of the discounts offered. If you’re not working on a project during the holidays, no worries. You can still get the discount for items delivered by February 25, 2022.

The deals

So if you’d like to rent some gear, head over to the site here* and add the items to your cart. Then at checkout, enter code LRBF2021. That code will get you 20% off your order.

If you’re looking to BUY items from Lensrentals*, you can take advantage of their new “Keeper” program and get 10% off your order with code KPRBF2021. The Keeper program is pretty cool because items are discounted since they’re used. And in my experience, the gear I rent from Lensrentals* is always in GREAT shape regardless of how old the gear is.

I’ve been eyeballing a particular Sigma lens* to use with my Pocket Cinema Camera 6K. I’ve used it before for portrait work, but never for video. Part of me just wants to go ahead and buy it. We’ll see. That’s the beauty of renting first. Anyway, check out the deals. Let me know what you end up ordering.

Image credit: Lensrentals

*Affiliate link used. Affiliate links allow me to earn a small commission as a content creator if you purchase items using the affiliate link. Thank you for your support.

Yes I'm Judging You: International Mobile Film Festival 2022

I have the honor and pleasure to be a part of the panel of judges for the 2022 International Mobile Film Festival. The wonderful Miss Susy Botello and team reached out to see if I’d be interested. Of COURSE I was interested. The world of content creation continues to fascinate me and when you look at it from a mobile device perspective, it’s pretty dadgum amazing.

Image via International Mobil Film Festival

I got to know Miss Susy a few years ago as I saw her on Twitter preaching the gospel of Filmic Pro. I love that app for getting the most out of your smartphone video camera. She’s being running this film festival for quite a while now (2009, I believe) and it’s great to see its growth in popularity from creators around the globe. Really great seeing the passion to help push folks into creating more stories with their mobile devices.

The event takes place in San Diego April 29th - May 1st 2022. For more information, head on over to the site and feel free to submit your mobile cinematic masterpiece.

Sound Devices MixPre Firmware Update Available

If you’re using a MixPre audio recorder from Sound Devices, the company released an updated firmware today. Get firmware version 7.15 from the website here.

Update details

As mentioned on the site. The update addresses the following:

• Last digit of the elapsed record time no longer displays incorrectly when the recording is longer than one hour.

• Take numbers are now correctly reset to 001 if the take name is changed and the MixPre is power cycled before recording.

• Loud pop in the headphone monitor no longer occurs when entering playback while monitoring an isolated channel.

• Rare events where a channel suddenly experiences a brief crackle no longer occur.

I’ve not had any problems with the one I use for work. I love this dadgum thing. The dynamic range on it really helps getting audio dialed in for the show. Even though I’ve not had any issues, I’ll still update the firmware just to be safe.

image: Ant Pruitt all rights reserved

Thank You, Lensrentals

It’s been a pretty challenging year for me, and quite frankly, I’ve enjoyed it. Yeah I wish some things were easier for me professionally, but at the same time, I do enjoy the challenges. I enjoy the small and large victories when they come, too. Recently, I’ve been fortunate enough to be offered an affiliate deal with someone I’ve dealt with regularly over the years - Lensrentals.com*

I’ve been using Lensrentals to help me with projects and gigs directly or indirectly for years now. Whenever I want just play with a camera, I rent one from Lensrentals. Whenever a client needed a particular piece of kit that I don’t have for the job, I have them rent it from Lensrentals (or rent it myself). Whenever someone asks me about buy a new camera, I tell them to rent what they’re thinking about before buying it via. . .Lensrentals.

This year I’ve been fortunate to partner with Lensrentals to help me out with my show, Hands-On Photography and other segments I’ve created at TWiT. More recently, they set me up with a lens to demo for wildlife photography. It was a fun demo and a great piece of kit to show off best practices and tips for shooting wildlife photography.

I want to thank Lensrentals for having me and say thank you to all of you that will use my affiliate link to check out photography gear rentals. It’s easy, just click here* or go to antpruitt dot com slash lensrentals to get to my affiliate store front. Each rental view my storefront will help support me and my creative endeavors to be able to get more gear and/or pay for more projects I’m working on. Thanks, yall.

**Affiliate link used. Affiliate links allow me to earn a small commission as a content creator if you purchase items using the affiliate link. Thank you for your support.

Nikon Z9 Mirrorless Camera Announced

Nikon has announced it’s latest pro camera body in the form of a full-frame mirroless Z9. This company has been (unfairly) negatively mentioned quite a bit in the photography community regarding its history with the mirrorless line of cameras. I recently chatted with Seth Miranda on my show about these grumbles and gripes from the community. But anyway, the Z9 is looking to be a bold statement from Nikon.

Image: Adorama

Tech specs of note

The camera is a mirrorless body, but a “shutter-less” body as well. Well, a mechanical shutter, that is. There is an enclosure over the sensor, but this isn’t a mechanism used during capturing images. Does this mean an improvement in sensor readout and rolling shutter? In addition to 45 megapixels, you’ll get:

• 8K/30p capture and 4K-from-8K, with ProRes 422 HQ

• 8K/60p, 12-bit 8K N-Raw and 4K ProRes RAW (coming soon with a software update)

• Dual CFExpress type B card slots

• 30 frames per second capture

• 120 frames per second capture (at a 11 megapixels)

• Improved autofocus and tracking

• Tilting rear LCD. It’s interesting looking. . . .

