Nikon Canada’s National Product Trainer, Chris Ogonek, recently took time out to chat with Vistek’s Pro Products Manager, Gary Goldberg about the new Nikon V1 and J1 cameras. Check out these videos and get the inside scoop!
Recently while we were at WPPI in Las Vegas, we came across CRU Dataports booth. I found their hard drives and Raids to be some of the best quality that I’ve ever seen. CRU was kind enough to send me the below units to test, and I’m giving you my honest opinion on them. They’re now available at Vistek stores (click the titles to find them on our website.)
Includes 2 500GB 5400RPM Drives. This is a beautiful looking unit, made of aircraft-grade aluminum, with a bright blue LCD readout on its side panel. The Tough Tech Duo comes pre-formatted as Raid 1 (for backup) for Mac or Windows, with 2X 500 GB 2.5 5400RPM, drives from Hitachi. Raid 1 is 500GB, Raid 0 is 1TB. Remember if you use Raid 0 you’re going to need another drive for Backup. You can also buy the enclosures without any drives, and add whatever brand drives you prefer.
What’s in the box? Includes cables for E-SATA, USB and Fire-wire. When connected via USB or Fire-wire, this drive can be used as a bus powered device. Remember if you’re a laptop user, that this will drain your battery directly from your laptop. The box contains all the AC/adapters you’ll ever need, including a unique plug that is designed with power converters for worldwide use. Also included is a nice little stand, so you can leave it upright on your desk.
I connected this to my MacBook Pro and it was instantly recognized. What is unique about these units is how easily you can swap the drives out.
I cloned my start up drive, which was about 150GB, using Carbon Copy Cloner, via mycard-buss 34 slot, using an e-sata connection, and it took 2:09 minutes. Of course all this will be faster depending on what drives you drop in here. 7200 RPM, or SSD drives will speed things up quite a bit.
For a photographer, this is the ultimate drive enclosure. What separates it from other drives on the market is the rugged construction and ease-of-use in which you can swap drives in & out of the unit – 1 click and the drive slides right out the front. Wiebetech also makes these great storage cases to house spare drives (they look just like VHS storage boxes) and they all include labels so you can clearly mark what is on each drive.
I dropped 4 1 TB drives in the unit, and powered it up. It’s default setting is RAID 5, Which will give you 3TB of usable space. So… whats so magical about RAID 5? Well, if you’re a pro photographer or videographer, you will get a mix of speed and uncompromisable security. If one of your drives fails, your data is spread across all 4 drives; simply pull out the failed drive and it will automatically re-write the data to the new drive – no worries. You know the saying, “its not a question of if your drive will fail, but when”. I can attest to this fact with first hand experience.
Read more about RAID here.
The RTX 400-QR Gets 5 Stars in my book, and will happily sit on my desk. It can be setup for RAID 0, 1, 3, 5, and 10.
What’s in the box? You get the drive enclosure which is ESATA, USB, Fire-wire 400/800, a 2 year manufacturer’s warranty, power cable, software and instruction manual on CD. You will need to load the configuration software on your computer in order to setup the RAID. It took me about 10 minutes – from unpacking the box plugging it in to configuring the RAID – to set this up on my Macbook Pro.
This unit is a 2 Bay Raid which can be configured for RAID 1 or RAID 0 with a setup a little bit from the unit above. This one is configured by the control panel on the front of the unit. Very simply – you insert your drives and turn it on. It will ask you if you want to setup a raid. You hit the enter button, and away you go.
I setup using RAID 1, for backup purposes. I installed 2 1TB Drives, which formatted & gave me 999.15 MB. I then connected to my MacBook Pro, which had to be setup using Disk Utilities, so that my Mac would recognize the drive.
On a through put note: I transferred an 11.35 GB file from my Mac to the RTX220 via Firewire 800 and it took 5.07 min. and via E-Sata it took 3.38 min. E-Sata is definitely the way to go, if you have it available to you.
Did someone say the word FREE?!
I love great deals as much as anybody, and if you’ve been thinking about buying the new version of Capture One Pro 6, this is the week to buy it.
Between April 7th & April 14th, if you purchase a full Version of Capture One Pro 6, you will be entitled to a digital download version of Capture One Express for free. You might want to give it to a friend or your parents. Hey, maybe your dog is really smart and needs a copy. Whatever! This is a great promo – and if you haven’t already heard, the new version of Capture One Pro 6 works with your iPad and iPhone 3Gs and 4, with Capture Pilot. It’s a really awesome feature for letting your clients view and select their favorites, while you’re shooting.
This offer won’t be around for long, so grab your copy today!
