Educational

Goodbye old young friend. Let me give you all a piece of wisdom that I recently learned the hard way. If you go on a fishing trip called 'Hit em' Hard' and the captain tells you that you should take your bag off and put it in the 'dry container', what he really means by 'dry container' is a place that will fill up with seawater after he accidently clogs the drainage pipe, soaking you and your friends cameras, bags, wallets and cellphones for over an hour in salty seawater.

Photographer Brandon Stanton has generated quite a bit of attention in the photo world through his project Humans of New York, which features thousands of portraits that form a visual census of the city. His goal is to capture 10,000 portraits of New Yorkers that are associated with points on a map.

Unlike many camera lens lines, Leica's lenses are group into categories under well known trademarked names. Mention the word Noctilux, and a Leica shooter will immediately know that you're referring to a f/1 lens that's geared towards shooting in low-light environments.

What are the most popular photo subjects in each location of your city? Is there any easy way of finding out? Those are questions UC Berkeley researcher Alexander Dunkel is trying to answer, and he has his sights set on Flickr as a possible solution. By combining the location geotags and context tags attached to many (or most) of the service's photos, Dunkel is able to create tag cloud-style maps of any location that reveals the tags that dominate each location.

Want to see how the highly-acclaimed Sony RX1 is assembled? At CES 2013 in Las Vegas last week, Sony showed the above video at its special press event, using it as a creative countdown clock for indicating when the show would begin. The split-screen video shows three of Sony's newer products -- the Cybershot RX1 camera, the Xperia Z smartphone, and an HD camcorder -- being assembled from their basic parts.

Canon recently launched a new safety initiative aimed at keeping dangerous knock-off gear out of your camera. The tag line for the initiative is "Play it Safe, Power your Canon with Canon Power," and the company is hoping that a mix of warnings and education will do the trick and keep you from buying counterfeit "Canon" batteries and chargers.

We've written a couple of times in the past on how you can achieve drastically different portrait looks by choosing different lens focal lengths and subject distances. Basically, your choice of glass can make a huge impact on what your subject's face looks like... and how much they appear to weigh.

Nikon recently put out this short 3-minute video that offers an interesting glimpse into one of the critical steps of lens making: the production of the optical glass. It steps through the various stages of manufacturing, from combining the raw elements through examining the chunks of glass before they're polished and perfected.

If you have your 35mm film processed and printed at your local lab, have you ever wondered how it's done? In this post, I'll take you on a behind-the-scenes tour on the entire process.

Leica made its name a very long time ago by creating the first practical 35mm camera to use standard cinema 35mm film. The rest, as they say, is history. A history filled with successes and failures alike, most of the latter coming in the early 2000s when the company was having trouble moving into the digital age.

Motion image photography is a new name for an old concept: pulling stills from video. In fact, famed headshot photographer Peter Hurley took a stab at it last year, pinning the 5K Red Epic against his Hasselblad to see if he could recreate his work in video. The issue there, even ignoring price, was that the sheer size of the Red Epic makes it far too bulky for anything but studio work.

If you've never shot with an old manual focus film SLR, you've probably never experienced the joys (and pains) of focusing with a split screen and microprism ring. YouTube user ttcalan created this short video that demonstrates how the system looks and works. He writes, …

The term "bokeh" is often used in the world of photography to describe the quality of the out-of-focus blur in photographs. Do you know how it's pronounced?

There are well over 100 million users on Instagram (assuming a quarter of them didn't just up and leave), and even though the typical Instagram photo stream consists of food and the family pet, there are certain places that show up more often than others. Times Square, The Eiffel Tower, Disneyland, the Bangkok Airport... wait... that last one seems out of place doesn't it? …

Painter Norman Rockwell's illustrations graced the covers of countless magazines over the course of the 20th century, becoming a much-loved piece of American culture for their simple snapshots of life. You might recognize many of the works, and even the name behind the paintings, but did you know that virtually all of the images started out as photographs?

Here's a primer for beginning photographers on the concepts of aspect ratios and compositional theories.

We've written a number of posts regarding the NASA Curiosity rover's photography on Mars, but have you ever wondered who it is that "presses the shutter"? If you have, you're not alone. The Planetary Society recently received the question as well, and has published an official explanation from NASA: …

If you shoot film and aren't much into chemicals (or don’t have a basement in which to keep a gigantic 5×7″ enlarger), you’ll soon find yourself needing a way to import those beautiful pictures you’ve taken onto your computer. What? Why didn’t I say, “you'll need a scanner”? After all, it’s not 1987 anymore -- scanners are as common as toaster ovens.

