Even if you know how to operate your SLR camera and external shoe-mount flashes, you might not have any understanding of the complicated, technical mojo going on that limit and affect your photography. This uber-informative lesson by photographer Paul Duncan brings you up to speed on how things like focal plane shutters and “second curtain sync” work.
(via f stoppers)
Nikon created this short video to introduce the various Nikon cameras that have been used during space exploration. The music is pretty cheesy, but it’s pretty interesting if you’re into this kinda thing.
Photographer Mike Collins created this simple video that gives you a visual look at the difference between full frame sensors and crop frame sensors when using the same lens. The video uses a Canon 5D Mark II for the full frame shots, and a Canon 7D (1.6x crop factor) for the crop shots.
This is a short test with the tripod in the same spot switching between prime lenses to show how the crop affects the 7D. The subject, ace stand in Chris Clement, was roughly five feet from the camera. This isn’t meant to be an aesthetic test to show the difference in image quality between the two cameras. It’s a down and dirty field guide for myself and the other shooters we work with so we can quickly figure what lens we want to use on each camera.
We go from 20mm all the way to 100mm with a Lensbaby composer thrown in at the very end.
You might be surprised at how different the lens are, especially if you’ve never used both full frame and crop frame before.
(via planet5D)
In 1983 the BBC aired a series called “Master Photographers” in which they interviewed some of the biggest names in photography at the time, including Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. The series can’t be found anywhere on DVD, but luckily many of the episodes have been uploaded to YouTube. If you’re at all interested in learning how historical greats worked and thought, this is a video series you have to bookmark and chew through.
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If you’re a fan of the Polaroid SX-70, this promotional video from the 1970s should stir up warm fuzzy feelings. If you’ve never used one, watching this might give you a better idea of why so many are obsessed with it.
Even if you’re already a SX-70 fanatic, you might learn a thing or two from certain parts of this video that shed light on exactly how the system works.
TED has some of the most interesting talks you’ll find on the web, with topics ranging from how diet can prevent cancer to demonstrations of amazing new photo technology. They also have a great collection of talks by photographers, and we’ve compiled a list of 14 of them here. These short talks are eye-opening, jaw-dropping, and often quite moving.
You might want to bookmark this page to take them in slowly when you have some free minutes here and there. If you know of any other talks that we didn’t include in this list, please share it with us in the comments!
The photo director for National Geographic, David Griffin knows the power of photography to connect us to our world. In a talk filled with glorious images, he talks about how we all use photos to tell our stories.
Photographs do more than document history — they make it. At TED University, Jonathan Klein of Getty Images shows some of the most iconic, and talks about what happens when a generation sees an image so powerful it can’t look away — or back.
Taryn Simon exhibits her startling take on photography — to reveal worlds and people we would never see otherwise. She shares two projects: one documents otherworldly locations typically kept secret from the public, the other involves haunting portraits of men convicted for crimes they did not commit.
In this stunning slideshow, celebrated nature photographer Frans Lanting presents The LIFE Project, a poetic collection of photographs that tell the story of our planet, from its eruptive beginnings to its present diversity.
In stunning large-format photographs, Edward Burtynsky follows the path of oil through modern society, from wellhead to pipeline to car engine — and then beyond to the projected peak-oil endgame.
Nick Veasey shows outsized X-ray images that reveal the otherworldly inner workings of familiar objects — from the geometry of a wildflower to the anatomy of a Boeing 747. Producing these photos is dangerous and painstaking, but the reward is a superpower: looking at what the human eye can’t see.
In this image-filled talk, Yann Arthus-Bertrand displays his three most recent projects on humanity and our habitat — stunning aerial photographs in his series “The Earth From Above,” personal interviews from around the globe featured in his web project “6 billion Others,” and his soon-to-be-released movie, “Home,” which documents human impact on the environment through breathtaking video.
In this moving talk, documentary photographer Kristen Ashburn shares unforgettable images of the human impact of AIDS in Africa.
Ryan Lobo has traveled the world, taking photographs that tell stories of unusual human lives. In this haunting talk, he reframes controversial subjects with empathy, so that we see the pain of a Liberian war criminal, the quiet strength of UN women peacekeepers and the perseverance of Delhi’s underappreciated firefighters.
Artist Chris Jordan shows us an arresting view of what Western culture looks like. His supersized images picture some almost unimaginable statistics — like the astonishing number of paper cups we use every single day.
Photographer Rick Smolan tells the unforgettable story of a young Amerasian girl, a fateful photograph, and an adoption saga with a twist.
With stunning photos and stories, National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis celebrates the extraordinary diversity of the world’s indigenous cultures, which are disappearing from the planet at an alarming rate.
Photographer Phil Borges shows rarely seen images of people from the mountains of Dharamsala, India, and the jungles of the Ecuadorean Amazon. In documenting these endangered cultures, he intends to help preserve them.
The embed code for this talk is broken, but you can click the image to watch this talk on the TED website:
Accepting his 2007 TED Prize, war photographer James Nachtwey shows his life’s work and asks TED to help him continue telling the story with innovative, exciting uses of news photography in the digital era.
Here’s an interesting behind the scenes video that shows the creation of a Canon 500mm f/4.0L IS lens. It’s a neat look at the guts of glass, and an opportunity to see how exactly the various components of a lens are created and put together.
You get to see the entire process, starting with raw materials and ending with the finished, $6,000 lens.
Seeing how fine-tuned many of the steps in the process have to be, it’s no wonder these lenses can end up costing as much as a car.
(via Nerd Vibe)
