"Zooms? We don't need no stinkin' zooms!" said a gaggle of ZEISS shooters. At least that's what we imagine ZEISS-lovers saying as they look at the comparison shot above by photographer and ZEISS lens ambassador Christian Dandyk.
Episode 67 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast.
Download MP3 - Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, email or RSS!
Featured: Photographer Geoff Zhang
Summer is coming and that means one thing for many photographers: the dreaded midday sun! Fear not people, you can use that harsh light to your advantage.
Here's a neat way to take your photos of wedding rings to the next level: include the couple in the reflections.
Berlin-based professional adventure photographer Benjamin Jaworskyj was recently flying to a workshop in Norway when he got a chance to test the low-light capabilities of his Sony a7S II: filming the dim Northern Lights in the skies outside.
What would your camera be like as a person? That's the question Sony Thailand tries to answer in this strange and humorous 3-minute advertisement that was published earlier this month.
My name is Tracy Willis, and I'm a newborn photographer and digital artist based in Dorset, UK. For my personal project titled "Animal Antics," I create composite photos of my dogs doing various human activities.
If your smartphone serves as a primary camera in your life, you may have come across a Goldilocks-style conundrum when trying to figure out how to stabilize your phone and trigger it remotely. Standard tripods may be too big and bulky, but a selfie stick is too small and not versatile enough for your needs. The MonoShot is a product that fills the gap between the two ends of the spectrum.
Here's a short and sweet educational video by the YouTube channel What Is... that provides an overview of film and how it works. While the discussion is through the lens of filmmaking, much of it is relevant for still photographers as well.
It's time again to celebrate the best of photography, amateur and professional alike. The Sony World Photography Awards 2016 winners have been announced, and we've compiled some of our favorite 1st place winners below for you to draw inspiration from.
You might want to take some anti-nausea meds before you watch this one. Balance, a film by Tim Sessler and Brandon Bray, is a dizzying, disorienting display of drone cinematography that may just leave you slack jawed. It's also the first drone film we know of to use the famous "vertigo effect," AKA dolly zoom.
Today is Earth Day, and while many will use the opportunity to share spectacular images of natural wonders still thriving, fine art photographer Joe Freeman is taking a darker tack. His series "Clearcut" serves as a poignant reminder of nature that is no more.
Recently I had the opportunity to shoot a young up-and-coming golfer named Taylor Pendrith for SCOREGolf magazine’s 2016 ‘Power’ issue. The creative team at SCOREGolf wanted to show Taylor in his swing, hitting the ball, displaying the incredible power this young man is becoming known for.
Remember the drone that a British Airways pilot said he hit in approach to London Heathrow airport earlier this week? Well, it turns out it may have been, "a plastic bag or something."
Sigh. There's nothing like a photo straight from the great Hubble Space Telescope to put our megapixel squabbling and ultra-fast frame rate comparisons in perspective. For the telescope's 26th birthday on April 24th, the Hubble engineers have released a spectacular photo of "an enormous bubble being blown into space by a super-hot, massive star."
SLR shooters have been dealing with autofocus misalignment issues for as long as autofocus itself has existed, but thanks to Nikon's new AF Fine Tune feature, what used to be a very annoying and difficult problem can now be fixed with a few button clicks.
I've been wrestling with this for a while now. I wasn't going to write a post like this but things have reached a certain point where I don't feel I can take anything on any further, so for now a little social media post will have to suffice in lieu of actual justice.
This is pretty cool. 360° video and photography is all the rage, but while Virtual Reality might be the main way you can experience these photos, a company called Scandy lets you hold them in your hand through the magic of 3D printing.
I was honoured to wrap-up another bridal-inspired editorial shoot where I was paid for my expertise. Having been a wedding photographer for 5+ years, I can say with certainty that it has taken 2+ years of hustling to be welcomed into the inner circle of a few select Sydney florists, stylists, hair stylists and makeup artists. Being invited to shoot an editorial campaign is one thing, being paid for the privilege is another.
Noise reduction for night sky photos can be tricky, because the algorithms at play often reduce the sharpness of your stars while removing noise in the darkest parts of the sky. In this video tutorial, photographer Dave Morrow shows you how to avoid this issue altogether using a simple, effective editing technique.
In this article I will describe how to construct a simple reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) setup using an Arduino microprocessor and a 3D printer.
Camera technology has come a long way in the last two decades; heck, it's come a long way in the last 5 years. But sometimes even decades old tech can keep up, like the Nikon F3H SLR and its burst mode that maxed out at a blazing fast 13fps in 1996!
There’s nothing like a spot of macro photography for making you stop to appreciate nature’s tinier gems.
Apple's iPhone 7 has long been rumored to sport dual cameras, but the smartphone might have another interesting photographic trick up its sleeve when it arrives: optical zoom. A new patent from Apple shows how they could make this happen without making the phone bulkier.
As a photographer I always get asked for advice on buying cameras and what is the least amount needs to be spent to achieve professional results. It usually happens when I'm photographing a wedding, which also means I rarely have time to properly address the question.
Artist and photographer Fabian Oefner is constantly working out new and interesting ways to create his art—whether it's splattering paint using a spinning drill bit or 'disintegrating' a car piece by piece. For his latest series 'Corona,' he turned his attention to petrol and achieved unexpectedly beautiful results.
