June 2015

You will be hard pressed to find a reasonable working photographer today, who won't admit that film still has a place in photography and really offers some unique characteristics, even if they choose to not use it. But often photographers who love shooting digital and don't want to deal with film attempt to write off and make excuses for why they can't shoot film. I'd like to offer a rebuttal to such excuses, inspired by a recent thoughtful PetaPixel post.

Olympus' innovative Air camera was announced back in February, but up to this point it has been a Japan-only product. Not anymore: today Olympus announced that the Air A01 will be available in the United States starting in July for $300.

The popular browser-based photo editor Polarr has now arrived on mobile devices. After launching in the iTunes App Store late last week, the app was featured by Apple and was downloaded a whopping 250,000 times in the first 48 hours.

I took a trip to Iceland this past March, but weather wasn't the greatest while I was there. We encountered a few blizzards, and I took some photos to see what I could recover from them. Adobe recently announced a Dehaze tool for Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC, and I wanted to know how well it could recover image data from a blizzard -- which could be considered be an extreme version of haze. After trying the slider on my images, I'm very impressed!

At least one major newspaper is taking a stand against Taylor Swift's concert photography contract, which has generated quite a bit of discussion in recent days over its 'restrictive' and 'unfair' terms. The Irish Times, Ireland's second most popular newspaper, explained today that it chose to leave out photos entirely rather than sign Swift's contract.

Photographer Nick Fancher is the author of Studio Anywhere, a photographer's guide to shooting high-quality portraits in unconventional locations and with low-budget tools and materials.

Here's a daily dose of cuteness: Renowned Japanese wildlife photographer Mitsuaki Iwagō recently traveled the world for a TV show series on cats met on streets around the world. The 1.5-minute above shows one memorable stop he made on the island of Okinawa, where a tiny stray kitten decided to befriend the photographer and use him as a bed, chair, and lookout tower.

Magnum Photos is a prestigious international photographic cooperative that focuses on photojournalism. The organization is made up and owned by its members around the world. Every year, the company typically nominates one or two new photographers. This year, however, Magnum has nominated six new members: a record-breaking number.

I’m an experienced wedding photographer who has wanted digital medium format for a long time. I use a pair of 1D Xs with the typical lenses that you would expect a wedding shooter to use. I never was intending on replacing my Canon gear, but rather supplementing it. My idea was use the medium format for location shooting, and use my Canon’s for everything else.

Getty Images has been known for its premium stock photography and video catalog. Now, with the birth of a major medium on the horizon, the company is looking to get into the virtual reality space. A new application, 360-Degree View by Getty, will give users a chance to experience their favorite moments as if they were there. Best of all, the application is available now on the Oculus Store.

There have been multiple stories of drones getting shot out of the sky with shotguns in the past couple of years. Last November, we reported that a New Jersey man was arrested after shooting down a camera drone that was taking pictures over his property.

If you thought you were Instagram popular, then you may want to check out Kendall Jenner’s ‘heart hair’ photograph, which has picked up 2.6 million likes in only five weeks. Jenner’s photo now sets the record for the most-liked Instagram photo ever posted. The previous holder of the title was Jenner’s half-sister, Kim Kardashian.

Here's an unusual wedding photography fail: Chase Richardson was photographing a wedding party last year when he accidentally slipped on a puddle. As he tumbled to the ground, his finger pressed his camera's shutter button and captured this photo of the party's expressions as they watched the disaster unfolding before their eyes.

It is no secret that Facebook has been hot on the trail of Snapchat. In 2013, the massive social network reportedly offered to buy the small Snapchat startup for three billion dollars. After being turned down, Facebook decided to try and invent their own alternatives - Poke and Slingshot. Despite the two applications being more full-featured, Snapchat prevailed. Now, Facebook has decided to ‘borrow’ some of Snapchat's features its primary mobile app.

Venus Optics recently sent me an early pre-production copy of the new Venus Optics Laowa 15mm f/4 1:1 wide angle macro, the world's first ultra-wide angle macro lens capable of magnification up to 1:1. I have been dabbling with it in the past week to publish a first look for this one-of-its-kind lens.

A new website, IsItNude.com, has set out on a mission to help identify whether or not photographs contain nudity. California-based algorithm company, Algorithmia, designed the custom code for a client, but you can use the above link to test it out for yourself. If interested, you can even pay to use the system within your own application or website.

The new $600 Nikon P900 compact camera has received a good deal of attention lately thanks to its record-breaking 83x optical zoom lens, the equivalent of a 24-2000mm on a 35mm sensor. There are numerous videos out there that show the camera's powers by zooming in and out of various scenes. The latest viral video to do so is the 1.5-minute clip above, uploaded by a German P900 owner named Lothar Lenz.

