In our age of selfies and instant photo sharing, some people appear to be losing touch with acceptable behavior in their pursuit of viral Internet fame. At the boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao this past weekend, one attendee was caught on camera getting a little too close to Mike Tyson while trying to pose for a picture with him.
I recently spent a few days in Kidepo Valley National Park, a remote reserve in the North of Uganda that borders South Sudan and Kenya.
We're entering the days of 4K, 5K, and 8K monitors becoming a standard feature of workspaces, but just 30 years ago the best selling computers could only display fractions of a megapixel in resolution. The Commodore 64, the best-selling computer of all time from 1982, had a "high-resolution" mode of just 320x200 and a normal multicolor bitmapped mode of 160x200.
A new challenger has emerged in the consumer camera drone fight to take a slice of the market currently dominated by Chinese manufacturer DJI. It's a company called CyPhy Works, whose CEO Helen Greiner was previously the cofounder of iRobot and its popular Roomba robotic vacuum.
Photographer Annie Leibovitz recently visited the set of the upcoming film Star Wars: The Force Awakens to shoot a series of behind-the-scenes photos for Vanity Fair. Above is a short video showing Leibovitz shooting portraits of the different actors and actresses in character.
It's amazing the kinds of space photos that amateur photographers can create from their own backyards these days. Case in point: the high-resolution moon photo above was captured last week by Polish photographer Bartosz Wojczyński. It was stacked together using 32000 separate photos.
A couple of months ago, we shared an interview with the photographer known as Weegee that was released in the 1958 vinyl record titled "Famous Photographers Tell How." On that same record is an interview with Henri Cartier-Bresson in which the legendary photojournalist shares his thoughts on what photography is, the way he approaches it, and various opinions on theory and technique.
Photographer and entrepreneur Gary Fong lost his house to a devastating fire earlier this year, but he didn't lose any of his most valued possessions thanks to precautions that he took. After the experience, he realized that cinder blocks can be used as a cheap way for photographers to gain some fire protection for their data without having to shell out big bucks for commercial solutions.
Posting live updates of special events to services such as Twitter and Instagram is a pretty common thing these days, but one photographer has chosen a relatively uncommon subject for her real-time Instagram snaps: childbirth.
Now that Rolleiflex cameras have gone the way of the dodo, Rollei needs to find a new segments of the camera equipment market to serve. It turns out one of the company's promising new niches is the selfie stick.
Hobbyist photographer and motor racing fan Carlo Bingen was at a race at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium yesterday when he cane across this photographer taking pictures over the chain link fence. While many people would be content with shooting through the fence gaps with a telephoto lens, this guy created a DIY platform that lets him stand over the top.
Olympus researchers have created an innovative new "3D stacked" CMOS image sensor that has both global-shutter and high-speed capturing modes. It is able to capture photos at up to 10000 frames per second.
For the past few years, photographer Will Ellis has been locating, exploring, and documenting obscure abandoned places in New York City. His images show everything from the ruins of old hospitals to abandoned subway terminals -- and sometimes the photos are one last glimpse of those spaces before they're reclaimed or reduced to rubble by developers or the government.
If you're a fan of the game Minecraft, then you may appreciate what SethBling has done. The Seattle-based player/inventor has created a working in-game camera using command blocks. His explanation is that the system uses ray tracing by shooting out armor stands from the camera, detecting when the stands hit another block in the scene, and copying that block onto a 2D canvas behind the camera. The camera is therefore able to correctly capture correct perspective by exactly recording its point of …
Unofficial RAW video functionality could be coming to a Nikon DSLR near you in the not-too-distant future. The Nikon hacker community appears to be making progress in using the live view feature of cameras to obtain RAW footage from the sensor.
My friend Matthew Simmons and I did recently did a photo shoot with an amazing little girl named Desi Robinson. After sending Renee, Desi's mother, the finished images and talking to her a few days after, something really hit me.
