Jay Abend

Portable Power On Location
The Vagabond Battery System
Jay Abend  |  Nov 01, 2004

All Photos © 2004, Jay Abend, All Rights Reserved

Complete freedom is the dream of every photographer. We want to go where we want, when we want, with completely portable gear. Cameras have shrunk over the years, from huge Mathew Brady-era view cameras to teeny-tiny pocket digicams. Lighting has gotten portable as well, with in camera and on-camera...

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Lighting
Off-Camera Lighting
Take It Off The Hot Shoe For Best Results
Jay Abend  |  Oct 01, 2004

Photos © 2004, Jay Abend, All Rights Reserved

The look of flash photography has been a problem for photographers for decades. As we migrated from huge silver reflectors stuffed with flash bulbs to smaller and more portable electronic flash units, the look of on-camera...

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Calumet's LiteLink Radio Remote Trigger System
A Handy Way To Shoot Without Wires
Jay Abend  |  Oct 01, 2004

Shooting with powerful studio style flash units has always meant dealing with the dreadful PC sync cord. That horrible little PC sync connection on your camera hasn't changed much in the past 60 years, and it remains the least reliable link in the world of most studio photographers.

Like most pros, I adopted a strictly...

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Balcar's AQ Lighting System
An On-Location, Battery-Powered Strobe
Jay Abend  |  Oct 01, 2004

Photos © 2004 Jay Abend, All Rights Reserved

When it comes to heavy-duty pro lighting gear, Balcar has long been a name synonymous with high-end studio strobes. This French company has been at the forefront of a number of trends in photography. Started in 1952, Balcar...

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Wide-Open
Walking The Knife's Edge Of Shallow Depth Of Field
Jay Abend  |  Aug 01, 2004

Recently I've begun to look at things differently. As a working commercial photographer, much of my work consists of really tack-sharp images. While I've always worked with foreground and background areas that may be out of focus, the...

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White Lightning's X-Series Monolights
New, Improved ...And Still A Bargain
Jay Abend  |  Aug 01, 2004

White Lightning strobes almost single-handedly revolutionized the studio strobe world. With their first coffee-can shaped WL10,000 more than 20 years ago, Paul C. Buff and company brought serious strobe lighting gear to a whole new generation of...

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Kodak's Pro SLR/n
Kodak Roars Back With A Revised Digital SLR
Jay Abend  |  Jul 01, 2004

The digital SLR world is a jungle. Just days after Canon announced its earthshaking 11-megapixel, full frame, EOS-1Ds SLR in September of 2002, Kodak blew them out of the water with their 14-megapixel SLR, the DCS 14n. The Kodak digital SLR was not only...

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QPcard's QPcolorkit 1
Custom Color Profile Creation For All Digital Cameras
Jay Abend  |  May 01, 2004

As more and more photographers are going partially or even totally digital, we're all starting to learn the elements that make for a great image. At first we're all wrapped up in pixel count, lens sharpness, zoom range, and battery life. After...

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The JTL Versalight D Digital Monolights
Power, Control, And Versatility Priced Right
Jay Abend  |  Apr 01, 2004

"Digital" is a word that has been thrown about a lot recently. MP3 players have given rise to "digital headphones," drugstore minilabs offer "digital prints," and now we're beginning to see the popularization of "digital lighting."
...

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Classic Camera Reviews
Classic Digital Cameras
Kodak's Vintage DCS 520 Digital SLR Is Now A Bargain...
But Is Tech From 1999 Just Too Outdated?
Jay Abend  |  Mar 01, 2004

Without a doubt, 1998 was an important year for the digital camera industry. For it was in '98 that the first really good, really usable, really portable digital SLR camera hit the shelves. A joint venture between Japanese camera maker Canon and...

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