If you are passionate about rare lenses, here’s a treat for you. A Berthiot Monital 130mm f/1.0 cine lens is currently being sold on eBay. Other than being very rare and having a wide aperture, it has a pretty unique trait: it produces triangular bokeh. The seller describes the lens as being in good condition, with “beautiful original coating” with a few marks. According to the listing, the original aperture “works perfectly....

Photoshop’s Blend If sliders are wonderfully useful and powerful tools. They allow us to seamlessly blend two images together with ease, or knock out elements of our images completely. But, they’re not without their quirks. One of those quirks is kind of a double-edged sword. The perk, and problem is that it takes adjustments you make to the image into account before it applies the blend. This can be very handy when merging two different landscape images together, for example....

As technology advances, we get to see some interesting camera-related inventions. Engineers at the University of Michigan have recently presented a prototype of a wireless camera that can power itself indefinitely by light. It’s also less than a millimeter wide, so it can be hidden anywhere. As explained on TechCrunch and IEEE Spectrum, photovoltaic cells can store the energy that falls on them and record how much energy fell on them....

I don’t know about you, but I find factory tours fascinating, especially when so much equipment is still being assembled by hand. Sure, the individual components manufacture may be automated, but to see them all come together to create the final by hand product is a wonderful sight. It’s also interesting to see how each company differs in their approach & working environment, too. I used to think all this stuff was 99% automated until I started seeing tours of factories like Leica and Sony....

We are all witnesses to vast technological advancement, and it’s fun to watch how it can be used for art. Artist Damien Henry seems to think so as well, so he wanted to see what happens when he uses machine learning to create a video – from a single image. He used a prediction algorithm and gave it one photo at the beginning. From then on, the machine calculated each following frame and predicted what it would look like....

Rumours about new Canon cameras seem to have been fairly quiet since the Canon EOS R3 was announced. At least, they’ve been very quiet when it comes to anything specific, but a new post on Canon Rumors suggests that we can expect three new EOS R system cameras to come in the latter half of 2022. Unfortunately, perhaps, none of them seems to be the anticipated EOS R1 flagship model....

Mounting a camera overhead can be a difficult task if it’s not something you need to do regularly. Many of those that do need it regularly have permanent camera installations so they’re always ready at a moment’s notice. For those who prefer to take the DIY approach, we’ve covered quite a few options before. Sometimes, though, you don’t want a permanent fixed rig. What do you do for those random occasions where you just decide you want an overhead shot, and need to setup in a hurry?...

This corona-madness has lasted for far too long, and it will probably last for a while more. There’s no doubt that 2020 has been hard. Even if we haven’t contracted the virus, many of us have been depressed, anxious, out of work, unable to travel… Because of all that, we may not really feel like shooting, or we just don’t think there’s anything to shoot. If you’re a hobbyist like me, maybe you feel like giving up photography at this point....

Tourism in Japan has increased dramatically over the past few years. And as we all know, not all tourists are respectful towards the places they visit. Kyoto’s historic Gion district has been struggling with bad tourist behavior. As a result, Kyoto has banned photography from all of Gion’s private streets and properties. With its traditional stone pavements, restaurants and tea houses, the Gion district is one of the major tourist attractions in Kyoto....

When shooting in low light, you need to either shoot at long exposures on a tripod or crank up the ISO if you want to shoot handheld. A group of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Intel are bringing the best of both worlds. They’ve trained AI to process low-light images so they’re much cleaner and more usable than grainy photos where ISO is too high. This tech could let you shoot at faster shutter speeds and lower ISO and still get with sharp, clear photos....

Once upon a time, I used to spend hours in the darkroom, making elaborate double exposures with negatives. Then, in the digital era, I started making them in Photoshop, which took so little time, and could be done in minutes. Now, anyone can do easily do it in seconds, with any smartphone. And it’s a whole lot of fun. Have you tried it? Here’s the basics: crank open your camera app on your smartphone, whether that be an iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel or whatever, and get ready to create a panorama....

Natural light or artificial light? Sure, it’s a matter of preference, but photographers Manny Ortiz and Jessica Kobeissi made an interesting challenge out of these two approaches. They had three rounds of photographing the same model in the same studio. Jessica used only natural light, and Manny added off-camera flash. Let’s check out the results and see which you prefer. The model Sophia changed three outfits throughout the challenge, and both Manny and Jessica photographed her in their own style....

If you ever needed more proof that you don’t have to jet off to exotic locations to take impressive photographs, then photographer Ola Maddams is the perfect example. Ola captures the nightlife of her local wildlife from her garden in Amersham using infra-red technology to set off the camera traps. Ola was first inspired by a chance sighting of a hedgehog as she sat in her garden during the pandemic lockdown last year....

Earlier this month, Calgary-based business The Camera Store was robbed for pricey Hasselblad X1D camera and three lenses, and a rare Leica MP Safari kit. Thanks to the fast reaction of the community and the police, the Hasselblad gear was returned to the store only 48 hours after the robbery. And now, just in time for Christmas, the rare $13,000 Leica found its way back to the store, too....

Shooting product photography is a whole lot of fun. Often, though, it can require a surprisingly high number of lights and modifiers to get the job done in a single shot. But what if you don’t have a ton of gear? What if you just want to give it a go without having to spend on a bunch of new flashes? Compositing is the answer. In this video, Dustin Dolby from Workphlo uses just a single speedlight to show one process for creating composited product photographs....

Every once in a while all creatives get stuck in a rut with their work. Photographers and filmmakers are no exception, and I believe we’ve all been there. Overcoming the creative block may seem difficult, even impossible – but it’s not the case. In this great video from This Guy Edits, you’ll see eight fantastic tricks for getting out of the creative rut and getting inspired anew. 1. Embrace constraints Are constraints limiting you, or expanding your creativity?...

Not entirely unexpectedly, Venus Optics has announced their new Laowa Argus 18mm f/0.95 MFT APO and Laowa Argus 25mm f/0.95 APS-C APO lenses. The addition of the two new lenses brings Laowa’s Argus line up to six lenses in total now, with two for MFT, two for APS-C and two for full-frame. Each pair offers a similar field of view range for each sensor format. The two lenses announced today offer a 35mm full-frame equivalent field of view for MFT and APS-C users with the usual fast f/0....

Advertisements The World Photographer of the Year is open for photos in the following categories: Main categories Bird Photographer of the YearBest PortraitBirds in the EnvironmentAttention to DetailBird BehaviorBirds in FlightBlack and WhiteUrban BirdsCreative Imagery There are also special awards: Portfolio Award and Conservation Award. BPOTY also chooses Young Bird Photographers of the Year, one from each age group: 8 and under, 9-13 years, and 14-17 years. The overall winner will be chosen from category winners....

VSCO has announced that the much loved VSCO Film Presets for Desktop are coming to an end. The company says they’re moving completely away from the desktop to focus solely on their mobile app. The Presets for Desktop have been rather popular over the years, although that’ll all come to an end on March 1st, 2019. VSCO hasn’t really said why they’re killing them off, except to say that they are “always moving forward” and focusing on mobile....

Back in 2017, the estate of Andy Warhol launched a preemptive strike against photographer Lynn Goldsmith over Warhol’s series based on her photo of Prince. They hoped to prevent any future legal challenges from her, considering that Warhol was “inspired” by her image. However, the U.S. appeals court sided with the photographer on Friday, ruling that Warhol’s Prince series was not transformative and that it could not overcome copyright obligations to Goldsmith....