It’s that time of year again! The 2022 5DayDeal Photography Bundle has just gone live, and this bundle is packed, once again, with goodies to enhance your photography. Today I’m going to share some of the products that I feel are particularly interesting and useful, and of course, links to the sale so that you can stock up on some of the best quality photography education available today.
Although I skip a year every so often, I’ve been working with the 5DayDeal team since their very first sale, and from the inside, I have to tell you that they are one of the most professional teams out there and always a pleasure to work with. It’s also very nice to see how sophisticated their production has become. For example, here is a video they put together to showcase this year’s bundle. I think they’ve done a very good job of this.
Anyway, first, let me explain the pricing structure of the bundles, along with savings made on each bundle, and then we’ll pick a few to look a little deeper into. The Main Bundle includes over $2,200 worth of photography education but it’s available for just $98, and, as the name implies, this is available for just five days, until October 18, noon, Pacific time. You can upgrade to the Pro Bundle for an additional $39 and get another $1,400 worth of education. The 5DayDeal team has always been big on helping you to help charities, and you can add their Charity Bundle for $29, adding another $1,300 worth of coolness! The full set costs just $166 with over $5,500 worth of photography education and tools, a total discount of over 97%.
The complete bundle contains 719 training videos, over 135 hours of training, and 2,693 LUTs and Tools. I rarely finish looking through everything available, but if you pick out stuff to ingest as time allows, it is a great way to up your game.
Perfecting the Headshot
So, let’s jump in and look at some of the products in the Main Bundle. The first thing that I wanted to mention is Perfecting the Headshot from Fstoppers. Headshots seem easy, but there is much more to creating great headshots than meets the eye. The number one challenge any photographer has when photographing people is learning how to break them out of the all too common “deer in the headlights” look and make them look comfortable and engaging. In this tutorial, Peter Hurley dives deep into the human psyche and explains why people almost always have apprehension and fear when looking into a camera. After learning what causes people to look that way, Peter teaches you multiple techniques to make your subjects look more confident and attractive in 10-and-a-half hours of content.
Mastering landscape photography
Next up, Mastering Landscape Photography, which contains 20 videos that will show you how to master the finer points of landscape photography with skills such as smoothing out water, creating reflections, showing motion on moving water, panoramas, and more. The course covers must-have landscape photography gear and the features you need in a photography backpack, and techniques for shooting great landscape photos and focusing techniques to create tack-sharp photos every time.
Dramatic Black & White Landscapes
Creating Black and White landscapes is an art all of its own, but help is at hand with the Dramatic Black & White Landscapes course. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to process and create dramatic and impactful black-and-white images utilizing photoshop, including…
– Utilizing smart objects in a black and white workflow – Utilizing Adobe Camera RAW in Black and white conversions – Maximizing contrast – Maximizing visual flow – Using Luminosity Masks to maximize contrast and depth – Cleaning up visual distractions – Controlling visual flow through color seperation
The course contains 4 tutorial walkthroughs with a combined runtime of 1.5 hours
There’s much, much more in the Main Bundle, but these three are some of my favorites. The Pro Bundle adds heaps more material for a relatively small additional fee, so it’s highly recommended. Here is a taste of what’s inside…
Milky Way Made Easy
Despite the non-professional sounding title, Michael Shainblum has done a great job with his Milky Way Made Easy course.
Learning how to shoot the milky way can be intimidating, but this course explains basic and advanced techniques in easy to understand video tutorials. Whether you are just getting starting taking your first night sky long exposure, or are advanced and just looking for some new tricks and tips to elevate your images, you’ll probably find value in this course, which contains 25 videos total over six hours of content, including a section called Single Exposure Shot at Crater Lake.
In this tutorial Michael covers how to shoot and compose a single exposure of the Milky Way. He then covers post processing techniques to clean up the photo and bring out the Milky Way. Even if you are an advanced shooter, this video shares some different techniques that you may not have seen before. You’ll learn techniques for properly planning out and scouting for night sky photography, gear for night sky photography and focusing techniques, including photo stacking.
