There's a simple way to make your subject's eyes pop in a portrait, and it doesn't involve touching vibrance, saturation, luminosity, or any other color-based edit. In fact, you can make the full edit in 30 seconds.
Lensbaby's creative selective focus lenses like the Composer Pro will run you around $400; even the relatively affordable Spark costs $90. If all of that sounds too expensive for your taste, you should definitely check out this hacked version Mathieu Stern created for just 30 bucks!
Using a modified DSLR, ultraviolet light bulbs, and a custom-built massive UV ring flash, Mathieu Stern teamed up with UV photographer Pierre-Louis Ferrer to capture some fascinating portraits and side-by-side video.
Photographer Mathieu Stern made this 2-minute video walkthrough on how you can remove fungus on the glass elements of a camera lens.
Usually, getting some beautiful swirly bokeh on the cheap means looking to used Russian lenses like the Helios 44-2. But if you're determined to get more creative, weird lens hunter Mathieu Stern has an idea for you: try a military grade night vision lens.
The first autofocusing camera was invented 40 years ago, so how did weird lens lover Mathieu Stern manage to 'hack' AF capability into a 120-year-old lens from a folding camera? Well, it turns out there's an adaptor that will let you do just that.
Photographer Mathieu Stern has based his YouTube channel on reviewing cheap and unusual lenses, but for his latest experiment he went a different direction. Stern created his own lens using 3D printing to see what results he could achieve.
Everyone's digging that "faded" film look nowadays, but here's a secret: you don't have to have a VSCO preset pack to get it. In this short tutorial, Mathieu Stern will show you three very quick and very effective ways to "crush the blacks" and get that popular look using just Photoshop.
If you think a 50mm f/1.2 lens that captures sharp portraits with gorgeous bokeh is hundreds or even thousands of dollars away, think again. If you're willing to get creative, you can have one for just 20 bucks.
If anybody knows how to mount a weird lens, it's got to be the creator of "Weird Lens Reviews" Mathieu Stern. And now, he's sharing one of the super simple tricks he uses to find the working distance of any lens so he can create or buy the right adapter for it.
Accurately colorizing a photo usually takes hours upon hours of research followed by the same in Photoshop. But now, thanks to fancy new neural network technology, you can do an amazing job in no time.
The enlarger lenses used by film photographers to create prints from developed negatives are not meant to be used on a camera. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't use one... or that you shouldn't try.
Want to shoot long exposure photos in bright daylight without having to shell out big bucks on a neutral density (ND) filter? Try using a piece of welder's glass -- the kind that protects your eyes while welding. The 13-minute video above by photographer Mathieu Stern provides a nice overview of this photo hack.
It may not be the first place that comes to mind, but the Soviet Union is a great place to start if you're looking for a good quality piece of glass on the cheap.... well, what's left of the Soviet Union anyway.
Want to mix things up a bit, gear-wise, without breaking the bank? Photographer Mathieu Stern has an idea for you. In this short video he shares four cheap toy camera lenses that he thinks are worth your time.
Ever since his video Alone in Paris got massively popular, people have been asking photographer and filmmaker Mathieu Stern to share some behind the scenes tidbits. Today, he obliged those requests.
Shooting stereoscopic 3D images usually means breaking out a cool old film camera like the one used here, but this $30 eBay find from 1950 can make shooting 3D images on your DSLR as easy as shooting a regular 2D still.
Here's a short 2.5-minute video in which photographer Mathieu Stern reviews the Lomo T43 40mm f/4, a cheap $5 manual Russian lens that has surprisingly good image quality (given its cost).
If you want to pick up an interesting lens for your camera, check out the Angenieux 25mm f/0.95. It's a somewhat hard-to-find lens that was once used by NASA to photograph the moon with a lunar probe.
Cheap lens aficionado Mathieu Stern just released this 2-minute video review of the Minolta MD Rokkor-X 45mm f/2 lens.
If you enjoy do-it-yourself photography hacks and projects, here's an interesting one for you to try: buy an old Soviet MIR-1B camera lens for about $45 on eBay, open it up by unscrewing the front, and reverse the front lens element. The result is a "reverse globular lens," photographer Mathieu Stern says.
For his latest Weird Lens Challenge experiment, French photographer Mathieu Stern found a 136-year-old lens and mounted it to his Sony a7 II mirrorless camera to see what the results would look like. You can see his test footage in the short video above.
Photographer Mathieu Stern did this short experiment with capturing the full image circle from a 180-degree fisheye lens. You'll need a smaller image circle on a larger camera sensor. For this video, Stern used a Kenko 180° fisheye lens, screwed onto a 55mm to 52mm filter, screwed onto a Canon 50mm f/1.4 FD lens, screwed onto a NEX adapter, mounted to the Sony a7II.
Photographer Mathieu Stern found an interesting way to shoot digital photos through the plastic lens of a 1950s toy camera. After removing the back of a Photax Heanar Type V camera, he simply strapped it to the front of his Sony a7II using rubber bands.
After using a vintage 1910 lens on a modern Sony a7II, Paris-based photographer Mathieu Stern is back again with another interesting lens experiment.
This time he created "bokeh madness" by attaching a Russian Jupiter 9 85mm f/2 lens onto his Sony a7II using a M42-to-E tilt adapter.
Paris-based photographer Mathieu Stern released this short and sweet video showing how he took a 105-year-old folding camera lens from 1910 and mounted it to a Sony a7II mirrorless camera using bellows for focusing.
"The lens is incredibly sharp for a 105 year old lady... but it also gives some strange lens flares and light leaks that are pretty dreamy," Stern says. The video contains some sample footage shot using the lens.