You can almost never find videos or photos of the Eiffel Tower at night on stock sites. Why is this? Because the Eiffel Tower is copyrighted when those lights are twinkling in the night sky. This 4-minute video from Half as Interesting explains why.
The exposure triangle forms the basis of creating a good exposure. Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO speed are the three different factors that contribute to determine the exposure of a photo.
Hyperfocal distance is a tool often used by certain genres of photography to render an entire scene in focus. It allows you to capture the foreground through to the background, keeping the whole image sharp. But how does it work? This 12-minute video by Filmmaker IQ looks at the science behind hyperfocal distance.
DSLR cameras often have a little depth of field preview button beside the lens mount. This 3-minute video by ZY Productions revisits the basics of a DSLR camera and looks at how this handy button works, as well as some lesser-known things to consider.
Rolling shutter is the answer to why concrete bends, propellors break up, and trees turn to jelly when you're filming them while either you, or the object, is moving quickly in front of certain cameras.
You would think the physics of lenses and light are pretty set in stone—and yet, somehow, people still get really twisted around when it comes to things like crop factor, depth of field, and speed boosters. Hoping to end (or at least quiet) this debate, photographer Jimmi Kai created this very informative, easy-to-understand video.
"What lens should I buy?" It's one of the most common gear questions that pops up in the PetaPixel inbox, and while there is no one-size-fits-all answer, photographer Peter McKinnon does a great job of explaining what's out there and what you need to know to decide on your next lens in this informative video.
After Bill Gates sold Corbis Images to Visual China Group (VCG) back in January 2016, the citizen journalism photo agency Demotix (which Corbis bought in 2012) suddenly went dark. Now, after over a year has passed since the Corbis sale, some Demotix contributors have finally received an email from VCG... with few happy answers.
It's often said that a camera adds 10 pounds to a person being photographed. SciShow made this 2-minute video exploring reasons why cameras play tricks on our eyes when it comes to apparent weight.
On Saturday, PetaPixel ran the story of a photographer whose photo had been imitated to a surprisingly thorough degree by a German ad agency. While a poll on that article suggested that a clear majority (~74%) of respondents saw it as unethical plagiarism, I thought I’d dig into the legal aspects a bit.
The above photo is taken at 28mm at f/11 on an ancient Minolta 28-85mm lens, the focus was set to about 2.5 meters and according to the depth of field scales everything should be in focus... but it isn’t.
If you need a simple, straight-forward explanation of how the digital camera captures photos, look no further. This creative little animation by YouTube channel Some Stuff Explained does a fantastic job.
Everybody knows tilt-shift lenses can be used to get a "miniature" effect, but many photographers are oblivious to their other, more traditional applications, and even fewer understand exactly how these lenses work. The folks at LensPro ToGo are here to clear things up.
When Google announced its Pixel smartphone last week and boasted about its "best smartphone camera ever," there was one notable thing it lacked compared to the iPhone: optical image stabilization. Instead of physically stabilizing shots, the Pixel uses readings from the phone's built-in gyroscope to compensate for shake.
Here's a helpful 12-minute video by landscape photographer and vlogger Thomas Heaton about lens filters. With the emergence of digital photography and powerful editing software, the benefits of some filters can be recreated digitally while others cannot.
If you're the technical type, or your just love to understand your photo and video history, you'll definitely want to check out this straightforward explanation of NTSC vs PAL, or why your camera shoots 29.97, not 30fps.
Why do the new iPhone 7 phones have to simulate a shallow depth of field? The short answer: physics.
When you resize (and resample) a photo in Photoshop, you’re given the option of strategies such as Nearest Neighbor and Bilinear. If you have no idea what those mean, check out this 9-minute video by Computerphile.
Here's a 2-minute video by SciShow that explains why the red-eye effect often turns irises into bright red spots in flash photos.
Here’s a simple 8-minute video by photography instructor Phil Steele about …
If you’ve seen the RGB and CMYK color models referenced all over the place but aren’t exactly sure how …
My name is Jason Rosenthal, and I'm the CEO of Lytro. A little over a year ago, it became clear to me that we needed to drastically change the direction of our company.
The Canon 35mm f/1.4L II lens announced back in August 2015 was the first Canon lens to feature the company's new Blue Spectrum Refractive (BR) lens technology, a special lens element that corrects for color fringing.
If you’re just starting out in photography and photo editing, you may be confused about that strange chart on …
If you ask a photographer if they can give you the entire set of unedited RAW photos from a shoot, there's a very good chance they're going to say no. No, it's not because they don't want you to have all your memories -- it's because they only want to deliver their very best finished work.
This is a question that's been weighing on photographer Jessica Kobeissi's mind, so she decided to make the 5.5-minute video above to share her explanation.
If you reference camera sensor ratings published by DxOMark, you may have noticed that the France-based company doesn't test Fujifilm cameras. It's surprising, given that Fujifilm sensors have been praised by many reviewers in recent years.
No, DxOMark doesn't have anything against Fujifilm, and no, it's not something fishy going on behind the scenes. The reason is simple: DxOMark isn't currently able to properly test X-Trans sensors.
After exploring the science of digital camera sensors, Filmmaker IQ just …
Here’s a great 13-minute video in which John Hess of Filmmaker IQ teaches …
Here’s a short 4-minute video in which photography instructor Karl Taylor offers …
Back in 2011, Lytro launched the world’s first consumer light field camera, which lets you “shoot first …
If you've ever photographed spinning airplane propeller or helicopter rotor blades with your smartphone, you may have found that the spinning blades were turned into bizarre shapes in the resulting photo. What you're seeing is distortion caused by a rolling shutter, when a CMOS sensor captures a scene by scanning across it very quickly rather than capturing the entire frame at once.
What makes one smartphone camera good and another one bad? YouTube tech video star Marques Brownlee of …
If you're just starting out in photography, you may be confused with the term "crop factor" that's thrown around when talking about cameras and lenses. Here's a 10-minute video in which Mark Ryan Sallee of Michromatic explains the concept in an easy-to-understand way.
If you enjoy knowing the nitty gritty technical details of how photography technologies work, then you may enjoy the …
A few months ago I decided to do something a little different and create an iOS app to present my photography. I had been thinking about it for a while and had a vague idea of what I wanted the app to achieve and how I wanted it to work.
Portfolio websites are great for photographers to showcase their work to potential clients but unless the website has additional content, there is no reason for people to keep coming back. This is why many people add a blog to their website with behind-the-scenes or tips-and-tricks content.
Here's a fascinating (but very heady) video by Computerphile, which recently sat down with image analyst Dr. Mike Pound of the University of Nottingham to talk about the subject of digital image steganography.
Steganography is the practice of hiding one piece of content inside another. In this case, Pound talks about the idea of being able to kind all kinds of content inside digital photograph files.
Have you ever wondered how film projectors are able to turn still frames on film into moving images in …
Traditional SLR cameras do phase detection autofocus by directing light onto AF sensors in the camera’s mirror box. Some …
If you're just getting started in photography, perhaps you've confused or overwhelmed by the different types of filters that are available for your camera lens. Photo gift company Zippi wants to help you wrap your mind around the concepts more easily, so they created a handy "cheat sheet" infographic that lists out the different kinds of filters on the market along with short explanations and example images showing what the filters do for your shots.
One piece of advice you’ve probably heard regarding printed photos is to never leave them in direct sunlight, which …