Educational

PetaPixel's editorials are in-depth stories, thought-pieces, and opinions on the photography industry led by the minds of our editorial team.

The Crazy Shots You Can Do with a Camera Robot

Marques Brownlee (AKA MKBHD) recently paid a visit to the company Motorized Precision in Portland, Oregon, to check out the company's high-speed camera robots. In this 8.5-minute video, Brownlee shares the beautiful camera moves that are made possible by this "dope" technology.

Do YOU Look Through the Viewfinder with Your Dominant Eye?

Just as people are right- or left-handed, everyone generally prefers the input of one particular eye, something called "ocular dominance" or "eyedness." Most people rely on their dominant eye for things like aiming, and a person's dominant eye actually has more neural connections to the brain than the other eye.

What Should You Charge for Your Pro Photography?

Figuring out how much to charge clients is a struggle shared by many photographers, particularly if you're trying live off the fruits of your craft. In this 30-minute episode of their Picture This Podcast, photographers Tony and Chelsea Northrup spend half an hour discussing this topic and sharing advice.

How to Clone a Photo by Shredding It

Here's a curious little 43-second video by Japanese artist Kensuke Koike that's going viral. Titled "Top Breeder," it shows how you can duplicate a photo of a dog by putting the print through a pasta cutter and distributing the slices into new photos. One picture can "magically" turn into four.

What’s With All the Poor Negative Film Reviews?

I don't usually go the negative Nellie with anything photo related, sometimes it's best to keep your mouth firmly shut. But I'm not going to take it anymore, I'm as mad as hell, and I'm going to lean right out the window and shout it to the world, enough, I'm done with rubbish samples of film technology on the Web.

Using Diffusion Filters: A Comparison of LEE Soft Filters 1 to 5

I've used diffusion filters for years but rarely for their intended purpose. If you haven't heard of them before, diffusion filters are transparent glass or plastic sheets that go in front of the lens and diffuse the light as it enters the camera. The resulting images taken with a diffusion filter have an appearance of reduced contrast that ultimately looks hazy, offering a slightly dream-like effect.

This is the Result of Placing My Camera Lens 300 Feet from a Rocket Launch

My name is John Kraus, and I work as a photojournalist at Cape Canaveral, covering rocket launches with up-close cameras at the various launchpads here. For yesterday’s Atlas V rocket launch, I had two cameras at Space Launch Complex 41. These cameras were sound-activated; the sound alone would kill anyone standing at the launchpad during liftoff.

The Problem of Color Contamination in Photography

Whether you're aware of the correct terminology or not, you have likely experienced color contamination happening in your photographs already. Put simply, color contamination is when one color is affected by the presence of another color in close proximity.

How I Created a 16-Gigapixel Photo of Quito, Ecuador

A few years ago, I flew out to Ecuador to create a high-resolution image of the capital city of Quito. The final image turned out to be 16 gigapixels in size and at a printed size of over 25 meters (~82 feet), it allows people see jaw-dropping detail even when viewed from a few inches away.

Beware 500px’s (Very) ‘Flexible Pricing’

Are you a freelance photographer like myself? Have you already put up your masterpiece on 500px? Maybe you’re trying to share your photos and sell them at the same time in case some stranger admires your work? If you’ve answered YES to all these questions, I'd like to share the terrible experience I had with 500px.

Film vs. Digital: Can YOU Tell the Difference?

It's an age-old question: why do people shoot on film? Can you tell the difference between film and digital? Is it enough of a difference to warrant the high cost of shooting film? Or is it just a fad? We are here today to hopefully answer some of these and more!

Using Drones to Shoot War Zones

Photographer and director Joey L has been using camera drones to capture aerial photos and videos in conflict zones. Here's a 21-minute talk he recently gave on his work at Hardwired NYC.

What National Geographic Photo Editors Actually Do

Have you ever wondered what the photo editors at National Geographic do? No, they don't sit around and edit pictures in Photoshop. In this 6-minute video, some of the biggest names in photography offer a glimpse into the closely-knit relationships between photographers and their editors.

Are $5 IKEA LADDA Batteries Identical to $20 Eneloop Pro Batteries?

Do you use Eneloop Pro rechargeable batteries in your photo equipment? You may be able to get the same performance at a much lower cost. This interesting 7-minute video from Matthew Eargle of AirborneSurfer looks into whether these relatively expensive batteries ($20 per pack of 4) are actually identical to the much cheaper IKEA LADDA batteries that cost just $5 per pack of 4.

How to Get STF-Style Bokeh Without a $1,000+ STF Lens

Smooth Trans Focus (STF) was invented by Minolta in the 1980s and became available in the Minolta 135mm f/2.8 STF in 1999. The special design of the lens with an Apodization (APD) filter allows for the smoothing of out-of-focus areas, or bokeh. The APD filter reduces the light transmitted through a lens, but the strength is gradually decreased toward the center of the filter.

‘Stupid’ Photography Terms and Ideas for ‘Fixing’ Them

Photographers Tony & Chelsea Northrup made this educational and tongue-in-cheek 5-minute video in which they rant about how many of the most common terms in photography are "stupid" because they're often inherited from history (and therefore may not make sense immediately without digging deeper into each concept).

Peter Lik Called Out by Photographers Over ‘Faked’ Moon Photo

Photographer Peter Lik is purportedly one of the bestselling landscape photographers on Earth, having sold a reported half a billion dollars worth of prints by 2015. He also claims to have sold a single print for $6.5 million in 2014, which would still be the world's most expensive photo today. But one of Lik's new prints is raising eyebrows and eliciting cries of "Photoshop!"

How to Capture Heat on Camera Without Expensive Optics

Standard schlieren imaging techniques use a large mirror to be able to visualize heat or pressure differences in air. The problem with these techniques is that they require large precision telescope mirrors that are very expensive. My lab is fortunate to have a 13-inch diameter telescope mirror; but what happens when I need to photograph a larger subject?

The First GoPro Was This 35mm Film Camera

When you think of GoPro, you probably picture a neat, compact digital action camera, but the original GoPro was actually a 35mm film camera. Here's a 7-minute video by Thirty Five Studio that takes a look at the camera and shows what it can do.

$10,000 vs. $425 Portrait Lighting: Can You Tell the Difference?

How much of a difference is there between using an expensive high-end lighting setup and shooting the same portraits with cheaper gear? Photographer Patrick Hall of Fstoppers made this illuminating 9.5-minute video that compares a $10,000 studio lighting setup with a $425 option. Can you tell the difference between the resulting photos?

Colorized Photos of American Child Laborers

Photographer Lewis Wickes Hine once said: "There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work."

The Story of Sean Flynn’s Leica M2

This is a story about a camera, a rather special camera. Every camera has a history, so they say. But it is not all that often that one has such a rich and documented history. One that was thought to be lost but has been found again. This is the story of Sean Flynn’s Leica M2.

Google’s Clips AI Camera Was Trained in Photography by Pro Photographers

In October 2017, Google announced Clips, a small hands-free AI-powered camera that's designed to capture your life's memories without much human intervention. The camera isn't on store shelves yet, but Google is revealing some new interesting details about it. One such detail is that the camera was trained with the help of real professional photographers.

Who Shot the Iconic Apollo 8 Earthrise Photo?

Apollo 8 was the first manned mission to leave Earth's orbit, orbit the Moon, and return to Earth. Since it wasn't a moon landing, though, it tends to not be as celebrated as other manned moon missions. But the photo known as Earthrise was captured during this mission on December 24th, 1968, becoming an iconic piece of history. This 6-minute video from Vintage Space explores the question of who the person behind the camera was.