Featured Articles
What 15 Years of Mentoring Photographers Taught Me About Photography Itself
There's something people often misunderstand about photography workshops. They think workshops exist to improve technique.
Seven Photography Habits That Are Quietly Ruining Your Shots
Putting your lens cap back on after every shot is costing you photos. It sounds like a minor habit, but when a moment happens in front of you and your hands are fumbling with gear, it's gone.
A $999 Anamorphic Lens vs. a $3,900 Cinema Lens: How Close Is the Gap?
Anamorphic lenses produce a look that's immediately recognizable: stretched bokeh, horizontal lens flares, and a cinematic quality that's defined Hollywood films for decades. The question most people face is whether that distinctive look is worth the tradeoffs compared to a conventional spherical lens.
The Lightroom Masking Trick That Separates a Flat Bird Shot From a Striking One
Bird photography is brutally unforgiving when it comes to editing. A dull background, clashing colors, or a flat-looking subject can kill an otherwise great shot, and getting it right in Lightroom takes a specific sequence of decisions that most people skip.
Leica SL3-P Review: Is This the Hybrid Camera the SL System Always Needed?
The Leica SL3-P positions itself as Leica's answer to a problem that has frustrated SL system users for a while: you had to choose between the video-focused SL3-S and the resolution-focused SL3, and if you shoot both stills and video seriously, neither option was a clean fit. The SL3-P sits between them, and Leica calls it the best camera they've ever made.
The Best Premium Compact Cameras in 2026
The compact camera is having a genuine revival, and it has caught the industry slightly off guard. Models that sat ignored for years are now selling out, prices are climbing, and manufacturers that abandoned the category are scrambling back into it. The reason is simple: people who grew up shooting on phones increasingly want something that feels deliberate, looks distinctive, and delivers image quality a phone cannot match. A premium compact earns its place by beating your phone at one of four things: image quality, reach, video, or the sheer pleasure of carrying and using it.
Why Posing Maternity Clients Starts Long Before You Pick Up Your Camera
Why do I tell every maternity client, "Show up in your pajamas and I will take care of you"? Great maternity portraits have very little to do with fancy equipment or complicated lighting setups. They start with trust, and that trust begins long before the camera comes out.
How to Actually Use an 85mm Lens for Better Portraits
Buying an 85mm lens is one of the most common moves in portrait photography, and it's also one of the most misunderstood. The lens has a reputation for good reason, but the way most people use it wastes most of what makes it worth owning.
Sony's Two Best Cameras Compared: Where the a7R VI Actually Beats the a1 II
Choosing between the Sony a7R VI and the Sony a1 II is genuinely difficult, and the spec sheets don't make it any easier. On paper, the two cameras overlap so heavily that you could easily talk yourself into either one without ever really knowing if you made the right call.
In 2026, I Still Carry an Olympus Stylus Infinity
Photography, in this social media era, has become exhausting.
A $135 Full Frame Lens That Shouldn't Be This Good
At $135 a full frame autofocus 50mm lens sounds like a compromise waiting to happen. The Yongnuo 50mm f/1.8S DF is that lens, and it turns out the compromises are a lot smaller than you'd expect.
Le Mans in 40 Hours: One Photographer's Gear, Access, and Survival Guide
Shooting the 24 Hours of Le Mans sounds thrilling until you realize you're standing inches from cars doing 200 mph for 40 hours straight. The gear choices, accreditation requirements, and shooting approach at an event like this are genuinely different from anything else in motorsport photography.
Testing the 7Artisan 35mm f/2.8 LTM Lens
To paraphrase a favorite pair of authors of mine: once is never, twice is always. Not sure where the third and fourth times something goes wrong rates.
Because that's how many times my Leica MP pulled my bulk-loaded film out of the canister. Not the camera's fault; instead, the cheap tape I've been using didn't seem to be holding up to the stress of those final few tugs of the film advance. The first time it was something important: two dozen arrests during a protest downtown. Thankfully the rest were less important, mostly technical shots for this lens review.
