Unfortunately, the news that a particular type of film is being discontinued is anything but surprising these days. And even though we haven't had reason to report any such news for a little while, we can once again cue "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen, this time in honor of Fujifilm's Neopan 400 B&W film and Provia 400X slide film.
Let me say this right at the outset. This is not another high and mighty rant against cell phone cameras, Instagram, "art" filters, Lightroom presets, etc. You’re not about to read another gripe about everything that photography has become in the twenty-first century, even though I was afraid that’s what it would sound like when I started writing this.
Attention photojournalists: As if times weren't tough enough already, a new startup wants to replace your work with Twitter-based crowdsourcing.
It wasn't long ago that Flickr rolled out its massive redesign -- met by both boos and cheers -- that entirely changed the way you experience the photos sharing site. Now it's 500px turn. The premium photo sharing platform just announced its own redesign, focused around larger photos and a Focus Viewer feature that offers a "stunning full screen experience."
After a couple of months in beta, the photography review site DPReview is finally announcing the official launch of an online store that bears the website's stamp of approval. Named GearShop, it's a specialty camera store that will stock its shelves with only DPReview recommended and approved products.
I'm photographing a wedding in a couple of weeks. During one of our meetings, I asked the bride whether she and her fiancé had made a decision regarding their guests being allowed to photograph during the ceremony and reception. She started shaking her head, saying that it hadn't even occurred to her.
On Christmas Day of last year, we shared the news that Instagram was still dealing with fallout after their infamous Terms of Service mishap. Even after scaling back the Policy to pacify angry users, the company still faced with a class action lawsuit.
There's a brand new service in town that's looking to help out those photographers who choose to share their images for free with the online community. Powered by Creative Commons, the new website Dotspin uses a hashtag and voting system to determine a photo's quality and give the photographer a chance to earn credits towards rewards such as restaurant gift cards.
Every so often I get an email asking me to jump in on some forum argument or other. I rarely do that because of the language barrier.
Some people say that the secret to striking it rich during a gold rush is to sell shovels. That's kind of what Roger Cicala is doing. With photography exploding in popularity as of late, Cicala has found huge success in loaning out gear to photographers who would rather rent than buy.
It's official -- the point-and-shoot market is dying, while DSLRs and other interchangeable lens systems champion the cause for standalone cameras.
Last Thursday, the long-awaited and much-talked-about Lumia "EOS" 1020 finally made landfall. Equipped with a second gen 41-megapixel PureView sensor capturing photos from behind a 6-lens ZEISS system, the phone packs quite the photographic punch.
About a month ago, almost every Canon website announced the release of the brand new EF-M 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM wide angle for the company's mirrorless EOS M. We say almost because, at the time, no pricing or release date details had come down the pipe from Canon USA.
Formula One car racing authority FIA instituted new rules this week banning photographers from track pits, after several spectacular injuries or near-misses this season. But photographers are saying such restrictions will do little more than reduce the quality of their work.
Less than two months after the Chicago Sun-Times closed up its photo department and disbanded its staff photography team, a newspaper chain in Georgia has done the same.
Yahoo can't seem to catch a break where Flickr users are concerned. Just as everyone is coming to terms with the redesign that stirred a bit of an uproar on the Flickr forums, the company has introduced a new toolbar at the top of every page that has users upset yet again.
A federal court judge has ordered celebrity/fashion photographer Terry Richardson to surrender 142,000 shots of Lady Gaga as evidence in a lawsuit against the pop star.
We received a new press release out of the Nikon camp this morning, and although it didn't announce any fresh cameras or lenses, it was eager to share a different creation with us: My Nikon World. My Nikon World is a brand new Facebook app that seeks to "Challenge photographers to shoot, share and learn," mostly through friendly competition.
Don McCullin is a photojournalism icon. He's spent his life chasing haunting images that, more often than not, he's succeeded in capturing. And even though his career has taken him all over the world -- to Cyprus, the Congo, Biafra, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, El Salvador, and the Middle East among others -- one thing has sed the same throughout his journeys: he's always shot film.
As baby photographers will tell you, there are a lot of props out there on the market for photographing infants. And, as is the nature of portrait photography, many of these props have a life cycle of a couple years and then, it's on to the next Big Thing. Or, since it's babies, Little Thing.
Yesterday we shared some news coming out of photographer Vincent LaForet's camp that the website service liveBooks -- which is used by many photographers -- was quite possibly on its way out. This after a month of silence and "knowledgeable sources" indicating that the US branch of the business was all but shut down.
There are as many career paths in photography as there are food pictures on Instagram. The difference is that on Instagram, the pictures are posted for fun. When it comes to a career though, pictures are produced for profit. At least that's how it's supposed to be.
Photojournalists in the Philippines are accusing a National Geographic photographer of pushing and kicking a newspaper photographer at a recent press event.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about support and what it means. Is it something you can ask for, but not give back? Are we obligated to return the favor, or is it even important to worry about that? …
Nikon appears to be gearing up to drop some bombshell announcements on the camera industry sometime in the next half decade -- things that could shake up the photo world and change the way consumers think about cameras.
As DSLRs become more and more capable video capture machines, the problem of overheating becomes a more pressing one. With RAW video in particular, where the amount of data being captured is staggering, the sensor needs to be protected if you expect to keep using the camera for any extended amount of time.
