Olympus Russia had recently posted a photograph showing the above image, which showcases a secret data screen on one of their OM-D cameras. In fact, there are three pages of data screens that provide information from how many times the camera’s shutter has been released, to how many times the flash has been fired, and much more. Olympus has since taken down the image, but the secret access code has now been outed.
Wildlife and nature photographer Dennis Fast captured a gorgeous set of photos showing polar bears rolling around in a colorful field of fireweed. The pictures show the polar bears sprawled out in the soft field, relaxing and having a merry time.
One thing that early reviewers are noticing about the Sony a7R II is how much better the camera is at focusing with Canon EF lenses than its predecessors. In the 1-minute comparison video above, Michael Hession of Gizmodo shows how much faster and more accurately the camera can focus using a $399 Metabones III EF-to-E adapter. While the a7 hunts for focus and often fails to find it, the a7R II is able to lock onto subjects consistently and relatively quickly.
Here's a humorous little meme image that's been floating around the Internet. It's said that the average photographer will spend between $10,000 to $15,000 every two years in camera gear expenses, and many struggle with G.A.S.
If you want to shoot "vintage" photos with your iPhone, there are apps like Instagram. If you'd like to do the same thing with video, there's a new app for that called VHS Camcorder. It turns your iPhone into a 1985 camcorder, allowing you to shoot VHS-quality footage that'll give you a pang of nostalgia that takes you back three decades.
Popular browser-based editor Polarr has released a new plugin for both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox that enables users to instantly edit any photo they stumble across on the Internet. With the click of the mouse, an image can be imported into Polarr’s online web-based editor for a number of adjustments. No more having to download an image to your local drive -- this is complete editing in the cloud.
Here's a daily dose of cuteness: this 3-minute behind-the-scenes video shows how Long Island-based photographer Faryl Loew goes about shooting portraits of newborns and their parents. We see how Loew gently handles and soothes the infants to capture happy and relaxed expressions on their tiny faces. You can find a gallery of her newborn photos here.
In addition to the prototype tripod design that we recently featured, ProductTank has also created a new design for a simple camera slider. A bit different than traditional rail style sliders that keep the camera locked to an axis, the ProductTank slider simply uses a guided rail and friction to get the job done. The result is a slider that be easily adjusted to your shooting situation, and can be seen in the 6-minute video above.
This past weekend, New York-based photographer Brian Maffitt set up an angled mirror underneath his bird feeder and photographed hummingbirds for a few hours. Afterward, he combined a large number of the photos into this single, surreal composite photo showing ruby-throated hummingbirds swarming.
One camera that has generated a great deal of interest in recent days is the Sony a7R II, which packs the world's first BSI full-frame sensor, ISO 102400, and 4K video into a flagship mirrorless body.
Photographer Lindsay Adler is teaching a CreativeLive course this month on the basics of portrait photography. The 5-minute video above is a discussion about three fundamental principles of light: intensity, direction, and quality. Adler shares how these principles can be manipulated to create better photographs.
Want an inside look at how The Impossible Project makes its instant film? The folks over at Highsnobiety recently paid a visit to the company's factory in Enschede, which it purchased from Polaroid and rebooted. The 3-minute video above shows various steps of the instant film creation process, from development, to assembly, to boxing it up for shipping.
Stock photography has provided business and individuals with a method of acquiring imagery without the need to hire a photographer. However, has any bit of stock photography ever truly captured the complex nature of a New Yorker? Apparently the folks over at New York radio station WNYC didn’t feel that the need was being addressed and, as a result, have crafted 35 “quintessential photos of true New York City.” …
This is pretty crazy if it's real: an ammunition company called Snake River has just announced a new product called the Drone Munition shot shell: it's a shotgun shell designed specifically for shooting down camera drones.
Photography safety is a growing concern leading up to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This past weekend, a group of photographers were mugged and had their expensive equipment stolen while covering a road cycling test event for next year's Games.
This week, software developer and photographer Dan King introduced the world to the DAKboard: a customizable display for showcasing your photographs, calendar events, and weather. The actual wall display isn’t currently available for purchase, but the software is in the beta stage, so anyone can test it out via their web browser or tablet device.
British photographer David Yarrow is making headlines after a tiger got loose during a photo shoot in Detroit.
