As a full time professional photographer, I try to remind people that the best camera you have is the one you have with you. Since I have yet to permanently graft a DSLR onto my body, my best camera is often my iPhone. So, is the new iPhone 7 Plus good enough to help alleviate the anxiety I get every time I leave my camera at home? Let’s find out!
If you want ultimate control over your High Dynamic Range images, manual blending is still the way to go. But creating a perfectly blended image from two or more exposures using layer masks can be challenging.
You can always find a reason why you shouldn't go out and try to shoot something. You don't have the right gear, for example, or there's too much light pollution in your area. Let this short timelapse serve as an example of why you should ignore those excuses.
I have known about these sunflower fields for several years, but seeing as the flowers only bloom for about two weeks, between work and travel I have never had the opportunity to go and photograph them.
Sigma's photographic lenses are usually released in three mounts: Canon, Nikon, and Sigma. But that's not always going to be the case. In an interview, Sigma President Kazuto Yamaki confirmed that they are indeed planning to make Sigma lenses for Sony Full Frame E-Mount.
Episode 110 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast.
Download MP3 - Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, email or RSS!
Featured: Brad Smith, former Sports Illustrated Director of Photography
For several years now, Singaporean macro nature photographer Nicky Bay has been focusing his lens on spiders that have mirror-like reflective abdomens, which he calls mirror spiders. Certain species have mirror-like scales on their abdomens that change size depending on the spiders' mood.
Leica and Huawei are taking their photography partnership to a new level. Just 5 months after the launch of the Huawei P9 smartphone, which features dual Leica cameras, the two companies have announced the creation of a new research and innovation center to push photography forward.
Snapchat just unveiled camera sunglasses for capturing your daily life as your eyes see it. The Snapchat Spectacles are upcoming $130 shades that will compete against the likes of Google Glass.
My 19-month-old son, Stanley, has learned how to use a camera and to shout out cheese as he presses the shutter. He has a few of my old crappy point-and-shoot film cameras in his toy box to play with, but today I gave him my old Canon G12.
Portrait photographers looking to diversify your background options listen up. There's an affordable background material you need to know about, and a great DIY portable background stand you can build for just $25.
The Hula is an agricultural region located in northern Israel with abundant fresh water. It is a major stopover for various birds’ migration path along the Syrian-African Rift Valley between Africa, Europe, and Asia. An estimated half a billion birds are passing through the Hula Valley every year.
Well, you can add "captioning photos" to the list of jobs robots will soon be able to do just as well as humans. After some training, the latest version of Google's "Show and Tell" algorithm can describe the contents of a photo with staggering 94% accuracy.
It's not always guaranteed, but here's a great way to make sure your next wedding shoot goes viral: replace flower bouquets with adoptable puppies. That's how photographer Caroline Logan's recent wedding shoot wound up skyrocketing to Internet fame.
I have had a great weekend shooting with the now kind-of-old, well-known, and mostly-forgotten-about Canon 50 f/1.2L lens. This lens came out years ago, and has been reviewed hundreds of times by users, reviewers, and anyone with an opinion. So why I am dedicating a post and short review to this lens?
Fujifilm "won" Photokina. There's no real doubt about that. With the announcement of the mirrorless medium format Fuji GFX 50S, they stole the show. But what does the camera actually feel like IRL. And how big it is compared to, say, a Fuji X-T1?
This week, a fire at Puerto Rico's largest power plant triggered a chain reaction that has left the majority of the country without power, air conditioning, and water. These satellite images show what it looks like when 1.5 million homes lose power all at once.
Need a little bit of gear lust in your life this Friday? We've got you covered. The video above by Pro Centre camera store in London claims to be the "world's first" unboxing of the Hasselblad X1D mirrorless medium format camera.
Alien Skin just released the new version of their flagship Exposure software, adding features like a histogram, History panel, and Spot Heal tool that make it a much more powerful stand-alone RAW photo editor than ever before.
Venus Optics are quickly becoming a leader in extreme lens design, but even by their standard, they've seriously outdone themselves with the Laowa 24mm f/14 Replay 2x Macro lens.
We're always looking to up our Photoshop game, but the lists of Must Know "techniques" or "skills" or "tools" we run across typically disappoint us by being either to basic or too niche. This useful Top 10 by Nate Dodson of Tutvid is an exception.
There's no shortage of timelapse controllers out there—from feature-rich camera triggers that use your phone as a sensor, to popular motion control systems. But the Astro Core has one specific feature that sets it apart: gesture control.
Today, we know the Eiffel Tower as the beloved symbol of Paris. It wasn’t always like this though. In fact, many Parisians were not too fond of their new landmark back in 1889 and many of them wanted it taken down.
Apple released iOS 10.1 to public beta testers today, and it includes one of the most anticipated features they showed off during their iPhone 7 keynote: the "Portrait" mode that fakes a depth of field effect.
It looks like Amazon has abruptly ended its $12 per year plan that provides unlimited photo storage, which included RAW files and was a fantastic deal for photographers looking for a backup solution.
