Opinion

Ask any working photographer what the one thing that they cannot fix in post is, and the answer will almost always be the same: light. It's easy to clean up skin, tweak color and contrast, and even swap skies or extend backgrounds. Still, bad light has historically meant a costly reshoot, hours of painstaking compositing, or the quiet disappointment of delivering something a client doesn't like. Stockholm-based startup Vividon is looking to change that, and today it has opened early access to …

Blackmagic Design has released DaVinci Resolve 21 Beta 2, a quick follow-up to its recently introduced public beta. The update arrives less than a month after the initial announcement and focuses largely on stability, bug fixes, and refinements, particularly in the new photo editing tools.

You might not know what the word "provenance" means but you probably are familiar with the problem it can cause. You take an amazing photo, it goes viral on social media, but no one knows who took it. There is no provenance trail to link back to the creator.

I’ve looked at thousands of black and white photographs over the years -- both my own and those of others -- and I’ve noticed something that nobody talks about enough.

Panasonic's most exciting news this week was definitely the new Lumix S 40mm f/2 lens, but there's also some news surrounding arguably the perfect camera to use with the new Lumix S 40mm f/2 prime, the Lumix S9. There's yet another new color for the Lumix S9, and slightly to my chagrin, it's the best one yet, at least in my view.

Alongside importing and selling many foreign products, Japanese company Saeda also makes some things itself, including under its internal "BECKS" and "Be" brands. Through the former, Saeda has just announced a new digital camera, the Becks B-Quest BQ1, and it is an interesting mixed bag of style and specs.

Canon's latest patent applications in Japan outline three very interesting, exciting lenses. The patents describe 130mm f/1.8, 300mm f/2.8, and 500mm f/5.6 prime lenses. The usual disclaimer applies: just because a company files patent applications for products does not mean it will ever actually make them. That said, if Canon did make them, the EOS R system would be decidedly stronger.

NASA's historic Artemis II mission delivered many absolutely spectacular photos and inspired a new generation of people to love space exploration. It also provided a fresh opportunity to explore the often confusing, disjointed landscape that is NASA's photo publishing system.

We have bred an entire generation of technicians, not observers. The modern photography industry operates on a highly profitable, cynical lie: buy the next lens, the next sensor, the next firmware update and your photographs will finally matter.

Your photos have meaning intrinsically linked to your own and your viewers' personalities and subjectivities. Understanding how that works helps us to break free from bland, mundane images and create something more compelling.

When PetaPixel editor-in-chief Jaron Schneider saw Sony's cutting-edge XYN immersive display technology at CP+ 2026 in Yokohama, Japan, he described it as being like seeing through an Apple Vision Pro, but without any of the headgear. But XYN goes far beyond a single display device; XYN is an end-to-end spatial capture solution.

When Shenzen Sonida Digital Technology Co. Ltd. joined the Micro Four Thirds system in February, it was easy to wonder about the quality of Sonida's future products. However, the company has publicly expressed a strong desire to make high-quality new imaging products.

This March, Spanish conceptual artist and photographer Joan Fontcuberta published a new book in Italy. Immagini Latenti concludes with a chapter on AI and photography, referencing the debates surrounding Boris Eldagsen’s submission of an AI-generated image to the Sony World Photography Awards in 2023 and Miles Astray’s submission of a photograph in the AI category of the 1839 Award in 2024.

VSCO has increasingly incorporated artificial intelligence (AI) into its photography products, including AI Lab, a dedicated AI-based editing platform inside the VSCO app on iOS. To better understand how photographers feel about AI and how they want to use it in their photography workflow, VSCO conducted a survey of photographers across the U.S. and Canada in December, and the results are quite interesting. The company published its report today.

A camera projects an illusion of authority. It is easy to mistake the act of framing for the act of creation. We expect the lens to function as a paintbrush, assuming that technical mastery guarantees dominion over a scene. The prevailing mythology insists that vision alone bends reality, and that a trained eye can summon permanent order from spontaneous chaos. The vagaries of the environment dictate otherwise. 

In the modern age of wildlife photography, I increasingly find myself reflecting on the balance between technological advancement and genuine photographic skill. With the rise of advanced mirrorless cameras, AI autofocus, high-speed burst rates, and powerful editing software, many photographers can now produce technically sound images with relatively minimal effort.