Wet plate collodion photographer Alex Timmermans recently shot a new photo titled "Swan Lake" for his surreal Story Telling project. Here's a look at how the image was made.
Camera rigs can be large and difficult to carry around when on the move; once you add on additional components, the problem intensifies. Now, Scratch Ideas from the UK has introduced ‘LOKI’ on Kickstarter with a $38,910 fundraising goal. An ultra-portable and modular piece of equipment, LOKI can transform between a shoulder rig, a camera cage, an underslung rig, and a dolly with a few twists and clicks.
Anne-Marie Valentine was on a camping trip at Folsom Lake in California last month when she spotted what appeared to be a dead seagull at the bottom of the dry lake bed. When she got closer, she realized that it was a camera drone that someone had crashed into the lake before the drought had sucked away water. What's more, footage in the video camera was still intact, and it showed the drone's unfortunate final flight.
Turns out my great-great-grandfather was a photographer. Born in 1850, Robert Stapleton served in the US Army for two five-year tours in the then-wild-west.
Have you ever tried to show a friend a photo on your phone, only to have them start swiping through your entire personal photo collection uninvited? If you do know someone like that, there's now a lighthearted way to prank them. It's an Android app called Ninja Snap that will surprise nosey swipers by showing them their own face in your album.
Hold Fast is a camera accessory company most well known for their MoneyMaker Luxury Leather Multi-Camera Strap. While the MonkeyMaker is a beautifully crafted piece of gear that allows you to quickly access your cameras, the price tag is a bit out of the price range of what some photographers are willing to spend. Enter the Camera Swagg, a non-leather variation of the MoneyMaker with a much lower price tag.
MIT scientists have designed a new camera that will never overexpose a photograph, no matter what the lighting situation is. Called a "modulo camera," it captures a high dynamic range photo with every exposure.
The folks over at Seaport Digital have released the Volta battery Power Station and Ring Light case for Apple iPhone 6 devices. Powered by an internal 3800mAh battery, the Volta can charge your smartphone when needed via an attachable lighting cable... or it can act as a handy ring light to brighten your subject in dimly-lit situations. Of course, we won’t judge you if you choose to make it your personal selfie light.
Wedding photographer Sean Cook captured his "strangest photo" a few weeks ago while shooting at a wedding in Chicago. At the exact moment of the bride and groom's first kiss, a bridesmaid (the groom's sister) fainted. The newlyweds now have a "first kiss" wedding photo that features a bridesmaid lying facedown in the background.
Leica M rangefinders have a reputation of being extremely durable, and one Chinese photographer recently found out first hand just how much abuse the cameras can take. He accidentally dropped his Leica M9 off a hotel balcony, and instead of the fall breaking the camera, the camera broke the ground.
Have you ever wondered if you were getting the best performance out of Adobe’s Photoshop Creative Cloud? Depending on your particular workflow and individual needs, your favorite image editing software can be tweaked and adjusted for optimal performance. Today, we are taking a look at some of the settings available in Photoshop to get you running more efficiently on your personal computer.
With a little bit of patience and a whole lot of luck, I was able to capture this photograph of myself perched on a rock above the Pacific Ocean. When I set out to photograph the annual famed Perseids Meteor Shower last week, I had a specific goal of capturing a "selfie" photograph with myself in frame and hopefully a meteor streaking overhead (along with a variety of other images throughout the evening). My hope turned into reality in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
In the summer time at Scott Base in Antarctica, there are 4 months in which the Sun never sets. From the latter part of October through the latter part of February, the Sun stays above the horizon line, giving each day 24 hours of sunlight.
What memory cards perform the best with the Canon 5DS's 50.6 megapixel photos? To find out, Camera Memory Speed recently tested 75 different CF and SD cards with the camera to see which ones would come out on top.
If you want to experience what it's like to shoot as a combat photographer, but don't want to actually risk getting shot at, you can look into photographing war reenactments. Lucas Ryan is a photographer who shoots reenactments, and last year he covered D-Day Conneaut, one of the world's premier D-Day reenactment events.
If you're a dog lover, photographer Amanda Jones has a photo project that will tug at your heartstrings. After photographing 30 different dogs as puppies years ago, she revisited them and captured what they look like as older dogs. The before-and-after portraits, a series titled "Dog Years," show how dog's have a unique spark of personality that lasts a lifetime.
