Smartphones are getting smarter with every new generation, and so are their cameras. But when you combine a good photographer and a good smartphone, the sky is the limit. Quite literally. Zach Honig of The Points Guy recently shot magnificent Northern lights with nothing but his iPhone, handheld at a 3s exposure. He shared his experience and some photos with DIYP, so let’s see how he did it. In spring last year, Zach saw his first Aurora from an airplane while flying over Alaska....

Photography is a lot of fun. For the most part it’s a solo pursuit where you are completely responsible for your own success or failure. But anyone can be a great photographer! Most people in the world are professional photographers now that phones are taking world class, billboard worthy images. If you want to stand out in this sea of photographers, you’re going to have to learn how NOT to swim....

Low lying fog can be fantastic for those creepy photo shoots, especially out on location. Or, perhaps you’re trying to recreate the look of a particular 80s pop music TV show. Whatever your reason, low lying fog often works much better than a more elevated smoke-filled atmosphere choking your subject. In this video from Jay P Morgan for The Slanted Lens, we see how to make a smoke machine produce low lying fog....

Advertisements 1. Paint Symmetry The first Easter egg can be a pretty useful feature if you use Photoshop for drawing. Go to Preferences > Technology Previews and check the Paint Symmetry. You’ll see a little butterfly icon appear in the toolbar. When you create a new document and click on the butterfly icon, choose “Vertical” you can paint symmetrically. It’s similar to those watercolor symmetry projects we did as kids....

Lightroom started to overhaul its Lightroom CC UI in around October 2020, switching the old split toning feature into a new Color Grading feature with more video editing style colour wheels rather than basic sliders and a standard colour picker. But it’s a feature that still confuses some Lightroom users who have only ever dealt with the previous split toning feature and have never worked with video before. The Colour Grading feature does the same thing that the Split Toning tool did, except it lets you do a lot more, too, and it lets you do it a bit more intuitively....

Huawei has just announced three phones in the P40 series: Huawei P40, P40 Pro and P40 Pro+. Once again, Huawei has put the focus on the camera capabilities. All three versions of the latest flagship phone bring some improvements over the previous series. Sensor size, zoom range, and maximum ISO are only some of them, so let’s dive in and see what Huawei has come up with. Each of the models has a different number of cameras....

To show off the features of the Sony RX100 IV camera, Sony Thailand has produced an amusing three minute video imagining your camera as if it were a human in order to make their points on the RX100 IV’s advantages over a big, bulky, scary DSLR. With features like a flip screen, the RX100 IV certainly offers its advantages to the social media selfie addicts. Especially when you add in the WiFi capabilities....

With the lack of trade shows this year, Cinema 5D has taken to hosting an online virtual show this month, allowing companies to show off their new product announcements. It looks like some of those announcements are coming a little earlier than the live streams expected to begin on April 20th. One of the first announcements is the new SpiderCrab quick-release magic arm from iFootage. Magic arms have been a staple for photographers and filmmakers for years, allowing them to attach things to other things....

In October last year, the sad news was announced that Imaging Resource would be shutting down after more than 20 years of being one of the most respected resources for photographers on the web. Now, five months later, it appears that IR has a saviour, in the form of Madavor Media, the company behind such publications as Outdoor Photographer and Digital Photo Pro magazines. A post on the Imaging Resource website by IR founder, Dave Etchells, says that they’ve been in talks with Madavor Media since the initial announcement in October, but it’s taken until now to wrap things up and make it official....

Plenty of selfie-related accidents and deaths happen each year, and the majority of them occur in India. In an attempt to increase safety at popular tourist spots, the country is about to introduce “no-selfie zones,” where visitors, as you can guess, won’t be allowed to take selfies. According to research, between October 2011 and November 2017, there have been 259 selfie-related deaths in 137 incidents. The researchers have spotted an exponential increase in these accidents and they blame it on several factors....