Today's minor update from Instagram -- you can tell it's minor because it's version 4.0.2 -- was actually a bit more feature-packed than the number suggests. Coming on the heels of the major Instagram Video update in 4.0, the newest iOS update adds much sought-after landscape support as well as video stabilization when using the front-facing camera.
This month, the Consumer & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) released a new standard to help make better sense of the world of image stabilization. Theoretically, the standard will make sure that all manufacturers test and report image stabilization statistics the same way, so you can better compare between lens brands.
Designing a camera from start to finish takes a lot of work by a lot of talented people. What begins as brainstorming and sticky notes must be turned into sketches, 3D renderings, and physical products. Even the UI has to be meticulously planned so that it is intuitive, speedy and responsive.
Avoid all the signs that it’s a hard time for photojournalists. Four years later your determination may pay off in a reduced job market.
About a month ago, Leica Camera AG made an announcement that's bound to make prospective buyers happy, while possibly justifying the price tag of a Leica camera a tiny bit. The company has decided to begin including Adobe Lightroom 5 with every Leica S, M, X, V and D-Lux camera from here on out.
We told you about the Postagram app/service by Sincerely all the way back in 2011 when it first made landfall. Using the free app, users could select photos, pay $1, and have them slapped onto a postcard and sent to whomever they chose.
The photographer who captured images of the Chicago Bears doing the "Super Bowl Shuffle" is suing the Chicago Tribune and Fox Sports for allegedly misappropriating the images.
When the company CanvasPop puts a customer's photo onto, well, canvas, they often wind up with a bunch of scraps that they have to throw away. Not only are there excess pieces that have been cut off during the wrapping process, but sometimes entire prints don't make it through quality assurance and have to be tossed.
The Olympus financial scandal -- you know, the one that was discovered all the way back in October of 2011 -- has been trying to reach a conclusion for some time now. But now that the Japanese justice system has reached a decision, many won't be happy with the end result. Namely: all of the major players in the $1.7 billion scandal have managed to avoid jail time entirely, at least for now.
A few days ago, we shared the news that Carl Zeiss was rebranding. In an attempt to present a "more consistent image," the company decided to officially change (or rather shorten) its name to just ZEISS. It was minor news but it seems the idea has caught on, because earlier today, Pentax Ricoh announced a name change of its own.
A group representing Irish photofinishers and related businesses says the country's new driver's license policies could kill as many as 500 photography jobs.
As the saying goes: "better late than never." In a move that puts Bing on par with the likes of Google's and Yahoo's image search engines, Microsoft's search giant has just added licensing refinements to its image searching capabilities as well.
So far, the partnership between Hasselblad and Sony hasn't been as enriching as both companies might have hoped for. Hasselblad's Lunar mirrorless camera was met with less-than-favorable reviews once people realized it was basically a re-branded Sony NEX-7 with a massive price tag.
It's been almost two months since we mentioned Sony's mysterious camera-focused smartphone code-named "honami." Thought to be a PureView and UltraPixel competitor, it's expected to add another powerful camera to the smartphone market, but so far Sony has kept a pretty tight seal on any potential leaks.
Aspiring photojournalists probably have a hard time finding much inspiration these days. The profession was ranked 188th out of 200 in terms of desirability, the entire photo staff of the Chicago Sun Times recently got the axe, and a story from earlier revealed that even the successful ones sometimes get stuck on a 12-hour flight with an empty airplane seat as a subject.
It's rather obvious that money is to be made in the stock photo industry. Shutterstock founder Jon Oringer is finding tremendous success with his 55 percent stake his the company. Since filing for an IPO and selling its shares publicly last October, Shutterstock's stock value has more than tripled. In the process, Oringer has become Silicon Alley's first billionaire.
Famed and well-respected optical systems manufacturer Carl Zeiss is taking a step forward to create a "more consistent" image of the brand -- a brand which, up until now, has been known as Carl Zeiss AG.
One of the hashtags that made its way around the Internet after Instagram video was announced last week was #RIPVine. That, of course, was referencing Twitter's 6-second looping video app that many believed would now be brought low by Instagram's new 15-second capabilities.
"I wonder which one of us dies first?" …
After the Chicago Sun-Times laid off its entire staff of photographers at the end of last month, the newspaper's editor sent out a memo stating that employees would be trained in using their smartphones to contribute photography ("iPhone photography basics," it was called).
"Spec" is short for "speculative," and "spec work" is defined by the AIGA (which counts many photographers as members) as, "work done prior to engagement with a client in anticipation of being paid." …
Want a peek into how much freelance photographers get paid by Sun-Times Media? The issue is one that may be on many a photographers mind after the Chicago Sun-Times decided to fire its entire staff of photographers. Thanks to a "leaked" memo, we now have some idea.
Smartphones have been stealing market share from the big camera manufacturers for years now, and it doesn't seem like it'll stop anytime soon. Naturally, that leads to a healthy fear from companies like Canon and Nikon who, unlike Sony or Samsung, don't have players on both sides.
Fujifilm's newest creation, the X-M1, was outed last week when photos of the entry-level X-Series interchangeable lens camera (ILC) leaked onto the web. But while the photos did reveal that the camera would pack a serious punch in a tiny package (in large part due to the lack of a built-in viewfinder), many of the camera's specs and features were still unknown.