Other sections include Twilight Blend On the Oregon Coast, Star Trails Tutorial at Sparks Lake, Moonscape Processing at Smith Rock, and Basic Light Painting at Mystic Beach.
Again, there is much more in the Pro Bundle. You can learn Frequency Separation Retouching, Compositing for Portraits in Photoshop, real estate photography, woodland photography, Newborn photography, Mastering the Adjustment Brush Tool, Advanced Portrait Editing Techniques, Launching Min-Sessions like a pro, and a realistic sky replacement workflow.
The Charity Bundle
With the Charity Bundle you’ll learn creative photography concepts, The Thriving Artist Method, exposure blending, creative blurs, the art of digital blending, wedding photography, and a Lightroom sunset workflow, among other things. Plus, of course, the charity aspect of this and the sale itself is one of the most amazing things about the 5DayDeal. Since 2014 the team has given over $2,000,000 to charity, so it’s not just the photographers that buy the bundles that benefit.
So, the 5DayDeal lasts just five days, but this blog post is eternal, so if you arrive after October 18, 2022, the sale will be gone, forever. The team will, I’m sure, be back next year with another set of cutting edge products from some of the worlds best photography educators, but this sale has to end on October 18. If you are in time, do check it out, and if you heard about the sale from me, please do use my link (https://mbp.ac/5daydeal). Please also share this post with your photography friends.
I’m proud to be a part of the Out of Chicago LIVE event that will take place from April 9 to 11, 2021, and today wanted to provide a sneak peek at part of what I’ll be talking about, and walk you briefly through some of the post-processing techniques that I’ll be demonstrating in Capture One Pro during my live session. My Live Session is entitled “Photography Nirvana Through Minimalist Introspection” and I’m going to talk about minimalist photography mostly illustrated with my Winter Photography from Hokkaido, Japan, and get into finding your style and learning to really love your photography. I’ve created a video that starts with a brief teaser about my talk, but then I provide a 20-minute demonstration of how I process two winter scenes in Capture One Pro version 21.1, and whether you will be joining us online for the Out of Chicago LIVE event from April 9 to 11, 2021, or not, I think you’ll get something out of the video. Check out details of the event at https://www.outofchicago.com/ and I really hope to see you there and would love it if you join my session on Photography Nirvana through Minimalist Introspection. Here’s the video. I hope you find it useful.
The 5DayDeal 2020 Photography Bundle has just gone live until Oct 20, and this is such a great sale that I decided to dedicate this week’s Podcast to telling you all about it. I’ll assume that you are here because you love photography, but all too often I hear from photographers that spend so much time on post-processing or business-related tasks that they start to lose interest in photography. That is a crying shame considering that many of the background tasks that surround photography can be optimized to the point that they are simply part of the fun, and it thanks to the 5DayDeal Team, a multitude of training tools that will help you to streamline your photography are available until October 20 for just $89 for the Main Bundle! There is also a Pro Bundle add-on which costs $39 and a Complete Bundle which adds the Charity Bundle to the Main and Pro Bundles for an additional $29.
The Photography Bundle 2020 contains 55 hours of training in 319 videos. If you were to buy everything individually the total would be thousands of dollars, but through the generosity of the contributors and sponsors and through the audience that this global sale attracts, it’s possible to bring this to you at a 96% discount. There’s so much inside the Photography Bundle that it would take hours to walk you through everything, so I’m going to talk a little about some of my favorite tools to give you a taste of what’s inside, but really, you need to go and grab your Bundle before October 20 or this will be gone forever! To ensure that the 5DayDeal Team knows who you heard about the sale from and to help support my efforts in providing the content that I do, please use my link which is mbp.ac/5daydeal, or use the button below.
