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.
Back in 2011, we shared a simple tutorial on how you can create a sturdy camera strap using about $7 worth of paracord. Hamburg, Germany-based photographer Bo Ismono recently published the 3-minute video tutorial above on how you can use paracord to make a cheap, simple, and durable wrist strap.
Many photographers unfortunately know the horror of editing a photograph and accidentally saving over the original copy all too well. While Lightroom implements a non-destructive system for saving files, Photoshop can be a bit more dangerous, and accidents do occur. Today, we will show you how to set up a safe workspace area on your Mac that will back up photographs as you edit them.
Last year, journalist Esther Honig published a viral series of images showing how photo retouchers in 27 countries around the world "enhanced" a portrait of her according to their cultural preferences. Inspired by that project, the UK medical website Superdrug Online Doctor just published a similar experiment that explores body image.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, pricey camera equipment is becoming one of the favorite targets of robbers. In 2013, the New York Times reported that photojournalists in Oakland were becoming the victims of camera robberies. Last month, photographers were robbed in broad daylight by assailants wielding pepper spray.
A new letter published by Kensington Palace in the United Kingdom sheds light at the extreme measures paparazzi are taking in order to capture valuable photos of Prince George, the son of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Prince George was born in 2013 and has endured the prying lenses of paparazzi photographers since day one.
At the 2015 Flash Memory Summit in California this past week, Samsung unveiled the largest capacity hard drive in the world. It's a 2.5-inch solid state drive (SSD) that can hold 16 terabytes of data (15.36TB, to be exact).
When ice crystals in the atmosphere interact with sunlight in a certain way, a beautiful weather phenomenon known as sun dogs (formally called "parhelia") can appear. From observers on Earth, it shows up as bright spots on either side of the sun, and often a bright glowing ring around the sun, called a 22° halo.
Photographer Trey Ratcliff is currently on a photo walk tour of the United States. On Wednesday, he visited Atlanta, Georgia, and led a large crowd of photographers on a route through the city. While strolling through Centennial Olympic Park, however, the group was confronted by police officers and told that their photography wasn't allowed in the public park.
My name is Jeremy Lebled, and I'm a fashion photographer. I recently just did a shoot to demo Leica's S Camera. My specialty is using just the sun to get a high-end studio look to photographs instead of using dozens of strobes.
Taking a quick snapshot of your meal at restaurants has become a widespread pre-meal ritual in recent years. People often like to keep a memento of the food they eat, and perhaps share that image with others online as well.
On August 8th, 2015, Tucson, Arizona-based photographer Bryan Snider took his camera out and shot time-lapse photos of the Arizona landscape while a powerful thunderstorm rolled through his area. He ended up capturing some stunning shots of wet microbursts pouring water onto his city.
Invisible Photographer Asia just posted this humorous graphic that takes the "You have two cows" idea for political satire and applies it to how different types of photographers work.
Earlier this year, photographer Thomas Blanchard released a mesmerizing time-lapse showing 21 kinds of flowers blooming. Now the artist is back again with another eye-popping project.
Tripods are often designed for stability rather than ease of use, which can make operating them a slow and complicated process. Traditional tripods are also often difficult to set up with one hand.
So, the Nikon D7000 I bought, brand new in early 2014, is a fake. Unbeknownst to me until very recently, of course. Let's start at the beginning -- it being the most logical and traditional place to start.
If you’ve ever dreamed of seeing the world through the eyes of a wild animal or insect, then you happen to be in luck. A team led by scientist Jolyon Troscianko at the University of Exeter in the UK has developed an application that processes RAW image data and then converts it into a result that showcases the way various animals might view their surroundings. Best of all, the software is open source and you can download it today.
Over the past half year, Latvian photographer Gvido Mūrnieks has been testing out a DIY ring light he made for himself. The light is large enough to shoot with longer focal length, but at the same time it's small and light enough to quickly throw into the trunk of your car on the way to a shoot.
In this post, I'll be sharing 5 business mistakes that photographers make all the time.
