Fstoppers Original Articles

After a long weekend with too much food and too little exercise, I found myself receiving a gift that contained both a product and a lesson.

Have you ever considered using a phone for a professional project? I hadn’t but I was pleasantly surprised by what the vivo X70 Pro+ phone was capable of. Sure, it has all the technical specs with an imaging system co-engineered with ZEISS and their color correction technology built-in, but what was it like to shoot with?

Breathing life into your photographs can make the difference between an average shot and a masterpiece. But how can we bring life into a flat piece of paper? Depth is all you need.

When you combine modern photography gear, even at the entry-level, with today's post-production software, it has never been easier for people to get high-quality images. The days of perfectly matching time, elements, and light are essentially done.

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, the season of shorter days and more time spent indoors is upon us. Indoor pet photography can be tricky, but it doesn’t have to result in leaving the camera down until spring.

The Fstoppers community is brimming with creative vision and talent. Every day, we comb through your work, looking for images to feature as the Photo of the Day or simply to admire your creativity and technical prowess. In 2021, we're featuring a new photographer every month, whose portfolio represents both stellar photographic achievement and a high level of involvement within the Fstoppers community.

In the first part of this series of two, I introduced bokeh — out-of-focus areas — and outlined the main controls of defocus. These include sensor size, focal length, aperture, distance to subject, and distance to the backdrop. How, then, do you compare defocus between lenses and cameras? Read on.

Perhaps some of the biggest dealbreakers for images are sharpness, resolution, and noise. No one likes a blurry low-res ISO 25,600 file. Yet, sometimes the client picks the worst possible file that is the definition of poor image quality. Luckily, Topaz Labs have developed AI-enabled software which lets you save your portraits. Act fast and take advantage of their Cyber Monday prices.

Imagine you can open up Lightroom and browse through the lighting setup (a graphic from top down) that shows you what you did during your shoot, where each photo has its lights, and the setup of these lights, all embedded. Would that be beneficial?

Drones are appealing to a wide gamut of people, from creatives to tech-heads, to aviation enthusiasts. For me, it was perhaps a blend of all three, but something I couldn't easily justify. Nevertheless, I bought one anyway, and it turned out to be the best poor decision I've ever made.

A polarization filter is a great tool for reducing glare on shiny surfaces. A welcome side effect is the more saturated colors. Especially during autumn, a landscape photo will get a nice warm appearance. Unfortunately, automatic white balance may counteract the effect.

I recently interviewed Australian film photographer Rob Walwyn on his incredible images documenting the aftermath of the bushfires that devastated Australia’s east coast in late 2019 and early 2020. Walwyn’s project, "Karrikins," led to his first solo exhibition at the 2021 Head On Photo Festival in Sydney.

Astrophotography and nighttime photography generally come with their own respective challenges. The biggest problem tends to be increased noise especially in the shadow areas of an image. But what if there was some incredibly smart software that could magically get rid of the noise and improve your images, would you use it?

Here are some of the biggest Photography deals we've found lasting Black Friday through Cyber Monday.

Australian photographer Rob Walwyn is hosting the first exhibition of his project ‘Karrikins’ as part of Sydney's Head On Photo Festival. Karrikins documents the aftermath of the bushfires that devastated Australia’s east coast in late 2019 and early 2020. What makes Walwyn’s images even more stunning is his use of Kodak’s discontinued false-color infrared film Aerochrome.

It is good to have a plan B in landscape photography. But what if even plan B doesn’t work? Should we give up? Or is there still the chance, any way to get some really strong photographs? I came exactly into such a situation recently – and oh man – finally it turned into one of the best photography days I ever had. I even got 360 degrees surrounded by compositions!

During an effort to rid my house of excess belongings this weekend, I stumbled upon an analogy that should help inform my gear buying decisions going forward.

It seems like all photographers can talk about these days is how sharp this lens is versus that lens. I miss the days when blurry photographs were charming.

Black Friday sales are here and we want to keep you up to date on some of the best photography deals available. These savings are only available for a very limited timeframe, so if there's something that piques your interest, make sure to act on it now!

Over the evolution of photo manipulation and editing there are those features that have come about that truly change not only how we do things, but how quickly, and have us reevaluate what we think is possible; things that seem like magic.

I raise you my swirly bokeh to your circular bokeh because I intuitively know that it looks nicer. However, is my swirly Nikkor AF-S 50mm f/1.4G on the Fuji X-T4 more blurry than your circular Nikon Series E 50mm f/1.8 on the Nikon D850? Read on.

Can you emulate studio gel lighting with Lightroom's new masking tools? In short, yes, but is it as good as the real thing?

Welcome to the next, and 5th episode of our 8-part video tutorial series about long exposure photography, and how different filters can produce dramatic results. As a reminder, every time we release a new video, we give away some great prizes. Make sure to follow the instructions in this post to enter this week's contest.