Argentinian professional photographer and retoucher Joaquin Villaverde has a knack for restoring and colorizing old photographs. The video above is a time-lapse he made showing how he recently breathed new life into a vintage portrait that had a good amount of damage. It's 2 hours of work in Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 condensed into 3 minutes.

In New Zealand, there's a species of glowworm called Arachnocampa luminosa -- commonly known as the New Zealand glowworm -- that can be found in dark, wet caves. Photographer Joseph Michael made these insects the subject of a series of photos titled "Luminosity."

Adriana Napolitano is a 31-year-old Italian artist and photographer who creates beautiful paper props by hand for portrait and advertising photo shoots. Her creations include everything from food to costumes to phones to water gushing out of a crying woman's face.

There are a number of easy-to-use model release form apps out there already, but Snapwire wants to do better. The photo marketplace has launched its own free app called Releases. Designed for professional photographers, the app lets you easily create, sign, and send model and properly releases using your iPhone.

In 1990, the late American photographer Mary Ellen Mark captured a photo titled "Amanda and her Cousin Amy," which showed a 9-year-old girl named Amanda smoking a cigarette while standing in a swimming pool with her 8-year-old cousin, Amy. It's a striking photo that became one of Mark's most famous works, but have you ever wondered what became of the two girls?

When people notice something interesting or beautiful these days, there's often a natural impulse to pull out their smartphones and snap a photo of it, preserving that moment and memory. But "there's a big problem associated with [this]," says The School of Life in the 3-minute video above. "We're likely to be so busy taking the pictures we forget to look at the world whose beauty and interest prompted us to take a photograph in the first place."

Canmore, Canada-based photographers Lanny and Erika Mann of Two Mann Studios are considered two of the best wedding photographers in the world by Fearless Photographers, a popular online directory of global wedding photographers. ShotKit recently sat down with the Manns and recorded the 45-minute interview above in which the duo shares six tips that helped them get where they are.

Purchasing a new lens for your kit can be an expensive endeavor and the more information you know before making a purchase is always useful. You may have noticed that lens manufacturer sites tend to include what is known as a Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) chart.

After my public response to Taylor Swift’s open letter to Apple, I didn’t quite expect the phenomenal reaction it received. I knew it was provocative. I knew it was going to be risky and could possibly harm my chances of getting access to other concerts in future, but it needed to be said -- out loud. When I thought hard about the possible consequences, and restrictions on my access to future work, I asked myself “What point is there in going to work if I can’t be paid for it, yet …

I'm a documentary wedding photographer, which means there's a certain way that I work, and a certain style to the photography I produce. The end product of which is an accurate, beautiful document of the single most important day thus far in a couple's life together. I want my clients to feel what they felt on their wedding day, years later when they're reminiscing with their album.

Hasselblad is a legendary brand name in the photo industry, but over the past few years the company has taken a hit in the eyes of some photographers by choosing to sell luxury, rebranded versions of Sony cameras. Starting with the Lunar back in 2012, Hasselblad made a habit of taking a popular Sony camera, redesigning the body with luxury materials, and then selling the "new camera" for multiples of the original price.

Adobe Photoshop serves as an important process in many photographer’s daily workflows. Whether you are fine-tuning your shots from a wedding or simply touching up a photograph of your cat, Photoshop can help you bring your mind’s visualizations to life. However, you may be utilizing more of your time than needed if you employ repetitive actions without the use of macros.

New York-based photographer Dana Stirling is no stranger to rejection. In the course of her photography career, she has received numerous rejection letters in various forms and from various sources. Instead of letting them derail her dreams, Stirling has compiled the letters into a new book titled "Dear Artist, We Regret to Tell You."

In this article, I'm going to share a simple comparison between photos taken with the Canon 1D X, Nikon D810, and Pentax 645z. First things first, this is not a scientific or carefully done test. Don’t read too much into it!

Saturn has 62 known moons, and NASA recently captured three of the more prominent ones together in the same frame. This photograph, taken by the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera on March 25, 2015, shows the moons Titan (Saturn's largest moon), Mimas, and Rhea.

Selfie sticks may be growing in popularity, but bans of the photo accessory have been increasingly common as well. First sports stadiums started prohibiting spectators from using the sticks, and then major museums started following suit. Next in line: major theme parks.

In addition to fake DSLRs and fake memory cards, there are also fake flash units in camera bags around the world. We first shared a look at this issue back in September 2013, but today Canon issued a new warning about counterfeit versions of the Speedlite 600EX-RT, which was introduced in 2012.