Have you ever wished you could remotely control your smartphone’s camera with a trigger remote disguised as a 35mm film canister or a mini twin-lens reflex camera? If so, then your wish has been granted by the Japanese company Gizmon. For a small price, you can pick up one of these cute and colorful gadgets and pair it with your iOS or Android smartphone.
Over the past year, Dutch artist Mathijs van Oosterhoudt has been developing a new camera system. No, it's not a high-tech digital system that's intended to go up against the major camera companies. Instead, it's an open-modular camera system that's intended to teach people how to build complex cameras. Its name is The Focal Camera.
Want to see what a speeding bullet leaving a handgun looks like at 73,000 frames per second? Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters recently decided to find out by pointing a Phantom v2010 high-speed camera at Hyneman while he fired a pistol. While the price of this camera hasn't been published, its predecessor, the v1610 cost around $100,000.
B&H published this 9-minute video in which portrait photographer Peter Hurley opens up his camera bags to give us a tour of the gear he uses on a regular basis.
In 2013, my then-girlfriend Martina and I were in Queenstown, New Zealand at the end of a two-month trip. The evening before our journey back home, we went out for a walk, absorbing the magical streets.
If you’ve been waiting for the chance to convert your 4x5 large format camera into something that can produce instant results, then you are in luck. A company called CatLabs has launched a new Kickstarter campaign to introduce their Instant Pack Film Holder for 4x5 camera systems.
Linus of LinusTechTips just published the 9-minute video above that explores whether shooting video at 4K resolution is worth it. Using both a Panasonic GH4 and a Sony FS700, Linus and his team take to discovering the links between video resolution, video bitrate, and downsampling.
Earlier this month, the photo sharing service 500px rolled out a new version of its iOS app that focused on sleekness, simplicity, and social sharing. Media outlets immediately pointed out how similar the new app's look and feel is to other services, particularly Instagram.
As a junior in high school in 1997, when I was deciding which path I wanted to go down, fine arts or photography, things were pretty simple. Did I want to express myself with a camera or a pencil? Inspired by masters like Annie Leibovitz and David LaChapelle, I opted for the camera.
Photographer Casey Mac created this wild image by shooting ~800 photos of kite boarders at California's Waddell Creek Beach and then blending the shots together in Photoshop. The photo is titled "Rush Hour." (Here's a larger version.)
There’s been a lot of news coverage and editorializing about vertical video. It’s become such a scourge that PSAs have been created to stop the phenomenon in its tracks.
Branden Harvey became a professional photographer at the age of 16. He has since become an extremely popular photographer on social media, boasting over 104,000 followers on Instagram and one of the largest followings of a photographer on Snapchat (with 50,000+ views per image shared). We spoke to Harvey about his unique career path and perspective.
Camera gear can be expensive, but one way to work around this issue is to purchase equipment used from online auction websites such as eBay. But it can be tough trying to determine the exact condition of an item without getting your hands on it. We will be going over tips to help you purchase both digital and analog film cameras without throwing your money down the drain. Here are some practical pointers to staying smart and safe on eBay when buying your next bit of kit.
If you need an accessory for mounting your camera to random places, instead of purchasing a Gorillapod (or something similar), you can go a thrifty do-it-yourself route. For just $8, Instructables member Megan Yeomans crafted her own affordable solution that uses vinyl tubing and copper wire. The result is a three-foot flexible 1/4” piece of kit that can be used as a standard tripod, a selfie stick, or an articulated mount.
Apple has a distinctive style when it comes to product images promoting its gadgets. After seeing the teaser image for the new Apple Watch, photographer Jared Polin of FroKnowsPhoto decided that he would try his hand at recreating the shot as closely as possible.
Yesterday, NBC News aired this short but interesting look into the life and career of photographer Roberto Salas. At the age of 15 in 1955, Salas met an activist named Fidel Castro during a photo assignment with Salas' photographer father. The encounter ended up giving Salas front-row seats to the revolution that was about to unfold, allowing Salas to capture intimate photos of Castro that other photojournalists in the country could only dream about.
They say to learn about a person you should look at their bookshelf to see what they read. Similarly, we believe that delving into a photographer’s bag sheds light on their personality and style. Today’s article is the first in a series that explores the bags of professional photographers and, of course, your friends here at PetaPixel. Step inside my bag to see what I carry on a daily basis and the significance of each item.