It’s also important to mention that the 5DayDeal team gives 10% of every purchase directly to a number of charities, and will be raising funds to help offset food insecurity brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. During checkout, you get to choose which charity you would like to help. For example, Make-A-Wish helps create life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses. The Colorado chapter alone has granted more than 5000 wishes to eligible children. Orbis transforms lives through the treatment and prevention of avoidable blindness by providing hands-on training, public health education, and more. Mercy Ships manages hospital ships that provide free, lifesaving surgeries for people where medical care is nearly non-existent. And the 5DayDeal Foundation lends a helping hand to scientific, environmental, humanitarian, and other charitable causes worldwide.
This post will, of course, remain in my feed indefinitely, so if you missed it, and would like a remember when future sales are underway, please subscribe to the General Information interest group of my newsletters which you can find at mbp.news. Anyway, here are some of my favorite tools from the 2020 Photography Bundle.
Main Bundle
Magic with Any Light – Jerry Ghionis
One of my favorite courses is Magic with Any Light from Jerry Ghionis. In this Masterclass, Jerry shows you how to shoot in a variety of challenging situations, from full sun to a candlelit room. Jerry provides help with obtaining consistency in different lighting conditions, help with posing your subjects, and provides advice on post-processing. Finally, he takes you through the entire post-photography process giving tips on how to achieve a minimum stress workflow.
One Light Masterclass – Joel Grimes
Another favorite is the One Light Masterclass from Joel Grimes, in which Joel takes you through his One Light Masterclass showing how to master creating dramatic portraits using only one light. You’ll learn about the inverse square law and using the Zone System, as well as what High-Speed Sync is, and how to create shallow depth of field images in full sunlight. This is a 26-course class with almost five and a half hours of tuition.
Lighting 101 | Introduction to Flash Photography from SLR Lounge
If you are just getting started with flash photography or need a refresher, we’ve got you covered as well, with the Lighting 101 Introduction to Flash Photography from the SLR Lounge, which will help you to create flattering light anywhere! You’ll get a better understanding of creative white balance and light modifiers and how to create multi-point light with one flash, among other things. Every image in the workshop is created with just one on-camera flash and basic light modifiers, proving that you don’t necessarily need expensive lighting to get great results. This workshop includes 60 video lessons with 9 hours of content.
Shooting Digital Like Film – Sebastian Michaels
A subject that is close to my heart is Shooting Digital Like Film and Sebastian Michaels covers this masterfully as he helps you to learn how to reframe how you think about photography. I’m not going to quote everything that Sebastian says about the course as frankly, I find it a little presumptuous, but it’s a good course all the same and highly recommended.
Creative Control 1 & 2 – Nicole S. Young
Nicole S. Young has contributed her Creative Control Lightroom presets 1 & 2 to the sale. Nicole is a lovely person and great photographer, and although I personally never use third party presets, or Lightroom for that matter, I do know that it can be a huge help if you are still trying to figure out how to get certain results by applying and studying presets.
Each pack includes 100 presets you can use to completely process your photographs from start-to-finish. You can selectively edit the colors, tones, contrast, and much more just by working your way through each sub-set. It’s an excellent way to quickly create a polished image and control the look of your photographs, or to make a few changes to any of your existing presets.
Pro Bundle
Pricing Your Photography Workshop – Jessica Whitaker
If you are thinking of selling your photography but having a hard time developing a pricing strategy, Jessica Whitaker comes to the rescue with her Pricing Your Photography Workshop as part of the Pro Bundle. Jessica says “You have to stop treating your photography business like a hobby!” and that is so true. Of course, if photography is a hobby for you, there is no shame in keeping it that way, but if you start to do photography as a business, this is solid advice from someone who knows what she’s talking about.
Office Organization For Photographers – The LawTog
Another great tool is Office Organization for Photographers from The LawTog, which helps you to manage business finances and general office organization.
