Want to see what's inside a modern instant camera? The website All About Circuits just published a teardown of the Fujifilm Instax Mini 8 to explore the inner workings of the camera.
Camera angle as composition isn't talked about as often as, say, how the elements in your photos are arranged. But changing your camera angle can completely transform the message an image sends, something Ted Forbes explains beautifully in this crash course on low angle photography.
Introductions to basic lighting don't get much simpler or better than this. You could call it Lighting 101, and whether that light is coming from a window or an artificial light source, the info here qualifies as "must know basics" for anybody with a camera in hand.
We talk about composition a lot, but have you ever really dived into the subject of color theory and thought about how it applies to your photography? If you haven't, you should... and arguably the best place to start is this incredibly comprehensive demo by landscape photographer Dave Morrow.
Ultra high ISO with lots of noise... There’s a lot of buzz going around about the new Pentax KP with it’s maximum ISO of 819200. Every comment I read says ‘what’s the point’?
Well, here are two benefits: late night framing and focus.
Raymond Thi—the creator of the Composition Cam app and ultra-popular Twitter account—is back with another great database for composition-obsessed photographers. It's called Geometric Shots, and it's a searchable collection of great composition from well-known films and TV shows.
Indra Kumar Jha is a 26-year-old death photographer. He works 16 hours a day in Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges, the sacred river for Hindus, where an average of 300 bodies are burned every day.
Want to win at social media in 2017? The folks over at On Blast Blog did some research on tips, tricks, and best practices, and they've created a helpful cheat sheet infographic with all kinds of helpful nuggets of wisdom.
CMYK—which stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (or Black)—is the color model used in most printing. It's called a subtractive color model, and if you don't understand what that means or how it works, this brilliant little demo should help.
If you're obsessive about checking every exposure on your camera's histogram, this informative little video is a must-watch. In it, Matt Granger covers three common misconceptions about your camera's histogram that many photographers—even experienced shooters—might be falling prey to.
Focal point is a term that photographers and photography blogs throw around continually. “Create a focal point,” it’s said, “it should be the first and last place the eye goes in your image.” That’s true, of course, but like most important things it’s easier said than done.
Want to learn photography from Harvard? (Yes, that Harvard.) It turns out you can easily do so, even without being a student. The oldest institution of higher learning in the United States offers a free 12-module online digital photography class.
Back in 2014, the light field camera company Lytro unveiled the $1,600 Illum, a camera of the future that shoots 40 "Megaray" photos and lets you refocus photos after they're shot. The tech specs were fancy, but no one bought the camera, leading to massive price cuts and eventually a complete change of direction by the CEO. The 5-minute video above is a hands-on look at the Illum.
Back in 1984, Minolta launched a camera called the Minolta AF-S V. Marketed in the United States as the "Minolta Talker," the camera would actually speak to the photographer using it.
Many materials show internal stress when illuminated with polarized light and photographed with a second analyzing polarizer. This unique property of materials is called birefringence. Some of the more common material that exhibits this property is glass, ice, and most plastics.
In their recently released report titled "Growing Up Digital," the UK Children's Commissioner did something we wish tech companies would do more of: they had a lawyer "translate" Instagram's Terms of Use into language that children (and their parents) could actually understand.
When it comes to printing your images and that elusive DPI (dots per inch) number, the ultimate question is: "how big is big enough?" Whether you're exporting for billboards, magazines, or fine art prints, this video explains what DPI you should be using and why.
If there is one genre of street photography I specialize in, it is street portraiture. I love talking with my subjects, engaging with them, and focusing on their faces. If I started shooting street portraits all over again, this is the advice I would give myself.
Ever wonder what the difference between an F-stop and a T-stop is? If you've never bothered to look up and understand this bit of light transmission trivia, listen up: this simple video does the work for you.
The folks over at the image tracking service Pixsy have released an infographic about the state of photo theft in 2016. As 64% of you have personally experienced, photo theft remains a serious and widespread problem in our digital age.
Just before sunset a few days ago, a gorgeous double rainbow appeared over the San Francisco Bay. I happened to have a fisheye lens attached to my camera, so I ran outside and snapped the shot above.
Prior to January 22, 1987, Associated Press photographers were given a choice of shooting B&W or color film on photo assignments. But on that day, something happened that caused AP photographers to switch to shooting every assignment in color: it was the suicide of American politician R. Budd Dwyer.
The above photo is taken at 28mm at f/11 on an ancient Minolta 28-85mm lens, the focus was set to about 2.5 meters and according to the depth of field scales everything should be in focus... but it isn’t.
Streetlights are the driving force behind nighttime street scenes and how they make us feel. The way streetlights spread their light, the shadows they cast, and the colors they bring out affect everything else nearby, setting the tone of the scene.
If you need a simple, straight-forward explanation of how the digital camera captures photos, look no further. This creative little animation by YouTube channel Some Stuff Explained does a fantastic job.
It's easy to take memory cards for granted and forget how far we've come, but that 256GB microSD card in your camera bag is nothing short of a modern day miracle. Don't believe us? Just check out this "blast from the past" tour of old digital cameras that used floppy disks as their "memory cards".
As a photographer, you obviously want to spend your time focusing on your passion: capturing great images, being creative, and making art. Unfortunately, in our connected world, photo security is a very real concern. This article is a comprehensive guide on protecting your photos from online image theft.
My name is Jeff Cable, and I'm a photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. I previously spent many years of my life as Director of Marketing at Lexar dealing with the ins and outs of the memory card business. And in all that time, I have never written about the do's and don'ts of memory cards. Now that I am not on that side of the business any more, I feel that I can write this objective piece for you without any conflict of interest.
Social media have so thoroughly infused our everyday lives that calling them “ubiquitous” seems inadequate. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and others take up an astonishing amount of our time, bandwidth, and attention, and have become indispensable business and marketing tools as well.
Simon Roberts, a London-based animator and designer, has created a great photography resource for beginners that is both simple and useful. It's called Photography Mapped, and it allows you to play around with and better understand the manual settings you'll find on a DSLR.