Canon Dominated Gear Rentals in 2020 — Again

Each December, LensRentals releases its list of the year’s most-rented equipment and it’s evident that change might be coming but it is taking its time. Canon dominated 2020 — and so did its DSLRs.

A Comprehensive Guide to Capturing Better Portraits

Capturing technically sound and compelling portraits take the confluence of a variety of skills. If you would like to improve your portraits, check out this fantastic video tutorial that is brimming with a wide variety of helpful tips and techniques.

How to Make Someone Look Younger Using Photoshop

Photoshop is a powerful tool for retouching a person's appearance, and one of the most impressive things it can do is convincingly make someone look younger. This fantastic video tutorial will show you how to adjust all of a person's features to take away years from their appearance.

Madlad Fits All of 'Shrek' Onto a Single Floppy Disk

Remember floppy disks? The little disks that could store a whopping 1.44 MB of data were the ubiquitous choice for portable data storage for decades until faster and (much) higher-capacity options came along. Still, that did not stop a clever and nostalgic tinkerer from managing to compress an entire feature-length film enough to fit it on a single floppy disk.

Helpful Tips for Saving Time When Retouching

With the requisite attention to detail and myriad of tasks you often have to perform, retouching can be a very time-consuming process, and as such, it is worth finding any little areas you can to make your workflow more efficient. This excellent video tutorial will give you a variety of tips for saving time while retouching without sacrificing any image quality.

How To Get Started With Flash for Portraiture

Using strobe or flash lighting for the first time can be daunting, but it's easier than you might realize. If you're looking at trying it out, here's a beginner's guide to getting started.

A Beginner's Guide To Photographing Wild Birds

Photographing birds is tremendously tricky and requires as much wildlife know-how as it does knowledge of settings. So, if you're interested in getting started, here is a beginner's guide to push you in the right direction.

Canon's Other Mirrorless Line May Finally Be on Its Way Out

With all the fanfare and excitement surrounding Canon's RF mirrorless line, it can be easy to forget that the company actually has two separate mirrorless lines, with the second being the EOS M. That line's future has been in question since the introduction of the more advanced RF line, and it seems now that Canon may be getting ready to shutter the line.

The Lark 150 Microphone System Reviewed: Effortless Wireless Audio

Getting good audio is essential to creating a quality video. The Lark 150 from Hollyland is positioned as a turnkey solution for easily recording two subjects without the need for a tangle of wires. Whether you’re just getting started with video or are looking for a competent wireless option, you’ve got to hear what this piece of kit can do!

Fstoppers Photographer of the Month (December 2020): Danijel Turnšek

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 2020, 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.

Comparing the iPhone 12 Mini to the Google Pixel 3a, the 'Photographer's Phone'

I’ve waffled and flip-flopped on Apple’s computational imaging claims in its new iPhone 12 series, and so, to finally put my curiosity to rest, I decided to pit what’s (to me) the most compelling iPhone, the iPhone 12 Mini, against my previous favorite phone photography standard-bearer, the Google Pixel 3a.

How I Created This Neon Synthwave Design in Photoshop

In this video walkthrough, I will show you all the steps it took to create this neon homage to Synthwave in Photoshop. Synthwave is a genre of music that has striking conceptual imagery to accompany the albums.

Faking the Anamorphic Look With a $35 Vintage Lens

The anamorphic look is attractive and loved by many videographers and filmmakers. The problem is, it costs a lot to achieve, and prices itself out of reach for most videographers. But what if you could effectively fake it?

ACDSee Photo Studio's Color Wheels Are Great for Refining Color in Travel Photos

In my look at the new features of ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2021, I was excited to see the inclusion of color wheels and tone wheels. I first started using this style of editor in video production; it’s a big part of what gives stylized video like Mad Max its distinctive look. When editing photos, however, it’s a great, intuitive way of working with the luminosity and color ranges in your image.

Is an 8K Sony a9 III Going to Be the Canon R5 Killer?

It’s little more than a year since Sony announced the launch of the Sony a9 II, but despite that, we could see its successor unveiled within a matter of weeks. Rumors suggest that the a9 III is on its way, so what does the Japanese manufacturer have lined up?

Is the XF 50mm f/1.0 R WR the Must-Have Portrait Lens for Fuji Photographers?

The XF 56mm f/1.2 R has long been known as the superlative portrait lens for Fujifilm shooters, but the company recently released the XF 50mm f/1.0 R WR, which pushes the boundaries of lens design all the more. This great video review takes a look at the lens and if its performance holds up to its impressive design.

Top Three Hacks for Cutting Out Hair in Photoshop

In this video tutorial, watch as Dean Samed shows you how the top three hacks for cutting out hair in Photoshop. Each one is a great way to get those tricky hair cutouts mastered.

How to Dodge and Burn Dark Skin Tones

Dodging and burning is both a fantastic way to shape the light in an image and to retouch blemishes; in fact, it is the technique preferred by a lot of high-end retouchers over other more common methods. When working with subjects with dark skin tones, you will want to take note of a few differences in technique compared to working with subjects with lighter skin tones, and this excellent video tutorial will show you everything you need to know.

