Every time a new generation of phones comes out, it always surprises me with how far they seem to leap forward with each generation. Much of it is down to software and computational photography rather than the sensors or processors themselves actually improving. But sometimes you see something that really makes you go wow. Qualcomm, manufacturer of the Snapdragon, the most popular line of smartphone processors, has just released a video showing off 4K HDR with a Snapdragon 855-powered smartphone....

When man landed on the moon in 1969, it was a milestone in the history of humankind. Around 530 million people watched the Apollo 11 moon landing live. During the trip to the moon, while on the surface, and when heading home, many photographs were created. Made using modified Hasselblad 500EL cameras, those shots result in some very high resolution images. Fast forward to now and motion designer Christian Stangl along with his brother, composer Wolfgang Stangl, have created a fantastic short film documenting the event....

In 2014, Rosetta spacecraft became the first spacecraft to orbit a comet and bring us stunning images of its surface. In 2016, it made its final maneuver when it hard-landed the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The Rosetta’s comet mission gave us over 400,000 images, and motion designer Christian Stangl and composer Wolfgang Stangl joined forces to turn them into this breathtaking video. Rosetta probe was launched in 2004 from the Guiana Space Centre....

Colour wheels in applications like Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve are an absolute blessing when it comes to both colour correcting or colour grading video. It’s a feature that I’ve wished image editing applications like Photoshop had for years. Now, finally, a new Colour Wheels plugin from the folks at Retouching Toolkit gives them to you! Colour wheels really are the most intuitive way to correct or alter your colour and are way faster than trying to do it directly with something like a curves adjustment layer....

Wigglegrams are a fun thing to shoot and experiment with. For those who’ve never heard of them before, it’s essentially a sort of 3D photo, shooting an image with multiple lenses side-by-side next to each other and then turning them into an animated gif to help show some depth in the photo. You can even just take two of the images and try to turn them into a regular stereoscopic 3D image if you want....

When he wanted to create a futuristic movie in his imaginary world, a green screen was not an option for Michael Plescia. It was too expensive and way too time-consuming to composite every frame. So, he gathered a dream team that helped him reinvent filmmaking and make his movie possible. He shares the story of how he killed the green screen and brought his idea to life. Since he realized green screen wasn’t going to work for his movie, Michael saw the tornado scene from the Wizard of Oz....

Before Twitter killed Vine, Kevin Parry was famous for his mind-bending short clips. The US-based stop-motion animator creates videos with clever and fun optical illusions. Even though we all know they are just clever filmmaking and editing tricks, for some of them we can’t help but wonder – how did he do it? I remember seeing one of Kevin’s illusions circulating around Facebook as a gif, the one where he catches a ball from his own reflection....

Remember that funny story about eagles being trained to clean the airspace of illegal drones? Well, things just got serious. The program started with one eagle, so the chances of the bird catching a drone somewhere in the duch airspace were pretty random. but the program is gaining momentum and more eagles are begin trained. If you thought that this is a futile effort, just watch the video below. The film is and it looks like it rolls the story of a high profile meeting being spied upon with a drone....

There is a lot of German camera gear that we use or at least mention from time to time. And if you’re an English speaker, chances are you pronounce all of it in a “wrong” way (just like we do with the Japanese word “bokeh”). Max of Analog Insights even got criticized for not pronouncing gear like Leica, Meyer Optik Görlitz, or Carl Zeiss “correctly.” So, he made this video for all of you who may have been in a similar situation....

Even if you have a limited budget, you can still recreate the look of some famous movies and TV shows if you have enough imagination. But guys from Studio 188 are taking these recreations to a whole new (and utterly hilarious) level. They create low-budget trailers for famous movies and TV series. Actually, zero-budget could be a better description, since they use nothing but household items and their imagination. Terminator 2, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, you name it – they can recreate it, and make you laugh out loud when you see the result....

If there is one thing I have grown to love about photography, it is the ability to capture, control, and manipulate time. Photography is giving us the option to see things in ways that are impossible to achieve with our naked eyes. This opens up a whole new world of creative options. While cameras do offer us a fair amount of control using ISO, shutter, and aperture, we sometimes need to look at other options to get extremely long exposures....

Total solar eclipse is coming on August 21, and I guess your cameras and protective filters are ready. But before you start filming or photographing this phenomenon, would you like to see the first ever photo of it? Prussian photographer Johann Julius Friedrich Berkowski was the one who took the first correctly exposed daguerreotype of total solar eclipse. It was on July 28, 1851, in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). No one before him managed to do it; it’s not an easy task even today....

It’s the perpetual question in photography. Should I upgrade my gear? It’s one that photographers seem to struggle with every day – because that’s how often new cameras seem to be getting announced these days. Everybody thinks they’re missing out on something wonderful and amazing when they don’t have the latest and greatest kit. But do you really need it? Should you upgrade? That’s the answer that photographer Dan Watson attempts to answer in this video – as he walks into frame carrying a Nikon Z7, Canon EOS R, Fujifilm X-T3, Sony A7III and Sony A7RIII....

Even if we’re not told, nobody likes to have the realisation or go through the experience of failing at something. Many of us go through things in life that we’re failing at without even realising it because we just don’t understand what we’re doing wrong and how we could do things differently. It can be even worse when somebody else points out that we’re failing, as photographer Justin Mott does in this video....

The choice for shooting hard vs soft light is quite an easy one for many people. But if you don’t understand what the difference is, what difference it makes to your subject, or how to create it, soft light can be a bit of a mystery. Soft light is fantastic for portraits, though. It’s particularly flattering, especially to ladies, and isn’t that difficult to understand. This video from Caleb Pike at DSLR Video Shooter walks us through how to get it and why we need it....

If you’re not dealing with broadcast, and you’re simply uploading to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc. then I’ll save you some time. You don’t have to stick with 29.97 framerate. It’s old, it’s obsolete, it’s no longer technically relevant, shoot and play back at whatever framerate you like. If you want to delve a little deeper into why 29.97fps is even a thing, check out this video from Matt Parker at Standup Maths....

On Via Paolo Lomazzo, in Milan, sits an unassuming shopfront. On the window are the words “Riparazioni Macchine Fotografiche” (“Camera Repair”) printed in simple bold letters. This is the workshop of 76 year old Gian Luigi Carminati, a man who has spent his entire working life repairing cameras. Armed with little more than a set of screwdrivers and a lot of patience, Carminati has repaired countless cameras in his time....

We’ve seen a couple of encounters of photographers and bears so far. This video from RM Videos shows a polar bear that got too close to a photographer and did it more than once more than once. But the photographer kept his cool stood up to the animal each time, and then casually went on taking photos. The bear in the video seems young, but it’s still large. After all, there can possibly be other bears around....

Product photography can be such a fun genre of photography to explore, even if you don’t want to do it for a living. Perhaps you just want great pictures of your own products to sell in your Etsy store or maybe you just want to show off your new toys in an effective way to your Instagram followers. Whatever the ultimate use, it’s still product photography and if you want to do it well, then you’ll want to watch this video....

Capturing footage with a moving car has typically meant one of three things. Either you’ve got an operator clutching a camera pointed through a window or missing door. The camera is fixed to the vehicle itself, strapped to all manner of poles, suction cups and various other things. Or, you hire a vehicle equipped with the Ultimate Arm. Now, that’s all about to change. Thanks to the rapidly advancing gimbal technology we have today, other options become easier to develop....