Finding success in a single area of the photography industry is no small task. And yet, R. J. Kern has managed to find success not only as a wedding photographer but now as a fine art photographer as well. I sat down with him one afternoon to pick his brain on his top five tips for emerging fine art photographers.

Every photographer needs a camera bag. Preferably one that not only protects the equipment, but is also comfortable to use. It has to carry at least a camera and a couple of lenses, along with the necessary accessories. Unfortunately, there is not one camera bag that is perfect for every situation.

After a decade of selling my work at art festivals, I've discovered that beyond the money that I've earned, I've also gotten some valuable lessons both for my career and for my life.

Opinions matter to most people, but when the opinion of another photographer goes against or deviates from what the original photographer intended for that image, does that that make the image wrong?

Skylum has been touting their upcoming release of Luminar Neo, an image editor that builds on Luminar AI with some new features that are sure to please fans of the current product and may arouse interest from other photo editors.

A long time ago, I heard someone utter this bit of nonsense. Depending upon the genre of photography you shoot, there are good arguments for using manual controls and settings. However, there are times when your camera’s automated technologies prove the Luddites wrong, then automation is king.

Gear Acquisition Syndrome isn’t found in the New England Journal of Medicine, but it’s a reality for photographers the world over. But why?

It always starts innocently enough: you buy a new camera and start taking photos. Then someone you know asks a favor and you’re all too happy to oblige them with all the photos you can snap. Fast forward just a small amount of time later and you realize, with great sorrow, this phase of freebies doesn’t have an end.

Every year, I run dozens of workshops for photographers, and there are always the same areas that even established photographers have not grasped. Learning the metering and exposure ropes opens a gamut of creative possibilities.

How do you define success as a photographer? How do you know when you’ve reached the goal you’ve set for yourself when you first started your journey behind the lens?

Zoner Photo Studio X is a powerful and affordable editing suite that doesn't get the attention it deserves. Now they have improved the speed of the Develop module along with some other new features, increasing its viability as an all-in-one post-production and digital asset management tool.

When starting with photography, it is easy to be focused entirely on the technical side of the medium. However, paying close attention to your compositions is sure to bring your images to the next level.

Modern cameras have an amazing dynamic range. It allows the capture of all the luminosities between the darkest parts and the brightest parts. If you want more, a bracketing series can go beyond that. But do we need everything within the dynamic range, or not?

Fuji recently unveiled their Instax Wide photo printer, over 20 years after the format first made its appearance. So, why has it taken Fuji so long?

"Don't turn too much. It will ruin your photo!" This is what we have all learned about circular polarizing filters in our young days as photographers when we tried to get rid of glare. But how much polarization do we need?

My preferred targets for astrophotography are what we might call transient targets. In this article, I will identify three targets I will be aiming for this winter.

Before getting into the thick of this article, there is an important distinction that needs to be addressed when discussing the coloring of images (and video, for that matter), and that’s between color correction and color grading.

One light, no studio. This quick tutorial will show you how to add a gel backlight to your portraits.

It doesn't matter what kind of photographer you are, chances are your images will benefit from being edited in some way. If you are serious about your pictures looking their best, these six key Photoshop techniques are well worth mastering.

No matter how long you’ve been involved in photography or other creative work, you’ve probably been asked to do something for someone for free, or worse, for “exposure.” Is it ever sensible to give your time without some form of tangible remuneration?

Just about every important image I publish or send to a client passes through Photoshop. It’s an essential part of my workflow, and if you’re like most photographers, I’m sure it’s a part of yours. There are, however, a number of cases where I’ve just found a significantly better tool for the job, one that’s worth paying for. Want to see why you should consider snagging these programs that beat Photoshop at their own game?

Photo contests are often very divisive. You're happy when you win and furious when your work is snubbed. They can be so subjective yet they draw people in like moths to a flame. Why?

As I am knee-deep in production this week, I thought I’d take this week’s article to share an experience outside the normal photography realm that still has lessons to teach for every small business owner.

If money is of little concern and cameras are what you're interested in, then let us guide you through the realm of exotic and super-expensive cameras.

It's time to release the fourth episode of our 8-part video tutorial series about long exposure photography, and how different filters can produce dramatic results. Remember, each time we release a new video, we also give away some awesome prizes. Read through this post to find out how to enter this week's contest.

It is quite often overlooked when it comes down to creating a stunning photograph, although it has a big impact on the composition and even on the story of an image. We are talking about the right focal length. Avoid one of the biggest traps about focal lengths and find out how to impact your composition with the right lens.

One could easily say that nothing is what it seems because our minds create a subjective representation of the world around us. With memories, this representation may be even more complex. As scientists explain, encoding a memory in the brain is a biological event that begins with a sensory experience. Every memory we have captures emotions, and colors are one of those aspects that evoke and illustrate what we feel.