Yes, that’s right Pentax shooters. The wait is almost over. The Pentax FA* 50mm f/1.4 SDM AW lens you’ve all been coveting is finally being released. Pentax says that this is the first new lens which follows a new set of standards for their top-of-the-line Star series lenses. New standards that will, they claim, help to minimise aberrations and deliver the highest possible image quality. We took a brief look at the new lens along with the Pentax K-1 Mark II during The Photography Show a couple of months ago....

The United Nations has called the global refugee crisis the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time. According to the UN, 65 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict or persecution. Sixty. Five. Million. People. Numbers that gigantic can be very hard for most people to visualize or understand. Husband and wife photo team Daniel Farber Huang and Theresa Menders remind us those numbers are human lives – men, women, and children – and not just statistics....

The renewed interest in film lately is fantastic for those who have an affinity for film. It means that the films and products we love will continue to live a while longer. Well, as long as they’re not made by Fuji. It’s resurrected old film, brought a few new ones, as well as the occasional product mixing the old tech with the new. Now, though, the first newly designed 35mm fully manual SLR in 25 years is coming....

Gimbals have become one of the most commonly used camera accessories when filming video. And for the most part, there have been two very different types. Gravity stabilisers, like the Glidecam, and motorised 3-axis gimbals, like the Zhiyun Weebill Lab and Crane 2. The SteadyCross seems to be something sort of in between. It’s a 3-axis gimbal, however, it’s not powered by motors & electronics. Nor is it simply another gravity stabiliser....

Shot in New York in 1932, it’s an image that could never be photographed today. Even if you wanted to, various health and safety regulations simply wouldn’t allow it. Made during construction of the 69th floor of the RCA building, Lunch atop a Skyscraper has become one of those iconic masterpieces of photographic history. Much is known of the building itself. It was completed in 1933, has had several names in its lifetime, and it has almost 2....

Some of you will recognise the name Keith Loutit. He’s the amazing timelapse photographer behind The Lion City, a film which really pushed the limits of of what we all thought timelapse could do, as well as the extremely popular Bathtub series. An Australian filmmaker based in Singapore, Keith now presents us with The Lion City II – Majulah, a sequel to the original timelapse, which offers even more new, exciting and interesting sequences and techniques to inspire our creativity and raise the bar even higher....

At a glance, this image looks like an old photograph of five somewhat bored children posing for a family photo. And indeed, it is. However, it hides a certain macabre secret: the smallest child on the far left is actually dead and is propped up on a stand. To our modern standards, this seems rather creepy, but in the Victorian era, these ‘death portraits,’ as they became known, were very common....

Personal and experimental projects can be a lot of fun for both those who create them and those who view them. This particular project was created by Italian film photographer Mario Cipriano, and it’s definitely a little bit odd, but pretty cool. He combines film photographs he shot with his Leica M6 with a sound recorder to capture the five seconds leading up to the shot being taken, and the five seconds following it....

NASA recently released a stunning Hubble photo of remnants of a massive supernova. While the image seems way more peaceful than real fireworks, this colorful cloud is actually a result of something… well, far less peaceful. What is now a cloud of intricate filaments used to be a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. In the image, what you’re seeing is a remnant of a supernova DEM L 190, also known as LMC N49....

Composition is one of those things that some people just get innately. For others, it’s a constant struggle. We try to obey “rules” and many of us miss taking shots because even though we might like them, other people will think it sucks because it doesn’t fit the “rule of thirds”, the “golden ratio” or some other thing we’ve been told that images are supposed to conform to. In this video from Jamie Windsor, all those “rules” go completely (mostly) out the window, as he discusses the issues around composition and offers eight somewhat unconventional tips that most of this type of content usually doesn’t go into....

In August this year, we presented you with beautiful shortlisted images of Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 contest. The winners of nine categories are officially announced today, along with the overall winner. There were over 3800 entries taken from over 90 countries across the globe. We bring you the best images according to the contest judges. The overall winner is Russian photographer Artem Mironov. He has beaten thousands of amateur and professional photographers from around the globe to win the title of Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017....

We all get stuck in a creative rut from time to time. It’s completely normal if we’ve been into photography for a long time, but it can be frustrating if it persists. There are many ways to get back on track, and Adam Karnacz of First Man Photography offers some that I absolutely love. They’re not difficult to implement, but they’ll all enrich your life and your creative work.Advertisements...

There are some paper and cardboard cameras on the market. Most of them are mere replicas, some shoot film, but have you ever heard of a paper digital camera? I sure haven’t, but it turns out it’s real. And pretty affordable too: for just $99, you can take 16MP digital photos, even video, with a super-thin and super-weird camera made out of paper. This paper digital camera is pretty basic, as you would probably expect from a $99 camera....

I remember when CCTV really became a big thing. For years, London had the most cameras of any city in the world. Now it appears that London has slipped behind, now sitting third behind Beijing and Chongqing in China. Although, these days, it’s not so much about how many cameras you have as it is about how many megapixels each of them has. At the China International Industry Fair last week, scientists revealed a 500-megapixel cloud camera system, which they says is capable of capturing facial details of every individual in a crowd of tens of thousands of people....

If you’re shooting videos with your smartphone, there are plenty of accessories that help to expand your possibilities. At NAB 2018, Cinematics International Co, Ltd introduced an adapter that lets you pair your smartphone with camera lenses. You can attach any professional lens onto your phone and turn it into a cinema camera. As Lanxin Zheng of Cinematics International explains, the adapter covers many different lens mounts. She mentions Sony, Nikon, and Canon, but she adds that you can use “almost all of them....

We’ve seen some interesting uses of AI so far, and the latest prototype software launched by Nvidia could be of great help to many artists. It can turn your crude sketches into pretty realistic landscapes in a matter of a click.Advertisements Nvidia researchers explain in a blog post that their latest software uses generative adversarial networks, or GANs. It converts rough doodles into realistic images thanks to a “smart paintbrush....

Artificial intelligence keeps getting better. A group of scientists from China has developed an algorithm that can turn sketches into realistic portraits. It even works with pretty rough sketches, and the end results look very close to real photos of people. The algorithm was developed by the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and City University of Hong Kong. In the paper, the group of five scientists explained the principles behind this technology....

Oceanographer and engineer Derya Akkaynak from MIT has developed an algorithm that “removes water” from underwater images. As a result, it makes the underwater world look exactly as it would if we were to see it on dry land. And it’s not only useful for scientists. For us “common folks,” it’s amazing to see the underwater world in a completely new context.Advertisements Derya developed the algorithm named Sea-thru in collaboration with Tali Treibitz from the University of Haifa....

I find shooting film is a fulfilling experience, especially if you develop and print your own rolls. But what does it take to make the rolls of film you shoot, the chemicals, and the photographic paper? ILFORD Photo has recently published a beautiful short film which takes you “behind the scenes” of its UK factory. If you’ve ever wanted to see how all things film are made, this movie lets you take a peek inside the facilities and see what happens before the film reaches the shelves....

I am quite fascinated by both thunderstorms and photos from an airplane. But what about taking a photo of a rare weather phenomenon straight from the cockpit? This is exactly what Swiss pilot and photographer Sales Wick did while en route to Brazil. He captured pretty rare St. Elmo’s fire and it looks like the airplane is engulfed in it. The photo is impressive and scary at the same time, and I just had to contact Sales and find out more about it!...