Image: Adorama

All of these specs look great and pretty much expected for a flagship device. I appreciate the fact that the dual card slots are identical. Not just an “ultra fast” slot and a “fast” slot the way other manufacturers are doing it. The squad Chris and Jordan at DP Review did a great video checking out a pre-production Z9 out and about in Seattle. I’m putting there video below. Be sure you click like and subscribe on their channel. You can pre-order the Z9 for $5496 over on Adorama.* Again, this seems like everything you’d expect in a pro body, but with really competitive pricing.

**Affiliate link used. Affiliate links allow me to earn a small commission as a content creator if you purchase items using the affiliate link. Thank you for your support.

Photoshop on the Web? Yes Please: Adobe Max 2021 Announcements

Happy Adobe Max Day, everyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I come off as a huge fanboy. So be it. I like what I like and the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription* works for me for most things I do in my day-to-day professional life. With that said, Adobe began its annual conference aimed to educate and inspire the content creators of the world. The keynote presentation is always noteworthy with some big updates to its software offerings. Let’s take a look at those new updates.

Photoshop Is Pretty Much Everywhere

The Adobe Sensei AI engine continues to improve as it will offer more tools to help speed up the photo post-processing workflow with just a few clicks. Creating selections in Photoshop gets easier as you can now hover over objects and preview what a selection would be in your artwork. There’s also more neural filters in place to help with enhancing landscape images beyond sky replacements. Lightroom also gets some new AI love. What excites me the most is a forth-coming (beta) Photoshop web interface with the help of a more collaborative Creative Cloud. This is all about speeding up the collaboration process as well as aid in helping train up someone you’re mentoring. Collaborators can use the browser to do some basic editing or provide feedback to the artist. No Creative Cloud account required for the collaborator. More on this beta and other photography app updates is available here on the Adobe blog.

Image: Adobe

Slick Update for Vloggers in Premiere Pro

Premiere Pro has had a few updates earlier in the year pointing towards performance and useful tools for your final video composition. Let’s face it, video is becoming more and more prominent the world of communication and branding. Platforms like YouTube and TikTok will favor your videos if you have certain behind-the-scenes elements in place with your workflow in addition to creating captivating stories to keep your viewers on their platform. Vloggers and film makers will love the updates. As a vlogger wanting to have music bed in their video, but the music track doesn’t quite match the length of the video. It’s a horrible experience to try to tastefully trim music to a video with cuts and trimming of the audio track. Now audio remix, which is found in Adobe Audition, is available in Premiere Pro. This is a great tool in Audition. Good news is this is coming to Premiere Pro. Bad news is this is a beta release.

Image: Adobe

Another useful update is the “simplified timeline” AI that’s available in Premiere Pro. This is yet another tool aimed at making collaboration more efficient. For some, a video sequence timeline can become quite messy when piecing together tracks, effects and markers. If the project is a team project, it may be helpful to minimize all the extraneous markers and layers when a collaborator is reviewing the sequence. Simplified Timeline does just that without destroying the project. This feature is available in the new update. More on the video updates from Adobe can be found here.

There are other updates available to the Creative Cloud suite this week. In Design, Illustrator, Character Animator and more received updates. I didn’t get into them all because, I don’t use those apps as often. But if you’re interested, more news on the all the Adobe updates can be found here on the Adobe blog.

Did you sign up for Adobe Max? I hope so. It’s FREE and full of information to help you better understand some creative concepts and fundamentals, as well as get a better grip on the Creative Cloud suite of apps.

(*) Affiliate link used. When you use my affiliate links, I receive a small commission from your purchase at no additional cost to you as the consumer. Thank you for your support

Sony's "Basic" A7 Isn't So "Basic" Now: Sony A7 IV Full-frame Mirrorless Camera

The rumored Sony A7 IV is now here for pre-order. Sony has kicked up the standards when it comes to what a “base model” full-frame camera can offer its consumers. Really great specs announced with the A7 IV.

Tech Specs

With this new camera body you’re getting a full-frame 33 megapixel sensor with Sony’s updated BIONZ XR image processor. You’re also getting:

• 4K 60 frames per second 10-bit 4:2:2 video with full pixel readout

• 7K oversampling full-frame 4K 30p 4:2:2

• Eye auto focus for humans, animals and birds

• S-Cinetone, S-Log3, HLG and other video profiles to record your footage

• Up to 15 stops of dynamic range

• Dual SD card slots (1 for UHS-I/II cards, 1 for both UHS-I/II cards and CFExpress Type A cards)

• 10 frames person second shooting still

• Flip-out touch screen on the back

• 5-axis in-body stabilization

Image by Sony

This body is available for $2499 on pre-order*. That price point seems fair considering the massive spec bump shown in this body compared to previous models. Compact, light weight which makes it great for portability. Of course I’ve reached out to see if I can get my hands on one. I’m curious to see how this body will feel in my hands. The A7C did NOT feel good in my hands, but the A7R-IV and A1 felt great in my hands. What are your thoughts on the Sony A7 IV?

**Affiliate link used. Affiliate links allow me to earn a small commission as a content creator if you purchase items using the affiliate link. Thank you for your support.

ProRAW and More Coming to Photoshop for iPad

Photoshop on iPad has been a DREAM for many photographers and creative artists for years, now. It’s now available on iPad, but it’s not quite everything you’d have on an actual laptop or desktop computer. Adobe knows this and has been working at getting the experience closer to the laptop or desktop experience. Adobe shared a sneak peak of another feature coming to the Photoshop for iPad app in the video below. If you’re interested in getting these great photography tools for yourself, I have an affiliate link here for pricing starting at $10/month.