diyphotography

If you’re not sure whether you’ve achieved good exposure, using a histogram is the best way to check it. But there are some misconceptions about histogram you’ll hear from many photographers, even the most experienced ones. On the other hand, there are some facts few people knows or shares. In this video, Matt Granger refers to the three most common facts and misconceptions about histogram. Did you know them?...

Sony shooters know that the battery on their cameras doesn’t last as with some other camera brands. This is especially the case with the mirrorless cameras, considering that they are smaller in size than the batteries for DSLRs. In this video, Chris Gampat gives you some advice how to get the most out of your Sony camera battery and make it last longer. If you shoot all-day events with a Sony mirrorless camera, you may need a lot of spare batteries to bring along....

Selfie sticks have been around for a while, and (unfortunately) it seems they are here to stay. They serve as a tool to help you take a photo of yourself with (or without) your friends and get everyone in the frame. But, is it that easy to take a high-quality, artistic selfie with a selfie-stick? This “professional selfie-stick photographer” hit the streets of New York City and offered people to help them take professional photos with a selfie-stick....

With the expansion and increased availability of action cameras, we’ve seen tons of different videos. Many of them are really epic, fun or so stupid that they cause some kind of a reaction. Because of this, our criteria rise and it’s not that easy to get impressed and amused anymore. But then, something like this comes up. Dušan Vižnik was filming a bicycle ride through the woods in Slovakia when suddenly, a bear showed up running towards the cyclist in front of him....

Ever since the middle of high school, I’ve been immensely interested in “the process.” You know, that middle bit between point A and point B that nobody but the artist ever sees. I’ve always loved peeking behind the scenes to see where something started and what kind of work and thought went into creating the finished product. To satisfy those of you who are like me, here’s another post in my Before/After series which not only shows you my images straight out of camera and the final product (hover over the image to see the before), but which uses each image to explain a bit more about what I do in post....

If you are a beginner photographer, everything may seem overwhelming, as there’s a lot to learn at once. But there are still some things tutorials or course books won’t teach you, and photographer Toma Bonciu has created a list of seven lessons like this. These are the things you need to know before you start the wonderful journey of photography. They aren’t the tips about gear, composition and the like....

A picture is worth a thousand words, but when the picture is doctored – it’s a thousand words long lie. And when these fake photos hit the news and ads, it becomes a problem. Sophie J. Nightingale of the University of Warwick ran a study to test how well people can detect doctored images. And the results are not encouraging. It appears that many people can’t spot a doctored image, even when the manipulations are obvious....

It’s mid-summer and I have been doing a lot of underwater portrait photography lately…which has started me thinking that it might finally be time to upgrade my current DSLR underwater camera housing. I have been working with an inexpensive EWA Marine underwater DSLR camera housing for years (read my review here) – I love the simplicity of this housing, but I feel like I have reached a point where the limitations of the flat port are impacting the types of underwater photos that I can capture....

If you want the best sound in your video, you really do need an external microphone. Many cameras today offer the ability to plug a microphone into them, which you then usually mount from the hotshoe. Not all cameras, however, do. Two cameras, particularly renowned for their vlogging abilities don’t have microphone sockets, which is quite surprising. Those are the Canon G7X II and Sony RX100 V. Ted Forbes at the Art of Photography has the Sony RX100 V and as one might expect, uses it for vlogging....

Advertisements We also got to play with the IRIX 11mm f/4 lens which they announced in The Photography Show and were blown away with the sharpness and lack of distortion on that lens (see samples and video below). We tested it on a full frame D810 and shot some of the stands both in landscape and in portrait mode. If you want to get an idea about the distortion, just check the lines along the booth’s walls....

Getty Images has filed a copyright infringement suit against Ohio man, Walter A. Kowalczuk for allegedly downloading as many as 3,400 high resolution images from Getty’s servers without permission which he then resold through a private group on Facebook. According to PDN, Getty’s claim against Kowalczuk, filed June 8th in US District Court in Cleveland, states that he and other members of the group allegedly bought and sold images using codewords for the sources of those images, such as “Spaghetti” for Getty and “Apples” for Associated Press....

We were (semi) excited about the GoPro hero5 Black announcement. And while the footage wuality is yet to be seen, we were still left with some questions about how the camera actually feels and operates. Questions like how does the camera mount to a stick (or any other accessory for that matter)? How does it feel in your hands? Is the LCD any good? Luckily we met the gopro team on the floor and they just happened to have a gopro hero5 black with them....

Raise your hand if you’ve been in this situation before. You are out at night. No camera, just a phone. You want to take a photo of something more than a meter away, and the light is just not there. Even if you turn on the tiny phone light. I know that phones are always improving with low light performance, but sometime you just need that extra kick. Matt of DIY Perks has a great build for an Egg Light (well, a light) that needs no batteries and is extremely strong....

Hello, my name is Tom Waitzman. I made a simple and cheap camera obscura using two cardboard boxes, and I’d like to share the build with you. Two boxes. Tall one is 10″ tall and 5.5″ wide. Small box is 6″ tall and 5″ wide. They are both open on the bottom. Small box has tracing paper taped to one end. Tall box has a 20mm concave lens from an old magnifying glass taped in the middle of a square of cardboard....

Lee Howell is an Award-Winning Commercial photographer and creative retoucher based in the UK, specialising in advertising, fashion and contemporary editorial portraiture. Here, he shows us how he created his image, Walk on the wildside. For this series I wanted to produce an ongoing body of work where the elements of the animal kingdom and classic city architecture are merged into the same imagery. Wildlife and animals have always appealed to me since I was a boy, as well as being a keen wildlife photographer before becoming a professional commercial photographer and retoucher, which has meant that they have often played a significant role within the imagery I produce....

I live in south Florida and spent many nights last summer chasing storms through swamps and along the beach attempting to learn to shoot lightning. I’m a simple hobbyist so please take these suggestions with a grain of salt or at face value…or whatever, you know what I mean. But I’d like to share some lightning photography tips with those who are new to this. Ok so settings usually depend on a couple factors… ambient light (dusk, evening, dark night etc), the distance you are from the storm, and the size of the lighting the storms putting down....

Having spent almost a decade making software exclusively for Apple platforms, Macphun is now releasing software for Windows. Launching today, Macphun Luminar for Windows is now available. It’s not quite perfect just yet, though, but it’s not far off. Macphun Luminar makes its Windows debut as a completely free public beta. Luminar is an all-in-one photo editor, in a similar sort of vein to Lightroom. It works in a non-destructive way with your images to offer quite a wide range of options....

GoPro cameras seem to get mounted everywhere these days, but what do you do when you simply want to attach one to the strap of your backpack and give yourself a bodycam? For those that don’t already own something like the excellent Peak Design P.O.V. action camera mount and want to get up and running quickly, this video from Kyle Martin offers an easy and inexpensive solution. Ok, it may not win any beauty awards, and the bright white cutting board might make things a little more obtrusive than you’d like, but you could always go with black, and sand down the edges to neaten things up a bit....

If you were to ask me about a specific time in my life when photography made a significant impact it would’ve been fall of 2011. For my birthday, my husband surprised me by taking me out for lunch at a tiny burger dive, and then stopping in at the local art museum. He’s not exactly an “art-lover” per say, so I was a little confused by the move – until he explained what they were showing....

Comedian Tanya Hennessy might already be well known to some of you. She posted a video to Facebook last year, titled Things people say to Photographers, which proved rather popular. It particularly struck a chord with Australian photographer Karen Alsop. And when Tanya recently posted that she dreamed of being a princess, Karen was more than happy to help turn her dream into a reality. Karen specialises in creating fantasy....