Here's a video by the Camera Repair Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, that shows an overhaul they did recently of a Pentax K1000 film SLR -- the "dirtiest Pentax [they've] seen in a very long time." The 3 to 4 hour examination and cleaning is condensed down to 2.5 minutes, and shows the beautiful mechanical inner workings of the K1000.
One of the challenges (and rewards) of managing a digital production lab for a university research library is working with the wide assortment of analog formats that are collected within its archives, special collections, and map library holdings. For instance, we've recently begun conversion work on a 2002 aerial survey of Connecticut that was originally shot on 9"x9" positive black and white film.
If you've been itching to step up your film photography game—be it trying 35mm for the first time, stepping up to 120 medium format, or even trying out large format film—this old video that's circulating the Interwebz again today is a great place to start.
Marc Silber of Advancing Your Photography just released another insightful conversations with Ansel Adams' son Michael Adams. This time around, they tackle Ansel's famous book The Range of Light, his work schedule, education, childhood, and much more.
As we mentioned this morning, composition is one of the most critical aspects of photography. But another, equally important piece is understanding the basic laws of light and how to use them when capturing a photograph.
Over the past several months, Adobe has been promoting Photoshop at major sporting events with its "Adobe Photoshop Fan Cam," which shows fans in attendance being Photoshopped on the big screen. Adobe recently invited PetaPixel to a game for a behind-the-scenes look at how the Fan Cam is done.
Walt Disney reportedly smoked three packs a day, so how come it's so difficult to find a photo of Walt smoking when you're walking around Disneyland or digging through the Disney Archives? The answer is simple: all of the cigarettes have been Photoshopped out.
Here's a 3-minute video by Great Big Story about the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, a nuclear bunker that was once used by the Feds to house $4 billion worth of gold. Its goal these days is to preserve the nation's history of film.
Leading lines, negative space, rule of thirds, all of these compositional elements are discussed ad nauseam in the world of photography. This short video ignores all that, and instead focuses on a different, but equally powerful element in an image: geometric shapes.
Here's a helpful 12-minute video by landscape photographer and vlogger Thomas Heaton about lens filters. With the emergence of digital photography and powerful editing software, the benefits of some filters can be recreated digitally while others cannot.
The Tessina is a vintage Swiss camera that was created by an Austraian chemical engineer named Rudolph Steineck and introduced in 1957 in Switzerland. What's neat about the camera was that one of the accessories was a special wrist bracket that allowed you to wear the camera on your wrist like a watch.
If you're the technical type, or your just love to understand your photo and video history, you'll definitely want to check out this straightforward explanation of NTSC vs PAL, or why your camera shoots 29.97, not 30fps.
What would you do if you were stranded in the wild with nothing but your camera gear? Could you fashion tools for yourself to stay alive? That's what Chris Niccolls of TCSTV explores in this unusual 14-minute video.
For a recent project, I was tasked with shooting a hot rod. It was exciting from the beginning, because this particular kind of car is pretty rare here where I live. The owner also requested that their dog sit on the car's fender, and for the photos to be huge -- 100 megapixels were too few.
Flash is a complicated beast, let’s put it that way.
Say you’ve spent the last few years of your photography journey perfecting natural light, and you know the exposure triangle by heart. Flash comes in to the picture and ruins that perfect triangle, making it more of an exposure square.
While embedded with troops in Afghanistan in the late 2000s, war photographer and writer Michael Yon captured numerous photos of the sparkling halo that can appear when a helicopter's rotors hit sand and dust. Upon finding that the particular phenomenon didn't have a name, Yon gave it one that honors two fallen soldiers: the Kopp-Etchells Effect.
A few months ago, photographer Karl Taylor got a tour of the LEE filters factory where he got to see how these high quality filters are cast, tested, and dyed (by hand!)—he even got to dye one for himself. Fortunately, he took a camera man (and now us) along for the ride.
We all have a blind spot, both literally and metaphorically. Ansel Adams had one so big and powerful that he, Beaumont Newhall, and a few others “disappeared” some very important and wonderful photographers from the history of photography. And in doing so they also helped “disappear” an important movement in photography, one called Pictorialism.
Fujifilm caused a great deal of excitement this week by announcing its first medium format mirrorless camera, the 51MP GFX 50S. But "medium format" is a a relative term rather than a specific sensor size, so how does the new 50S's sensor stack up against other digital cameras on the market?
If you ever see an ultra-slow-motion clip online, there's a good chance that it was shot using a Phantom high-speed camera. The 12-minute video above is a behind-the-scenes look at how the cameras -- which cost upwards of $150,000 -- are made.
Why do the new iPhone 7 phones have to simulate a shallow depth of field? The short answer: physics.
Canon just released this 3.5-minute video that explains how lenses work. We learn about focal points, spherical aberration, chromatic aberration, and how multiple lens elements are used together for aberration correction.
When you resize (and resample) a photo in Photoshop, you’re given the option of strategies such as Nearest Neighbor and Bilinear. If you have no idea what those mean, check out this 9-minute video by Computerphile.
In 1871, the Prevention of Crimes Act made it a legal requirement that anybody who was arrested in England and Wales had to have their photograph taken—thus was born the official "mug shot". But mug shots from the late 1800s look very different from the ones you might see today.