Yesterday marked the 109th anniversary of the first aviation photograph ever snapped. Back on December 17th, 1903, an amateur photographer named John Thomas Daniels Jr. captured the now-iconic photograph above showing the Wright brothers' first flight.

When travel photographer Craig Pulsifer accidentally smashed the front of his lens recently and found his lens filter fused firmly to the metal threads, he went to Canon for help. The removal process explained to him by a Canon Professional services technician is probably something most people wouldn't think to try: use a hammer and hacksaw to surgically remove the stuck filter. Pulsifer followed the advice, and found that it works quite well (though he does warn that it's "not recommended for …

Want to learn how to be more productive with your photography? Instead of simply "trying harder" and relying on your willpower, a better way may be to take simple steps that have been shown to be effective by science. The above 3-minute video, created by artists/educators Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown, offers some tips that science has taught us about being more efficient at working and spending less time getting our work accomplished.

When Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast back in October, the photograph above was widely circulated by people who believed that it showed the storm bearing down NYC. It doesn't. The image is actually a composite photograph that combines an ordinary photo of the Statue of Liberty with a well-known image by weather photographer Mike Hollingshead.

When the engineering students and staff of King's College in London gathered together to take a faculty portrait, the photographer used an old camera that panned from left to right in order to capture an extremely long panorama of the entire group in one frame. It worked a bit like the panorama features on modern smartphones: start the exposure on one side of the frame, and then gradually sweep the camera across the scene while everyone in the frame stays as still as possible.

The megapixel war is heating up again in the high-end DSLR market, with the 36MP Nikon D800 leading the charge and rumored high-MP Canon and Sony competitors on the way. If you've been drooling over massive megapixels, be warned: with great megapixels comes great responsibility storage costs. Photoshop guru Scott Kelby writes: …

Did you know that some of the most famous master painters from centuries past may have actually used camera "technology" to aid them in creating their masterpieces? According to the hotly debated Hockney-Falco thesis, some well-known artists likely used rudimentary camera obscura rooms as a tool -- essentially "tracing" parts of their work.

If you're at all interested in the history of photography, Henry Fox Talbot is a pioneer that you need to be familiar with. Although French pioneer Louis Daguerre is often credited with being "the father of photography," Talbot, based in England, had announced his own photographic process in the same year. Daguerre's daguerreotype process dominated the industry early on, but Talbot's process -- one that involved creating photographic negatives and then printing photos with them -- eventually …

Check out the two memory cards above. One of them is a counterfeit card while the other is a genuine one. Can you tell which is which? If you can't, we don't blame you. Japan-based photography enthusiast Damien Douxchamps couldn't either until he popped the fake card into his camera and began shooting. The card felt a bit sluggish, so he ran some tests on his computer. Turned out the 60MB/s card was actually slower than his old 45MB/s card.

Do you ever clean the front element of your lens by fogging it up with your breath and then wiping it off with a cloth? If so, you might want to stop -- Nikon says the practice could be damaging to your glass. Apparently human breath contains stuff that isn't too friendly toward camera lenses.

Back in October, we shared some photos taken inside a small Chinese studio lighting maker named NiceFoto. Now we have a look at what operations look like at a much larger manufacturer: Godox. It's reportedly the second largest studio lighting producer in all of China.

You may have heard that there are 12 Hasselblad film cameras sitting on the surface of the moon at this very moment, left there by astronauts who needed to lighten their vessel's load as much as possible. However, did you know that at least one of those cameras was left there to test the durability of the gear?

How well do you know the area in which you live? Or any area you regularly visit, for that matter? This may seem like the question of an idiot -- of course you know your area of residence -- but do you really? Have you explored every road and back road and high street and side street and pathway and alleyway? I’m aware I strayed into polysyndeton, but it’s relevant to the question I’m asking: how well do you know the area in which you live?

Reuters has published its list of the best photographs taken in 2012, a massive collection of 95 powerful images showing different events that have occurred around the globe over the past year. In addition to large photos, descriptions by the photographers, and the official captions, each image is also accompanied by information about the equipment and settings that were used to capture it.

Even if you've never heard of Peter and David Turnley, you've likely seen at least one of their photographs at some point in your life. The identical twins are two of the most renowned photojournalists to have covered world events over the past few decades. The video above is a fascinating 13-minute-long feature titled "Double Exposure," which aired on 60 Minutes back in 1996 (warning: there are some strong images of violence).

This iconic photograph by LIFE magazine photojournalist J. R. Eyerman turned 60 this past week. Shot at the Paramount Theater in Hollywood in 1952, the image shows the opening-night screening of the first ever full-length, color 3D movie, titled Bwana Devil.

