Blend Modes in Photoshop are simple at a glance, but it’s easy to forget exactly how each of the 27 modes work. This 10-minute video from Blake Rudis of f64 Academy goes in to detail on Luminosity and Color, which are both very useful for photo editing.
Off the top of your head, do you know how much more light f/2.8 lets in compared to f/5.6? Do you know the f-stop number that comes after 11? This 1.5-minute video reveals the simple pattern used by the scale.
Here's something you might not be able to "unsee" if you've never noticed it before: during an NBA basketball game, whenever there's some exciting action around the rim, there's a good chance you'll also see a bright flash of light illuminate your screen for a split second. These are the powerful strobes installed high overhead by photographers.
The foods you buy in the store and at restaurants are never as tasty as they look in advertising photos, but what many people might not know is that you probably wouldn't enjoy eating the foods seen in those pictures. The reason is because commercial food photographers use all kinds of non-edible products to cleverly make food look delicious in front of a lens. Here's a 9-minute video on 10 of those tricks.
Here's an interesting piece of photo history: five years before Kodak’s automatic Super Six-20, Dr. Albert Einstein received a patent for a camera which could automatically determine the proper aperture and exposure to take a photograph. Yes, that Einstein.
If you are a photographer or fledgling retoucher opening Photoshop for the first time, it is a daunting experience, to say the least. There is a wealth of knowledge, free and purchasable online, but how do you know what to search for if you don’t know what you don’t know?
If you have never printed your own work before, you might not know that some careful preparation is needed to make sure the colors in your print match what you see on your screen. This 20-minute video from photographer Michael Woloszynowicz will teach you how to print your images with confidence.
I remember how excited I was when I first started posting on Instagram. I finally had a platform to get my work seen, tell my stories, share my life and get inspired by those of others. It was all about creativity and art and the work. It was fair and ethical and just awesome!
We've shared some impressive work by photo colorizers who use Photoshop skills and hard work to add realistic colors into historical monochrome photos. If you're wondering how its done, check out this 7-minute video by Vox that discusses the process. (Note: there's a bit of strong language.)
The "dolly zoom," also known as the "Hitchcock zoom" or "Vertigo effect," is a filmmaking technique that involves changing a zoom lens' angle of view while moving the camera toward or away from a subject to keep their relative size in the frame the same. Here's a 4-minute video by Now You See It that explains this technique and how (and why) it's used.
Every 53 days, NASA's Juno spacecraft flies close to Jupiter and travels from the giant gas planet's north pole to and past its south pole, shooting photos along the way. The eye-opening 2-minute video above was created using a set of these still photos.
Tanzania is one of the best places in the world to see nature and wildlife as it has been for thousands of years. The 947,303 square kilometer country holds some of the most famous national parks and nature reserves in the world with diverse landscapes and dense population of wildlife like the Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater.
Before you read the rest of the article, and it will be a long read, please allow me to share a few thoughts with you. Visiting the abandoned city of Pripyat and the disaster site of Chernobyl was an experience that I was looking forward to for a very long time.
The Rolleidoscop was made from 1926 to 1939 in Germany alongside the Heidoscop, the same camera but with a sheet film or glass plate back. It was actually the very first camera that renowned manufacturer Rollei made.
If you'd like to get your hands on a legendary Canon lens without having to take out a mortgage, the 200mm f/1.8 may be one to consider. Sometimes referred to as the "Eye of Sauron" -- a Lord of the Rings reference -- the 200mm f/1.8 only saw 8,000 produced during its run from 1988 through 2004.
Back in February, we shared a simple animation made by the film brand Ilford that shows how a film SLR works. It turns out that video was the first in a series of many animations in a playlist titled "Introduction to film photography."
Long exposures are a great way to capture the movement of roiling ocean waves, but you can take that effect to the next level by combining multiple exposures, as shown in this 15-minute tutorial from photographer Greg Benz.
This handy 7-minute lighting guide from Aussie music photographer PJ Pantelis shows how you can use 2 lights and a reflector to create a professionally-lit headshot. Even if you’re not shooting portraits, the video is a great tutorial on working with light.
Macro photography can be incredibly expensive, but as British photographer Adam Kappa shows in this video, it doesn't have to be. In 7 minutes, Kappa demonstrates how to produce impressive macro shots using kit lenses, extension tubes, and a flash diffuser crafted from a Chinese takeout container.
In this short-but-useful tutorial from DSLR Video Shooter, Caleb Pike runs you through 5 video and photography uses for simple foam board. Get out a pen and a pad, this photo DIY 101.
Neutral Density (ND) filters are a great tool for producing unique photos in lighting conditions where a long exposure would otherwise not be possible. This 7-minute video tutorial goes in to detail about which filter to select for your scene, with before and after photos showing the effects possible.
If you're interested in product photography, Dustin Dolby's channel workphlo is definitely worth a bookmark. Using minimal equipment, he's able to capture distinct looks like this makeup shot, and in this tutorial he'll show you how a single speedlight can produce a bold beautiful wine bottle photo that looks 100% pro.
I recently had a few prints made from some medium format negatives. The prints are for a specific purpose so I wanted them to be of the highest quality possible, this meant taking them to a local specialist where the film was scanned with a $16,000+ Hasselblad Flextight X1. The Flextight is about the best quality scan you can get before moving up to dedicated drum scans that can be messy, time-consuming, and expensive.
There are three basic types of surfaces, as far as lighting is concerned: reflective, transparent, and neutral. In this video, you'll learn about the 3 basic techniques for properly lighting each of these—in other words: the 3 techniques for lighting ... everything.