A couple of months ago, we featured a helpful little web app called the Bokeh Simulator and Depth of Field Calculator. The website allows photographers to quickly visualize what different options in a particular shot (e.g. aperture, focal length, distance to subject) do to the bokeh and depth of field in the resulting photo.
In the world of diamond mining, huge open pits are dug into the Earth in order to find and extract a relatively small amount of usable diamonds. For his new set of images in his ongoing For What It's Worth project, photographer Dillon Marsh created a series of photos showing this dramatic comparison.
A change in the law will allow photographers to pay rent on their homes and studios with ‘exposure’ instead of money. They will also be able to buy coffee, shampoo, and other essentials by mentioning to the checkout assistant that they did a big job last week for nothing and are hoping it will bring them some paying clients.
If you’re looking for an inexpensive way to achieve high magnification in your photography, you need to know about the reverse lens macro photography technique. Reverse lens macro photography has allowed me to achieve the magnification I couldn’t come close to with my more expensive equipment.
Since 2013, Sigma has been releasing an annual short film that shows how its highly regarded lenses are manufactured in the company's only factory located in Aizu, Japan. The company just released the third video in the series, which documents the daily life of the customer support department in the factory that services equipment for Sigma shooters.
Sony may not make the world's most popular smartphones or cameras, but it's playing a bigger role in those industries than what meets the eye: the company's image sensor business has been booming in recent years. In 2014, Sony was the company that made 40% of all the sensors sold across the globe.
If you're getting into drone photography, it's important to know where you can and can't fly -- otherwise you could find your activities in the news for all the wrong reasons. AirMap is a new free, comprehensive, and interactive digital map that's designed specifically to help drone users find safe and legal airspace around them.
Yesterday I shared the before-and-after photos above. The image on the left was taken on the 22nd April, 2009, almost exactly six years and one week before the image on the right. They show the same street in Bhaktapur, one of Nepal's most historic cities, before and after last Saturday's earthquake.
It was five years ago that we first covered Eric Fischer's Geotaggers' World Atlas project. His goal was to gain insight into the world's most interesting places and routes by gathering vast amounts of geotag data from Flickr photos.
Want to play around with studio lighting from the comfort of your own home without dropping any money on actual lighting equipment? Here's a 10-minute video by DigitalRev TV with 5 different lighting setups you can create using things found around a house. Kai and Lok cover using lamps as hot lights, creating makeshift diffusers with photo frames, using a Pringles can as a snoot, turning a home organizer into a soft box, and crafting a beauty dish from a round aluminum pan.
There's a critically endangered species in the world of photography businesses: the one-hour photo shop. With the decline of film developing and photo printing, the one-hour photo niche has become the single fastest-dying business in the United States.
HTC is doing a lot to beef up the camera in its One M9 smartphone after the initial release was somewhat underwhelming. Less than a month after improving image quality with a software update, the company has released a new version of the phone's camera app that adds RAW functionality.
NASA's MESSENGER mission came to an end yesterday after the space probe slammed into Mercury's surface at about 8,750 mph. The photo above is the last photo that was sent back to scientists on Earth before impact.
Boxing superstars Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao are set to engage in a historic match tomorrow dubbed "The Fight of the Century" that's expected to be the highest grossing fight in the history of the sport. Photographer Alexis Cuarezma was recently tasked with doing a portrait shoot of the two fighters for HBO.
How Old Do I Look? is a simple demo website created by Microsoft engineers who are working on information management and machine learning. Given any photo showing a face, the system will do its best to guess the age and gender of the people in the shot.
Today Lomography announced its new Lomo LC-A Minitar-1 f/2.8 M Art lens, which features the original optics from the original Lomo LC-A camera that was first introduced back in 1984. The new lens lets photographers capture the look that kicked off the Lomography movement using Leica M rangefinders and other M-mount cameras.
Want to see how the world's biggest fashion and beauty magazines retouch their photos? Here's a set of time-lapse videos that show many hours of retouching compressed into a matter of minutes.
