Educational

Photographer Patrick Demmons shoots tintype portraits for about $60 a pop through his Revival Tintype studio in Oakland, California. In the 2.5-minute profile above by WIRED, Demmons offers a short and sweet look at what tintype photography is and how it's done.

I write an annual article to help photographers with one of the toughest parts of their job: pricing their work. In the 2016 version, I’m going to add some new elements such as a little advice for photography buyers. Another section I’m most excited about is the question and answer portion at the end. Each year I receive many questions about photography rates in the comments. This year, I address some of the common and interesting follow-up questions I have received over the past few years.

Here's a short video clip showing a Formula 1 photographer doing a brief photo shoot with a car and driver during recent pre-season testing. We see how a backdrop is quickly wheeled into and out of the scene for just a few moments of shooting (and before the photographer gets a little scare from the driver).

Want to learn the basics of photography for free from the comfort of your own home? There are many ways to do so these days, but a new one you might want to check out is Photoskop.

Here's a recent episode from the Science Channel's show How It's Made that shows how modern camera tripods are manufactured. We get a tour of a Manfrotto tripod factory, starting from when aluminum tubes are sliced to specific lengths by precise machines and up through when tubes are joined through custom housings by hand.

World Press Photo yesterday announced the winners of its 2016 contest, honoring the best news photos captured in 2015. Above is a breakdown of the cameras that were used by the photographers who were honored by photojournalism's biggest prize.

Have you ever wondered why some Canon lenses are white while most other lenses in the industry are black? No, it's not just for aesthetics and marketing... Canon has a technical reason for it: heat reduction.

For a short time every February, when conditions are just right, Horsetail Falls in Yosemite gets transformed by a phenomenon known as "firefall." When the sunlight hits the water just right, the waterfall looks like molten lava flowing down the side of El Capitan.

NPR's All Things Considered aired this interesting 5-minute segment that discusses Japanese internment camp photos of photographers Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and Toyo Miyatake.

Becoming a professional photographer is pretty "easy" in one sense, yet incredibly "hard" in another. The lower and lower barriers of entry makes jumping in easy, but developing yourself and your business in the industry can be a challenge that takes a lot of time, effort, and dedication.

During the Great Depression, the US government launched the largest photography project it ever sponsored by sending photographers across the country to document America. Of the 170,000 photos captured by photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Arthur Rothstein, some of them showed other photographers at work with their cameras.

Last week, the Museum of Modern Art unleashed a free online course on Coursera entitled “Seeing Through Photographs” as taught by MOMA Department of Photography Curator Sarah Meister. Although I’ve watched dozens if not hundreds of YouTube videos on everything from “How to tie a bowtie” to last night’s “Coq Au Vin Recipe,” I had never taken an online course, and was intrigued by the subject matter.

NPR's All Things Considered just broadcast this short segment on the FlatCam, a thin camera that can capture sharp images without the help of a large lens. Being developed over at Rice University, the technology could transform the way cameras are designed in the future.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York just launched its first free and massive online course for the general public. Titled "Seeing Through Photographs," it's a 6-session class on Coursera that's designed to help you go beyond simply seeing photos and advance to truly understanding them.

The 2016 Grammy Awards will be held in Los Angeles next week, and this year the awards handed out will have something special: there's a camera built into the base of each trophy.

Want to see the inner workings of a Sony E-mount lens? Engineer Dave Jones of EEVblog was having problems with his $350 Sony 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS E-mount lens, so he decided to take it apart on camera to see what's inside. You can watch the teardown in the 26-minute video above.

Back in September 2015, we reported that selfies now cause more deaths worldwide than shark attacks. As people become more and more daring in their attempt to snap the perfect self-portrait to share online, there are more stories of those picture-takers getting seriously injured or killed.

If you ask a photographer if they can give you the entire set of unedited RAW photos from a shoot, there's a very good chance they're going to say no. No, it's not because they don't want you to have all your memories -- it's because they only want to deliver their very best finished work.

Want a crash course on the history of photography? COOPH just published this info-packed 5-minute video on how photography developed from the early days of the camera obscura up to the emergence of smartphone cameras and online photo sharing. (Note: there's a bit of nudity.)

When starting out in photography, a lot of beginners are confused about RAW and JPEG formats while shooting. There are plenty of explanations out there, but with us being photographers, it's easier for us to comprehend a visual reference.

Here's a video you need to watch if you enjoy seeing and learning about photography history. The folks over at Objectivity recently paid a visit to The Royal Society, where they were shown a set of priceless items from photography history.

With today's unveiling of the Canon 1D X Mark II and the recent announcement of the Nikon D5, both major camera companies have now revealed their latest and greatest technologies in their flagship DSLRs.

Canon's new 1D X Mark II flagship DSLR can shoot at a staggering 16 frames per second in Live View mode with the mirror locked up. Here's a hands-on video by e PHOTOzine that shows just how fast this rate of fire is.

Backing up your data properly is a critical responsibility for digital photographers these days, but if you use certain Seagate hard drives in your setup, you may want to think about alternatives.

The China National Space Administration, China's NASA equivalent, has just published a new set of high-definition true color photos of the Moon's surface. They were captured by cameras on the Yutu rover, which traveled to the Moon on the Chang'e 3 spacecraft back in December 2013.