Complete Bundle
From the Complete Bundle, and again, this is just a few of my favorites, Courtney Slazinik has contributed the Beginners Guide to Manual Mode Course to help you to master your digital camera and take great photos in all kinds of situations and environments over a 4-week course. Ana Brandt also contributes with the adorable Creative Baby Wrapping course to help with newborn and maternity photography. This is ten videos on creative wrapping and posing. There is also a Street Photography Masterclass from Thorsten Overgaard, to give you a whole new perspective on street photography.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, as there is so much content in this bundle, I have only scratched the surface here, but I hope it gives you an idea of what you’ll get. Even if you are still on the fence, do go and take a look at the bundle and check out the rest of what is available, and remember, you are helping not only your own photography but some very worthy charities at the same time by getting involved.
I’m incredibly happy and proud to tell you that our iOS app Photographer’s Friend version 3 is now available on the App Store! I was able to create an upgrade option as well, so today I’m going to fill you in on all the details.
It took me a few weeks longer than I’d hoped because I decided to add one last feature that proved to be a lot more difficult than I’d imagined, but as I knew it would be necessary, I think it was worth spending the extra time. I also really wanted to provide a way for existing Photographer’s Friend 2 owers to get a discount on the upgrade, and this took a few more steps that also delayed this announcement.
But, I am really happy to tell you that Photographer’s Friend 3 is now available in the App Store, and I was successful in setting up a mechanism to get existing customers a discount, and you don’t see that very much in the App Store. Basically what I’ve done is created a bundle, which is usually a way for companies or developers to sell additional products to customers at a discount. Our Photographer’s Friend Upgrade Bundle though does just that —provides a way to upgrade with a discount.
How it works is this. If you bought version 2 and probably also if you got version 2 as a free upgrade from version 1, you should see the words “Complete My Bundle” when you visit the bundle page. The price of the bundle is $6.99 US, but the amount that you originally paid for Photographer’s Friend is automatically deducted, resulting in a discount.
Another cool coincidence is that iOS 12 has just been released and in the Control Center we now have a button to start a native QR code reader, and I love QR codes! If you start the QR code reader and point it at the code above, you will be able to automatically just to the Upgrade Bundle on the App Store to upgrade to version 3 at a discount. If you want to upgrade of course.
If you are happy with the two calculators in version 2, you are most welcome to stick with version 2, but please note that all new features moving forward will be added to version 3. We did just release a small update to version 2 though, to make the Depth of Field calculator a little more accurate, so you aren’t being left out to dry.
There were various prices for version 1 and 2 over the years, ranging from an introductory price of $2.99 which then changed to the regular price of $3.99. If you paid $2.99 for your previous version, that is deducted from $6.99, meaning you’ll be able to upgrade for $4, a saving of 20% over the cost of version 3 which is $4.99. If you paid $3.99 for a previous version, you will be able to upgrade for $3, which is a saving of 40% off the full price.
I love this way of providing a discount because it’s completely fair in my opinion. People who paid less earlier pay more now, and people who paid more, now pay less. There’s a beautiful almost Kharma-like harmony to that!
In version 3, I’ve just posted a minor update for review by Apple with some under the hood updates, and a few more tweaks to the number of decimal places displayed in the Depth of Field calculator, making it even more useful when working with very shallow depth of field.
Introducing the Exposure Shift Calculator
The major update, of course, is the addition of a third calculator that I’ve called the Exposure Shift Calculator, rounding out the team of photography assistants in your pocket, and removing any confusion over how to change your exposure, or finding good settings from a light meter’s EV reading.
Rather than going through all of the details here though, I’ve created a video to walk you through this new calculator, which you can see below.
This video is one of three that I’ll be creating to explain each of the three calculators, and these are now linked to an Online Video Tutorial page under the Links and Help sections in the Photographer’s Friend app, so I hope you find these useful. There is still a help section for each calculator inside the app, that you can reference without an internet connection, as I know many people use the app in situations where connecting to the internet isn’t possible, due to either location or cost constraints.
