Want to see what "bridge" cameras were like before the days of digital? EEVBlog got its hands on a Chinon Genesis II 35mm from 1989 and recorded the 18-minute teardown above to show us the guts. The Genesis II was marketed as a "Zoom Lens Reflex" (ZLR) bridge camera because it was more advanced than a point-and-shoot and easier-to-use than an single-lens reflex.
In 2012, 35 years after its launch in 1977, NASA's Voyager 1 space probe left the Solar System and became the first human-man object to enter interstellar space. On board is a Golden Record with sounds and images that show life on Earth. 116 images were selected for inclusion by a committee led by Carl Sagan.
Want to see what Photoshop's adjustment layers are actually doing to your photos in terms of curves? There's an easy new way to do so.
In a Nutshell created this 5-minute video that offers a simple explanation of the problem of "freebooting" on Facebook, when copyrighted videos are ripped from other sources (mostly YouTube) and uploaded to the service without permission. The videos then go viral, gaining attention for the uploader and ad views for Facebook, but leaving the original content creator out in the cold.
Understanding the exposure triangle of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO is one of the first steps in learning photography. To help people wrap their heads around the concept, photographer Tony Catalano has created the Interactive Exposure Tool, an online tool for experimenting with how changing camera settings affects the resulting photo of a scene.
You know those iconic photos of NASA Apollo astronauts posing with the US flag on the moon? The 3-minute video above is a "behind-the-scenes" video that shows some of the portraits being shot.
Photo colorizer Jordan Lloyd of Dynamichrome was recently commissioned to digitally color reconstructed photos of the discovery and exploration of Tutankhaten's tomb starting in 1922.
Requests for free spec work is a big problem for photographers, who lose out when clients demand free photos in exchange for "vague to nonexistent compensation." To show how ridiculous the idea of spec work is, Toronto agency Zulu Alpha Kilo had a guy approach people in other businesses with requests for free spec work to sample their products and services before actually committing to paying. A barista, chef, personal trainer, and architect all responded with indignation; watch their reactions …
Want to see how the great-grandfather of Canon DSLRs compares to the company's latest and greatest camera? Photographer Jim Goldstein got his hands on the "ancient" Canon D2000 from 1998 and decided to pit it against the new Canon 5DS R in a shootout. The 10-minute video is a look at how a 17-year-old 2-megapixel DSLR stacks up against a 5-month-old 50-megapixel DSLR.
"Tilbakeblikk" ("retrospective" in Norwegian) is a fascinating photo project that shows how Norway's gorgeous landscapes have changed over the past century. Decades-old photos are faithfully re-captured by figuring out exactly where the original photographer stood.
It's always impressive when photographers and filmmakers capture mind-blowing shots in-camera rather than resorting completely to Photoshop, CGI, and other digital tricks. Screen Rant put together this 7-minute video that shows 9 movie scenes that were incredibly difficult to capture because they were (mostly) the result of meticulous planning, real stunts, and (often) countless takes.
Canon conducted an interesting experiment on the power of perspective in portrait photography. The camera company enlisted the help of 6 photographers and asked them each to independently shoot portraits of a man named Michael. But there was a twist: each photographer was told a different thing about Michael's background.
Do you know who the most photographed American of the 19th century was? It's not George Custer (155 photos) or Walt Whitman or Abraham Lincoln (130 each). The person with the most portraits made of them in the 1800s was Frederick Douglass, the African-American abolitionist, speaker, writer, and statesman.
Here's an interesting blast from the past: in 1965, the US Army released the 25-minute film above to teach the basics of photography (for military police purposes).
Paris-based photographer Mathieu Stern released this short and sweet video showing how he took a 105-year-old folding camera lens from 1910 and mounted it to a Sony a7II mirrorless camera using bellows for focusing.
Ellis Island in Upper New York Bay was the busiest immigrant inspection station in the United States at the dawn of the 20th century, with millions of immigrants arrived in the United States via the island by boat.