My name is Tavis Leaf Glover, and I’m an artist just like you, trying to create art that I can be proud of and share with the world. Though, something really hindered me in the beginning... the Rule of Thirds.

Over in Europe, Ford has created special 'Camera Tracking Unit' cars for photographers to shoot publicity photos from. The cars are standard Ford cars that have been modified -- the back has been chopped off and turned into a rear-facing seat specifically for a photographer.

We reported last December that the National Park Service photography program had posted a new job listing for a full-time photographer to document the country's natural landscapes -- the same position once held by legendary photographer Ansel Adams.

Photographer Peter Lik can be described as something of a photo tycoon. There's the unverified claim of one of his photos selling for a record-shattering $6.5 million. He has also reportedly sold over 100,000 prints for a total of over $440 million.

If you reference camera sensor ratings published by DxOMark, you may have noticed that the France-based company doesn't test Fujifilm cameras. It's surprising, given that Fujifilm sensors have been praised by many reviewers in recent years.

Did you know that sports and political TV commentator Keith Olbermann used to be a photographer? A number of his photos were purchased by Donruss (now known as Panini) back in 1981 for its first set of baseball cards.

Photographer Éric Lafforgue has spent years traveling the world to shoot documentary photos for well-known publications. He was even given rare access to North Korea, where he shot thousands of photos showing citizens and government officials going about their daily lives.

Here's a photo of a Pentax 645Z medium format DSLR that was sliced cleanly down the middle. Pentax was displaying this half camera at the CP+ show in Japan back in early 2015. It's an interesting look at the guts of a camera that currently costs about $7,000.

Back in December 2015, Sigma announced the world's first protective lens filters made of ceramic -- filters that it claims are 10x stronger than traditional filters and 3x stronger than chemically strengthened filters.

We’ve all seen those images over the past few years (popping up in our Facebook feeds or in the media) depicting spectacular displays of the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights from Great Britain, Ireland or the lower 48 in the US. Regardless of the location, they’re pretty amazing images.

Its been 2 years since 500px expanded beyond being a simple photo-sharing service by launching a commercial licensing system for photographers. We were curious about what the bestselling photos on the service are, so we asked 500px to reveal the top 10 and tell us why each one is selling so well.

Here's a new 18-minute educational video by Filmmaker IQ about the subjects of depth of field and its relationship to different lenses and sensor sizes. "Through some fundamental scientific demonstrations, we will clarify concepts like circle of confusion and lens equivalency," the video says.

Photographers often harangue one another over pricing. Ironically, very few are willing to publicly disclose how much they charge for jobs. In economic speak, this leads to an inefficient market that has wide ranging pricing for the same output.

I’d like to think that as I age I get wiser. I sure hope so because I want to be a better person every day! Lately I’ve been pondering about principles. For most of my life I’ve been chasing after the 1-2-3 approach only to realize that things are so complex, I would have been better off knowing the principles of life rather than going in without any guiding principle.

Here's something that most Nikon DSLR shooters probably know already, but perhaps some of you don't... Most Nikon DSLRs feature two small green dots somewhere near buttons on the back or top of the camera. Those dots tell you how to do a factory reset of your camera to default settings.

If you're a fan of the late musician David Bowie, there's a good chance you've seen these police portraits before. Often referred to as one of the best celebrity mugshots, the photos are mistakenly believed to be staged promotional photos. But they're not: they are official mugshots taken after Bowie was arrested for marijuana possession back in 1976.

In a world obsessed with views, likes, and viral hits, it can be discouraging to feel like no one is paying any attention to the art you make. If that describes your photography, then you should watch this fantastic 10-minute video essay titled "Painting in the Dark: The Struggle for Art in A World Obsessed with Popularity." …

So what is it really like to shoot The Antelope? …

One of the exciting features of the new flagship Nikon D5 is the fact that it can shoot with a native ISO of up to 102,400 and an expanded ISO of 3,280,000. If you're curious about what the D5's ISO 3.28 million looks like in photos, we've got some images that'll give you a small glimpse at the quality.

What’s in a viewfinder? The view within a viewfinder has always been an opportunity to display additional information to the user. In this post, we'll take a quick look at 8 film SLR and rangefinder camera viewfinders.

Yesterday's NFL football playoff game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Minnesota Vikings was the 3rd coldest game in NFL history, as temperatures were -6° F with a wind chill of -25° F. It was so cold that camera batteries weren't performing well and had to be warmed up on the sidelines.

For his latest Weird Lens Challenge experiment, French photographer Mathieu Stern found a 136-year-old lens and mounted it to his Sony a7 II mirrorless camera to see what the results would look like. You can see his test footage in the short video above.

Nikon's big announcement at CES 2016 in Las Vegas this year was the new flagship D5 DSLR. In the company's exhibition space, Nikon is displaying a Nikon D5 DSLR and Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 lens that have been sliced cleanly in half to show off the innards with a cross-section view.

Phase One dropped a bombshell this week by announcing the XF 100MP, a medium format camera with a staggering 100 megapixels. To see just how big a 100MP photo is, photographer Brian F created this illustration that compares the relative dimensions of a number of popular cameras.

Last month, Filmmaker IQ put out a great 13-minute video on the science behind digital camera sensors. If you got a lot out of that, here's a new video you should watch: above is a 21-minute-long overview of the features and properties of modern camera lenses.