Michael Zhang

Founder, Editor

Michael is a photography enthusiast, entrepreneur, and programmer based in Northern California near San Francisco. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with two degrees in computer science.

Articles by Michael Zhang

Fujifilm X100T Review: Your Best Friend with a Lens

Hey T,

I hope you had a safe flight back home.

I’m so glad we were finally able to spend a couple of months here in Melbourne together! There were so many places I wanted to show you, so many people I wanted you to meet.

Guy Given Second Trip with Family After Sad Vacation Photos Go Viral

Some months ago, 34-year-old telecom worker Kevin Blandford of Louisville, Kentucky, won a free vacation to Puerto Rico from his job. His daughter was too young to make the trip at the time, so she and his wife stayed home. Blandford decided to document the entire trip with a series of sad-faced portraits showing that he wasn't having a single second of fun without his family. Those photos went viral after he shared them online, racking up millions of views.

They were so popular, in fact, that the hotel in Puerto Rico and an ad agency noticed and decided to pay for a second identical trip for Blandford's entire family. Blandford took the opportunity to recreate each one of his original sad photos as a happy family portrait.

Flickr Loses Its Head: Bernardo Hernandez is Out

Flickr is basking in a fresh wave of press after launching a revamp of its website and mobile apps, but the leader that oversaw Flickr 4.0 won't be around to see whether it pans out. Bernardo Hernandez, chief of the photo sharing service since 2013, has left his position at Yahoo.

Canon Issues Product Advisory for T6 White-Spotted Sensor Problem

A week ago, it came to light that some Canon T6s and T6si DSLRs were shipping with a strange defect: a large number of tiny white spots can be seen across the surface of the camera sensor, and the spots show up as dark dots in photos taken in certain conditions.

Today Canon has released an official product advisory confirming that this problem exists and promising free repairs for affected customers.

Bending the Light: A New Documentary About Lens Makers and Photos Takers

Bending the Light is a new documentary film by renowned filmmaker Michael Apted about the journey of glass from the artisans who have dedicated their lives to crafting the perfect lens to the photographers who spend their careers chasing after the perfect shot.

Above is a 3-minute trailer that will give you a taste of what the movie is about.

Sony Fires a Shot at DSLRs by Shattering Mirrors

Sony Australia has launched a new "Move to Mirrorless" advertising campaign that aims to lure people away from DSLRs and to the Alpha line of mirrorless cameras. To get its point across, Sony released the 60-second video above showing large mirrors shattering into little pieces in the desert in order to make way for "a new era in photography."

Why Your Lightroom CC May Actually Be Slower with the New GPU Acceleration

When Adobe unveiled Lightroom CC/6 last month, one of the big features in the update was support for graphics processors (GPU) in order to speed things up in the Develop module. Adobe claimed that some users would see up to a 10x performance increase with the GPU helping the CPU out.

Unfortunately for some users who bought or upgraded to Lightroom CC/6, that hasn't been the case.

A Conversation with Photographer Rick Smolan

If you have an hour to spare, here's a fantastic interview you should listen to. It's a Talks at Google event featuring renowned photographer Rick Smolan, who has shot for TIME, LIFE, and National Geographic. He's also one of the bestselling coffee table photo book photographers of all time.

Getty Teams Up with Instagram to Offer $30,000 to Mobile Photographers

Smartphone photography is becoming one of the main ways people share visual stories with the world, and Getty Images wants to help bankroll powerful mobile photo projects. The company is teaming up with Instagram to launch a new photography grant that will hand out $30,000 to help Instagram users tell important stories.

The Demolition of the Tallest Structure in the Southern Hemisphere

The Omega Transmitter was a huge 1,417-foot tall transmission tower near Woodside, Victoria, Australia, that was the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere until its demolition on April 22nd, 2015. Photographer Tom Blachford was on the scene, as he was hired by the Australian Defence Force to document everything with his camera.