Christopher Bonanos, author of Instant: The Story of Polaroid, has authored a lengthy piece for the Washington Post on what Kodak -- and whoever buys its film lines -- can learn from the fall of Polaroid. The article offers some interesting facts about, and insights into, the film photography industry: …

Imagine you were a newspaper photo editor back in 1963, and Swiss Magnum photographer René Burri handed you the contact sheet above filled with portraits of revolutionary Che Guevara. Which photograph would you select for publication? …

Here's an interesting 26-minute documentary about the life and work of 20th-century-photographer Edward Weston, a man who is considered to be one of the most influential American photographers and one of the masters of photography during his era. The 1948 film, titled "The Photographer," was shot by American filmmaker Willard Van Dyke, an apprentice of Weston's, who went on to become a very notable photographer in his own right.

Stephen Dowling of BBC News has an interesting piece that tells the story of the Lomography movement and how it may be instrumental in saving film photography.

Sony is continuing its campaign against the mindless use of DSLRs. After releasing a series of viral videos poking fun at inept DSLR users, Sony is now turning to facts and hard evidence (in addition to humor). The company recently did a survey of 1012 non-professional DSLR users, and the results are pretty interesting.

This article started after I followed an online discussion about whether a 35mm or a 50mm lens on a full frame camera gives the equivalent field of view to normal human vision. This particular discussion immediately delved into the optical physics of the eye as a camera and lens -- an understandable comparison since the eye consists of a front element (the cornea), an aperture ring (the iris and pupil), a lens, and a sensor (the retina).

Back in 1998, PC World magazine published a review of the Sony Mavica MVC-FD71 as the digital camera industry was beginning to pick up steam. He's what they wrote: …

The mid-1800s was a busy time for photographic firsts. In 1838, daguerreotype inventor Louis Daguerre captured the first ever photo of a human being. One year later, in 1839, photograph pioneer Robert Cornelius stepped in front of his camera and created the first self-portrait. 1840 held yet another interesting development: the first hoax photograph.

Snapping mirror self-portraits may have gotten a huge boost from the introduction of digital photography and smartphoneography, but it is by no means a new activity limited to our era. The photograph above was created back in 1917 -- nearly 100 years ago! It was snapped by an Australian flying ace named Thomas Baker when he was 20 years old.

During the Iranian election protests back in 2009, a 26-year-old woman named Nedā Āghā-Soltān (above right) was shot and killed while standing around and observing protestors. After footage of her death went viral online -- Time says it's likely the "most widely witnessed death in human history" -- Neda's portrait became the face of the movement, as countless protestors around the world held large prints overlaid with statements like, "Neda did not die in vain." The problem is, one of the …

Photography isn't even 200-years-old yet, but there have already been over 150 different chemical processes developed over its relatively short lifetime. In this interesting 5-minute video titled "A Brief History of Photography: Innovations in Chemistry," photo conservation scientist Art Kaplan of the Getty Conservation Institute quickly introduces some of the groundbreaking processes that have made a significant impact on the history of photography -- processes such as the daguerreotype, …

In 1984, photographer Steve McCurry shot a portrait titled "Afghan Girl" that would become the defining image of his career and one of the most famous National Geographic covers ever published. In 2002, McCurry was able to locate the subject, Sharbat Gula, and learn her story.

Documentary filmmaker and photography enthusiast Matt Morris recently noticed a magazine article about a tintype photographer named Harry Taylor based in his hometown of Wilmington, NC. Having recently gotten engaged, Morris and his fiancée decided to have Taylor shoot their engagement photos using the 150-year-old photo process. They ended up sitting for a 5-hour-portrait session, and Morris was stunned by the results.

Back in September, we shared the first photos snapped by the world's largest and most powerful digital camera: the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera located on a mountaintop in Chile. Reuters recently paid a visit to the massive astro-camera and the scientists behind it, and created the short 2-minute piece above that offers a closer look at the unique piece of camera equipment.

Here's a dissection video for those of you who like photography better than biology. It's a Khan Academy lesson that offers a glimpse into how digital cameras work on the inside. The camera being dissected is a Vivitar V25, a 2.1 megapixel camera that you can pick up for around $18 from places like Walmart. Although it's basically the digital equivalent of a disposable camera, the camera still shares some things in common with higher-end digital cameras. You might be able to learn an …

This photo is the greatest sports photo of all time -- at least according to Sports Illustrated. The magazine has published a gallery containing 100 of the greatest images (from an American's perspective), and the #1 image is the above shot of Michael Jordan hitting the game-winning shot to help the Chicago Bulls beat the Utah Jazz and win the 1998 NBA Finals in 6 games.