In 2008, Olympus was teetering on the edge of photographic irrelevance, and Panasonic wasn’t a serious player in the camera industry. All that changed, however, when the latter launched a brand new mirrorless interchangeable lens system, dubbed Micro Four Thirds, with the Panasonic Lumix G1, released towards the end of that year.

Sony's not a camera company or at least hasn't been until relatively recently. Its heritage is as un-optical as any recent manufacturer can be and is certainly far removed from the heritage of the likes of Nikon, Canon, Leica, and Pentax. Yet, among the gravestones we see littering the photographic landscape, it seems likely that the A mount will soon join them, finally severing any link to the past. So, why wasn't the A mount Sony's future?

If you're older than about 30 or so, you probably remember just how unbelievably ubiquitous Kodak was at one time, making their eventual fall all the most extreme in retrospect. This great video takes a look at the fascinating history behind the rise and fall of what was once a titan of the photo industry.

This past weekend, The Olympus Corporation turned 100 years old. A review of Olympus' history is eye opening. I didn't realize that Olympus was originally a healthcare company, and it remains a leader in certain healthcare fields today.

This year, Nikon is gearing up to celebrate its 100th anniversary. July 25 is the date that marks a century since three leading optical manufacturers merged to form the company we now know as Nikon in Tokyo, Japan. Check out this freshly released video that is leading Nikon's proceedings.

Perhaps no single photo is more symbolic of America’s troubles during the Great Depression than Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother.” Depicting an itinerant farm worker, Florence Owens Thompson, and five of her children apparently in the grips of despair on the side of the road, this single image came to surmise an entire era.

"Men Wanted For Hazardous Journey: Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honour and recognition in case of success." Do you think you’d answer this ad if it popped up on Indeed or Monster?

Shooting a hundred-year-old camera that is also a darkroom is unusual but this fascinating story becomes more remarkable when you consider that the photographer earned a living for decades creating portraits in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. 65 years later, he’s still taking photographs.

Have you ever wondered what fashion trends will be in style, let’s say 20 years from now? Well some say the best way to predict the future is to look at the past, and this video does exactly that. "100 Years of Beauty in 1 Minute" illustrates hair and makeup styles from each decade, starting at 1910 straight through to 2010.

What happens when a visual artist overhears his uncles discussing how women "are better off cooking, taking care of the kitchen, and fulfilling their 'womanly duties?'" Eli Rezkallah, who's a photographer and a visual artist currently residing in Beirut, came up with the idea of creating a controversial set of photographs that reverse the traditional gender roles, that had been so strongly embedded within our society through advertisement during the twentieth century.

KCET’s “Lost LA” does deep dives into the lesser-known history of Southern California. In a recent episode, photography takes center stage as they tell the story behind some of the most famous images from one of the darkest chapters in American history.

It is a truism that the rich and famous are early adopters of the latest technology. Given that photography was unleashed on the world in 1839, what is the earliest surviving photo of a US President?

Photography is a centuries-old practice with a rich history of innovations and advancement, and it is a fun and informative exercise to take a look at all the events that brought us to where we are today. This great video takes a look at 10 of the most pivotal moments in photography history.

Three years ago, I suddenly became obsessed with the colorization of old photographs. It soon led to me creating a time-lapse of the largest colorization job I'd had, which took over 14 hours to complete.

In 1995, Sony released a camera that would go on to dominate skateboarding videos for the next 15 years, revolutionizing the culture in its wake.

Visual and special effects have a long history; they've been around since the dawn of filmmaking. Here are some great examples from silent films where the techniques used behind the scenes are still relevant today.

South Africa's racial segregation laws and policies of the apartheid era may have ended 22 years ago, but the lingering effects of the forced separation of whites and blacks is getting another look through a photography project called "Unequal Scenes." It is the brainchild of American Photographer Johnny Miller, who now lives in Cape Town. What started as a post on his Facebook page, has morphed into a national and international dialog.

The millennium was yet to dawn, but 1999 saw Bill Clinton acquitted, the Columbine massacre, the world's population hit 6 billion, and "The Sopranos" debut. Lance Armstrong won his first Tour de France, the Euro came in to circulation, Napster was released along with Internet Explorer 5, and "The Phantom Menace" and "The Matrix" were first screened. But why did it also see the birth of the DSLR?

Temples have always been close to my heart. In fact, that is where I started my journey in photography years ago. The divinity in its architecture and the timeless stories etched in it fascinate me. While we can talk about the what and how of temple photography in detail in a future article, this is essentially a list of important things that one has to tick before setting out to photograph temples. Hailing from India, the temples I have shot are mostly rooted here but the points mentioned would apply universally as well.

Many of us photographers have a penchant for vintage lenses, but this one might top the lot.

Seventy years ago, on January 27, Russian soldiers arrived to liberate less than 8,000 prisoners still remaining at Nazi-Germany's deadliest concentration camp, Auschwitz-Berkinau. During the camp's operation, Auschwitz' officers were responsible for an estimated 1.1 million deaths. To mark the historic liberation of the camp, BBC treated its audience to a unique view that embodies the eerie and gruesome history of the vast camp.

Italian photographer Filippo Blengini embarked on a mission to take a panoramic photograph of Mount Blanc, Earth's 11th tallest mountain. After 70,000 individual photographs, 46 terabytes consumed, and 2 months of editing and processing later, the photo taken by Blengini and his team of five is currently the largest photograph in the world. Check out this video for a brief overview of how they did it.

"Instant Dreams" is a feature-length film about Polaroid that explores the magic of this defunct format, the pioneer of instant imagery, and documents the search for the lost chemical formula. Premiering at the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam a few days ago, the film discusses what it meant to produce imagery that is physical, unique, and, as one of the subjects puts it, "an artifact of time."

The swirly bokeh of fast lenses designed by Joseph Petzval in the mid-19th century is no longer solely available to fine art photographers using view cameras. In July, we profiled a Kickstarter campaign by Lomography to fund the creation of a brass Petzval for Nikon and Canon mounts. Now, a new campaign is hoping to fund the production of an F3.8 120mm lens for medium format cameras with a Pentacon Six and Hasselblad compatible mount.

At 60,000 years old, the Australian Aboriginal culture is the oldest, longest-running culture on Earth. Amy Toensing photographed them for National Geographic, lending her intimately deep sense of storytelling to the sad and tragic history of their culture and the bond they share with their land.

NASA recently released over 11,000 images from the Apollo space missions via the Project Apollo Archive on Flickr, and I have spent the past few days looking through them. Spoiler alert: They're awesome.

We take a lot for granted in the digital era, particularly the automation of a lot of functions. In the early days of film, everything was fully manual, and even one parameter set incorrectly could ruin an entire roll. Later in the 20th century, a standard called DX (Digital indeX) was introduced, and it automated a lot of settings, reducing errors and making photography more accessible to amateurs and casual users. How did it work? This neat video takes you behind the scenes of the surprisingly sophisticated system.

If you frequent this site, there's a pretty good chance you love photography. But how much do you actually know about its origins? Most of us rightfully jump to the camera obscura when thinking about the beginnings of photography, but how did we get from there to today's modern cameras? Have you ever wondered what the first photo ever taken was of? Or what the world's first color photo was of?

The daguerrotype was one of the earliest means of capturing images onto a surface and was the first photographic process available to the public. Using a piece of silver-coated copper and a 35mm film camera, this videos shows you how to make your own.