Baby Sloth Grabs Camera and Poses for Selfies

Here's a cute little video to brighten your day. It shows a baby sloth at the Sloth Sanctuary of Costa Rica interacting with a camera that's being held near its bed. Instead of taking a nap, the slow-moving sloth decides to explore the camera and reach out its arms for some selfie-style portraits.

Photos of the Colossal Duga-3 Radar System Built by the Soviet Union

Duga-3 is a radar system set up by the Soviet Union in the 1970s as part of the nation's anti-ballistic missile early warning system. Although official operations were ended in 1989, the gigantic antenna of the original Duga-3 still dominates the countryside near Chernobyl, Ukraine.

Photographer Peter Franc recently traveled to Ukraine to see and photograph the radio transmitter.

DJI Raises $75 Million in Funding and Is Now Valued at $10 Billion

The world's largest drone maker is quickly becoming one of China's most powerful homegrown companies. DJI announced today that it has raised another $75 million in venture capital funding, and recent talks with investors have reportedly pegged the value of the company at a whopping $10 billion.

This Restaurant Made Special Plates for Smartphone Food Photos

If you can't help but snap a smartphone photo before eating a meal, there's a restaurant in Israel that has a new concept designed just for you. The Tel Aviv restaurant Catit and Carmel Winery have teamed up for a new project called Foodography. It's a new meal experience that features newly designed plates that help you shoot quality food photos with your smartphone.

Clone Portraits Show Woman Before and After Losing 150 Pounds

Photographer Blake Morrow shot a creative series of clone photos showing his friend Beth Beard before and after she lost 150 pounds. The portraits were taken two years apart and combined into pop-culture inspired clone photos showing old Beth interacting with new Beth. It's a series titled The Beth Project.

Sony Reportedly Struggling to Keep Up With Demand For Its Sensors

This week it was discovered that Samsung has been using Sony image sensors in some of its S6 smartphone cameras, but Samsung sensors in others. Some publications guessed that the decision may have been due to a shortage of Sony-made sensors, which have been increasingly popular in recent years. That theory is now being bolstered by a new report that Sony is indeed struggling to keep up with surging demand.

This ‘Moon Trail’ Was Shot with a 37-Minute Exposure

You've probably seen star trail photos before, but how about a "moon trail?" A Finnish photographer named Janne shot this beautiful photo earlier this week as the rising moon streaked across the sky. Janne was shooting with a Nikon D800 and 100-300mm lens at 300mm, f/8, and ISO 100. The trick behind the shot was a 10-stop neutral density filter, which greatly cut down the amount of light hitting the sensor and allowed Janne to shoot a 2258-second exposure -- that's a whopping 37.6 minutes!

These Animations Show How CMOS and CCD Sensors Work and How They Differ

Want to see how CMOS and CCD image sensors work and how they differ from each other? Photographer and animator Raymond Sirí created a couple of simple animations showing the basic idea of how these two sensor technologies go about capturing light, reading it, and storing the information.

The animation above showing CMOS sensor tech was used in a trial against Canon, Sirí says.

Photographer Wants to End Discrimination Against High-End Camera Gear

Photographer Jason Lanier is on a mission to end "discrimination against photographers." He just posted the video above showing two encounters he recently had with law enforcement while doing a photo shoot in San Francisco. In both cases, the officials noticed his "nice" camera and high-end equipment and questioned him to see if he was shooting commercially without a proper permit (which can cost hundreds of dollars).

Photos of Giant Science Facilities That Look Straight Out of Science Fiction

Scientists around the world create massive and elaborate facilities for carrying out groundbreaking research. Photographer Enrico Sacchetti is a guy who specializes in capturing them on camera. He's a "science, technology, and industrial" photographer based out of Rome and London, and his images have appeared in many of the world's top science and technology magazines.

Portraits of Dogs Wearing the Cone of Shame

If there's one things dogs don't like, it's the Elizabethan collar, popularly known as the "cone of shame" or the "pet lamp-shade." It's a protective medical device that's also commonly used by owners to discipline dogs when they do something bad.

For his new project titled Timeout, photographer Ty Foster shot a series of portraits of dogs that captures the sadness and embarrassment caused by wearing the cone of shame.