January 2016

Here's a photo of a Pentax 645Z medium format DSLR that was sliced cleanly down the middle. Pentax was displaying this half camera at the CP+ show in Japan back in early 2015. It's an interesting look at the guts of a camera that currently costs about $7,000.

Dutch photojournalist Teun Voeten and videographer Maaike Engels were shooting a documentary at a migrant camp in Calais, France, earlier this month when the photographer was mugged by three refugees armed with pepper spray and a knife. The attack was stopped when other migrants in the camp came to the rescue.

With tens of thousands of Instagram followers, Amalia Ulman is something of an Instagram celebrity. She regularly posted photos of herself "living the life," posing on hotel beds, wearing haute couture, and eating haute cuisine.

A group of 12 photographers gathered in a beautiful villa in Tuscany, Italy, last year to be creative, learn from one another, and exchange ideas. On the last day, they decided to challenge themselves with an experiment: they would each spend 15 minutes shooting a portrait of a model using the same room as the setting.

"Lens management"... Zzzz... I'm bored already.

Here's some amazing nature footage captured with GoPro cameras by filmmakers Cristian Dimitrius and Fran Hutchins, who traveled to Bracken Cave near San Antonio, Texas. The cave is the summer home of the world's largest bat colony, with millions of Mexican free-tailed bats living there for about 6 months of each year.

Back in December 2015, Sigma announced the world's first protective lens filters made of ceramic -- filters that it claims are 10x stronger than traditional filters and 3x stronger than chemically strengthened filters.

The YouTube channel tesla500 wanted to see what happens when various objects fall into the spinning blades of an upside-down lawnmower, so they set up some slow motion cameras to find out.

We’ve all seen those images over the past few years (popping up in our Facebook feeds or in the media) depicting spectacular displays of the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights from Great Britain, Ireland or the lower 48 in the US. Regardless of the location, they’re pretty amazing images.

Here's a quirky fact about photography and life: the lids of certain Häagen-Dazs ice cream containers make for perfect lens caps for 72mm lenses.

Photographer Craig Mann is passionate about both photography and Star Wars, but one of the things that puts a damper on his work is the fact that he spends 6 months of each year working on an offshore drilling rig in the Atlantic Ocean.

One of the largest photo collections in the world was just sold. Corbis, which is owned by Bill Gates, has sold off its images business to Visual China Group, China's equivalent of Getty Images. VCG is the same company that led a $13 million investment in 500px in 2015, and which is partnering with 500px to expand into China.

My name is Mohammed Sattar, and I'm a photographer and digital artist. My goal isn't to capture reality -- it's to create dreams.

Its been 2 years since 500px expanded beyond being a simple photo-sharing service by launching a commercial licensing system for photographers. We were curious about what the bestselling photos on the service are, so we asked 500px to reveal the top 10 and tell us why each one is selling so well.

Here's a new 18-minute educational video by Filmmaker IQ about the subjects of depth of field and its relationship to different lenses and sensor sizes. "Through some fundamental scientific demonstrations, we will clarify concepts like circle of confusion and lens equivalency," the video says.

Kodak's film business may finally turn a profit this year thanks to support from Hollywood, but the photographic film industry is still seeing declines in demand.

"Bubbleissimo" is a quirky new photo project by New York-based photographer Mindo Cikanavicius. It features serious portraits of men wearing serious expressions... and beards and mustaches made of soap bubbles.

If there's one piece of technology that I love, it's my phone. And as a photographer, always having a camera is convenient, occasionally saving myself from missing that once in a lifetime shot.

Photographers often harangue one another over pricing. Ironically, very few are willing to publicly disclose how much they charge for jobs. In economic speak, this leads to an inefficient market that has wide ranging pricing for the same output.

"The Boy with a Camera for a Face" is an award-winning 14-minute short film about a boy who was born for a camera in place of a human head. Every moment in the boy's life is saved for the future, leaving to a unforeseen benefits and challenges in life.

Check out this photo of a potato. It may look like a rather ordinary photo, but it's one of the most expensive photos in the world: it sold last year for a staggering $1,000,000+.

"The Lab" is a series of 6 creative experiments being conducted on photographers by Canon Australia. Early efforts were interesting: 6 photographers were asked to shoot portraits of the same subject while given different backstories, and then another 6 were asked to shoot photos of the same objects with no repeats.

I’d like to think that as I age I get wiser. I sure hope so because I want to be a better person every day! Lately I’ve been pondering about principles. For most of my life I’ve been chasing after the 1-2-3 approach only to realize that things are so complex, I would have been better off knowing the principles of life rather than going in without any guiding principle.

The upcoming Olympus PEN-F has been outed in leaked product photos already, but blurry product shots don't always give a good idea of what the camera looks like in the real world.

