A young kid named Isaiah Xavier is blowing up the Internet with a homemade music video he created using just his phone and a lip syncing app named Musical.ly. Without exaggerating, we can say this video is one of the most impressive smartphone creations we've ever seen.
Going from a state-of-the-art mirrorless system to a range finder system will be considered a backward move by many. On paper, you're giving up a lot in return for little upside. In reality, though, the story is a lot more complicated.
Ring lights are a great piece of kit for illuminating your subject evenly and creating a distinctive catch light in the eyes. Unfortunately, these lights are typically expensive, but this short tutorial by Instructables user gravityisweak will show you how to building your own for next to nothing.
All of the drives we are using to store our precious photos and videos are not 100% reliable. Everybody should know that by now (and back everything up) but even if you are doing it properly, there are times when a drive fails and you have nowhere else to get its contents except from the drive itself.
Long exposures are a great way to capture the movement of roiling ocean waves, but you can take that effect to the next level by combining multiple exposures, as shown in this 15-minute tutorial from photographer Greg Benz.
This is amazing. The researchers at UC Berkeley who came up with the automatic colorizer algorithm we first shared back in March, 2016 have released a major update. The software now lets you team up with the algorithm to colorize complex black and white photos accurately in seconds.
Want to make your portraits look like they were taken in some weird Minecraft universe full of squares? Weird lens expert Mathieu Stern can help. He found a cheap, strange little lens that produces square bokeh that immediately makes photos and videos stand out.
Tempered glass is a toughened form of glass used in car windows, shower doors, refrigerator trays, and mobile screen protectors—and now Breakthrough Photography are using it to create their new Dark CPL and X4 GND filters.
Need a bit of comic relief this Thursday? Olympus UK has you covered. In response to a customer's question about joining the Olympus Club, the rep decided to offer photographer Greg West a history lesson in US/UK relations.
As the saying goes, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." And it looks like this applies to camera tech as much as anything else. According to a new report, the Sony a9 had to sacrifice some dynamic range to reach the crazy 20fps speeds everyone is so excited about.
Black Hole Sun, won’t you come, and wash away the rain.
Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell unexpectedly passed away yesterday. His 1994 composition Black Hole Sun was a genre defining song for the grunge movement. An incredibly tragic loss for Generation X who grew up with the flannel wearing styles of the 90s.
In addition to stepping on Photoshop's toes, Google also spent some time at yesterday's keynote showing off something called "Google Lens": a technology that basically turns your phone's camera into an artificially intelligent visual search tool.
Google made a bunch of interesting and exciting camera-related announcements at I/O 2017, and we'll cover them all, but one of the most intriguing was also one of the shortest. Google briefly showed off a powerful "content aware fill" feature that left people wide-eyed and clapping furiously.
Episode 177 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast.
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Featured: Photographer and Shotkit creator, Mark Condon
This is the famous and elusive Horsetail "Firefall" in Yosemite National Park, but unlike every other image you may have seen—taken near sunset around February—the fire effect in this image is caused by moonlight. That's the only possible way one could see the firefall and stars at the same time.
This handy 7-minute lighting guide from Aussie music photographer PJ Pantelis shows how you can use 2 lights and a reflector to create a professionally-lit headshot. Even if you’re not shooting portraits, the video is a great tutorial on working with light.
Rebecca Bathory first fell in love with the decaying beauty of abandoned buildings when she photographed an abandoned school in 2012. This love took her on an adventure to 30 countries and over 500 locations, culminating in a photographic series she's calling Orphans of Time.
The Nikon D810 was announced almost three years ago now, and Nikon shooters are getting impatient for a replacement. But have no fear, Nikon faithful, a new report claims the D820 is right around the corner... and it'll be worth the wait.
Ready to get creative this weekend? Good, because our friends at COOPH are back with 9 creative photography tricks you can try out at home when you have a spare minute. From making your own glitter "snow," to magnifying glass macro and beyond, there are some really fun tips in here.
FilmSpektakel is back with another of their special 'flowmotion' hyperlapses, this time featuring the city that never sleeps: New York City. The production team behind ‘A Taste of Austria’ (featured here) spent 10 days taking 65,000 photographs to create the hectic video above.
British designer Olly Gibbs recently did something really fun. He took the popular neural face transformation app FaceApp to the Amsterdam museum, where he used it to... liven a few of the characters up. Somber paintings and sculptures alike transformed in front of his lens.
Sony just debuted two new full-frame E-mount zoom lenses—one ultra lightweight, one premium. The 12-24mm f/4 G ultra-wide angle zoom falls into the former category, while the fast 16-35mm f/2.8 GM joins Sony's line of high-end G-Master lenses for pixel peeping sharpness fiends.
Improving your composition can bring balance and personality to your photography, simultaneously enabling you to produce more appealing images. And as quick tips go, this 90-second video from Mango Street Lab is absolutely packed full of key compositional advice.
The well-regarded Olympus TG-4 is being replaced by a more powerful model—say hello to the TG-5. Olympus' latest 'tough' camera packs a better sensor, better processor, and 4K video capability into a rough and tumble shell that is waterproof, crushproof, shockproof, freezeproof, and dustproof.
I’ve collected and shot film cameras for 40 years, but only started blogging about it in the last decade or so. I went looking for other blogging camera collectors and film photographers, hoping to find community among others of like mind. I found several and have been amply rewarded by sharing in their adventures.