Right now, most consumer and professional 360 cameras use Wi-Fi to operate. Sadly, its limited range means you can only go so far to use it. The good news is, Insta360 users are about to get a boost in their signal. Well, at least the ones who have the $3,500 Insta Pro 360. The VR company just announced Farsight, a wireless video system that broadcasts Wi-Fi over long distances. It’s similar to DJI’s Lightbridge, but for VR use....

Another lawsuit has been filed against Snap Inc. and Meta and their impact on a teen’s mental health. The Social Media Victim Law Center sued the two companies over the “burgeoning mental health crisis” in children and teenagers in the U.S. In this particular case, the Snapchat and Facebook and Instagram parent companies have been sued over the suicide of a 17-year-old boy. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Wisconsin boy Christopher J....

Other than shutting down its IGTV app, Instagram is bringing more changes to the video content on its platform. From now on, videos on Instagram will have auto-generated titles in over 15 languages. Sounds familiar? Yes, TikTok has this feature too. Instagram made an announcement on Twitter, sharing that auto-generated captions will become available for all Feed videos. There are 17 languages for now, but Instagram promises that there are more to come....

Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s privacy & portability issues have been all over the news lately. Naturally, some attention has turned toward Instagram, too. After all, he owns them both, so why not look at both platforms? TechCrunch posted an article a few days ago about Instagram’s portability problem. That problem being that you’re unable to download your data. While Facebook (sort of) allows you to do this (it’s never worked for me), Instagram doesn’t....

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure nothing good has ever happened when a bunch of Instagrammers discovered a new photogenic destination. During this year’s UK lockdowns, hikers have discovered an airplane crash site in the Peak District. Of course, everyone now wants a photo of it. The invasion of “Instagram hikers” has gotten dangerous for Instagrammers themselves, but it has also created new problems for the rescue teams in the area....

When Interfit first released the Honey Badger, it just looked like a straight up copy of the Alien Bees DigiBee. But Interfit has is busting the Badger out of that mould with their next generation Badger Unleashed lithium-ion battery powered portable strobe. It resembles the original Honey Badger but offers TTL and High Speed Sync. And, of course, there are no wires to worry about, thanks to a built-in battery....

According to the DxO tests, the camera of the iPhone 8 Plus is the best they’ve tested so far. It scored the impressive result of 94, but could Samsung Galaxy Note 8beat it? DxO hasn’t tested this phone’s camera yet, but SuperSafTV’s Safwan Ahmedmia has. In this video, you can see a side-by-side comparison of iPhone 8 Plus and Galaxy Note 8. He tests the quality of the video, audio and photos, in terms of sharpness, low-light performance, dynamic range, background blur and so on....

Irix, the Swiss lens manufacturers are branching out into new products besides lenses. The natural extension to lenses is filters. While Irix lenses do come with rear filter holders, you often need them on the front. Things like polarisers and graduated NDs are impossible to work with when sandwiched between the lens and body. So, to tackle this issue, Irix have today announced a new 100mm filter holder system. The Irix IFH-100 is a dedicated adapter designed to hold 100mm wide filters....

When it first showed up, BeReal seemed like a breath of fresh air among all those social media filled with filtered faces, staged lives, and fake smiles. This app was dubbed “anti-Instagram,” as its goal was to have the users share the genuine, unstaged moments of their lives. But is BeReal losing its point only a few months after its launch? I have some thoughts about it, and I believe there are two main reasons why this app might fail before it even properly takes off....

I’ve seen my fair share of cool Halloween costumes over the years. But meteorologist Lisa Michaels has won this year’s first place in my book. She appeared on KFVS News in Missouri and did a weather report dressed as a floating cloud, thanks to a clever green screen costume she made herself. As you can probably imagine, this clever costume was made from “the cloud” and the green skirt. The skirt matches the color of the green screen so when Lisa appeared, it looked like she was floating on a fluffy cloud....