We all have a blind spot, both literally and metaphorically. Ansel Adams had one so big and powerful that he, Beaumont Newhall, and a few others “disappeared” some very important and wonderful photographers from the history of photography. And in doing so they also helped “disappear” an important movement in photography, one called Pictorialism.
MeFOTO just announced a new line of ultra-portable tripods that come with a few very interesting features. In addition to working like any other versatile travel tripod, the MeFOTO Air tripods come with a bluetooth remote and selfie stick built right in.
Over in Helsinki, Finland, there's a photo studio called Cahute, named after an old French word meaning "little hut." What's unusual about this studio is that it shoots portraits exclusively on 8x10 direct positive paper, processing the shots with caffenol (a process that traditionally uses coffee and Vitamin C).
The prospect of leaving behind the "safe route" to pursue a career in photography is daunting at the best of times, but it's that much more difficult when friends and family don't support your decision. Here's a short video that might help you cope if you're dealing with disapproval or lack of support.
I have been a model for 1 to 1 workshops that last half a day, full day, two days. I have been a model also for a 3-day long workshop with over 50 photographers. Working on both sides of the camera I can get incredibly passionate about being part of workshops, but I can get equally distraught because when you deal with people in such close proximity and so intensively, emotions and feelings are bound to be stirred in every single direction.
Here's a short video showing how the British sci-fi TV show Doctor Who recreated the Beatles' famous Abbey Road album cover photo. Since Abbey Road is an active two-way road in London, the team had to stop traffic at a crosswalk for about 90 seconds to nail the shot.
The Flickr Marketplace is no more. Two years after launching a commercial licensing marketplace—a place for Flickr users to license their images to big companies looking for "authentic" user-generated content—Yahoo is officially shutting the program down.
Three Instagram photographers have been selected as recipients of this year's Getty Images Instagram Grants. Their mobile-shared photos have earned them each $10,000 and an exhibition in New York.
If you're a member of the photo sharing service Flickr, you might want to change your password as soon as possible. Yahoo, which owns Flickr, has reportedly suffered a major hack.
Episode 109 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast.
Download MP3 - Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, email or RSS!
Featured: Dany Eid, Nikon and Carl Zeiss Ambassador
This is one of the luckiest, craziest stolen gear recovery stories we've ever heard. Five months after a man had $34K in gear—including a pre-production Canon 1D X Mark II—stolen out of his car, he actually got it back after the thief sold one of the stolen lenses to a police officer.
The Google Photos app just keeps getting better. First, the app made made backing up your iPhone's photos a breeze. Then it started turning Live Photos into stabilized GIFs. And now, now it can create themed slideshows a la Facebook, and make sharing your photos easier than ever.
Affordable, high-quality high speed cameras a tough to come by. But that might soon change, thanks to Kickstarter and years of work by one diligent engineer.
One of the biggest companies in the world just got into the photo print business. Seattle-based ecommerce giant Amazon just launched Amazon Prints—an online service that lets users order photo prints, build photo books, and soon much more.
Polaroid hasn't given up on instant photography yet. Following up on the release of the Polaroid Snap last year, the Polaroid Snap Touch "instant digital" camera combines the features of both a digital and instant camera into a fun, affordable package.
Apple hasn't officially published the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus sample photos that were shown off during the phones' recent unveiling, but the photos are found on the display phones in Apple Stores. One man recently visited an Apple Store and collected all 195 official photos to share with the world.
A guy who goes by the name "The Hyperunner" spent a year running with a GoPro strapped to his head. At the end of it all, he turned all the photos he shot into this mesmerizing hyperlapse journey through seasons.
Erik Johansson creates some of the most stunning surreal images in the world, and Volvo recently decided to follow him around and document his process as he shot his latest personal project. The final video is equal parts inspirational and just plain beautifully shot.
Fujifilm caused a great deal of excitement this week by announcing its first medium format mirrorless camera, the 51MP GFX 50S. But "medium format" is a a relative term rather than a specific sensor size, so how does the new 50S's sensor stack up against other digital cameras on the market?
Well-known TV personality Mike Rowe took to Facebook yesterday to share a crazy story of how a camera drone violated his privacy... by capturing him standing naked in his own bedroom.
While the Profoto D2 is still the world's fastest TTL Monolight, it is not the world's fastest monolight. That title belongs to Hensel's new, insanely fast Cito 500.
Donald Trump Jr. sparked controversy this week by Tweeting a photo of a bowl of Skittles to explain the "Syrian refugee problem." Now the story has taken a strange new twist: the photographer behind the Skittles photo says that Trump Jr. used the photo without his permission. What's more, the photographer himself was a refugee.
Kodak has released the third generation of its Pixpro SP360 action camera, and if you've been following Photokina news, it'll look very familiar. That's because it's basically just a pared down version of Nikon's KeyMission 360.
In a shocking move that came unexpected to the industry, (now-former) Apple CEO Tim Cook has agreed to join Adobe this morning at Photokina.
Fujifilm has been on a tear with its Instax line of instant cameras and film, and now the company is expanding its booming business into the world of fashion. Fuji has teamed up with renowned designer Michael Kors on a new fashion-forward limited-edition Instax Mini 70 camera.
