I recently received my shiny new ASUS ZenFone 5, which just went on pre-order in the UK today. As an ASUS Brand Ambassador, I can’t exactly review this phone without it being perceived as a little biased (even if I’m being completely objective), so I’m not posting a review. But what I can do is show you how I use it to help me with my photography and the apps I use to do that....

Those of us who develop ourselves typically throw the empty film canister away when we’re done. Perhaps we’ll keep one from a roll of something a little rare now and again. Hillvale, an independent film lab in Melbourne, Australia, however kept everything. Since opening shop in 2013, Hillvale have been saving the 35mm film canister from each roll of film that’s been brought in to them for developing. Last year, they developed their 50,000th roll....

There are macro images, and then there are extreme macro images. Photographer Marco Retana from Costa Rica specialises in macro images of insects that are indeed pretty extreme in the close-up department. Retana manages to capture such incredible detail, particularly in the eyes of his subjects that DIYP had to catch up with him and find out how he shoots these images. One of the things that Marco enjoys about such extreme macro photography is that you can capture details that you can’t even perceive with the human eye....

Drone technology has come on so quickly in such a short space of time. Especially the camera technology. I’m not just talking about the quality of the optics and sensors, either. The “brains” behind the visual systems in drones now is just nuts. Even modest consumer drones have facial recognition, subject tracking, and similar features. All these features and help us to achieve the best shot possible. A team of research from MIT and ETH Zurich have now taken things way beyond that which is currently available to the masses....

Creating apocalyptic worlds isn’t an uncommon theme for many photographers. Usually, however, this creation is finalised in Photoshop. They’re often composited images, blended with some CG textures to give those last little touches. But what if you don’t want to do it in Photoshop? What if you want to shoot it for real? That’s exactly what diorama artists Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber have been doing for over a decade....

There are so many things in our household that we could use for DIY projects. Some of them we use every single day for their primary purpose, but they can easily become our best friends when taking photos or shooting videos. If you’re on a budget or just need some quick and simple DIY solutions, check out this video from Chadwin Smith. He shares ten household items that you can use for your filmmaking and photo projects, and we all have them at home....

I can never get enough of gadgets and jewelry inspired by photography. One of these is Power Lens from LightPix Labs. It’s a “pancake lens” which is actually a wireless charger for your mobile device. It mimics the style of a 40mm lens, and it looks like a nice gift for photo nerds. LightPix Labs promises fast charging of your iOS or Android device with this “lens.” As they write, Power Lens supports Fast Charge, which is able to charge your phone 1....

Tatiana Subbotina, from Saint Petersburg, Russia, started making videos in 2013 while living in Thailand. The videos were aimed at children. But then she decided she wanted more from her creations. So, she decided to teach herself how to chroma key composite with a green screen and Adobe Premiere Pro. And it’s made her something of a YouTube hit. With nearly 20,000 subscribers and over a million views of her videos in the past month, she’s certainly doing something right....

3 axis handheld motorised gimbals seem to be the hot new toy at the moment. Electronic image stabilisation in small systems like action cameras and mobile phones sucks. Optical image stabilisation is rare, and still not amazing. So, a motorised gimbal helps to keep things smooth and steady and level. I got one myself about six months ago, the Zhiyun Smooth C, and they are extremely handy. For Chinese drone manufacturer Zerotech, though, handheld gimbals just don’t go far enough....

Milky Way photography is one of the most fascinating types of photography, but to shoot the most appealing part of our galaxy, the Milky Way center, you need to plan your shot since it’s not always visible. The galactic center is only visible during a specific season (March to September in the Northern Hemisphere and February to October in the Southern Hemisphere), and also, just for a few hours during the night....

There is no doubt that increases in smartphone camera technology has made a huge dent in the sales of compact cameras. Compact cameras, also known as point and shoots, vary wildly from very low end to fairly high. And for stills photography, there’s no doubt that most of the current top smartphones can easily keep up, and even beat, the selection of compacts that are out there. But what about for video?...