When Fujifilm offered to pay photographer Zack Arias to create a promotional video about their products, Arias didn't simply create a typical behind the scenes or gear review video. He turned the opportunity into a trip to Morocco, to help out a worthy cause.
There are some interesting 360° camera rigs out there, but not a one of them was designed with grizzly bear and jaguar attacks in mind... until now. Meet the Condition One VR 'Bison,' a super tough 360° 3D camera rig worthy of its hefty name.
Episode 66 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast.
Download MP3 - Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, email or RSS!
Featured: Photographer and 5DayDeal founder, Griffin Stewart
Once this was the most glorious building of Romania but since 1990 it’s been abandoned and slowly but surely falling apart. The building is now listed as a historic monument by the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs of Romania.
If you love light painting, then have I got a toy for you. The Pixelstick from Bitbanger Labs, which may just be one of the coolest ways to express your creative side after the sun sets.
Be honest: you'd do it too if you could. Artist Jasper St Aubyn West, better known as Tail Jar, recently embarked on a sketch challenge, transforming his "same old photos" of the "same old places" into something special... by adding monsters!
In Silicon Valley we have a saying: “Fail forward.” I think it is a beautiful saying—because it isn’t telling us that failure is okay for failure’s sake, but that we should learn from our failings, and learn how to move forward.
Watching the aurora borealis dance above your head is a transformative human experience that thousands capture from places like Norway and the Canadian Rockies every year. But watching it dance beneath your feet? That's an experience only a fortunate few will ever get to have.
For thousands of years humans have engaged in making visual records of the world around them. From the earliest Ice Age animal cave paintings to birthday photos of our children, a common value seems to be expressing itself through our ever evolving technologies and skills that create “visual likeness.”
There are plenty of products out there promising to turn your smartphone camera into the portable DSLR you wish existed—we've covered smartphone lenses, grips, lenscams, and more. The Miggo Pictar falls into the second category, grips, but it does something very different: it communicates with your iPhone using ultrasound.
When photographer Steve Arklay discovered his photo on someone else's Instagram account, posted without credit or permission, he didn't send a takedown request. Instead, he started a dialogue with the photo thief, trying to buy a print of his own photograph.
Highly controversial Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is in the news a lot, but today he's making photography news. "The Donald" is being sued by two photographers who claim he has used their iconic image of a bald eagle on campaign materials for sale on the Trump website without asking permission or appropriately licensing the image.
Edelkrone's tag line is simply "reinvent," and that's exactly what the company is doing with their new StandPLUS: they're reinventing the tripod. Or rather, they're throwing the tripod out altogether in favor of a different sort of camera holder.
Seeing and photographing the Aurora Borealis is pretty high on many a photographer's wish list, but if you don't live in the arctic circle (or don't have the budget to get there), then capturing this amazing display may have to wait a while. In the meantime, let the folks at Phlearn show you how to fake the Northern Lights using Photoshop.
When you think "towering architecture photography," the only chewing gum on your mind is probably the piece you might step on while trying to frame your shot from the sidewalk. But Sam Kaplan's architectural homage Unwrapped is actually made of gum.
Loss and desperation, love and respect, bravery and triumph, these are the themes that COOPH is exploring in their newest video, and they're doing it by reviewing some of the most powerful photographs ever captured.
The cat is out of the bag... well, maybe not entirely, but it's definitely peeking its head out. When Huawei announced the P9 smartphone and its Leica-branded dual-cam, neither company was being very straightforward about what Leica's role actually was in designing the optics. Now we have some answers.
Renowned travel photographer Bob Holmes says he shoots in a "National Geographic style." A style that he describes as not about the photographer, but about the subject; a style that is graphic, and features a strong use of color. And in this video, he shares some composition tips that will help you capture some of that iconic style in your photos as well.
A man in Sutton, Alaska was shot and killed over the weekend when he accidentally stepped into someone's line of fire to capture photos of video of other people shooting guns at a local makeshift shooting range.
Amateur photographer Carola Becker spent last Autumn photographing hundreds of leaves as they turned from green, to gold, to red, to brown. The resulting macro images, placed side by side, show "the beauty of diversity and imperfection."
News broke back in February that Russian camera manufacturer Zenit was going to come back and take on Leica in the luxury camera market. But the first Zenit products to see the light of day aren't cameras, it's three very fast KMZ/Zenit lenses: the Zenitar 50mm f/0.95, 50mm f/1.2, and 85mm f/1.2.
In the wake of the tragic earthquakes in Japan and Ecuador this weekend, the folks at Slate wanted to better drive home the destructive, terrifying power of a high magnitude earthquake. They did it by stabilizing shaky amateur footage of a home in Japan trying to survive the 7.3 magnitude Kumamoto quake.
Many of us started photography quite innocently— with small compact point-and-shoots, a smartphone, or a disposable film camera. The main advantage was that we didn’t need to think about all the technical settings when we made images—rather, we focused on capturing the “decisive moment”, the framing and composition as well as the emotional content within the frame.
Mother and talented photographer Niki Boon has chosen to raise her kids totally tech free: no Netflix, no iPads, just 10 acres of coast-side property in New Zealand to explore. And she's been capturing their unusual upbringing on camera in stunning candid photos.
