You know how many photographers say that gear doesn’t matter and that the story is more important than the gear you use? YouTuber Casey Neistat has made one of the most ridiculous (but pretty fun) comparisons between two pieces of gear. In this video, he tests a crappy $35 smartphone zoom lens against a $1,000 Sigma zoom lens. Can they even compare? Casey points out that “the story you tell is always more important than what you use to tell it....

A few days ago, we learned that Panasonic was about to go wide. We took a peek at the leaked specs and two leaked photos of the company’s new lens, and now it’s officially out. The Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 9mm f/1.7 ASPH. lens has just been released. It’s a lightweight wide-angle lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras, and one of the widest MFT lenses on the market. To be fair, we’ve already learned quite a lot from the leaked list of specs....

When I was a kid, stop-motion was the thing. There were many cartoons made using this technique, and I was enchanted by them. I even tried doing it with my old camera and some toys, but of course, it didn’t look like I imagined. If you’re enchanted by stop-motion like me, you will enjoy this video from Great Big Story. It’s a story about the master of stop-motion animator Phil Tippett and his project “Mad God....

In this hectic and violent world, photographers use the term “shooting” for totally different purposes. Jason Siegel is a photographer who combines the two meanings in a controversial and thought-provoking project called “Shoot Portraits, Not People”. This is his first non-photography based art project. In order to make it, he used photographic equipment built into high-powered weaponry. Thus, he combined different techniques and different types of art into a unique project....

When digital cameras became widely available, many photographers have switched from analog to digital shooting. Now we’re deep into the digital era, but it seems that analog photography is gaining momentum again. If you started your career as a digital photographer, and now you want to try shooting analog, you will find some precious advice in this video from Chris Gampat. 1. Film is balanced to daylight (or tungsten) When you shoot digital, you can adjust white balance settings according to the lighting conditions....

Being out alone in the dark isn’t for the faint-hearted, but astrophotographers have learned to handle any fear of the dark when conditions are favorable. Some night images take a lot of planning: full moon and milky way images with specific foreground, for example. Interestingly, there are actually very few photographers who specialize solely in astrophotography. The majority are versatile and shoot various types of landscape images. Kah-Wai Lin Dr....

Teeny tiny action cameras and 360° cameras open up a lot of filming options that just simply aren’t available to larger DSLR and mirrorless camera setups, let alone big chunky cinema cameras. You’re not limited to just clamping one to your chest or handlebars while you go out cycling, either. There are many very cool effects that you can create with one and in this video, Luke Edwin shows us 42 of his favourite small camera shots that he’s created with his action cameras and 360° cameras over his last few years as a full-time YouTube content creator....

Proper color grading is one of the important elements of your videos. It affects the mood of the scenes, and it can affect the viewers’ emotions. Proper color grading takes some time to master, and Matti Haapoja from TravelFeels points out to five mistakes you should aim to avoid during this process. They are common with newbie filmmakers, so if you’re still learning to color grade properly, you should pay attention to these....

It looks like 500px never lacks new reasons to make photographers angry. Users have recently received a notice that the website is changing its Terms of Service. The updated agreement has sparked some outrage among photographers, making them delete their accounts. Photographer Beno Saradzic (previously) shared a screenshot of 500px updated Terms of Service on his Facebook profile, particularly the part about the rights. “I just read 500px’s updated Terms....

For anybody who shoots videos, especially on their own, shooting b-roll can be a bit of a pain. You have to have it, though, really, to stop your video just becoming some kind of long monologue. It’s the supplemental footage that shows what you’re actually talking about, or just provides context for what’s going on or the topic at hand. It’s something Sean Tucker knows all too well, having gone out in the past carrying far too much gear in order to shoot it and ultimately using very little of it....

It is not uncommon for a photo to be retouched more than once. Maybe you spent a night sleeping over it, maybe you learned a new trick and most commonly: maybe the client came back with some feedback. In this case, you will go back to the files and re-do some of the work you already did. If you did it all on the background layer, you may find yourself in a bad situation....

