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Tuesday, November 15, 2011

December 2011

New Tools Of The Trade

This Article Features Photo Zoom

Portable Recorder
Give your sound quality a boost when capturing video with the Zoom H2n, a recorder featuring five microphones and four recording modes: Mid-Side (MS) stereo, 90° X/Y stereo, and 2-channel and 4-channel surround sound. What's key about this recorder is its flexibility. With Mid-Side recording, sound is captured from directly in front of you by a Mid mic and from the left and right by a Side mic. You can increase or decrease the level of the Side mic to control the width of the recording range. If you record in RAW, you can adjust that range after recording. Also included are a 1.8-inch LCD, a built-in reference speaker and USB 2.0 connectivity. Estimated Street Price: $199. Contact: Samson Technologies, (631) 784-2200, www.samsontech.com.

Light Up
For adding light exactly where you need to, the Litepanels Croma is an on-camera LED that lets you control color temperature and lighting intensity. It runs for up to six hours on six AA Lithium batteries, draws a maximum 9W of power and can provide up to the equivalent luminance of a 50W tungsten light source. Two ergonomic dials allow you to dim the light from 100% to zero and dial in fill light to any point between daylight (5600°K) and tungsten (3200°K). The Croma weighs just 12 ounces, measures 6x4x2 inches and is housed in a rubber and plastic shell. Estimated Street Price: TBA. Contact: Litepanels, (818) 752-7009, www.litepanels.com.

Gel Kits
The ExpoImaging Rogue Gel kits feature a combination of 14 color-effects gels, five color-correction gels and one diffusion gel. Each one is labeled with the LEE Filter name of the gel, as well as its measured ƒ-stop loss value, and the corresponding Kelvin color temperature correction and camera white balance icon if it's appropriate. They attach securely to your flash with the easy-to-use Gel-Band (included). The kits come with a storage pouch with quick reference dividers for keeping the gels safe and organized. Estimated Street Price: $29 (Universal Lighting Filter Kit); $27 (Lighting Filter Kit for Rogue Grid). Contact: ExpoImaging, (800) 446-5086, www.expoimaging.com.

A Close View
Doubling the size and capacity of its professional memory card lineup, SanDisk now has a 64 GB Extreme Pro SDXC card with Ultra High Speed (UHS) capability. The card delivers write speeds of up to 90 MB/s and read speeds of up to 95 MB/s for capturing high-resolution RAW files in continuous burst mode and full HD video. The advanced Error Correction Code engine improves overall data integrity and reliability of the card while it's reading and writing. Capacity ranges from 8 GB to 64 GB. Estimated Street Price: Starts at $100. Contact: SanDisk, (866) SANDISK, www.sandisk.com.

Four Thirds Lens Adapter
For Canon shooters who use a Micro Four Thirds camera as a DSLR backup, Redrock Micro now offers an optics solution. The LiveLens MFT lets you use Canon EF lenses on a Micro Four Thirds body. The lens mount has a touchpad that allows you to control the aperture in increments as small as a 1⁄3-stop, and it works with nearly all available EF models, including variable-aperture zoom, prime, L-series and third-party EF-compatible lenses. The compact LiveLens MFT weighs less than six ounces. Estimated Street Price: $442. Contact: Redrock Micro, (888) 214-3903, www.redrockmicro.com.

Filter Effects
For giving an image a little more flair, Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4 is a tried-and-true solution. The latest version of the digital filter and photo-enhancement plug-in features eight new filters, including Detail Extractor, Dark Contrast and Vintage Film, as well as updates to 10 filters from the last version. The variety of preset effects allows you to customize those effects to create your own "looks" and then control their application with Nik's intuitive control point system. Similar to how layers work in Photoshop, multiple filters can be stacked in one session by simply clicking and dragging them. There are 55 filters total for correcting color, retouching and adding creative effects. Estimated Street Price: $199. Contact: Nik Software, (888) 284-4085, www.niksoftware.com.