Ever since AI became widely available and used in every possible app, we’ve seen as many of its advantages as drawbacks. One of those drawbacks is racial and gender bias, and increasingly popular text-to-mage generators aren’t free from it. Enter Stable Diffusion Bias Explorer, a tool that lets you explore AI-generated images and the biases they contain. It’s free, accessible to anyone, and quick to show that both humans and artificial intelligence still have a long way to go before they get rid of deeply rooted stereotypes....

Most of us know about the amazing sky replacement AI in Photoshop, but what happens when you don’t want to actually replace the sky, just select it to make adjustments? Masking the sky can be a bit of a hassle if there are intricate parts to mask such as a bridge. We’ve shown you various techniques before to make this easier, but it seems that another extremely powerful tool in Photoshop’s latest update is hiding in plain sight and makes sky selections even quicker....

As somebody who owns five Panasonic cameras specifically for shooting video, I’ve learned to never rely on the autofocus from any of them and just go manual focus pretty much full time. It’s a lesson that many Panasonic video shooters learn quite early on. For some reason, Panasonic just really never seems to bring it home when it comes to video autofocus. Even with their newer full-frame S models. It’s something that Kasey at Camera Conspiracies has definitely noticed, and spoken about at length across multiple videos....

Many of us will remember the original adventures of Ted Theodore Logan and Bill S. Preston Esq., and their long-awaited third movie was finally released last month. There was quite a bit of makeup and effects for certain parts of the movie, though, as… well, this post will likely contain spoilers so I’ll save it for after the jump. But this 9-minute behind the scenes look goes through the process of how special effects artists like Kevin Yagher (who worked on the first two Bill & Ted movies, countless others and is also creator of the original Chucky) built the muscle and “fat suits” for Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter for various scenes during their reprisal of those two iconic characters....

It’s hard to imagine that a particular film stock, especially something like infrared film, might have an origin story that’s almost as wild as a superhero. But the way Todd Dominey tells it, that’s pretty much how it sounds for Kodak Aerochrome. In this video, he goes over Aerochrome’s origins and its life until its demise in 2009. Developed by Kodak specifically for the US military during World War II, Aerochrome has had a colourful history (pun intended)....

Canon’s EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II announcement is expected to happen quite soon. Rumour has it that this lens will be the first to feature its own built in LCD display. Up until now, nobody’s really known what for. Digicame-info, however, seem to have stumbled across a couple of patents which show what information may appear on the LCD. Set to replace the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM released in 2005, the new lens should carry all the usual updates we see with new lens announcements....

Landscape photography can enrich your life in many ways. One of the most obvious perks is traveling to new locations, but do you always need to travel to get amazing shots? Well, you sure can, but there are also perks to staying in your hometown and shooting local landscapes. In this video, Mads Peter Iversen gives you five reasons to shoot your local landscapes. 1. It’s simpler Obviously, it’s so much easier to shoot locally: there are no flights or long rides; you don’t need to worry about accommodation, car rental and other logistics....

Everything seems to be getting smaller and smaller these days. Cameras and lenses don’t seem to be immune to this phenomenon, despite some cameras pushing for bigger. Of course, there’s no real right or wrong when it comes to the size of your camera, just whether or not it will do the job. One of those jobs for cameras is medical, and scientists at the University of Stuttgart are really taking it to the extreme in a new paper published in Nature Photonics, producing lenses that are 120 millionths of a meter in diameter....

Deepfake videos are getting more and more advanced at a rapid pace. They could be misused in all sorts of ways, so it’s no wonder that scientists are working hard on spotting them. A new tool developed at Binghamton University detects deepfakes by analyzing the person in them and looking signs of life that may not be visible to the naked eye: a heartbeat. The tool is called FakeCatcher and it works by recognizing biological signals in videos of people....