I remember when LED lights first started to become a real thing for video a little over a decade ago. They weren’t even close to full spectrum, would introduce all sorts of colour casts, were huge, dim and had price tags starting in the thousands. Since then, though, LED technology has come a long way and the prices have dropped dramatically. How dramatically? Well, in this video from Caleb Pike, we see a 2-light LED lighting kit for video, including a softbox, that costs less than $100....

Twenty years ago, Nikon released a very special camera; The Nikon F3H (“H” for “High Speed”). Designed specifically for super fast burst shooting, it keeps up well with many of today’s modern DSLRs. Capable of shooting at 13fps, this rare modification based off the Nikon F3 and MD-4 motordrive manages to stand up against any of the latest and greatest modern DSLRs. In this video, the F3H’s 13fps is put against the measly 11fps crop mode of the more recent Nikon D3....

You don’t need a medium format camera to shoot medium format photos anymore. Well, sort of. FotodioX RhinoCam Vertex adapter lets you shoot digital medium format photos with your full-frame camera. Mathieu Stern tried this $300 gadget, and it seems to do the trick pretty well. First things first, how does the RhinoCam Vertex work? You’ll need your full-frame camera, a medium format lens, and Photoshop for stitching the images....

From time to time, we get to see really masterful digital art. The young Ukranian digital artist brings together photography and digital art, reality and dream, fairy tales and dark stories – and creates beautiful art from them using Photoshop. Viktoria Solidarnyh takes photos and turns them into composites. Some of them are realistic, while the others look more like digital drawings. All of them are made by combining many photos, and many artworks look like they belong on a book or movie cover....

It’s always interesting to see something familiar in a totally new light. This is exactly what photographer Don Komarechka did in the latest video for DPReview TV. In this fun video, Don shows us how insects see the world using a modified camera and ultraviolet light. And it’s incredible how flowers we see every day suddenly become something completely new! To capture the world from an insect’s perspective, Don uses a camera modified to full spectrum....

When on set, you need to stay focused and professional in all situations if you want to get the job done right. A cameraman named Greg Harriott raised this to a whole new level. While he was filming an interview with a horse breeder, one of the horses got a little too affectionate and started nibbling on him. However, Greg kept it together and filmed the whole interview. And there’s a video showing was going on behind the scenes, which is sure to put a smile on your face....

If you want to bring out your inner hunter but you wouldn’t hurt a fly, Alex of I did a thing has a fun DIY project for you. He has made a rifle that lets you shoot animals in the only humane way: with your camera. This camera rifle is cheap and easy to make, and Alex shares the build process in the video below. Alex says that he was inspired for his DIY project when he saw this man and his camera rifle....

One commercial photographer I know who shot a lot of pet food advertisements used to joke that the animals in his studio were so well trained he could almost get the cats to go make him a coffee. Not so with wild animals, unfortunately, where the saying ‘never work with animals’ becomes pretty accurate. This photographer found out the hard way when this elephant took a distinct disliking to his camera gear....

What’s the collective noun for frogs? No, it’s not a box of frogs much to my disappointment. It’s actually an army. Sounds a little intimidating but they ain’t got nothing on crows. One innovative Kickstarter project is now open and asking people to “join their army” as they turn the world into their very own tripod. The product is called the FROGPOD. It’s essentially a magnetic tripod mount, which contains incredibly strong magnets....

Last week, Canon rehoused a couple of its old EF lenses into RF cases, but also released something brand new. A macro lens that wasn’t just an old design with an EF to RF adapter bolted on the end, but a whole new design. That lens is the Canon RF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM and it brings with it a new and very unique feature – Spherical Aberration Control....

There are a few methods to make fake blood for the movies (or you can simply buy it). But what about drugs? Of course, the actors won’t use the real thing on set, but it’s not that easy to find substitutes as one may think. Fake drugs need to look and act the same as the real ones, but they also have to be completely safe to ingest. So how do they do it?...

A few weeks ago, The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) captured a groundbreaking image. For the first time ever, we can see not one, but two exoplanets orbiting a star similar to our Sun. The image was taken by SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument). It’s an instrument installed on VLT’s Unit Telescope 3 and designed particularly to search for exoplanets. This is the first direct image of a planetary system around a star like our Sun....

“What should I charge for my photography?” “Where can I go to find out how much to charge?” Commercial photographer and long-standing educator and mentor Don Giannatti says that of all the things he’s ever asked about photography, pricing related questions are by far the most common. He tells it like it is in this video about how to approach pricing your work.Advertisements Don says that contrary to popular belief, there is no one size fits all pricing structure, particularly for commercial photography....

A tiny camera that fits inside a pill-sized capsule has revolutionised cancer screening in Scotland. Over two thousand patients have now used the PillCam rather than the more traditional invasive method of having a colonoscopy. The PillCam has reduced waiting times for bowel cancer screening and allowed faster diagnoses, an important factor in battling the disease. The procedure itself is technically called a colon capsule endoscopy (CCE). The tiny camera is swallowed like a pill and then travels through the digestive system, recording 50,000 images along its journey....

If you spend time in nature, I bet you have been stung by ants more than once. And have you ever wondered how do these little critters inject their venom under our skin? Thanks to scientist Adrian Smith, you can now see it from up close. He has filmed the world’s first close-up, super slow motion video of how ants’ stingers work. And while it teaches you something new, it’s also very captivating to watch....

A photographer from Belarus, Dasha Buben, has published a powerful and meaningful project titled I Survived. She has photographed the survivors of domestic abuse in Belarus for over a year, and her aim is to help them love themselves again. Dasha’s portraits don’t tell the story of victims. She sees her subjects as heroes who have gone through a lot, yet have found a way to survive and get back on their feet....

I love seeing the wet plate experiments of Austrian photographer Markus Hofstätter. He’s so prolific with them that when he decides to do something interesting it ends up being very interesting. Lately, he’s been trying to apply wet plate techniques to types of photography you wouldn’t normally associate with the medium. He has a couple of very cool projects on the go at the moment that he will tell us about in due time, but for now, check out these passport photos shot on wet plate using the Polaroid MiniPortrait 402 camera....

Filters are usually used to enhance your images, add some effects, or protect your lenses. But here’s something different. Exelence Brilliance Indesign has launched Reflective Filter. As the name suggests, it’s a mirror filter that lets your models see themselves, or it can help you while vlogging. Reflective Filter utilizes a simple one-way mirror. Other than letting your models see and pose themselves, it also adds an “Instagrammable” flare effect if you shoot into the light source....

Most large modifiers come with two diffusers. A big one for the outer rim and a smaller one that fits between the source of light and the big diffuser, right in the middle of the modifier. Of course, this begs the question how may diffusion layers do you actually need. Photographer Francisco Joel Hernandez shares a short, yet informative video on how diffusion of strobes effects portraits (or any other type of shoot)....

Seattle-based photographer Rainee Colacurcio has recently captured a stunning image of the International Space Station (ISS) caught passing in front of the sun. What’s more, the sun is completely free of spots, which makes this photo totally captivating. I personally couldn’t stop staring at it, and NASA recently selected it for Astronomy Photo of the Day, explaining why it is so special. Rainee’s photo was featured on APOD (Astronomy Photo of the Day) and it combines two images....