Photo Op

 

Many of you know that photography and videography  are important to me. I use my skills and equipment both for professional uses here with Disciplined Monkey Studios as well as my own creative endeavors. And having the right equipment can make a big difference and that is why I paid close attention to a few things at CES.

Tiffen was on hand showing off a wide variety of accessories to help you get the shot you want.  They have all the standard tools like filters, cases, lighting, tripods and so on. But what caught my eye was their Steadicam lineup. These are designed to help you get a smooth and fluid picture or video without being tied to a tripod. Though they have been around since 1976, they continue to improve just about every year.

Another Company that was out in force and has some products that I’d rather not go shooting without is LensPen. They offer the best solution I have found for cleaning your lens. The Original Lens pen has a brush on one side to clear debris and the other is a cleaning pad with a carbon compound that easily removes oils like fingerprints. The have products for all sort of optics and also for mobile devices like the iPad. For Tablets the Sidekick is a niffy product to remove those distracting fingerprints.

Next let’s look at the most important equipment- The camera. Canon was out in full glory showcasing DSLR cameras and camcorders. While I didn’t see anything new other than a few awesome lenses that are outside of my price range, they still have some of he best on the market. From the Mark III and Mark IV to the 7D (that’s what I use) and all the way down the road to the Rebel series- They have DSLRs for everyone.

On the Camcorder front, Canon has a slew of new models. I’ll cover a few for you. The Vixia HFG10 is a prosumer model that will give you professional High Definition video. It features 32GB of memory and supports to SD cards for plenty of recording time and a full HD CMOS Image Sensor. For full on professional you’ll want the XF305 which has everything you need.  From 2 CF card slots to waveform audio monitoring and XLR inputs with recordings up to 50Mbps! And for the prosumer they also have the XA10, and ultraportable HD performance machine. 64GB flash memory and 2 SDXC card lots. This one is more for those who would like the high quality, but don’t need to go all out!

These are just a few things that we saw.