How do the shutter sounds of popular camera brands compare with one another? Which cameras are loud, and which are quiet? Photographer Davin Lavikka recently published the 49-second video above to shed some light (or sound?) on these questions. It's a comparison of the shutter sounds of the Pentax 645Z, Canon 5Ds, Nikon D810, Olympus OM-D E-M5 II, and Sony a6000.
Want to see a super early example of a photo being faked through compositing? Look no further than this circa 1902 photo, titled "General Grant at City Point." It appears to show General Ulysses S. Grant posing on a horse with a large number of soldiers in the background, but it's actually the combination of three different photos.
If you want to view the color spectrum of a light source in your studio, there's actually a super cheap and easy way to do so: an ordinary CD or DVD can do the trick. Simply allow the light to reflect from the surface of the disc into your eye -- it acts as a diffraction grating, allowing you to see the different color bands in the light.
In 1966, Bob Dylan released his 7th studio album, titled "Blonde on Blonde," which went double-platinum and contained some of Dylan's best-known songs. It's also known for it's unusual cover photo. It's a blurry portrait of Dylan, created by photographer Jerry Schatzberg in New York City's meat-packing district.
Canon's Selphy line of compact photo printers use cartridges that contain both paper and ink, allowing you to use your digital camera or smartphone like an instant camera while you're out and about. There's one thing you might not know about the cartridges, though: empty cartridges contain faint copies of the photos that were printed.
Nikon Asia just posted this performance test video showing how much faster XQD memory cards are than the CF cards they're designed to replace (400MB/s versus 160MB/s). On a Nikon D4S DSLR, the XQD could record 67 uncompressed 16.2MP NEF RAW photos at 11 frames per second (or over 200 JPEGs in a single burst).
Over the past several years, the U.S. Geological Survey has been shooting a "Repeat Photography" project in various locations to show how glacier ice has been retreating over the past century. Using photos from the late 1800s and early 1900s as references, photographers are rephotographing those same scenes to show how things have changed (and are changing).
Earlier this year, music photographer Adam Elmakias shot one of the biggest shows he has ever covered: a performance by the American pop punk band All Time Low at London's O2 Arena, which has the second-highest seating capacity of any indoor venue in the UK.
Mercedes-Benz Canada commissioned me in 2014 to shoot photos for the 2014 Sprinter lineup. In addition to those photos, I was also asked to piece together brochure images for the newer and not-yet-released 4x4 Sprinter model. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at the Photoshop work that went into the 4x4 images.
Want to see what it's like to work as a conflict photojournalist at the front lines of a war? Here's an 8.5-minute point-of-view video showing two photographers covering a battle in which Afghan soldiers close in on Taliban positions.
After several years of trial and error, I finally have a complete RAW photography workflow in Linux that I am happy with.
The FAA has published a new warning about the danger of storing spare lithium batteries in checked bags. The batteries, which are widely used in the photography industry to power things like cameras and lighting equipment, "present a risk of both igniting and fueling fires in aircraft cargo/baggage compartments," the FAA says.
Want to see the inside of a DJI drone manufacturing facility? Now you can, thanks to some test footage that was recently found on a new DJI drone camera. Data is normally wiped before cameras are shipped, but it seems that someone forgot to delete this one.
Rich Clarkson’s photo of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then named Lew Alcindor, in the 1968 NCAA Men’s National Basketball Final Four semifinal game in Los Angeles is a masterpiece of composition, timing, and exposure. The square format is the result of shooting the game action with a Hasselblad – a practice that continued into the early 2000s. But that isn’t what makes this photo historically interesting.
If you're just starting out in photography, you may be confused with the term "crop factor" that's thrown around when talking about cameras and lenses. Here's a 10-minute video in which Mark Ryan Sallee of Michromatic explains the concept in an easy-to-understand way.
Are you curious about what goes on inside an airliner cockpit during takeoff and landing? If so, the Swiss website Blick recently published the video above to satisfy that curiosity. They placed a 360-degree camera inside the windshield of an Airbus A320, creating an interactive view of the beginning and end of a flight from Zurich to Geneva. You can "look around" in the video with your mouse or your keyboard (with the A/S/D/W keys).