The Importance of Patience and Split-Second Timing in Landscape Photography

You might not think of landscape photography as a genre that relies on split-second timing, but when you are dealing with dynamic scenes, just a moment's difference can create separate images and tell entirely different stories. This fantastic video discusses why you should consider the timing of your shots and how you can get multiple images from the same scene simply by varying it.

The Difference Between Vibrance and Saturation

At first glance, the vibrance and saturation sliders might seem like they do the same thing, and while they do operate in similar manners, they are fundamentally different in their functions. This excellent video tutorial will show you the difference between the two so you can take better control of the color in your images.

Insights Into Hollywood's Favorite Lenses

As Gray Kotzé points out, there are bushels of reviews for entry-level cinema lenses on the web, lenses you might look to pick up on sale maybe. However, most feature films are shot on prohibitively expensive lenses that were always intended to be rented out over their multi-decade lifespans. The cost for these lenses puts them out of reach for most filmmakers who aspire towards ownership, but, if you have a budget and you're looking to shoot feature/cinema quality films, it's important to understand what's available for rent.

How National Geographic and BBC Filmmaker Bertie Gregory Captures Animal Behavior

From an early age, Bertie Gregory was sailing, surfing, swimming in the ocean. He was always outside, taking in nature. When you spend that amount of time outdoors and in nature, you gain an appreciation for it by osmosis. Even in England, a place not known for wildlife, he was able to appreciate it.

5 Helpful Tips for Using a Gimbal

One of the greatest advancements in consumer video products in the last decade or so has been the appearance of affordable and portable stabilization devices. Handheld gimbals allow you to get smooth, professional footage in almost any situation, and this fantastic video tutorial will give you five tips to get more out of yours.

Feeling Frustrated as a Photographer? This Will Help

Photography, like any artistic pursuit, will see the flow of your creative juices wax and wane, and it can be a real struggle when things are not going well. However, that might actually be the best time to consider your process and how you approach things, and from that, new ideas might grow. This great video discusses the issue and what you can do to overcome it.

Smart Objects and Why You Need To Use Them in Photoshop

In this video tutorial, watch as Abbey Esparza shows you all about Smart Objects in Photoshop and why you need to use them. This is definitely a good tutorial for those who still work destructively.

Stop Overcomplicating Your Photo Edits

Photo edits can often become very complicated, time-intensive things, but they don't always have to be. This great video discusses the common trap of being overly complicated in your image editing.

Why You Should Be Shooting on Film in 2021

If 2020 has somehow given you an appreciation of tactile experiences and a slower pace of life, you might want to consider periodically leaving your digital camera at home in in the new year and start capturing the world on film instead. Here are a few good reasons why.

A Complete Course on Photography for Beginners

When you are new to photography, it can feel a bit overwhelming trying to understand the wide variety of camera settings and equipment and how to combine them all with your creative side to make compelling and technically sound images. This fantastically comprehensive video tutorial will take you through all the basics with lots of explanations and examples so you can get up and running as soon as possible.

The Top Astronomical Events of 2021 for Astrophotography

Whether you are looking to get into astrophotography or take your skills to the next level, 2021 has lots of great astronomical events happening all over the world. Planning in advance and being in the right place at the right time is the first step to getting amazing shots.

The Best Canon EOS R5 Settings for Bird Photography

The Canon EOS R5 has proven itself to be one of the most powerful cameras ever released, and that means it is also a rather complex device, with a variety of settings and features that take some tweaking to get the best performance from the camera. This fantastic video tutorial will show you how to best set up your EOS R5 for bird photography and similar work.

Improve Your Black and White Edits in Lightroom With These Tips

Creating a good black and white image is about a lot more than simply pulling all the saturation out of a color photo. This fantastic video tutorial will give you a number of tips and techniques for improving the quality of your black and white images when working in Lightroom.

How Good Is Canon's Mirrorless Nifty Fifty Lens?

Canon's RF 50mm f/1.2L lens is absolutely fantastic, but at $2,299, it is anything but cheap. On the other hand, the RF 50mm f/1.8 costs less than a tenth that of its f/1.2 cousin. Does it offer usable performance despite its budget price? This excellent video review takes a look at the lens and the kind of performance you can expect from it in practice.

Can the Sony a7S III Keep Up With This Camcorder From 1998?

I promise this is not actually a serious comparison. It is hilarious, however. Sony's new a7S III is the pinnacle of its latest video technology, and it brings with it a plethora of advanced features and capabilities. But let's not forget Sony's once-popular line of Handycam camcorders. This great video takes a look at the two and why the Handycam just might be better.

Which of These Three Beauty Dishes Produces the Best Photos?

Beauty dishes are one of the most popular lighting modifiers out there, but they are not all created the same. Mola makes some of the most revered beauty dishes on the market, but with seven different models, you might wonder which is right for you. This excellent video comparison takes a look at three of the most popular versions to help you pick the best for your work.