Between the After Effects and Photoshop announcements and now this, it seems to have turned into Adobe day around here, but Adobe has now opened up registration for their annual Adobe Max event for 2021. Due to the global pandemic, the event is being held online again and registration is completely free. Announced earlier in the year, the event is happening from October 26-28th. Amongst the speakers are YouTubers, filmmakers, video editors, photographers, graphic designers and a bunch of other creative artists we can absorb knowledge and inspiration from....

Adobe is showing off a new sneak peek tech preview. This time, it’s a completely overhauled Content-Aware Fill interface that offers a great deal of control over the existing Content-Aware Fill feature. The old one is there if you want it, but the new one makes it a whole lot more powerful. The new interface pops up when you choose Content-Aware Fill from the menu. It looks a little intimidating at first, but the video shows that it’s fairly straightforward....

If you ever quite liked the idea of strolling though town wearing a “Happy senior couple piggybacking at the beach” long sleeved t-shirt, well, your time has come. The clothing line you never even knew you wanted is finally here (kind of), thanks to Adobe Stock. Don’t be so quick with the “Buy now!” button, though. It’s just a marketing campaign. Swedish ad agency Abby Priest was approached to create a campaign for Adobe Stock....

Popular iPad Pro photo editing app Affinity Photo has just seen a pretty significant update. The updates and new features are the result of direct feedback from users. Serif, the company behind the app, says that there are now over a quarter of a million Affinity Photo for iPad users worldwide. They also say that this has kept them “inspired” to keep pushing the capabilities of the software and what’s possible on a mobile device....

I’ve not generally been the biggest fan of backpacks. Around 16 years ago, I got a Tamrac Cyberpack 6, which I love and it’s served me well over the years. I’ve bought and borrowed other backpacks in the intervening years, but invariably I’ve hated them for one reason or another. But my Cyberpack 6 is getting a little old now, they don’t make them anymore, and my friends at Lowepro insisted that I give the new ProTactic BP 450 AW II a go....

Finding somewhere truly dark for astrophotography becomes more and more difficult with each passing day. Light pollution always seems to be increasing. Towns and cities are ever expanding, getting larger and brighter. And many astrophotographers guard the secrets of their favourite spots to shoot. For those just getting into it, finding somewhere dark can be quite the challenge. Now, though, America has a designated 1,400 square mile (3,600 square km) area of Central Idaho set aside for stargazing and astrophotography....

Well, this is an interesting one. Right-to-repair has been a hot topic for a few years now. It’s a way to combat things like planned obsolescence and expensive proprietary repairs for products you own. Printers, for example, are well known to allegedly have finite lifespans programmed into them. But some products, like those from Apple, are simply impossible to repair yourself if they break. It’s interesting then, for Steve Wozniak – yup, the Apple co-founder – to not only speak in support of right-to-repair but explicitly stating that Apple wouldn’t have existed in the first place if not for the ability to repair the “open” electronics they owned at the time of its creation....

Apple’s Photos app is capable of detecting almost 4500 different scenes and objects using image-recognition technology. But recently, a user discovered that the app also knows what a bra looks like. So, it recognizes and tags all your photos in a bra, making them all viewable in one place. Since no AI is perfect, this one isn’t either – some users have reported that the app also placed their nude or even sex photos in the “bra” category....

UPDATE: there will be no smiley in the sky tonight. What we thought of as a smiley, will be a rare conjunction (close pairing) of Venus and Mercury. As Forbes points out, on May 22, 2020 you will see the bright planet Venus about 10º above the horizon. Look just beneath it and you’ll see the tiny red dot of the planet Mercury. They will be just 0.5º apart It’s almost like a great cosmic “It’ll be ok”, but next month, on May 16th, to be precise, a crescent moon will sit in the sky beneath Jupiter and Venus to form a smiley face amongst the stars....