Have you ever wished that you could quickly access your photos from 3rd party apps on your iPhone as quickly as you access your Camera Roll photos? KwiltKeys is a new third-party keyboard for iOS that helps you quickly find and select photos that are stored both on your device and through different services. Just download the software to your device and you are ready to post any of your photographs within your favorite apps in seconds.

FLIR is a company that has a goal of bringing thermal imaging technology to the masses. Last year, they released the FLIR ONE: a $350 case accessory for the iPhone 5/5s that allowed you to capture thermal photographs and videos. Today, they have introduced the second generation of the FLIR ONE, which boasts a much higher resolution, cheaper price tag, and universal design for both iOS and Android devices.

My friend Joanne received the above inquiry via her website and sent it my way for help in responding. The following is my suggestion.

Back on June 1st, 2015, landscape photographer Nicolaus Wegner was on the scene as a massive supercell formed over the Black Hills of South Dakota near Rapid City. As the stationary storm unfolded over several hours before Wegner's eyes, he shot photos at one-second intervals with his Canon 5D Mark II and wide angle lenses. Afterward, he combined the photos into the 2-minute time-lapse short seen above, titled "Art of the Storm." …

'Bliss,' the default wallpaper that shipped with Windows XP, was photographed in Sonoma County, California, and may be the most viewed photo of all time. For its upcoming Windows 10 operating system, Microsoft enlisted the help of creative director Bradley G. Munkowitz for a fresh new default desktop photo that the company hopes will one day be just as iconic.

Polaroid’s Cube action camera presents an excellent option for adventurers on a budget. The Cube’s CMOS sensor can capture decent 1080p video at 30fps, along with 6MP still JPEG images. Now, the company has announced the Cube+: the next iteration of the action camera series that will be presented at CE Week 2015. Along with two new ‘funky colors’, the Cube+ will be receiving built-in Wi-Fi.

I love Canon cameras. I really do. And it was with great regret that I moved away from Canon last year after being an EOS system user my entire life. I started when I was 5 years old on my father's EOS 300 film cameras and have then enjoyed every camera up to and including the 5D Mark III, but there was a problem.

Photographer Levi Bettweiser and his Rescued Film Project got quite a bit of press back in January after Bettweiser found, scanned, and shared 31 rolls of undeveloped film from World War II. In March, Bettweiser offered a look at how he processes found rolls of C-41 film in his home darkroom.

Shooting a self-portrait a day over many years to create "passage of time" videos has been a popular project ever since Noah Kalina's everyday video took the Internet by storm several years back. One of the latest ones to surface is one of Daily Show host Jon Stewart that spans a whopping 16 years -- and neither Stewart nor his show had anything to do with it.

If you have ever looked at a camera lens and wished you could simply stick helicopter rotors on it and then fly it around the house, you are in luck. Toy Company, Silverlit, has introduced the Nano Flacon DigiCam: an incredibly tiny RC helicopter with a built-in camera capable of photo capture and video recording. Costing 8,980 YEN ($72), the little copter may just be worth picking up for a joyride when it is released this July.

North Korea has reportedly blocked access to Instagram, a service that has been widely used by journalists and tourists to share glimpses of life inside the secretive hermit kingdom.

Many digital cameras these days give you the option of selecting between the camera’s ‘native’ ISO range and a special ‘extended’ (or expanded) ISO range. If you are just starting out in photography, you may be confused about what each labeling means and whether or not there is a technical difference or if it just a bit of marketing. Today we'll be taking a look at the differences between native ISO and extended ISO ranges.

Here's yet another eye-opening video showing what the 83x zoom in the Nikon Coolpix P900 is like (it's a 24-2000mm in 35mm terms). Fratila Angelo starts off zoomed all the way in on an excavator in the distance before zooming all the way out to the 24mm end.

When Adobe launched a major Creative Cloud update that brought the powerful new Dehaze slider to Lightroom CC, photographers who had purchased a standalone copy of Lightroom 6 instead of subscribing to Adobe CC didn't receive the new features.

I love film. I purely, madly, and deeply love film. I learned on film, I shot my first wedding with film, traveled around Europe with a film camera, and have taken Polaroids on road trips, adventures and portrait sessions. I have boxes of beautiful little Polaroids that I treasure more than anything I’ve ever taken with a digital camera. Film is a wonderful, brilliant medium for taking photographs with real soul.

Do you yearn for a time when graphics were more pixelated and Betamax still had a chance? At times, we can’t help but to reminisce about late 20th-century technology, which is why we have decided to take a close look at Retrospecs for iOS. This nifty $2 app allows you to quickly transform your favorite pictures into retro computing art with the press of a button. Today, we are taking a look to see if it fulfills our nostalgic desires or gives us the pains of Nintendo’s Virtual Boy.