Smartphone vlogging has gotten quite popular over the last couple of years, but it has one big flaw. Not with all phones, but most of them. And that’s that you can’t use your high-quality rear camera if you want to see your composition. You’re stuck using the selfie camera which isn’t always that great. Well, now, thanks to the new Ulanzi ST-09, if you use an iPhone and have an Apple Watch, you can mount the two back-to-back so that you can use the better quality rear camera on your phone and see a live view preview at the same time....

If there’s one annoying aspect of cameras, particularly mirrorless cameras that are constantly powering an LCD or EVF the whole time they’re turned on, it’s battery life. There are grips you can get for some cameras to let you take advantage of multiple batteries or you can go with external power, but not all cameras. Frustrated with battery life, a tinkerer going by the name “funkster“, decided that the most practical option for his Canon EOS M mirrorless camera was to build his own grip....

In 2014 movie Interstellar, Christopher Nolan managed to create the first scientifically accurate black hole. Some sources claim it’s not the case, but nevertheless – I think the movie and the special effects are fantastic. This movie has inspired filmmaker Thomas Vanz to create a short film named INTRA, which takes you on a journey from a black hole to the Big Bang in only four minutes. Inspired by the “White Hole Theory” and Interstellar, Thomas created this abstract, immersive video using mainly practical effects and chemical reactions....

What does it mean to be a professional photographer? Many people will assume that the tag “professional” automatically means that you take amazing photos. But is it true that only pros are great photographers? In this great video, Mark Denney discusses three reasons why you don’t have to be a professional to still take great photos. And if you’re a hobbyist like me, you’re gonna enjoy this. 1. Skills have nothing to do with income When we think of “professionals,” we mainly refer to people whose entire income (or the majority of it) comes from photography....

If you follow our blog regularly, you know that we love toy photography and Star Wars. And today we have a treat for fans of both. Photographer Matt Ferris shared his photo of an X-Wing Starfighter, and we were immediately drawn by it. Although it’s a toy photo, it looks pretty real, just like it came straight from the movie. Matt was kind enough to share the details of creating the photo with DIYP....

Human trafficking is undoubtedly a huge problem on a global level. There are many organizations trying to solve it, and now there’s an app that helps all of us join this fight. TraffickCam is an app that allows users to contribute to the database of hotel rooms all over the world. All you need to do is snap a few photos of the hotel rooms in which you stay on your travels....

TTArtisan has released their new 50mm f/0.95 lens for APS-C mirrorless cameras. Like most of TTArtisan’s lenses, this is a manual focus lens and when used on an APS-C body, it offers a field of view equivalent to that of a 75mm lens on a full-frame body. The fast f/0.95 aperture allows for shooting in very low light conditions. It also offers a very shallow depth of field that’s particularly well suited to portraits....

Advertisements In my first compositing tips post I talked a bit about how lighting is everything. This still applies, and always will. When choosing what background to use for a composite, pretty much nothing is more important than finding (or shooting) an image that compliments the lighting of your subject. The. Lighting. Must. Match. Last time we talked about paying attention to what direction the light is coming from, but we didn’t go into any detail about the color of the light....

One of the most marvelous things about photography (and there are many) is the collaboration with other artists. You get to meet new people, you inspire each other, and together you make something extraordinary. So, when two incredible astrophotographers get together, what can you expect? An equally incredible image. Andrew McCarthy and Connor Matherne got together and combined over 200,000 shots to create a single moon photo. The result: a super-detailed 174-megapixel image that lets you zoom all the way in and see all the details you wish....

Often relegated to the realms of architectural, product photography and the occasional bit of timelapse, tilt-shift lenses aren’t typically found in a portrait photographer’s bag. But if “portrait photographer” describes you, then should you consider getting one? Eric Floberg things so, and regularly uses his Canon TS-E 45mm f/2.8 to create more interesting and unusual portraits on location. Tilt-shift lenses, as the name suggests, have two functions that make them different to normal lenses....

Well, this one has some potentially scary consequences for photographers rights, as well as other copyright holders. The case involves an image created by photographer Russell Brammer in 2011, stolen in 2016, and then taken, cropped and used by Violent Hues Productions, LLC on their website to promote a film festival. The logic of this is so complexly stupid that it’s going to take a minute to try and explain....

I thought this was quite an interesting video. It’s an interesting take on how we light for different subject matter. It isn’t saying that one method of lighting is necessarily better or worse than the other, just that the goals of the shoot are very different, the final use for the footage is also very different and so the lighting needs to be different. In this video, filmmaker Tyler Stalman shows us how we can light both ways using the same equipment....

Canon is getting ready to announce the Canon EOS R5 and EOS R6 mirrorless cameras and a bunch of lenses in the next few hours, and you can watch the whole thing live, right here. It’s scheduled to begin at 14:00 CEST (1pm UK time, 8am Eastern, 5am Pacific) today, and should make a lot of people very happy. It should also help to clear up the confusion about those long-but-slow f/11 primes....

Normally I create photographs. This time, however, the final product is a video where you can follow the change of crystals/salts from the collodion wet plate process. I have started this project because at my workshops I am often asked what happens when developing, fixing or sensitizing the plates. Of course, I have often tried to explain it, but a picture is worth a thousand words. That’s why this video was made....

If you are reading this site for any amount of time, you you know that we are big fans of adding movement to time lapses. I mean static timelapses are so 2014 :) UPDATE: the giveaway has ended and a winner picked. Please see bottom of post for details. Huge thanks to SYRP for the prize and huge thanks to everyone for playing. If you want movement but still cant setup a big rig, the Genie mini is the perfect solution for you, and we are giving one away!...

We really didn’t know what to expect going into this. Panasonic hasn’t even made an APS-C body before, nevermind a full-frame flagship mirrorless camera. Though, it seems they realized the S1 series needed to make a splash if its release was going to trail behind Canon and Nikon’s first foray into professional-grade mirrorless cameras because the Panasonic S1R is massive. This body is titanic compared to its competitors: the A7R III, Z7, and EOS R....

It’s the stuff of nightmares: you’ve been asked by a close friend to photograph their wedding. You feel like you can’t say no, but you’re not a professional wedding photographer. So what do you do? One Reddit user said ‘I do’ to her friends, only to regret it bitterly during the actual event when a heated argument with the groom caused her to take extreme measures. Reddit user Icy-Reserve6995 posted about the event in the ‘Am I the A**hole?...

A lot of us modify our gear to make things better suit the tasks we need them to perform. Sometimes we do it just to speed up workflow a little. Rarely, however, are the modifications quite as extreme as the Nikon D5500a from Primaluce Lab. Based on a Nikon D5500 this camera has had the stock CMOS sensor switched out for a CCD. They also added a pretty hardcore cooling system....

Resolution is an often complex topic but even more so when it comes to how it relates to human vision. And it’s kind of a two-part question, to begin with. What resolution do cameras need to be to capture what the human eye sees? What resolution do screens need to be for the human eye to not be able to see the individual pixels? But it’s even more complex than that, as this video from Vsauce explains....

In this article, I aim to explain what TTL is, what is does and how it can be implemented into a photographic workflow. I also go on to share my test images from a recent shoot where I tested the TTL abilities of the Godox AD600 / PixaPro Citi600 TTL / Flashpoint Xplor 600 TTL flash head. The test shots provided below show you exactly the strengths and the weaknesses of the function for a variety of situations....