A few months back, a viral video showed how the iPhone 7 could (in some respects) hold its own against a $50,000 RED Weapon. This side-by-side comparison of the iPhone 7 Plus against an $82,000 Arri Alexa is a bit more... what you expect.
Sony is pluming the depths of stacked sensor technology and uncovering all sorts of amazing gems—the a9's 20fps capabilities, the Xperia XZ's 960fps slow motion feature, and now, an industrial sensor that can recognize and track objects at an insane 1,000fps.
Macro photography can be incredibly expensive, but as British photographer Adam Kappa shows in this video, it doesn't have to be. In 7 minutes, Kappa demonstrates how to produce impressive macro shots using kit lenses, extension tubes, and a flash diffuser crafted from a Chinese takeout container.
When it comes to motorcycles, I’m the grown-ass man equivalent of the 8-year old girl with the pony sweater that every single person knew in grade school. I’m obsessed: they’re what got me into photography; motorcycle photography brings the funnest edits; and bikes are a huge part of my life.
This has to be one of the most incredible, and challenging, wedding photo shoots we have ever featured. In search of the ultimate adventure destination wedding, photographer Charleton Churchill helped bride and groom Ashley and James capture an epic and grueling wedding at Mt. Everest basecamp.
In this short-but-useful tutorial from DSLR Video Shooter, Caleb Pike runs you through 5 video and photography uses for simple foam board. Get out a pen and a pad, this photo DIY 101.
One of the main complaints when Sony releases a high-powered new full-frame E-Mount camera is, "Okay, but where's the glass!?" The release of the impressive Sony a9 'sports camera' was no different, but a new report claims Sony is working on at least one long, fast prime to silence the critics.
In nearly every industry, the Web has enabled a cadre of Internet-famous individuals, who on the merits of their marketing prowess have gained massive followings without necessarily acquiring the skills that has traditionally defined an “expert.”
Arguably Snapchat's most popular feature to date is their augmented reality 'selfie filters' that allow you to augment your face with bunny ears, vomit rainbows, and occasionally trample on someone's copyright. Now, in a move absolutely everyone saw coming, Instagram has copied the feature.
This incredible timelapse of the Grand Canyon filling up with clouds is beautiful beyond words. Shot on Canon 5DSR and 5D Mark III cameras, the film captures an extremely rare phenomenon called a full cloud inversion.
In a totally unexpected turn of events, Googles extremely impressive Google Pixel was just unseated as DxOMark Mobile's best smartphone camera by the new HTC U11. DxO announced the news a few hours ago, giving the U11 a top score of 90, one point better than the Google Pixel and 4 points higher than the iPhone 7.
There are some things in life that are universal rules we should all follow—things like not cheating on your wife, not killing anyone, and not stealing. Easy enough, right? And if life has Ten Commandments that are just obvious things not to do, retouching should have them as well.
An Oregon-based plant retailer was just awarded almost one million dollars in actual damages by a federal jury in one of the biggest photography copyright wins of the year so far. Despite the strange circumstances of this case, it's being called, "a huge win for artists, photographer, and creators."
Lia Konrad is a 23-year-old photographer who grew up in small town Hof, Germany with big ideas. With a very small budget for a camera with a single lens—but none for lighting—and a homemade costume, she has created a marvelous series of fantasy environmental portraits.
Sony claims the a9 is an autofocus tracking monster—its 693-point AF system performing 60 AF/AE calculations every second. But that's not limited to regular subject tracking; as this demo video shows, the eye-tracking AF has been significantly improved as well.
It’s easy to obsess over gear. We all love new toys, and it’s natural to lust over that hot new mirrorless camera or convince yourself that a lens upgrade is going to take your photos to the next level. But amid the onslaught of pretty-looking shots and gear reviews, never forget: story is king.
It's over. Reddit user GreenteaBanana has won the Thrift Shop Wars. The rest of us should just give up. During a random trip to a 'Value Village' near his school, the college student stumbled across thrift store gold: a Leica M2 in pristine condition... for just $5.
Fine art photographer Nicolas Bruno has suffered from the terrifying condition known as sleep paralysis for 10 years. Therapy for the condition ultimately led him to creative expression as a way to cope with the affliction, as he discusses with VICE’s Creators Project in this video.
Profoto isn't being shy about their new B1X monolight. They're calling it the "new benchmark for on-location lighting." A significant improvement on the Profoto B1, "This isn’t an update," explains Profoto. "This is a significant replacement with improvements in three important areas: power, power and power."
This lovely video from photographer Thomas Heaton sees him heading out in to the wilderness with his tent and an Intrepid 4x5 to try large format photography for the first time.
The question of zoom lenses versus prime lenses is an endless debate in photography, and one that has never really been definitively resolved. Essentially, the whole thing boils down to what’s more important: image quality, or versatility.
Filmmaker Robert Nyerges is about to make you cry. In an emotional Mother's Day Gatorade commercial he created on spec, he draws from his own heartbreaking experience of losing his mom to create one minute of pure, tearjerking brilliance.
Episode 176 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast.
Download MP3 - Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, email or RSS!
Featured: Landscape and lifestyle photographer, Baris Parildar
If you were to ask me whether or not I was surprised that there is another scandal in the photojournalism community, I would reply with a resounding and exasperated, “Hell no.” It seems that we can’t go a year without a new photo manipulation scandal. The Souvid Datta scandal is no different.
Check out this Nikon DSLR rig, which apparently uses a pistol-style grip for triggering the shutter. It seems this kit looks too much like a firearm for the TSA's liking.