I saved the best for last. Sigma had a truly remarkable year, launching a beautiful new camera and a diverse, large array of incredible lenses. There's a very good reason Sigma was PetaPixel's Photo Company of the Year for a second straight year. The company even rebranded! There's a lot to cover, so let's get right to it.
In National Geographic's latest documentary, "Cheetahs Up Close," Emmy Award-winning wildlife photographer and cinematographer Bertie Gregory travels to the Serengeti to capture jaw-dropping close-up footage of cheetahs as they rest, hunt, and of course, run. Gregory and fellow Emmy Award-winning wildlife cinematographer Tom Walker use long lenses, drones, and specialized equipment to capture remarkable shots, ensuring "Cheetahs Up Close" is as beautiful as it is exciting.
2025 has marked the passing of several influential photographers whose momentous work helped shape the visual history of the world.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture a panorama made up of photos taken at two different times of day on November 18, 2025. Although on the Red Planet, that time period spanned both the 4,722nd and 4,723rd Martian days, or sols.
Firework displays are few and far between, making it hard to practice photographing them. Fortunately for Benjamin Sunkyong Kim, he lives in New York and every Friday night from July to September there is a fireworks display at Coney Island.
A singer has sued a photographer for selling pictures taken of her for Vogue magazine as "fine art prints" without her permission.
While looking at old British illustrations, a Redditor found a 1944 Ilford Selo Film ad based on a baby picture of his grandmother entirely by accident, not knowing it was his grandmother in the ad.
This year, Leica celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Leica I, the first 35mm camera. That alone makes it an excellent year for the legendary German company, but it was also jam-packed with new cameras, lenses, and, as always, special edition product launches.
Not long after President Richard Nixon signed the act creating the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, the EPA launched a 50-state effort to document pollution. Photographers hired by the federal government took more than 80,000 images.
From a rare big cat once thought extinct, to breathtaking images captured by remote cameras deep in the Congo rainforest, and footage from a trail camera left inside a grizzly bear den for ten years, trail cameras recorded some truly remarkable images in 2025.
The action camera market, once almost entirely owned by the American company GoPro, is now dominated by Chinese companies like DJI and Insta360, which together hold nearly 90% of the market share in Japan.
The global memory chip shortage, primarily driven by the increasing memory demands of AI data centers, has drastically affected the market, sending memory prices skyrocketing. It is widely expected to impact a wide range of products, including, per a press release from ProGrade Digital's Japanese operation, memory cards and SSDs.
Google Photos is coming to Samsung TVs in 2026, giving users a native way to view their photo and video libraries on the big screen for the first time.
Trail cameras have documented the presence of the endangered flat-headed cat in southern Thailand, marking the species’ first confirmed appearance in the country in nearly three decades.
We all want to become more successful at photography, don’t we? Of course, success is a personal thing and can be defined in many ways. If you want that as your New Year’s resolution, there are ways to go about it.
Photographer Chris Gorman tells PetaPixel that drones are the “biggest game changer since the advent of digital.” And it’s difficult to argue with his portfolio of pictures taken in the past 12 months.
I know the title says "Grading Ricoh Pentax," but spoiler alert, Pentax didn't release anything new this year, and even discontinued a camera in Japan. 2025 was all about Ricoh and the long-awaited GR IV premium compact camera.
A series of investigative reports sent shockwaves through the tech and privacy communities when it was revealed that dozens of Flock Safety’s AI‑powered surveillance cameras were left streaming live footage to the open internet, unprotected and accessible to anyone who knew where to look.
The concept of a time machine was first described by H.G. Wells in his book The Time Machine in the year 1895. That was 57 years after Louis Daguerre invented his photographic technique, the daguerreotype.
After hitting a record high of over $82 per ounce over the past few days, analog photographers may have cause to worry about the price of their film. Silver is an essential component of film production, and silver prices have more than doubled in 2025.
PGYTech is expanding its creator-focused gear lineup with the launch of the OneMo Tactical Backpack, a rugged camera and drone pack designed for photographers and filmmakers who work far beyond paved paths.
Olympic gold medal-winning gymnasts Suni Lee and Simone Biles traded uneven bars and balance beams for Sony Alpha cameras this past week to photograph NFL action, becoming the latest in a very long series of pro athletes who have picked up a camera to shoot sports.
The new manual focus Brightin Star 35mm f/1.4 is the Chinese company's latest affordable lens for full-frame mirrorless photographers. Launching at just $159.99, the fast 35mm prime delivers high-end image quality and a robust build.
AI is now able to generate images of faces that many people mistake for real photographs, but new research suggests that five minutes of training can improve detection.
An official webcam has captured clear footage of a muddy eruption at Black Diamond Pool -- one of the most active hydrothermal pools in Yellowstone National Park -- for the first time.
Elon Musk has announced a controversial new feature on his X platform, one that allows any user to edit any image without asking permission.
An understanding of colors and how they can transform our photography is a skill we photographers must master. Therefore, getting to grips with the strangeness of color is essential for understanding how to take better photos.