First – I really want to thank everyone who came out to my Portrait Lighting Basics class on Saturday, March 19. We had a great (sold out!) class. Hopefully some of our students will share some of their photos on our Flickr Page. All you have to do is join the group, and then you can add some of your photos.
For those of you who have never attended a Vistek Semiar, here is a quick video clip (that I shot with my iPhone) of what you can expect from one of my Portrait Lighting Classes.
This class ran for 3 hours and, as with all my classes, we shot tethered to a 52″ Plasma display so that all of the students can see what we’re up to. Everyone who attends has the opportunity to shoot the exact same pictures that I do, and to learn lighting from scratch. In this class I decided to show everyone how versatile the Elinchrom D-Lite 4 kit is (follow the link to see everything that the kit includes.)
• The first shot we did was with one Soft Box, directly on Camera Right. We set up this shot to create a very dramatic look, and used Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to process all of the images you’ll see below.
• With this second shot, below, we brought the soft box forward to Camera Right at a 45º angle at about 6′ high, aimed slightly downward. Still we’re only using 1 main light.
• For this next shot we decided to leave our light source in the exact same spot, and switch to a Medium Photek Umbrella.
I processed this shot 2 ways: first is a B&W Infrared look that I created as a preset in Lightroom, and the second is just straight colour, with a bit of skin softening. By the way I’m teaching my introductory Lightroom seminar at Vistek, on Saturday, April 2 in our downtown Toronto store.
• Next up we went back to the Elinchrom Porta Lite soft box that comes with our D-Lite 4 kit, as our main light, in the same position. We’ve also added in a 30″ Silver Lastolite reflector as fill on Camera Left and a 10º grid spot on our second light (as a hair light) behind our model & aimed at her hair from behind, on camera left.
• In the shot below, we’ve added in a Lastolite Triflector kit which surrounds our model with reflectors to Camera Left, Right, and below her in front to add fill. Our main light is now directly centered in front of our model from high above. We still have our second light in the back to Camera Left & behind our model as a hair light.
• This is our last shot for this lesson. What we’ve done differently is taken our grid spot and aimed it at our Lastolite Collapsible background just to give it a slightly different look.
All of the images were shot with a Canon 1DS Mark III with a 100mm 2.8 macro lens.
Also used on this shoot were:
That’s what you can do with your Elinchrom D-Lite 4 kit – pure and simple. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. And, if you already own an Elinchrom D-Lite 4 kit, why not share some of your best shots on our Flickr Group?
Thanks!
Gary Goldberg
The Cotton Carrier is an exciting new product line that is now available in all Vistek stores throughout Canada. This is an incredibly unique system that allows you to wear your camera – either on a waist belt harness or on a chest belt harness. After carefully reviewing both versions of this product, I would say that both have their own unique set of characteristics that will appeal to active photographers.
Here is a skateboarder in action – using a Cotton Carrier.
The other system, Cotton Carry Lite, will probably appeal to Photojournalists, Wedding, and Event photographers, as it is a belt system worn around the waist. It allows you to quickly ‘holster’ your camera and lock it in. I ran up a few flights of stairs with my Canon 1DS Mark III to test this sucker out (and you know that’s a pretty heavy camera) and it didn’t move on me at all. The picture below illustrates the belt system.
If you need help getting started with your Cotton Carrier there are some great tutorial videos here for you to learn how to set everything up.
We hope you’ll all enjoy this new and exciting product. I personally, give it 2 thumbs up and I’m looking forward to using mine in the upcoming months.
-Gary Goldberg
Recently I was on a trip to WPPI in Las Vegas and came upon this amazing booth by Drop It Modern Backgrounds. I met with Kelli who is COO of the company. We had a great conversation and, after I saw the quality of the material, I realized we had to have these at Vistek.
Many of you may know me from my days as a Salesperson at Vistek’s downtown Toronto location, but I’ve recently been promoted to Products Manager, Professional Photo for Vistek’s Corporate Offices (also in Toronto.) One of my jobs is going to be to acquire and bring new and exciting products like these new backgrounds to Vistek, for our clients to enjoy.
One of the things that most attracted me to their backgrounds were the colours and patterns; I really had not seen anything like them before. The material is top notch and very durable. If you’re a portrait photographer, you’re going to have a blast using these – they’re fantastic for headshots, boudoir, kids, babies, etc. They come in various sizes, but I should warn you, due to the nature of the material, each pattern is only available in limited runs; once they’re gone they’re gone.
For more information, please have a look at all of the various patterns and sizes on Vistek’s website.
Below are some pictures of the backdrops – and we should have these in stock at Vistek in the next few days.
Subscribe via RSS Feed stay updated with blog articles
Subscribe via email address:
