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.
Ever wonder how much the arts and photography contribute towards the United States economy? Wonder no more. According to a newly-published government report, the arts contribute over $763 billion to the economy, and photography represents over $10 billion of that total.
How much sharpness and detail can you extract out of 8x10 large format slide film? Photographer Ben Horne was able to explore this question recently after he had one of his landscape photos digitized using a drum scanner. In the 10-minute video above, Horne pixel-peeps the massive 709-megapixel photo at 100% to analyze the sharpness.
JerryRigEverything just published this 7-minute teardown video of the Samsung Galaxy S9, and one of the interesting things it reveals is the mechanical workings of the DxOMark-leading camera, which is the first smartphone camera to feature a variable aperture.
Japan goes into a frenzy each spring as millions of locals and tourists gather to catch a glimpse of the elusive cherry blossom. Simply known as sakura, the petals come and go like the wind, representing the ethereal beauty of life.
Diane Arbus was honored with an obituary by the New York Times today, 46 years after the renowned American portrait photographer died. It was one of 15 obituaries published today as part of a project titled Overlooked.
BlackRapid is taking to social media to warn customers about counterfeit hardware being bundled into kits by some retailers. Not only can the hardware put your gear at risk, but any damage that results from using counterfeit gear will not be covered by the warranty on your authentic BlackRapid gear.
Ilford recently released a popular 8-minute video on how to process black-and-white film yourself, and now the film company is back again with another helpful crash course on how to make a black-and-white print in a darkroom. If you've never worked in a darkroom before, this intro is a great way to see what it's all about.
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.
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.
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.
If you've never tried your hand at black-and-white film photography before but would like to learn the basics of developing your own film at home, here's a great 8-minute primer that'll get you up to speed.
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.
Apple just released this 1-minute video that offers a short and sweet behind-the-scenes explanation of how the company created the Portrait Lighting feature found in the latest iPhones.
How does SpaceX get such clear and detailed imagery and footage of its rocket launches? Here's a 5-minute video from Primal Space that answers that question.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Whatever your spin is on the SpaceX launch of the Falcon Heavy and the stunt of Starman and the Tesla Roadster, for a few days (at least) it put on our radar topics such as space and space missions, rockets, interplanetary travel or technological advances.
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.
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).
Johnnie Behiri of cinema5D was recently invited to a private tour of the Fujifilm and Fujinon factory in Sendai, Japan, where Fujifilm cameras and lenses are manufactured. While there, he shot this 4-minute video showing what goes on inside the facility.
"Zooming with your feet" means getting closer to your subject physically instead of relying on a longer lens, but you should be aware that the results you won't be the same. Here's a 9-minute video from This Place that looks at how different focal lengths affect perspective when compared to "zooming with your feet."
DxOMark has published an interesting look at how smartphone cameras have evolved and improved over the past half decade, starting from when the camera testing lab began reviewing smartphones in 2012. Needless to say, we've come a long way in just a few short years.
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!"
Kodak's Portra 400 film is praised for its versatility, but exactly how well does it handle underexposure and overexposure? How far can you push things before your photos become unusable? Canadian photographer Kyle McDougall decided to find out by doing his own test.
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 Fujifilm X-Trans sensor is evil, its design is seriously flawed, and it causes all kinds of issues. At least, that's what pops up on the Internet every now and then.
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.
If you use Sony cameras, here's something you should be aware of: a computer security expert is warning that Sony's camera firmware update process has serious security risks that could put your computer and data in danger.
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?
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."
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.
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.
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.
Wondering what all those abbreviations mean in the names of Nikon lenses? My Nikon Life made this 5-minute video that shows you what all of the different elements of Nikkor lenses do and explains how they how they work.
A Japanese "machine gun" camera has popped on eBay. The camera, which was used in war-time during the World War II era, can be yours for a price of $4,499.
My name is David Wahlman, and I'm a photographer and videographer for outdoor and active lifestyle industries based in Orange County, California. In this post, I'll share 5 of the lessons I learned after my first year of business.
There are plenty of new digital camera unboxing videos these days, but they're generally not like this one. Lazy Game Reviews got its hands on an Epson PhotoPC and created this 11-minute video showing what it was like to unbox and use a digital camera back in 1995.
Check this out. The folks over at Photolemur have created a comprehensive "ecosystem map" that can help point you to the brands, organizations, services, websites, and applications you need as a digital photographer in 2018.
A friend recently posted an X-ray of his ankle replacement on Facebook, which led me to wonder “who owns …
The word "selfie" exploded into the mainstream over the past 5 years, but self-portraits have obviously been around much, much longer. Sarah Burton of BuzzFeed recently set out to discover the origins of the selfie. In this 7-minute video, take a trip through the history back to the birth of the selfie.
Over the last few months, I have been in contact with Phase One to test their latest medium format camera, the IQ3 100MP Trichromatic. The standard 100MP backs from both Hasselblad and Phase One, already have incredible colors, due to being able to produce 16-bit raw files. Phase One, however, decided this wasn’t enough and their latest sensor is a genuinely brilliant update.
Ever wonder how the iPhone's amazing Portrait Model is able to create "fake" bokeh? Some Stuff Explained created this simple 5-minute explanation video that explains how Apple's Portrait Mode works on iPhones with dual lenses.
While riding an ATV through snowy trails, photographer Peter McKinnon accidentally broke the mic input jack on his $6,000 Canon 1D X Mark II. Before sending the DSLR in to Canon for repairs, McKinnon decided to try his hand at blindly opening up the camera to see what's inside.
If you're just getting started in digital photography, you may be wondering about the choice between shooting JPEG files and shooting in raw. Here's a quick 2-minute video by B&H in which photographer David Flores explains the benefits of a raw workflow.
There are still a few very unique and interesting things that can be done with film but not with a digital camera. One of these experiments is the recording of sparks on film.
Carl Størmer was a Norwegian mathematician and physicist who's best known for number theory and studying auroras. Aside from his intellectual pursuits, Størmer was also an avid street photographer. When he was a 19-year-old college student, he used a hidden spy camera to shoot street photos in Norway in the 1890s.
Adrian Cook is a wet plate collodion photographer based in Sydney, Australia. The Guardian made this 7-minute video in which Cook talks about his background and walks through the wet plate collodion process by shooting a photo of Sydney Harbor.