I was in Nepal exactly six years and three days before the earthquake that devastated the country on Saturday.
Every once in a while my gear rental company notices something, because of the large quantities of cameras and lenses we buy, that we think people should be aware of. This particular issue won't affect our renters; we've sent the affected cameras back. It may not affect very many people at all, since this is from a relatively small sample size. But I still think it worth mentioning.
Leica today announced its new M Monochrom (Type 246), a followup to the M Monochrome black-and-white rangefinder camera. The new camera boasts improvements in image quality as well as new video and live view features.
Just a week ago, Devin Allen was just another photo enthusiast sharing his work on the Web, regularly posting artsy photos for his relatively small and faithful Instagram following. After protests and riots erupted in Baltimore this week, Allen suddenly became a much sought-after photographer who's sharing raw and gritty images from ground level for the world to see.
Note: This article is written for commercial photographers, not consumer photographers. A consumer shooter has a different list of challenges, and since I am not a consumer photographer, I won’t be addressing them.
Some drone operator gave a pilot a scare this past Tuesday after flying the quadcopter way too close to an airport. A Virgin America flight reportedly came within 200 feet of the drone while landing at Dallas Love Field airport. To put that distance in perspective, consider this: the Airbus A319 airplane involved has a wingspan of about 117 feet.
This past Monday, GoPro announced that it has acquired Kolor, a French company that's pioneering the use of 360-degree cameras for immersive virtual reality.
Yesterday, as a result of the ongoing Baltimore protests, the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox played in the first major league baseball game to not have spectators. The scenario made for a strange experience for everyone involved, and there was an unexpected side effect as well: loud shutter sounds from the photographers.
NPR's Radiolab recorded this 30-minute podcast episode titled "Sight Unseen" that explores current issues in conflict photography. We hear war photographer Lynsey Addario share about one particular experience she had with photographing a gravely wounded marine (The images can be see in this slideshow).
Time-lapse photographer Enrique Pacheco shot this beautiful time-lapse at Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, the world's largest salt flat. The 4,000-square-mile area is a popular destination for photographers, as the ground reflects the sky in ways that blur the distinction between heaven and earth.
Carl Zeiss today uploaded a number of sample photos captured with its new Batis line of full frame lenses for Sony's FE mount. Of the 7 images taken with the 85mm f/1.8 and the 4 with the 25mm f/2, one in particular is causing quite a bit of discussion among Sony shooters.
Want to try your hand at creating a solargraph? Photographer Justin Quinnell recorded this informative and humorous 14-minute video tutorial on how you can create a pinhole camera for 6-month-long exposures using only a beer can, some photo paper, a pin, and lots of gaffer tape (which Quinnell calls the "elixir of life").
Memory Clock is an interesting new concept design that combines the world of clocks with the world of digital photo frames. It's a clock that helps you relive memories by showing you photos from the past.
Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey recently gave this inspiring 18-minute talk at TEDxVerona titled "Life is Art." He shares the story of his own journey in photography starting from when he was diagnosed with polio at 6 years old, and had only a small window as his viewfinder into the world during months of solitary confinement.
You can tell a lot about people from looking at the things they value. A new project called "What We Really Value" offers a glimpse into the lives of people around the world through images of their single most prized possessions.
Sigma’s latest addition to its burgeoning fleet of Art lenses is just as dazzling as the first two incarnations. Riding the coattails of the beloved 35mm f/1.4 and 50mm f/1.4 primes comes yet another fixed lens success––24mm of wide-angle glory. This is the widest Art lens you’ll see in Sigma’s prime series, aimed at satisfying street photographers, landscape shooters, wedding soldiers, event documenters, and DSLR videographers.
LG put forward a new champion in the battle of smartphone cameras yesterday by officially announcing the new G4. Much of the anticipation centered around the phone's powerful camera features, which were finally outed in full detail.