The Camera Store TV recently found an original Canon Digital Rebel (AKA 300D/Kiss Digital/DS6041) from 2003 on their hands. Curious about how an entry-level DSLR from 12 years ago compares to cameras released these days, the team decided to do a hands-on field test.
Want to see how a New York Times war photographer transmitted photos from Afghanistan back in 2008? Here's an interesting 14-minute documentary that shows the workflow photojournalist Tyler Hicks used while covering the war in Afghanistan, where he had to prepare and transmit digital photos from one of the most unforgiving places on Earth to a Times photo desk in New York.
When photographing the world around us, the property of color is likely something most people tend to take for granted. We expect our cameras to portray the visible light spectrum accurately. However, in a world so engrossed with color, we sometimes forget how long it took to get to this point in time and how many photographers and scientists viewed the concept of color photography as a pipe dream.
Poet Edgar Allan Poe had glowing things to say about photography after it exploded onto the scene in the mid-1800s. Other commentators in those days weren't so kind.
Did you know that when the daguerreotype was announced back in 1839, one of the people who wrote about the new groundbreaking technology was the famous poet Edgar Allan Poe? …
Some photographers live by a set of rules: they follow the standard conventions of exposure and image development to produce realistic photographs that correctly reproduce the world around them. Others, however, see the world through an entirely different lens. They are the rebels; they are the alternative photographers. Today, we throw aside convention to look at five alternative processes and how they can be used to foster entirely new perspectives.
Did you know that you can easily see geostationary satellites by shooting time-lapse photos of the night sky? Reddit user jannne took his camera outside this week and managed to capture a number of satellites in their photos.
Dedolight celebrated its 30th anniversary this year by holding an international competition in which competitors create the best tutorials they can for passing on their lighting knowledge.
The first known photograph was captured in 1826 when light reacted with a particular type of asphalt known as Bitumen of Judea. Since that first natural light photo, photographers have introduced artificial flash lighting to photos through all kinds of different ways. In this post, we're taking a look at a brief history of the camera flash -- from its humble beginnings with explosive powder and burning metal up through the latest LED lights -- to see how far it has come.
Peter van Agtmael is a New York-based conflict photographer and a member of Magnum Photos. Since 2006, he has photographed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the effect of the wars in the US.
If you enjoy knowing the nitty gritty technical details of how photography technologies work, then you may enjoy the 8-minute video above. Published by Computerphile, it features image analyst Mike Pound of the University of Nottingham explaining the math behind how programs apply blurs and image filters (e.g. Instagram) to photos.
Want to know the most popular photo spot among Instagrammers in each state in the US? The travel Busbud recently decided to do some serious digging to find out. The map above shows the findings. The markers show where the most popular spot is found, and the state is color coded by location type.
Back in July of 1956, Kodak printed a helpful photography guide for Disneyland visitors. The pamphlet was titled: "Kodak Camera Tour of Disneyland" and featured colorful illustrations, technical camera tips, and sample photos.
We've shared a number of times in the past about how NASA uses Adobe Photoshop to create many of the dazzling space photos released to the public. Earlier this week, Adobe also published an interesting article that reveals 4 different ways the space agency uses image editing software to "reveal the unseeable."
Drones present an exciting new world of possibilities for photographers looking to explore and capture their world. Never before has aerial photography been as accessible to the masses as it currently is thanks to companies such as DJI. However, to quote a line from Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Drones can be dangerous if not used properly, and it is important to know the basics before taking off with your drone.
Capturing a collection of photographs and assembling them into a physical photo book can sometimes seem like more trouble than it is worth. Different sites present interfaces with varying levels of efficiency and generally force you to alter your workflow for print optimization. However, did you know that you can create an book directly in Lightroom? Today, we are taking a look at the built-in option available within Adobe’s Creative Suite.
Toronto-based cinematographer Jon Simo created this trippy portrait showing how an infrared camera sees things compared to an ordinary camera.
One of the big improvements in the new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus are the new camera modules, which now shoot 12-megapixel photos. If you'd like to see how the new camera stacks up to its entire line of predecessors, Camera+ co-founder Lisa Bettany has published a series of side-by-side comparison images showing the same scenes captured with each camera.