We just had a beautiful Aurora Australis hit New Zealand recently. I was fortunate enough to catch a quiet spot to myself where I could take in the atmosphere and shoot a few images.
Aurora photographers have been buzzing in recent days about a newly spotted phenomenon in the sky. It's a purple ribbon of light that differs in appearance from standard aurora. After being confirmed as a new phenomenon, it was given a new name: "Steve."
Want to see one of the rarest Canon lenses in existence? Check out the Canon 300mm f/1.8. It's an extremely huge and heavy lens, and so few exist that you'll probably never come across one in real life.
When you watch nature documentaries like the BBC's famous Planet Earth series, do you take for granted that everything you're seeing is 100% real? We wouldn't blame you if you did, but as Simon Cade of DSLRguide explains in this video, you'd be wrong.
Is there such a thing as the 'perfect' portrait and headshot angle? When you're dealing with something as subjective as photography, probably not. But that didn't stop Ed Gregory from YouTube channel Photos in Color from applying some 'science' to try and find that perfect shot.
The Canon EOS (Electro-Optical System) ecosystem was born 30 years ago with the introduction of the Canon EOS 650 35mm SLR on March 2nd, 1987. Since then, over 70 EOS cameras have been launched. Here's a 1.5-minute video by Digital Camera Warehouse that shows the evolution of EOS cameras over three decades.
Sony made quite a splash in the photo industry this week by announcing the new a9, a mirrorless camera that can shoot 24MP full-frame photos at a whopping 20fps. We soon got a look at what 20fps on this camera looks like. If you want to see what 20fps sounds like, check out the video above.
You've probably heard it a million times: "zoom with your feet!" This advice comes up almost any time the prime vs zoom lens debate resurfaces, but as anyone with even basic lens knowledge will tell you, zooming with your feet is NOT the same as zooming with your lens.
Scanning film is probably the least attractive part of shooting film, but that doesn't mean you should neglect this stage. Nowadays, we all want to share our analog images online, and the only way to do that is by digitizing our negatives one way or another.
8K is the future... at least that's what Matt Granger believes. And so he recorded this educational video at the YouTube studio in NYC to prove his point, explain some of the benefits and pitfalls of ultra-high res footage, and convince you to adopt 8K just as soon as you can.
You would think the physics of lenses and light are pretty set in stone—and yet, somehow, people still get really twisted around when it comes to things like crop factor, depth of field, and speed boosters. Hoping to end (or at least quiet) this debate, photographer Jimmi Kai created this very informative, easy-to-understand video.
You've heard the terms "varifocal" and "parfocal" to describe lenses, but do you know what these terms mean? Or why they matter? If you don't, this informative conversation between Vistek video producer Dale Sood and product manager Brian Young is the perfect place to start.
A common rule of thumb to figure out your maximum shutter speed for sharp stars at night is to divide 500 by your focal length. Sometimes it's called the 600 Rule or the 400 Rule or several other numbers that can be used depending on your sensor size. Unfortunately, it's a a very inaccurate rule today.
I think it's fair to say that most photographers will, at some point in their career, have to work with models at least once—whether you're a still life shooter that photographs models' hands holding a fork full of food a couple of times a year or an e-commerce shooter that works with models every single day.
In the world of Instagram, there is a practice known as botting -- and I hate it. For the uninitiated, botting is the process of tying your Instagram account to a wide variety of automation software, which charge users small sums of money to juice their profile. At the heart of it, it’s a pay-to-play relationship where you’re paying money to grow your following on Instagram.
Rotating an image in Photoshop might seem like a pretty simple process: you just... rotate it, right? Not quite. As this video from 2010 demonstrates, one of the ways a computer rotates an image is actually by applying 4 sequential transformations. (Warning: math incoming).
A video is made up from 25 single photos per second, that, when placed back-to-back, trick our mind into seeing motion. But what would happen if we only took one photo every minute, and then played them back at 25 frames per second? The result is a magnificent hyper-realistic compression of time.
Everybody wants to get closer when shooting wildlife, and one of the most affordable ways of doing this is to buy a teleconverter. These little gadgets will instantly add to your lens magnification without making your wallet thousands of dollars lighter... but are they worth it? Let's find out.
At least once per month, we hear about someone else—a photographer, photo shoot subject, sometimes just kids messing around—who was struck and killed while taking pictures on train tracks. And this weekend, the TODAY show demonstrated how these massive machines are able to "sneak up" on people.
Along with normal how-to articles and essays, I’ve always liked reading and writing very technical, nitty-gritty articles about photography—sometimes, articles on topics that rarely come up while actually taking pictures.
Given that most photos are captured digitally and shared online, it’s easy to forget the beauty of a print.
There is a lot of misunderstanding and confusion on the subjects of depth of field, the difference between full-frame and crop sensors, and the ‘crop factor.’
How important is exposure in photography? What are the components of exposure? What is the "Exposure Triangle"? These are the questions I will attempt to answer in this introductory article about ISO, aperture, and shutter speed -- the components of achieving a properly exposed photo.
If you're always on the lookout for great educational, inspirational, or just plain interesting photography content online, you need to visit the School of Visual Arts YouTube channel ASAP.
xkcd's comic today, titled "Color Pattern," is about the famous moiré pattern in photography, the interference patterns that appear when certain patterns are overlaid on each other.
If you're just starting out in photography (or know someone who is), here's a simple 5-minute animation that provides a crash course on the subject of aperture.