There are special agonies that are reserved for the "official photographers" of families and friends. One of them is when you sprint into the scene after setting your camera's self timer, only to have the camera snap the photo before you're ready. It was even worse in the days of film, when sometimes you might not even see the blooper until after the photos are processed.

Lomography just brought another classic lens design back from the dead. Today the company announced its new Jupiter 3+ 50mm f/1.5 lens for L39 and M mount rangefinders.

As 2016 gets underway, I'd like to share 8 tips on how to take and make better images. To prove that this has nothing to do with how much fancy gear you have, all these tips can be applied to any camera, and all the example images were shot and edited using only my phone.

Did you know that Star Wars: The Force Awakens villain Kylo Ren used to be a National Geographic photographer? Okay, not really. But kind of.

Panasonic drummed up some excitement back in 2014 by announcing the Lumix CM1, a smartphone with a serious camera that had a 1-inch sensor and a Leica lens.

Photographer Jan Helmer Olsen recently took his camera drone to Karasjok, Norway, and captured these beautiful aerial shots of the annual reindeer migration. 3,500 reindeer can be seen on their 2-month-long trek toward the south for warmth.

We've seen a number of photographers use mirrors in creative ways in recent years. Photographer Stefan Schlumpf recently decided to go big with the idea for a series of portraits.

I recently wrote an article about 8 Reasons You Should Buy A 50mm f/1.8 Lens and one part was about using it with the "El Bokeh Wall." What's an El Bokeh Wall? It's using some aluminum foil to add beautiful bokeh to the background of your photos. Here's a full tutorial on the technique.

Ever notice when you search for photography gear online that all the prices are exactly the same? Does it make you wonder why there isn't at least ONE retailer selling that awesome lens for less? …

Our buddies over at COOPH got their hands on the new Leica X-U waterproof camera and created this video with 8 photo ideas you can do when you have a rugged camera that can take a beating and a dip.

Leica today announced the Leica X-U (Typ 113), the first Leica camera that's specifically designed for extreme outdoor and underwater shooting.

While sitting in a coffee shop last Friday, I really didn’t want to answer any more emails so I went to a bar instead, ordered a pint and sketched out a bit of a doodle for a big camera. I then called my buddy Zach who shares my open schedule and vague ability with power tools, and he stopped by my studio an hour later.

As photographers in the United States, we hold the majority of power when it comes to our images. We automatically own the copyright to all photos we take, we are the ones who register our photos with the U.S. Copyright office, and we are the ones who license our images to clients, publications, and even the models in the photos.

Here's something that most Nikon DSLR shooters probably know already, but perhaps some of you don't... Most Nikon DSLRs feature two small green dots somewhere near buttons on the back or top of the camera. Those dots tell you how to do a factory reset of your camera to default settings.

I recently went on a 2-week trip to Dubai, a city with a futuristic appearance that looks like it came straight out of a movie like Blade Runner. If you enjoy shooting cityscapes, Dubai is where your dreams come true.

French-Moroccan photographer Leila Alaoui has died from injuries she received during the Al Qaeda terrorist attack in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, last Friday. Alaoui was 33 years old.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly has attracted over 700,000 followers on Twitter by regularly sharing beautiful snapshots of Earth, as seen from the International Space Station.

Fujifilm produced medium format cameras back in the heyday of film, but the company has focused on smaller formats ever since digital photography burst onto the scene. It's not ruling out a return to the medium format market -- in fact, Fuji says it's actively researching and testing medium format sensors.

During a wedding reception back in September 2013, photographer Tammy Bryan and the couple decided to have a little fun with the guests by organizing a flash mob. Bryan is the organizer of the Greater Cincinnati Photographers Club, and she asked 100 of the group's photographers to help brighten up the first dance... literally.

One of the things I love about photography is it appeals to both the geek and the artist in all of us. On the geek side you have the technical considerations of making an image; the f-stops, shutter speeds, depth of field, histograms, dynamic range, all the stuff we must all master in order to communicate our vision.

Upon first glance, photographer Benjamin Von Wong's latest work looks like a Photoshop composite that shows a model swimming with sharks below the sea. But what you see is the real deal: Von Wong did actually tie down a model underwater with sharks swimming around, all for a series of surreal (but very real) portraits.

Looking for a fun little weekend craft project or some thrifty home decor? You can make yourself an Olympus mirrorless camera out of paper.

My name is Dragos Ionescu. I was born in 1992 in Craiova, Romania, and moved to London, UK, almost 5 years ago to study and pursue a career in photography, and am currently in my final year of studying photography at University of East London.

Hungarian photographer and retoucher Flora Borsi has a knack for making creative (and viral) photomanipulations, from placing herself into historical photos to turning the world into a coffee-lover's dream.