I purchased the new Sony a7R III last week as an upgrade to my a7R II. I’ve used my a7R II in hundreds of shoots over the last year and it has always given me amazing results, but I’ve had one major issue with the camera: tethering speed.
To Adobe or not to Adobe. That is the question many photographers are asking with the spate of new image processing programs vying to “kill Photoshop.” I tested more than ten contenders as alternatives to Adobe’s image processing software, evaluating them for the specialized task of editing demanding nightscape images taken under the Milky Way, both for single still images and for time-lapses of the moving sky.
Reposting an Instagram photo you like currently involves uploading a new version to Instagram, an act that can put you on the wrong side of copyright law. Instagram may finally be getting ready to unveil a "regram" button that lets you safely share other people's photos in your feed without making a copy of them.
The new Sony a7R III has a new function called Pixel Shift. This function basically increases the resolution of your images by 4 times. In short: the camera takes 4 photos and shifts the sensor 1 pixel in between. By combining these images later (the camera itself doesn't do this) you get an image that has 4 times the resolution of a normal raw image (4 x 42 megapixel).
What kind of images does a $63,000 stills camera produce? Here's a 19-minute video by Ted Forbes of The Art of Photography in which he uses a Phase One XF medium format DSLR to show the bang for your buck that you get when you spend 63 grand on a camera kit.
A couple weeks ago, I got a chance to run the Nikon D850 through its paces as a scanner. The “Negative Digitizer” feature, which can automatically flip negatives to positive got a lot of buzz as the camera was being released, and I was eager to try it out.
My name is Richard Haw, and I'm a photographer based in Tokyo, Japan. In this post, I'll show you how scanning film works with the Nikon D850's unique new "Negative Digitizer Mode."
We’ve seen how the upcoming Nikon D850 handles low light, but how does the new sensor perform in a studio shoot? This 4-minute AdoramaTV video with photographer Seth Miranda puts it to the test, shooting a model with special effects makeup.
DSLRs generally have life expectancies based on how many "actuations" (i.e. openings and closings) their shutters can handle before they die and need to be replaced. To see what happens when a DSLR "dies" in this way, ContinueCrushingTech decided to torture test a Canon 7D Mark II with non-stop shooting until the shutter fails.
Last year, Olympus Singapore loaned me a pre-launch unit of their new STF-8 Macro Twin Flash, together with their OM-D E-M1 and M.Zuiko Digital ED 60mm f/2.8 Macro for a test-run in the field. I've had the set for about a week -- it was easy to use and the results were pretty good, although it took some time for me to get used to focusing using the LCD.
Sony recently released firmware v.4.0 for its a7S II and a7R II mirrorless cameras. The announcement that this firmware version “Improves image quality when Long Exposure NR setting is off” raised hopes for many photographers that Sony had at last addressed the issues caused by their automatic smoothing of all exposures of 4 seconds or longer, sometimes referred to as the "Star Eater" effect because of the way that it removes stars in astrophotography images.
The Fujifilm GFX 50S's ISO invariance makes it so easy to shoot the Milky Way that it's not even funny. I was able to take an "impossible" shot, capturing the Milky Way in the middle of Sydney, during a light festival, without bracketing on the Milky Way. The sensor captured so much info on the highlights that this was possible.
Last year, I was fortunate enough to earn a Nikon ambassador badge. I took this as a recognition of my work from a the institution I admire for making the best tools to meet my creative needs.
Let's say you spent pretty much all of your camera budget on a shiny new $1,400 Sony a6500 mirrorless camera, yet you want a super telephoto lens for getting way up close to subjects. Here's a thrifty option you could consider: buy a cheapo 500mm lens, Sony adapter, and 2x teleconverter for just $80.
First unveiled to the world back in July 2015, GNARBOX is a new storage device designed to allow photographers and videographers to back up, edit, and share their RAW photos and 4K videos without having to haul around a laptop.
Brazilian photographer Charles Oliveira recently put the Mitakon Speedmaster 85mm f/1.2 lens through its paces using his Nikon D600. Announced back in 2015, this is a Chinese lens that offers 85mm f/1.2 at a relatively affordable price of $799.
I was scrolling through my Instagram feed one Friday night when a promoted post popped up and caught my eye (and there wasn’t even a bikini, donut or motivational quote involved).
Since the introduction of the Fujifilm X-Series line of cameras, reviewers and consumers have struggled to compare them directly to the competition. Fujifilm’s is a tightly integrated system, wherein everything is a little bit different.
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?
Back in December 2015, Sigma announced the world's first protective lens filters made of ceramic -- filters that it claims are 10x stronger than traditional filters and 3x stronger than chemically strengthened filters.
Sigma has just published pricing and availability info for the new filters, as well as the above video, which demonstrates the filter's strength through a ball drop shatter test.
The braniacs at MIT have created an algorithm to determine the “memorability” of a photograph. The deep learning-based technology “learned” what makes a photo memorable by evaluating the rankings from 5,000 human volunteers, and even indicates which portions of an image it considers to be memorable with a heatmap depiction. The algorithm is allegedly as good as a human in determining what makes a memorable photograph.
But ranking a photo based purely on aesthetics isn’t necessarily how humans associate photographs. Context matters. Where was I? What was I doing? What is this photo representative of? I decided to test the algorithm against TIME magazine’s top 10 photos of 2015.
Photographers often use UV filters for lens protection, but how much are they actually able to prevent your lens from getting damaged? Photographer Steve Perry of Backcountry Gallery recently decided to find out... by breaking a large number of filters and lenses.
In the video above, Perry cuts through the haze surrounding UV filters and shows what they actually do and don't do for your precious glass.
