Jon Sienkiewicz Blog

I’d forgotten how much fun Cokin Creative Filters can be. You remember Cokin—slotted plastic filter holder that attaches to many dissimilar lenses via inexpensive adapters, and square filters made of CR39 acrylic resin. The idea that is you can use the same set-up on just about every lens you own, even if they have different size filter threads. And because most of the filters are square, you can slide them up and down in the holder to adjust the effect. The few round filters can easily be rotated for the same reason.

Everything you need to vlog, all neatly packaged and ready to go from Canon, Nikon and Sony. Just add a topic, a narrator and a smile. Contrary to popular belief, YouTube does not require the inclusion of cats, dogs or people falling off bicycles.

Contrarian

In addition to the usual suspects, we've rounded up a couple lesser-known options. It's time to get those images off your phone and out into the world for others to enjoy.

A few years back, while waiting for a beautiful but thoroughly flakey model in the parking lot of a restaurant near Liberty State Park, my boredom was interrupted by a black Lincoln Town Car that slipped suspiciously past me and parked a few spaces away. After several minutes, two men exited the sedan. They were wearing tuxedos and looked rather serious. The trunk lid popped open. Ignoring me completely, they rummaged through the trunk. One of the men removed his tux jacket and strapped on a large black holster. A moment later, the other did the same. I slid down in my seat, wondering if I was about to witness some weird reenactment of High Noon, right there in Jersey City.

See a spot of color you like? Scan it with this $59 doodad and instantly your smartphone shows the RGB values – and a lot of other stuff, including what brands and shades of paint to buy to match that color accurately. The Datacolor ColorReader EZ DC10-3 even suggests a full palette of other colors that complement the sample scanned. For photographers it’s a chance to objectively identify colors numerically and replicate them in Photoshop.

Don’t gamble with your image files. If you’re serious about the pictures you take, be serious about the memory cards you use to store them. There is a handful of reliable, consistently dependable brands available, and one of the most popular with advanced photographers is the Delkin Black lineup. Let’s zero in on their latest SD card and find out why.