Do let me know what you think of the new calculator, and once again I’d like to thank listener Steve Jarrel who provided the initial idea for the Exposure Shift Calculator, although my implementation may not be quite what he had in mind. I know from experience of talking about exposure in the field, that these exposure shifts can be confusing to calculate, so I think this will have practical uses.
Also, I think it’s great as an educational tool. There are situations when teaching photography when I wished I had a way of graphically showing how the Aperture affects the Shutter Speed, or the ISO affects the Aperture, and I can now lock any one of the three dials in the Exposure Shift Calculator and show just that, as we move any of the two dials that are not locked. And the Exposure Value lock moves all both of the free dials as you move a third, which again, is a great educational tool, and a way to find good settings changes based on EV readouts from a light meter.
Of course, just playing with the calculator is a great way to get a better understanding of how exposure settings affect each other, so I urge anyone that buys Photographer’s Friend to play away, and build a better understanding, so that you don’t struggle with this stuff in the heat of the moment in the field.
Anyway, as I say, I won’t try to explain this all in words, as the video will be much easier to understand, so please do take a look. If you don’t yet own Photographer’s Friend, but would like to buy it, you can use the QR code here to jump to the App Store or simply type in https://mbp.ac/pf3 in your browser on your iPhone or iPad, or search for Photographer’s Friend in the App Store. Do make sure that you buy version 3 though, and not version 2, unless you really don’t need the Exposure Shift calculator and want to save a dollar. If you’d like more written information before deciding if Photographer’s Friend is for you or not, the product page is here.
Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries and regions. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.
Android Version on the Way
I also wanted to say before we finish, that I am looking into a way to port the code that I have to Android, and hope to be able to bring you an Android version before too long. I know you want it, it’s just a matter of making the time now to make it happen, but I am on it.
Just a short audio podcast today, to let you know about a video, that I just published. I’m proud to announce the availability of our newest viewfinder mockup tool, for the Canon EOS 7D Mark II, and I’ve just finished putting together a video to walk users through how to use the tool.
Whether at university or a local camera club, when teaching photography, it can really help your students to understand the theory you are covering if you are able to show them exactly what they’d see through the viewfinder in any given situation. With every viewfinder element available, including the all new Intelligent Viewfinder II technology, the 7D Mark II Viewfinder Mockup Tool enables you to emulate exactly, any possible configuration and setting.
The 7D Mark II Viewfinder Mockup Tool is a Photoshop PSD file (requires Photoshop CS6 or newer). Each element is a separate layer, including every autofocus point in various states, grid lines, Intelligent Viewfinder II icons to indicate your selected shooting mode, white balance setting, drive and focus modes, file format and metering mode, as well as the new in-screen warning display.
The battery indicator can show varying charge levels, and exposure indicators, shutter speed, aperture, metering information, ISO setting and burst frames, and the new meter level on the right side of the viewfinder. It’s all included! With a single mouse click, you can immediately emulate the red viewfinder information that turns on automatically in low light, or when selecting your Autofocus mode.
The file is 4096 pixels wide, so perfect for 4K, and because the graphics are all on layers, you can create transparent overlays for use in programs like Adobe After Effects, to emulate looking through the viewfinder in video. This is also high enough resolution for any kind of presentation, eBook and even print publication.
To create something of this quality yourself from scratch literally takes weeks. I know, because that’s how long it took me to create! And because of that, I made the tool as intuitive and easy to use as possible, so that we can make it available to buy if you are in need of something like this, and save you the trouble of creating something similar from scratch.
Anyway, it probably won’t make much sense without seeing the Viewfinder Mockup Tool in action, so do take a look at the video, and there are more details on the product page at https://mbp.ac/vfm7d2.
Canon EOS 7D Mark II Viewfinder Mockup Tool PSD File
You can pick up your copy of the Viewfinder Mockup Tool by adding it to your shopping cart with the button below.
