The Yi 4K is a pretty great camera already, especially for what it costs. Yi, however, did something pretty unique with the Yi 4K. When they released the new camera, they also announced that it would come with an Open API. While most aren’t able to take advantage of this, what it does do is allow developers the opportunity to talk directly to the hardware and create custom apps for the Yi 4K....

RØDE Microphones film competition, My RØDE Reel, is now in its fourth year. Established in 2014, it’s rapidly grown to become the world’s largest short film competition. With close to 8,000 entries from 89 countries, it’s become a staple amongst the global filmmaking community. This year, the competition is back with a massively increased prize pool of more than $500,000 worth of equipment up for grabs. These prizes include one completely new one, membership to the RØDE Directors Club....

Massive multi-gigapixel images are starting to become a little more common now, with today’s computing power being what it is. But they still rarely fail to impress. Especially when they cover vast distances and include a lot of detail to zoom in on. This massive 195-Gigapixel image comes from Shanghai, shot from the top of Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Tower. The huge image was created by Jingkun Technology, otherwise known as Bigpixel Studio....

Zacuto, the company famous for its high-end (and expensive) cinema rig accessories has turned to smartphones with their latest release, the Smart Z-Finder. As with many of Zacuto’s more popular products over the years, this one’s a viewfinder. Except it’s not for cinema cameras or even mirrorless cameras. This one takes aim at mobile creators. It’s designed for smartphones. A first of its kind, the Zacuto Smart Z-Finder allows you to film with a smartphone in a way that feels a little more like a “real camera”, allowing you to fill your view with the screen while blocking out external distractions....

When buying a new lens, a common dilemma is whether to go for a native or a third-party lens. The third-party lenses are usually much cheaper, but how good are they? In this video, Jay P Morgan and Kenneth Merrill compare two standard E-mount zoom lenses for full frame Sony cameras: an $879 Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 Di III RXD and a $2,198 Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM. How do they compare in terms of sharpness, image quality, and autofocus for both photo and video?...

Not all of us are seeing snow just yet, and some of us won’t see it at all this year, but in a number of places it’s already started to show up in the environment. This video from landscape photographer Andy Mumford brings us 7 tips for shooting beautiful wintery landscapes Minimalism – A snow-covered scene presents unique opportunities for minimalism due to the mostly white landscapeTexture – Look for textures caused by the wind and patterns in the snowUse bad weather – Bad weather with dull soft light can add a lot of drama to your sceneExpose to the right – Snow is very bright, your camera may want to underexpose it to 18% greyLook after your batteries – Battery life decreases as batteries get cold – keep spares warm to swap regularlyKeep your hands warm – If you can’t feel your fingers you’re not going to make great imagesStay Warm – If you’re cold, you’re going to be miserable, it can ruin your trip and make you ill...

When photographers use terms like ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ light, it’s actually incredibly vague. You would rarely describe your meal as simply a ‘meat’ dish, so when a photographer says they are using hard light in a portrait, it’s just as open to interpretation as your mystery-meat. Hard light can be anything from strong sunlight, to snoots, grids or even simple barn doors in a studio. But even with all that, none come close to the true crisp, brilliantly contrasty light of ‘Optical Snoots’....

Shooting film is often seen as more of a novelty these days. Once, it was just the way photography was done. For those who started off in the digital world, the idea of shooting film can feel quite alien. Understanding the different formats and the effect they can have on the image can be difficult concepts for beginners to wrap their head around. And when it comes to developing their own film, that’s just too much for some folks to handle....

In 2014, curator Simon Njami engaged Ethiopian artist-photographer Aïda Muluneh to interpret Dante’s Inferno for an exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art entitled The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists. Muluneh’s “The 99 Series” featured a model set against a light grey mottled background, with her body and face covered in white paint, and her hands dipped in red. In this episode of the PhotoShelter podcast Vision Slightly Blurred, Sarah Jacobs and Allen Murabayashi discuss the plagiarism of Aïda Muluneh’s work....