This one will be short and sweet, as Tamron released just two lenses this year. This output is not far off the three lenses the company launched in 2024 and matches Tamron's pair of new lenses in 2023.
Claims made about the golden ratio in nature are often overstated or romanticized. In fact, it is more often a useful model than it is a universal law,
While Panasonic ignored Micro Four Thirds in 2025, OM System thankfully didn't. And that's a good thing, too, because it's OM's entire business. OM System didn't entirely allay my fears about Micro Four Thirds's ultimate fate, but at least the company did release some nice products this year.
For wildlife photographers, distance has always been both a necessity and a limitation. Get too close, and the subject disappears. Stay too far away, and the image loses intimacy. SmallRig is attempting to rethink that balance with the launch of the Remote Wildlife Pro Wireless Repeater, a long-range Wi-Fi hub designed to give photographers control over cameras placed deep in the field while they remain hundreds of meters away.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001 to 2003) is often lauded as the greatest trilogy of all time. And some of the practical photography effects done in those films -- especially in the first film -- are still revered even to this day.
A new book investigates a single 19th-century photograph of an unnamed Native American girl surrounded by federal officials and explores what identifying her reveals about the historical context of the American West.
It may be commonplace to you, but your audience members may be unfamiliar with the things in your life. Consequently, to them, your ordinary subjects may seem exotic and unusual. However, there are other good reasons to photograph the commonplace repeatedly.
2025 was an excellent year for Panasonic's full-frame Lumix S system and an eerily quiet one for Micro Four Thirds. The year was headlined by the Lumix S1 II, a dynamite full-frame hybrid camera, and the S1R II, the long-awaited high-res update.
Chinese smartphone makers are all-in on photography. Xiaomi's latest Leica-infused phone, the 17 Ultra by Leica, features incredible camera specs, the famous Leica Red Dot logo, and, most interestingly, a manual lens zoom ring.
Accessories may not get the same attention as cameras and lenses, but they are often the tools that keep photographers shooting smoothly. From memory card protection to power solutions and lens accessories, small upgrades can make a meaningful difference in daily workflow. Right now, holiday and last-minute savings are bringing substantial discounts to many of these essentials.
Viltrox has released promised firmware updates for lenses to improve performance and ensure compatibility with the brand-new Sony a7 V.
When Sigma announced its new cinema lens series earlier this year, that may have been the first time that some heard the word "Aizu." Aizu, the shortened form of Aizuwakamatsu, refers to a region in Fukushima, in northern Honshu, Japan, where Sigma is based. This region and its people are so important to the core of what makes Sigma special that it only makes sense to name a lens series after it.
Originating in the early part of the last century, Gestalt Theory revolutionized the understanding of perception. It emphasizes how humans perceive what they see. So, how can we use it to improve our photography?
A YouTuber has captured one of the clearest views ever of a Bobbit worm, one of the ocean’s most fearsome sand-dwelling predators, striking its prey -- using ultra slow-motion footage to reveal the creature’s lightning-fast attack on a squid from beneath the seafloor.
Fujifilm is going to be very difficult to grade this year, not because the company didn't do anything, but because it delivered such an eclectic mix of products, ranging from fun but bad to good but boring. Fujifilm always does things a bit differently, but this year was especially odd.
Leica counted down the days to Christmas in style, delivering daily videos that showcase "the most special things" in the company's archives. As is tradition, the photographic advent calendar of sorts concluded yesterday, Christmas Eve, and we thought a nice little Christmas present to our passionate readers was a recap of Leica's Christmas countdown.
A new exhibition explores the history of photography in children's books from their rise in the 1930s to the present day.
Learning photography is a never-ending quest. Most of us are hoping to make our photos appealing to our audience. So what follows are five approaches we can employ to help achieve that.
Sony has long been the top dog in the full-frame mirrorless camera space, but the gap has closed dramatically in recent years. Did Sony do enough to stave off the competition in 2025?
Since veteran astronaut and fantastic photographer Don Pettit returned from his record-setting fifth expedition to space in April, he has been regularly sharing photos he captured aboard the ISS. His most recent one is a remarkable portrait of his fellow astronaut, Sunita "Suni" Williams, floating in space during her ninth spacewalk. The International Space Station's (ISS) solar array is in the background, delivering an incredible sense of scale.
When Nikon announced the RED-fueled ZR cinema camera in September, it also unveiled a companion shotgun microphone, the ME-D10. This new mic is now finally available in stores.
Surprise! The PetaPixel Podcast team got together one more time for the true Season 4 finale! Grab a glass of eggnog, don your Santa hats, and pull the pole out from the crawlspace, because it's time for the annual airing of grievances!
In mid-December, as the winter sun drifts across Cairo’s skyline, a new kind of exhibition opens its doors, built not from the work of gallery veterans but from the pockets of everyday people. Each image is a reminder that the world is full of stories happening in the margins of daily life. And increasingly, these stories are being captured through a device nearly everyone carries.
