SIGMA 50mm f/1.4 ART to only be $790?!

More lens news!  However, I'm taking this one with a HUMUNGOUS grain of salt.   Both SigmaRumors and PetaPixel are reporting that Sigma's Otus-killing 50mm lens is going to run for a stunningly inexpensive $790.  If this is true,  I'm placing my order the second it goes on sale.   Rumors are that this lens has completely eschewed trying to compete with Canon and Nikon's 50mm f/1.4 offerings and have gone straight for competing with Sony's $4,000 Otus 55mm f1.4 uberlens.  Early reports from testers are reporting that they have just about hit that mark,  blowing away the competition from Nikon and Canon.  I think the lens wars are about to get really interesting.

Attached below are some rumored sample images from this new lens, comparing it with its current competition:

Samyang Teases its new AF lenses!

If you haven't yet heard of Samyang I can understand.   For quite a while now they have been making waves in some more niche photography markets as sellers of manual lenses to whatever company wanted to slap their label on their product.  So if you looked, you could find Samyang lenses on the market under the name Rokinon, Bower, Bell & Howell, Vivitar among others.    Now it looks like things may be changing.

The lenses they have been producing up to this point have been both exceptionally inexpensive, and optically pretty outstanding.  One of their current best is their 85mm f/1.4, a stunning portrait lens seen below.

They also have a wide variety of fisheye lenses and more standard wide angle lenses.  All of which have been well noted for their sharpness and overall great image quality for the price.   Heck the past few months I've started to see them out in the wild on the wedding circuit from time to time. The biggest issue was that all of their lenses are entirely manual.  This has been no problem for the DSLR video people or those who can really take the time to work with manual lenses.  But for the run and gun pro,  they have been almost eliminated from the competition because of the lack of autofocus.

It was really only a matter of time, but the rumor mill for a while has been churning that Samyang is looking to take a bigger chunk out of the lens market and make the dive into Autofocus lenses.   This seems to be confirmed now by the teaser image above that Samyang put out today.  If I had to take a guess,  we will probably see Autofocus versions of their popular 14mm and 24mm lenses and perhaps a 35mm.  Unfortunately I doubt we will immediately see an autofocus version of the 85mm.   Focusing on a lens like that is far too critical, and with them just getting into the AF business, I doubt they would pin their early hopes to a lens that could be that difficult to build a reliable AF system for.   Once they get the hang of it, I'm sure you'll start to see a lot of interesting products coming from them.   Samyang today is in the position Yongnuo was 3 or 4 years ago.   Just starting to get out there,  releasing simple and inexpensive tools,  building their skill sets and reliability.   Now Yongnuo is starting to become a heavy hitter among strobist enthusiasts and many other photographers for having fantastic tools at great prices.   I think we may see Samyang start to hit those marks even faster!

Photo of the day - March 19th

Daisies by Maja Topčagić on 500px

This is some absolutely stunning portraiture work. Delicate features meet a delicate pose. The catchlight in the eyes is almost magical. Outstanding work.

full vintage glamour portraits workshop!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPBO9paDGmA Bookmark this one for when you get home ladies and gents.   It's a wonderful 1.5 hour long workshop on how to shoot and process vintage glamour portraits.   Great stuff!

How it's Un-Made: Oreo Cookies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJyGoGPXTj4#t=281 I almost hesitate to mention how much I love the show "How It's Made".  It probably stems from my Mr. Rogers watching days when Mr. McFeely (by the way, how creepy is THAT name now that you're an adult?) would drop off videos to Mr. Rogers about how things like crayons or saxophones were made.   I never thought I would get so much entertainment about finding out how a kayak is made, but there you go.   This video is the perfect parody of that show,  doing a spot on impression of the style of the narrator while playing an episode about making Oreo cookies in reverse.  I lost it at "powerslam ramp".

Photo of the Day - March 13th, 2014

Julia by Ralf Mack on 500px

I've been experimenting with a portrait style similar to this lately. Super raw portraits that show every flaw, and yet still manage to really capture the beauty and intensity of the subject. This is one of the best examples I've seen. Usually portraits in this style tend to go with people who have a lot of texture to their skin, this takes it the other way and brings out the details of someone who has nice smooth skin with a hint of freckles. I can only imagine what the unprocessed image looked like. I certainly have to step up my game on my attempts at this now. I will be putting up a tutorial in the future on how to light, shoot, and process shots similar to these (albeit mine will be sans-ringlight).

The NSA scandal just gets worse.

First of all, just a thought:  Who puts the graphics for these NSA slide decks together?  WRETCH.  Hire a graphic designer for chrissakes!

Posting today on his new multi-million dollar wordpress blog, The Intercept,  Glenn Greenwald shows how the NSA just keeps seemingly digging it's hole deeper and deeper:

Top-secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency is dramatically expanding its ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale by using automated systems that reduce the level of human oversight in the process.

The classified files – provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – contain new details about groundbreaking surveillance technology the agency has developed to infect potentially millions of computers worldwide with malware “implants.” The clandestine initiative enables the NSA to break into targeted computers and to siphon out data from foreign Internet and phone networks.

So far, I hate to say it, but I'm not surprised.   Nothing we have learned so far has shown anything other than the NSA's need to know the whereabouts, conversations, and interests of every person on the planet.   What did surprise me was this little nugget:

In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social media site as a launching pad to infect a target’s computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive. In others, it has sent out spam emails laced with the malware, which can be tailored to covertly record audio from a computer’s microphone and take snapshots with its webcam. The hacking systems have also enabled the NSA to launch cyberattacks by corrupting and disrupting file downloads or denying access to websites.

I wonder if Facebook is complicit in this?  It seems it would be extraordinarily difficult for the NSA to pull something like this off without at least SOME allowed access to Facebook's infrastructure.    This may indeed be the bigger story here.   Is it something akin to Apple's goto fail issue?  Where backdoor access has been "accidentally" added in a bit of code somewhere?  Or more frighteningly, is Facebook actively cooperating with the surveillance of the American people?   Terrifying thought if true,  that's for sure.