Myths and misconceptions persist because they’re either compelling or no one bothers to correct them. For photographers, many myths of digital photography arose when trying to draw imperfect analogies to film photography.
Back in the heyday of film photography, a common part of the photography experience was dropping off your film rolls at a store or lab, placing the roll in an envelope and checking boxes with instructions for what you'd like. Here's a fascinating 5-minute video that reveals what happened to your film between drop off and delivery of your prints and processed film.
It's been called the first underwater photograph and the first underwater self-portrait, but it doesn't seem to be either of those things. No, but this photo by diver and photography pioneer Louis Marie Auguste Boutan, taken in 1899, does seem to be the world's first underwater portrait.
Want to take a university-level class on digital photography for free? Former Stanford professor and current Google engineer Marc Levoy has a site containing his complete course materials for a class that he has taught 5 times at Stanford and once at Google.
How many famous modern and historical photos are you able to recognize simply by hearing the nickname? Go ahead, read each nickname then try to picture the image in your head.
Stop-motion photography has come a long way since the early 1900s, but it still involves creating an animation one frame at a time by introducing slight changes and movements between still photos. To see how far we've come with the technique, check out this 3-minute video, titled "The Evolution of Stop-Motion."
Here's a 2-minute video by SciShow that explains why the red-eye effect often turns irises into bright red spots in flash photos.
I’ve always found Olympus cameras to have excellent quality. But when I first picked up the PEN-F, it was immediately apparent that the quality of this camera is of a higher caliber. The PEN-F oozes quality.
Curious Droid made this 9-minute video that takes a look at 5 of the most amazing camera technologies, both those in existence and those that are coming soon. They include an ultra-powerful satellite camera, a high-resolution surveillance camera, the most powerful camera, the fastest camera, and the smallest camera.
Jeanne Adams is the daughter-in-law of the late and great landscape photographer Ansel Adams, and she served as the head of the Ansel Adams Gallery for 25 years. In the 10-minute interview above, Jeanne talks to Marc Silber of Advancing Your Photography about Ansel's workshops, teaching styles, and lesser-known portraits.
As beginner's guides go, this is one of the best we've stumbled across. In 10 minutes, Joe Edelman does a fantastic job comparing the standard speedlight to the standard monolight or "studio strobe," explaining some of the confusing terminology, and helping break down which is better when and why.
Since 1932, the renowned Swiss watchmaker Omega has served as Official Timekeeper at the Olympic Games 26 times. This year at the Rio Olympics, Omega is once again providing finish line cameras to provide officials and the public with the most precise view of the athletes.
Want to see light pollution changes photos of the starry night sky? Photographer Sriram Murali's new time-lapse short film will show you. Titled "Lost in Light," it shows different locations with progressively lower levels of light pollution.
Photographing a meteor shower is more like photographing a time-lapse than traditional still photos. You can never anticipate where or when a meteor is going to streak across the sky.
When Polaroid announced that it would stop making Polaroid instant film in February 2008, The Impossible Project was founded to keep the film alive. Filmmaker Jens Meurer has spent several years shooting a feature-length documentary film about the saving and reinventing of the Polaroid picture.
Welcome to the world of photography, where geeky scientists make great lenses... and use all their secret codes to confuse consumers. Fret not, this guide will explain those EF-S, STM stuff to you, and a small history lesson to help you better understand.
Digital cameras are notoriously difficult to design and get right. Where do you start? Who is the customer? What features do you include on the camera? There are uncountable ways to approach a camera development and design program.
Once Syria's largest city, Aleppo has been the worst-hit city in the country since the Battle of Aleppo began in 2012 as part of the ongoing Syrian Civil War. Now a series of before-and-after photos reveals just how much the once-vibrant historical city has been marred by war.
Sony's sgnl YouTube channel published this 5-minute teardown video that offers a look at the guts of the company's high-end 24-70mm f/2.8 G Master lens, which retails for $2,200.
It's time for a long overdue post. Looking back through my archives, I realized that I've covered topics like film selections and scanning film but to date I've skipped one really important part: metering and exposing color film.
It's commonly said that a camera adds 10 pounds, making you look heavier than you actually are. Here's a striking animated GIF that shows how much the focal length of a lens affects your apparent weight in a portrait.
Want to see what it's like to tiptoe between life and death as a war photographer? Watch Conflict, a 6-episode miniseries that provides a no-holds-barred look at photography in conflict zones. Netflix just picked up the show, but you can also watch it for free online.
You may think you're no good at seeing in the dark, but your eyes are actually incredibly sensitive. In fact, according to a new study, the human eye is so sensitive it can detect even a single photon of light!
I never get tired of seeing our closest star set below the horizon, and seeing how the landscape changes as the warm light gets fainter by the minute. Every sunset has its personality depending each location, weather and season. One beautiful thing about a sunset is what happens right after the Sun has set. If turn around, you can slowly see the Earth shadow rising from the horizon.
Cameras and photography were birthed in Europe, so how did the Asian island country of Japan become the most dominant player in the global camera industry? Here's a great 30-minute video that explores that question, offering a look into the history and culture of cameras in Japan.
Want to see the composition concepts used in famous scenes from famous movies? Raymond Thi of Composition Cam has been taking still frames and overlaying neon pink lines to show things like symmetry, thirds, quadrants, triangles, diagonals, and more.