Working with real big lenses is fun, but often troublesome. Handholding with image stabilisation can help, but only until your arms get tired, which is where the trusty tripod steps in to give you a solid foundation on which to rest your lens. But even when working with tripods, the view can sometimes be a little unsteady. In this video, wildlife and nature photographer Steve Perry offers us a few tips to help improve stability when using big long lenses on tripods....

Triple display laptops have almost sort of been a thing since 2017 when Razer first showed off their then-top-secret triple-display laptop to Linus Tech Tips at CES. Those early prototypes were stolen and somebody was even caught trying to sell them, but they’ve kind of disappeared ever since. There haven’t been any commercially available laptops with triple displays, and most DIY solutions are a little brutal at best. There are some bolt-on solutions to turn your regular single monitor laptop into a triple monitor machine, but Matt at DIY Perks thinks he’s come up with his own ultimate solution....

A few months ago, I gave a masterclass about how to create colorful portraits. One of the setups was a unique portrait with a model “trapped” inside a light-painted circle. I wanted to share how I created that portrait using a drill, a found garden hose, and a couple of KYU-6 LED lights. You may hear me saying “don’t try this at home” a couple of times. If you do decide to defy me, please use soft materials like a garden hose and soft KYU-6 lights....

Every Monday I ask my FB Page community to participate in my -Share-a-Shoot- post whereupon they share a recent shot they’ve taken in exchange for some feedback from myself. I’ve been doing this every week for what feels like years now, and each and every week I am often mentioning the same things in my responses. Often it’s the subject being lit from below, badly placed hair lights, awkward posing and so on....

Recreating practical lighting effects for video and photography is a fairly straightforward process. You just need to think about how the lights are constructed in the real world, and then recreate your own version of it. When it comes to creating natural lighting effects, though, things can be a little more tricky. Natural lighting effects can be extremely effective, but are often difficult to capture as they occur in the real world....

Finding a specific niche is one of the things you should do if you want to be a professional photographer. But it’s not as straightforward as it sounds. In this video, Scott Choucino discusses why photographers should find their niche and how it will affect their business. But what’s also important – he shares some advice on how to do it. Scott shares his experience and the story of his journey towards finding his niche....

Sony’s A7/A9 series of mirrorless cameras have a bad reputation for their grip ergonomics. And rightly so. I love my Sony A7III and it is still the best camera on the market for my particular needs, but the grip just isn’t anywhere near as good as on a pro DSLR. My pinky finger has nowhere to go, and when holding the camera for extended periods of time, often with a big chunky lens and a speedlight attached, my hand even starts to hurt....

There are lots of videos out there on lighting and shooting portraits, but they often show huge studios, with the kind of space that no reasonable person would have available in their home. That observation was pointed out to photographer Nathan Elson on a video he posted shooting self-portraits at his studio. So, he’s made another one, to show how you can use smaller equipment to get a similar look in a small space in your home....

Interviews can be a fun lighting challenge, especially when you need to go back and forth between two subjects; The interviewer and the interviewee. There are all kinds of elaborate lighting setups you can use to light two subjects and have them both looking great on-camera. Sometimes, though, you’re limited on gear or space or setup time. In this video, filmmaker Rubidium Wu shows us a simple three light setup that gives short lighting on two interview subjects to great effect....

If you’re a photographer, chances are that someone has bought you a lens mug so far. Or maybe you already have a few of those (I know I do). We all know more than one lens mug is just too much – so why not repurpose it? In this video, Dave Knop a.k.a. Knoptop will show you how to turn a lens mug into a desk lamp. It’s simple to make and it looks pretty neat!...

The beauty dish has become a staple of portrait and fashion photographers. When used well, they offer a pleasing and flattering look to your subject. The price of beauty dishes has come down in recent years as more have come to market. But you’re still not usually going to find one as cheap as making your own. In this video from the folks at COOPH, we see how we can make our own DIY beauty dish for minimal cost and tools....

Other than being the greatest toy ever, LEGO bricks have been proven useful in photography and filmmaking. Some creatives use them as subjects, and some make sliders or stabilizers out of them. In this video, Jacob Kassnoff of Indy Mogul demonstrates how he made a DIY follow focus rig using LEGO bricks and a single 3D-printed piece. So if your stash of LEGO is gathering dust somewhere in the attic, here’s a chance to play with it again in this super-geeky project....

Photographer Dustin Dolby is known for his comprehensive tutorials all of us can try out at home. After a series of excellent wine photography tutorials, he has issued the latest one – about photographing glassware with minimal gear, but professional results. You need to pour that wine into something, right? Like his previous setups, this one also involves some pretty basic gear – a camera with a kit lens, a strip box with a speedlight adapter, a speedlight and a commander unit....

Recently, Caleb Pike showed us his studio on a stand. Now, he’s back with a new video, showing us how we can set up something a little more permanent for YouTube or other content creation by setting up a complete studio on a desk. If you’re regularly shooting at the same location, perhaps doing tutorials, or even just spoken pieces to camera, having a more permanent, efficient setup often makes more sense than one you can wheel around....

I love using wide-angle lenses on location (although I don’t do it anywhere nearly as often as I should). They’re fantastic for showing your subjects in the context of the environment, enjoying their surroundings. They can really suck you into not only the feeling of the location but the mood of the subject, too. They’re not always easy to shoot, though. In this video, Pye Jirsa shows us how he uses wide-angle lenses on location for engagement shoots to shoot action portrats and create images that he describes as “alive and immersive”....

Long before I decided to start shooting portraits, I was asked to photography people. Friends, family, their friends, and their friends. At the time, I wasn’t interested in photographing people, and didn’t really have much idea how to go about getting great photos of people. I usually declined and deferred to people who knew what they were doing. But it’s a valuable skill to learn. In this video, photographer Joe Edelman shows us how to get great casual portraits and headshots using very minimal kit....

The vast majority of us learn photography with the aid of natural light. Whether we started years ago with our parent’s film camera, or whether you found your passion for photography thanks to your smartphone, natural light was most likely the sole source of light in your shots. For many, making that first step into the world of controlling the light can be a daunting one. Which light should I use and how do I learn to use it?...

The Koldunov Brothers are always coming up with strange ideas. Mostly they’re to replace photographic accessories with, let’s say, less conventional items. This time, it’s something a little different. They’re not just replacing camera accessories. They’re replacing the camera. With a flatbed scanner. It’s actually not a bad idea for experimenting with. A flatbed scanner is essentially just a giant, slow, rolling shutter camera. Sure, it has an extremely close focus and a very limited depth of field....

I had to shoot in an environment without HSS (Didn’t have my Citi600 with me) and I didn’t have my Hoya ND16 filter with me either. Which meant that I couldn’t effectively overpower the ambient light coming off the stage to get rid of the blue on the model’s skin. This led me to trying a few solutions, albeit badly until Stefan Kohler hooked me up with this ridiculously simple and awesome solution for fixing colour problems while retaining all of the micro details in contrast etc (which you lose when you use Frequency Separation for low level skin etc)....

I’ll regularly take pictures when I visit family or they visit us with my phone and I’ll send those to whoever, no problem. But when I take pictures with my camera, I want to edit them. I’m gonna colour correct, edit out undesirable little bits, crop it possibly, I’m gonna do shit to it before I want anyone to see it. But inevitably there’s always someone who asks to be sent the pictures and it’s always the same convo....