Adobe Is Buying One of the Last Good Things in Photo Editing
Adobe announced on June 25 that it has agreed to acquire Topaz Labs, the Dallas company whose denoising, sharpening, and upscaling tools quietly became part of how a huge number of photographers finish their work. Neither side put a number on the deal. Closing is targeted for the back half of 2026, assuming regulators sign off. Adobe says Topaz CEO Eric Yang will stay on, the standalone apps will keep running, and the underlying models will eventually flow into Firefly, Firefly Services, and Creative Cloud apps.
Viltrox Redesigned Its 35mm f/1.2 LAB (N) and We Can See Why It Makes Sense: A Close-Look Review
Why fix what isn't broken? Well, Viltrox seems to have a good subtle reason as to why it did with the 35mm f/1.2 LAB (N) that photographers might appreciate.
Apple's Cheapest MacBook Ever Is an Amazing Deal
The MacBook Neo sits at the bottom of Apple's MacBook lineup, and that single fact shapes everything about it. At its price point, it goes up against laptops that routinely disappoint, which makes what Apple has pulled off here genuinely worth paying attention to.
Camera Raw 18.4 Finally Has the Gradient Feature Photographers Have Wanted for 10 Years
Camera Raw 18.4 just shipped with three masking features that Lightroom still doesn't have, and one of them has been on photographers' wish lists for over a decade.
The Loneliness Nobody Warns You About in Landscape Photography
Shooting landscapes solo sounds peaceful in theory, but for many people it's genuinely difficult at first, especially if you've spent most of your life surrounded by others. Ian Worth spent nearly two decades earning a living with a camera, and even he found the transition jarring.
Leica SL3-P Review: 45 Megapixels, 8K Video, and a Real Autofocus Upgrade
The Leica SL3-P sits in an interesting position: a 45-megapixel hybrid that Leica designed to land between the speed-focused SL3-S and the resolution-heavy SL3, and the question of whether it actually pulls that off has real stakes if you're considering dropping serious money on any of the three.
Why a Decade-Old DSLR Keeps Winning Awards, and What That Should Teach You
Earlier in 2026, a 15-year-old named Jack Crockford won his category at the British Wildlife Photography Awards 2026 with a frozen instant of a Eurasian hobby snatching prey out of the air, a shot that demands timing most photographers spend years failing to develop. He did it with an aging professional DSLR and a long telephoto lens, not one of the artificial-intelligence-driven mirrorless bodies that dominate every camera advertisement this year. On its own, that is a charming footnote. The problem is that it is not on its own.
Five Older Cameras That Prove Great Photography Isn't About Technology
There's this idea going around that the newest cameras, with the latest sensor or faster processor, will give you the best image quality. I say to that, what absolute twaddle! (They wouldn't let me use the "B" word).
Leica Announces the SL3-P
A new Leica camera always attracts attention. And while the M line is the brand's most famous line, there are many devotees of the SL system, which is a more contemporary system akin to cameras offered by Nikon, Canon, and Sony. Today, Leica announced the newest iteration, the SL3-P, a 44-megapixel camera designed for both speed and performance.
When the Street Becomes Too Open
There are moments when the street offers nothing back. No gesture, no alignment, no interruption — just space, air, a sky that refuses to hold anything except itself, a line cutting across almost by accident, a billboard drifting at the edge already dissolving into irrelevance.
Canon RF 20-50mm f/4L IS USM PZ Tested on Full Frame and APS-C
The Canon RF 20-50mm f/4L IS USM PZ is a lens built around a specific kind of shooter: someone who wants wide angle coverage, reliable stabilization, and smooth power zoom control, all in one relatively compact package. At $1,400, it sits in territory where performance has to justify the price tag.
The Tamron 17-70mm f/2.8 Covers a Gap Most APS-C Shooters Don't Realize They Have
Finding a fast, versatile zoom for APS-C mirrorless that doesn't cost as much as a full frame body is genuinely difficult. The Tamron 17-70mm f/2.8 sits in a spot where very few lenses compete.