Anamorphic lenses are everywhere these days. From the small screen of television to the big screen of IMAX theaters, cinematographers often reach for anamorphics. These lenses not only deliver an ultra-wide, cinematic look but also feature distinct oval bokeh and exaggerated flare. The look is so prevalent in live-action filmmaking now that even animated movies, like the brand-new "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie," are following suit and simulating the "look" of anamorphic lenses.

Although it is April Fools' Day, OM Digital Solutions (OMDS) is not joking around. The company announced a significant change in its corporate shareholder structure today, which it says will "enable more agile and flexible decision-making."

AI in photography is a hot topic. It can range from a purely workflow tool to a portrait retoucher and even a full-blown creation tool. According to a survey of 363 photographers who either use AI as part of their workflow or are open to AI retouching tools, the vast majority believe AI should assist but not take over creative control.

Thypoch, known for its classically-inspired manual focus prime lenses like the Simera 28mm f/1.4, Eureka 50mm f/2, and most recently, the Ksana 21mm f/3.5, has unveiled its next project: an autofocus-equipped 24-50mm f/2.8 zoom lens. This is a very bold new chapter for the upstart Chinese lens company.

Earlier this week, Panasonic unveiled the Lumix ZS300, also known as the TZ300 in some markets. The new compact camera is nearly identical to its predecessor, released in early 2018, except for one big thing: the ZS200's electronic viewfinder has been removed, replaced with nothing but more plastic. There are logical explanations for this, but they do little to stop me from disliking the change.

I flew to Atlanta expecting to cover a lens launch and came away with something far more meaningful. The debut of the Zeiss Otus ML 35mm f/1.4 was framed as a first look, but what Zeiss created was not a traditional showcase. Instead, it became an evening centered on artists, storytelling, and a sense of community that rarely takes the spotlight in this industry.

A well-known Pentax leaker with a strong history of being right has said a new Pentax DSLR is coming this year. That's certainly possible, but based on very recent conversations with company leadership, you should probably temper your expectations.

AI-powered post-processing platform Aftershoot has published what it describes as binding public commitments, outlining three key pillars for how the company will develop, implement, and utilize artificial intelligence as part of its product offering.

This week, ON1 announced Restore AI for its Photo RAW MAX software. The company says the goal is to give photographers the ability to restore old photos using a "powerful new AI photo restoration module," but what it appears to do instead is dramatically change the photos into AI hallucinations.

At first glance, it plays like visual effects wizardry, an F1 car suspended midair, mechanics orbiting it with balletic precision, but the reality behind Red Bull Racing’s zero-gravity pit stop is far more ambitious and well worth revisiting.

At CP+ 2025, TTArtisan, best known for its lenses, unveiled that it was developing its first-ever camera, a retro-inspired folding Instax instant camera. The TTArtisan 203T is finally nearing release, but TTArtisan's approach to the launch is strange.

Just over a month ago, Chinese imaging technology company Shenzen Sonida Digital Technology Co. Ltd. (Sonida), joined the Micro Four Thirds system. Sonida makes Songdian-branded cameras, which are typically low-cost compact models.

GoPro announced a new GP3 image processor a couple of weeks ago, promising twice the pixel-processing power of its prior system-on-a-chip (SoC) and improved image quality. After showcasing the new chip's prowess with sample photos, GoPro today released a new video, and the next generation of GoPro is looking very good so far.

Think back to this time last year when The Brutalist was being pilloried for using AI to improve Adrian Brody's Hungarian accent. Two other Oscar-nominated movies in 2025 had also confessed to using AI to improve speech.

Adobe's longtime CEO, Shantanu Narayen, announced this week that he is stepping down after 18 years as CEO and nearly 30 years at the company. If you ask shareholders, Narayen was, for a long time, among the very best in the biz. If you ask Adobe's core customers, the artists who were once indispensable to the company's success, it's a different story.

Meet Alphy, Sony Alpha India's new AI-generated rodent mascot. Alphy loves his Sony Alpha camera, traveling the world, capturing beautiful photos, and being an affront to human creativity.

Japan's love affair with train photography is well known, with train photographers, also known as "toritetsu," occasionally causing significant safety concerns as they throw caution to the wind to get better train images. However, most train photographers don't menace society. A new Panasonic survey focuses on a pleasant part of railway photography: Photographing train-obsessed kids enjoying their hobby.