In some situations, Photoshop’s Magic Wand tool can save you a whole lot of time when making selections. This group of tools is getting an upgrade, and a very powerful one: meet Object Selection tool. It’s a powerful AI-powered solution that helps you make even complicated selections by a simple click-and-drag. In the video below, Meredith Payne Stotzner of Adobe will show you how it works, and I must say it looks pretty impressive....

This year’s Adobe MAX brought some interesting announcements and new apps. One of the new features introduced at the Sneaks event really caught our eye. It’s called Project About Face, an AI-powered tool that can detect if the image has been manipulated, It also shows where the manipulation has been applied and even helps you to revert back to the original, unaltered photo. Project About Face was demonstrated at Adobe MAX’s Sneaks event by Richard Zhang....

Remember Adobe’s recently announced web-based version of Photoshop? It’s finally available online and its name is Creative Cloud Express. It’s designed for experienced photographers and designers, but also those who’ve never used Adobe editing tools before. It’s a crossover between Adobe Spark and Photoshop Express, but it strangely reminds me of Canva, too. Creative Cloud Express is available to use both through a web browser or on your mobile device....

Advertisements The Arab Image Foundation is a Beirut-based non-profit archive of Middle Eastern photography. Its physical collection counts over 500,000 photos coming from 50 countries across the Arab world and its diaspora. It comprises the work of over 250 amateur photographers and 700 professional photographers and studios. The images date back to as early as the 1860s, all the way to the present day. The Art Newspaper writes that the digitization initiative was launched in 2016....

“ARRI has agreed to a settlement with Rotolight”, a joint statement between the two companies begins. In September 2021, ARRI began legal proceedings towards Rotolight, amongst others, disputing the validity of their lighting effect patents. The challenge came in view of what ARRI called “myriad prior art”. Basically, it’s been around for years, so what’s Rotolight done that’s actually new and patentable? They argued that it was “not new, but rather state of the art”....

Model Bella Hadid recently posted a photo of herself on Instagram without asking for the photographer’s permission. And now, she’s facing a copyright infringement lawsuit. If all of this sounds as if you’re having a déjà vu – well, you almost are. The model was already sued over the same thing before. The agency behind the photo seeks an injunction against Hadid’s further use of the image, but also damages for using the image in the first place....

We tend to think we’re quite privileged here in the First World. To the point where the #firstworldproblems hashtag is basically a joke. It’s to make us feel better about all our petty grumbles the world throws at us. But even in this supposedly privileged society, there are many people truly suffering. And many of those are children. Benjamin Von Wong discovered this after talking with the people at Second Harvest Food Bank....

Here’s a cool trick that my friend Amr Tahtawi showed me a while ago and that I keep using for my light-painting pictures. As usual, I do a series of quick light-painting pictures with Kim Henry at blue hour (to get the nice background). Most of them are lit in one second. These are created using tubeguards. Make sure your composition is perfect before starting shooting and never move your tripod or camera angle....

This guide is intended for concert photography beginners. If you have a DSLR camera and are interested in how to control your camera settings to take great photos at concerts, this guide is for you. If you’re an experienced photographer who just hasn’t shot shows before, there may be some helpful info in here along with plenty of stuff you know already. A quick look at camera settings for concert photography...

Teleconverters have been a part of photography for decades. They’re a great way to effectively double the number of lenses you own by effectively turning each lens you own into two lenses. The native lens and one at double that focal length (or focal length range, in the case of zooms). But are they really worth it? And can you tell the difference between images shot with a teleconverter vs simply cropping the image?...

Well, a couple of things coming out of the Canon camp today. First up, Nokishita has spotted two new camera registrations from Canon coming from what appears to be a Russian certification body. The two bodies are unreleased cameras with the codes DS126841 and DS126842. The other is an update on the long-awaited APS-C RF mount mirrorless camera. The timing of these two seemingly independent bits of info seems quite convenient and I think they may be linked....