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 copyright” to that image? …
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.
Photo Gear News recently visited the Sony factory in Chonburi, Thailand, where the highly-acclaimed Sony a9 mirrorless camera is being manufactured. This 6.5-minute video offers a behind-the-scenes look into the factory.
Want an unusual camera that you can pretty much guarantee that no one around you has? A rare World War II German "gun camera" has popped up over on eBay. It's a Zeiss Ikon camera that was mounted to fighter planes to shoot dogfights.
Astronaut photographers on the International Space Station have dazzled us for years with eye-popping photos and videos shot from orbit. To learn more behind-the-scenes details of photography on the space station, photographer Jared Polin interviewed NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik.
As one of the more "recent" art forms, photography’s popularity in the art market has grown and grown, with the highest amount paid for a photograph sticking at $838,000 in 1999 until being bumped off the top spot 4 years later with a sale of $922,488, and then again 2 years later when the first million-dollar photograph was sold for $1,248,000.
When MasterClass announced Annie Leibovitz Teaches Photography, I was pumped. I'd already taken the James Patterson Teaches Writing MasterClass and loved it. In just a few hours, I got a crash-course in fiction writing with plenty of actionable tips I still use every single day. So when MasterClass finally released Annie's class on December 14, I yelled: "Take my money!"
The folks at Daytripper Photo recently decided to find out what happens when you microwave a DSLR camera in the name of science. The 11-minute video above documents how the Nikon D60 and 18-135mm lens fared (spoiler: not well).
Most photographers rely heavily on the capabilities of autofocus systems in DSLR cameras, but knowing how they actually work is something that even experienced photographers may not have learned. Here's a 4-minute video by ZY Productions that helps decode the mystery of DSLR autofocus by explaining the technical details behind it.
Want to be inspired by the great American photographer Ansel Adams? Here's a fantastic 80-minute documentary film that PBS aired back in 2002. Titled Ansel Adams: A Documentary Film, it's an in-depth study of Adams' life and work.
Dual cameras have become ubiquitous in the smartphone world, and with them has emerged a new technique for simulating a shallow depth of field -- the feature commonly called ‘Portrait Mode’. This 10-minute video from Marques Brownlee explains how it works, and it also pits Portrait Mode on an iPhone X, Note 8, and Pixel 2 against the $8,000 medium format camera Hasselblad X1D.
Photographer and visual artist Antti Karppinen dodges and burns his photos using a single 50% natural gray layer in Overlay blending mode. By sharing these gray "dodge and burn layers" separately, Karppinen can easily show exactly what he did to each of his photos.
When we finished our teardown of the a7R III, we didn’t anticipate just how badly people wanted to see the new camera body’s weather sealing.
Our pre-ordered Sony a7R III finally arrived this weekend, and we couldn’t wait to crack it open and see what’s inside. The a7R III has been receiving a lot of positive reviews and I can see why.
I take a lot of photos. Usually, I pack either a Sony a7R II or a Leica M -- two cameras with massive sensors and brilliant lenses. But lately, I’ve been shooting exclusively with the iPhone X, and have found it absolutely excellent.
Want to see how RED makes its popular digital cameras that carry price tags of tens of thousands of dollars? The company released this 3-minute video that offers a behind-the-scenes look at its manufacturing and production facilities.
As creatives, we all go through a very similar journey when it comes to improving our skill. Though details of the turbulent ride vary for everyone, it always boils down to two things; the how, and the why.
In this post, we're going to revisit The Americans by Robert Frank. This influential photography book, first published in France in 1958, appears highly relevant today with the United States divided in so many ways. However, the odds are that these honest, and often sad images, have always been relevant.
Who would've guessed it? Holding a camera up to your face during a car crash can be quite hazardous to your health. New research by the University of Southern California and the International Cinematographer Guild has shed new light on the dangers posed by cameras in "free driving" situations.
It might seem like one of the simplest parts of photography: leveling your horizon. Most photographers want their horizons to be straight, of course, but this isn’t an area of photography that gets too much attention. And why would it? Leveling the horizon is a very easy task — right? In practice, though, it requires more care than many people think.
Tracking and panning a camera in time with a tank shell seems impossible given that the shell travels at over 1,500 meters per second. Yet, somehow, there are videos showing just that floating around the Internet. Here's a 7-minute video from Curious Droid that lifts the veil of mystery on ultra high-speed cameras and explains how they work.
Here's a 6-minute video from PiXimperfect that looks at the difference between the Levels and Curves functions in Photoshop. While the two may seem similar in purpose, there are some very clear differences between them.
Want to know the origins of the concept of copyright? Here's a 25-minute video from Filmmaker IQ that looks at the history and philosophy behind modern-day copyright.
Sheep can recognize human faces in photos at a level that's comparable to humans. That's what scientists discovered through testing sheep by showing them celebrity portraits.
This image was taken on November 4th, 2017 at 4:19 am in Titusville, Florida. It shows the International Space Station (with a crew of six currently onboard) transiting the full “Beaver Moon.” As the ISS orbits Earth at 17,500mph, or roughly five miles per second, the transit lasted just 0.90 seconds.
Nine months after taking office, the White House has finally released official portraits of both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Last month, the Washington Post did a story highlighting the empty walls of some 9,600 federal buildings, all waiting for for an official portrait of the new POTUS.
In the modern age of photography, there are more and more cameras that embed GPS data into photos, something casual users may not even be aware of -- this is particularly true of smartphone cameras. And here's something you should be aware of: unwittingly sharing GPS data in photos of sensitive wildlife can directly lead to its death at the hands of poachers.
On July 2nd, 2017, Gatwick Airport in the UK was forced to suspend its runways for a total of 14 minutes because a drone was flown in restricted airspace. This 2-minute visualization released by NATS shows the chaos that ensued.
My name is Stefan, and I'm the CTO of the marketing firm Relatable. To facilitate execution of global, large-scale influencer marketing campaigns, we rely a lot on data to give us insights. Using a sample of about 2 million Instagram accounts (with a minimum of 1,000 followers) and 40 million posts, I’ve been digging deep, compiling statistics, finding insights, and just discovering some quirky facts. In this article, I'll share some of my findings.
In the 1850s, photography became much more affordable and accessible for consumers. This sparked a trend in the Victorian era of postmortem photography, where dead loves ones featured among the pages of family albums. Here's a 2-minute video by the HISTORY channel about this creepy fad.
Here's a beautiful photo from over 100 years ago that shows two Native Americans looking at a strip of photographic film against the sky. It's a black-and-white photo that was colorized by colorization artist Jecinci.
Vintage lenses seem to be increasingly popular nowadays, and not just in the hipster crowds. In this 5-minute video, photographer Mark Holtze looks at why some people are picking up (and dusting off) old vintage lenses instead of their more modern equivalents.
Want to see how the shutter system in a modern DSLR is replaced once it fails? The South African camera repair company Photographic Repairs shared this time-lapse of a shutter replacement surgery involving a Canon 6D.
If your dream as a photographer has always been to have your work exhibited in a big city gallery, you might want to be aware of "vanity galleries." Here's a 6-minute video in which photographer Mathieu Stern warns this type of gallery, which he calls a "scam."
If you've started using Photoshop CC 2018, you may have noticed a strange purple line following your brush around as you're using it now. That line is called a "brush leash," and here's a helpful 6-minute video by retoucher Pratik Naik about what that purple line is and how you can use and customize it.
Here's a 15-minute video by Filmmaker IQ about exactly what forced perspective is and how it works in photography.
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."