Last week, we shared a video showing how the Sony a7R II has greatly improved autofocusing with Canon EF lenses using a Metabones adapter. Photographer Yannick Ciancanelli did some similar tests using a Fotodiox adapter and a wide range of Canon lenses, including the massive $11,499 Canon 600mm f/4.
Ciancanelli's findings weren't as positive as what other photographers are reporting.
Want to see how much you can overexpose C-41 color negative film and still get usable shots? Photographer Daniel Lachman of Retro Camera Review decided to film out recently after coming across a broken Mamiya 645E with a busted light meter.
In this article I will take a look at Google Photos' new photo compression performance. I've been using a program called JPEGmini for a couple years now to compress my JPEG images. Its compression of JPEGs is lossy, but it claims to do so leaving the perceptual image quality virtually unchanged. As far as I can tell, its claims are pretty accurate, and it has literally helped me cut the size of some of my picture folders in half.
Someone, somewhere, recently decided to bid a fond farewell to one of the most legendary telephoto lenses ever made, the Canon EF 1200mm f/5.6 L USM. Now that it is at the B&H SuperStore, a group of photographers from B&H were given the opportunity to take this optical giant out for a unique shooting experience.
I received a Rosco Gel kit a week ago, and after a few tests I can say I really love using all the awesome colors for my photography.
The kit includes 20 individual 30x48cm square sheets for color corrections (e.g. CTO, CTB, ND) and a range of different colors, all of them contained in a protected and resealable packaging.
FoCal today announced Version 2 of its automated camera calibration software that helps photographers calibrate the microfocus adjustment on their cameras. The new update will allow users of the software compare their autofocus test results with other users and see previous tests you've run to better see how your gear is performing.
The popular YouTube tech channel LinusTechTips recently did an SD card showdown to see how the actual performance of the cards compares to what's written on the labels. One of the things they did was a Canon 6D test, the results of which can be seen in the graphic above (here's a larger version).
Editor's note: If you're unfamiliar with how to interpret MTF charts, you can find a primer here.
I'll be honest. I'm pretty excited about the Canon 11-24mm f/4 L lens. I love shooting ultra-wide and the chance to shoot this wide with a rectilinear lens on a full-frame camera has me pretty excited. But I'm also very aware of how near-impossibly difficult designing a lens this wide would be, so my expectations were tempered a bit.
There's a reason I'll often stitch together a couple of 24mm shots for a landscape rather than take one 16mm shot. OK, there are several reasons, but image quality is high among them.
February has brought back the galactic core of the Milky Way into the sky. It is now rising in the east just before sunrise. Each week it will rise a little bit earlier in the night.
I have a trip planned for this spring and have been thinking about some of the shots I want to do. One of them is one where I think a lens longer than the 24mm might be useful to really bring some mountains and the Milky Way together.
Nikon’s newly-announced D750 has impressed those who have managed to get their hands on it thus far, but to properly put it through its paces, DxOMark ran it through its trusted sensor tests.
As expected, it came out with quite high marks, putting it in 8th place on DxOMark’s overall rankings and making it the 6th Nikon camera to make it into the top 10.
I have a couple of things to talk about today. First, is to announce the winner of our name the new machine contest. Second is to answer about 1,000 people’s questions regarding optical testing and adjustment.
Photographers commonly place UV filters on the front of their camera lenses in order to protect the glass front element. Aside from preventing dust buildup, the filter also takes the brunt of any impact seen by the front of the lens. If you have to have some glass shatter, you'd rather it be a relatively cheap filter compared to an entire lens, right?
But how easy is it to damage or destroy the front element of a lens? Photographer Richard Choi had the opportunity to find out a few years ago when he found a bricked lens on his hands.
“Commerce makes progress. Fortune passes everywhere.” – Frank Herbert
A few years ago I was accused of being a Sigma hater. (For the record, I did hate their quality control and so-called repair service at that time, and I didn’t hesitate to say so.) For the third or fourth time in the last year, I’m about to be accused of being a Sigma fanboy.
After the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L Mark II was announced at the beginning of this year, many photographers were disappointed that it didn't include Image Stabilization. When October rolled around, there were new rumors that Canon had an IS version of the 24-70mm up its sleeve. The company did, but it wasn't what people were expecting. When the new IS lens was unveiled in November, it was an f/4 lens rather than an f/2.8.
If you're one of the many people who wanted both the convenience of having IS and the benefits of having f/2.8, here's some good news: there is indeed a 24-70mm f/2.8 IS on the way.
Facebook is testing out a new feature for its Android mobile app called "Photo Syncing". The feature automatically backs up your smartphone's photographs by uploading them to Facebook as they're shot, tucking them away inside a private "Synced from Phone" tab on your photos page that isn't visible to anyone but you. You can then later choose which photos you'd like to make private and which you'd simply like for Facebook to hold on to.
Stephen Shankland over at CNET has written an interesting behind-the-scenes look at how DxO Labs -- one of the world's premier camera testing services -- evaluates equipment. DxO Labs is based near Paris, France and was the result of a 2003 spinoff from a company called Vision IQ, which specialized in swimming pool safety. Since then, the group has published over 185 in-depth camera reviews on its website DxOMark.
Wondering whether or not the shutter speeds on your camera are accurate? Instead of taking it to …
This photograph was taken by a lens with some "obstruction" on the front element. Aside from the blurry patch of nastiness in the bottom portion of the frame, the rest of the image looks pretty decent. What do you think the "obstruction" is? A little dirt? A smudge where the photographer accidentally touched the front element? A scratch? The answer is a little closer to a scratch than a smudge...