Smoke grenades: foul smelling, clothes staining, and a primary tool for celebrating the birth of our nation. Recently, while in Austin Texas, I was introduced to a model, Valerie who suggested we use smoke bombs during the shoot. I was immediately intrigued at the creative possibilities...
Announced today, Nikon has updated their popular entry-level D3xxx series of cameras with the new D3400. Highlights of the new DSLR include always-connected Bluetooth for automatic sharing with mobile devices, double the battery life of the previous D3300, and image quality that is a step up from mobile photography. The D3400 will come with a new Nikkor DX 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR kit lens and cost $646.95, with the option to also add on the new Nikkor DX 70-300mm f/4.5-6.3G ED for a total of $996.95.
One of the most useful lenses any photographer can own is an ultra wide-angle zoom lens. One of my favorite zooms in this category is the Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 lens. Tamron recently released the upgraded G2 version of their already great SP model and I wanted to see if this redesigned lens was worth the upgrade.
We each do it every year saying the same thing. "This year it will be different, I'm going to actually complete my resolutions!" We may make it and complete a couple but, very rarely do we have the stamina and discipline to keep going until the list is done. Going into 2014 you're going to see a lot of resolution idea lists for photographers and that's fine for most, but you're going to be different.
When I preordered the Nikon D800 early last year, I purposely didn't order the battery grip for a few reasons. The first was that I didn't think I needed it, and the second was that the $450 price tag way way too steep, and seemed ridiculous for the product that I was getting. The first reason turned out to be dead wrong. Carrying my camera around for 8-10 hours a day as a wedding photographer meant that the joints in my right hand were always hurting. Maybe it was just because of how I held the camera, but either way, I realized I needed a battery grip to help balance the weight. But this meant I had to spend almost $500 right?
Where are the top Fortune 500 companies sourcing new talent for their advertising campaigns? Direct mail promos, e-promos, portfolio meetings? Try Instagram. Even after the Terms of Service backlash in December 2012, the photo-sharing site surges on and photographers, many just hobbyists with big followings, are being sourced by major companies for campaign work.
Wide-angle lens lovers have been anticipating the Tamron SP 15-30mm f/2.8 wide-angle fast zoom lens with internal stabilization for quite a while now. Despite having been listed on B&H's website for some time, there's been no indication of what it'll cost — until now.
Pop Photo released a great guide for all things photography (including everything from high-end DSLRs to light wands and iPad apps) that were released this year. So if you don't know what to spend your new Christmas money on, check it out. Everything is on there for a reason -- and quite a few have been reviewed and are highly recommended by Fstoppers writers...
If you’re looking for a full frame compact camera, you can get a Sony RX1 series camera and it gets the job done. If you’re looking to get the job done in style, you can spend thousands more and get a Leica Q, but you’ll probably arrive at the same place. That about sums up the relationship between the MeFOTO RoadTrip Classic Leather Edition and the original RoadTrip Tripod.
"If you’re not on Instagram, you don’t exist." How many times have you heard a statement to that affect? I recently had a discussion with a fellow professional photographer about the value of Instagram. In this article, I’ll explore our conclusions.
Almost every video you see online holds an element of sound production made up of music and sound effects. For us to produce a quality body of work, we need to know where to look. I’ve recently started focusing more on producing, shooting, and editing and wanted to share this list I created where you can find awesome music for your projects.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has relayed back images of the Earth and moon from 900 million miles away. The images, taken in a series of photos on July 19th as Saturn was backlit by the sun, portray the blue planet as a diminutive blip in a vast dark solar system.
With every new camera, new options and enhanced features are introduced, sometimes small and perhaps even insignificant, sometimes groundbreaking. The end result is never perfect, but what if you could design one yourself?
There are increasing rumors that the Canon EOS R6 Mark II mirrorless camera and RF 135mm f/1.8L IS USM lens are on their way soon, and now, more info on both has emerged, including expected prices.
Michael Ash Smith is a commercial wedding, portrait, and lifestyle photographer based out of Barto, PA. As a hybrid photographer, much of Michael's work is done on 35mm and medium format film with some instant film here and there for special occasions. He recently shared images from a wedding he shot over on the Junebug Weddings blog. The difference? Everything he shot that day was with instant film.
Camera manufacturers have been in a megapixel race for some time. Canon has its new 5DS and 5DS R bodies, Nikon has its D810 and even the D810A for astrophotography, and PhaseOne, Hasselblad, Pentax, and even Leica are competing for medium format, high-megapixel territory. While Canon's 120-megapixel APS-H sensor is actually not entirely new (it was announced some time ago), the announcement that Canon is actually working to get it into a DSLR body and not just using it for bragging rights (their 250 MP sensor now lifts that crown) is a huge development. Meanwhile, Canon is among the first to announce some serious commitment to 8K video.
Have you ever wondered what Donald Trump would look like if you combined 50 random photos of him and averaged them together? That's exactly what Reddit user Dwainosaur did with his latest photo/data mashup. Using commonly found images on Google, these composites of celebrities like Barack Obama, Kayne West, Bill Murray, and Brad Pitt almost look like pencil drawings. The results are pretty eerie and give a pretty good idea what each of these well known people would look like as a ghost.
Platon is a renowned photographer who's taken the portrait many of the most important, influential, and infamous people in the world. His portfolio includes photos of President Obama, the First Lady, Vladimir Putin, Muammar Gaddafi, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, amoung many, many others. The New Yorker recently shared this video taking us behind the scenes at Platon's New York studio during a portrait session and offers a glimpse at a true master at work.
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.
Are some types of landscape photography inevitably doomed to failure? If they proceed from a desire to depict what Immanuel Kant referred to as "the sublime", then this may well be the case.
Capture One is one of those programs that, once learned, is hard to do without, but due to the common experience of learning post-processing software within an Adobe ecosystem, anything different like Capture One can appear less intuitive or more challenging, even if it isn’t.
I don't know about you, but many of us, your humble author included, had a pretty horrific upgrade to Big Sur, the latest and apparently, not the greatest OS from Apple.
PhotoShelter released their results from a 2012 survey that was sent out to over 5,000 professional and aspiring photographers worldwide. The survey asked photographers about the various ways in which they were planning on marketing their photography business in 2013 and the results they were hoping to achieve from their efforts.
Want to easily create a 3D model from a set of photos? Find out how to do it in this tutorial.
Whether we admit it or not, we are living in the best era for photographers as the constant technological improvement undeniably uplifts the entire ecosystem, making the entire image-making process easier. Everything from capturing the moment to medium output can now be made within seconds. And with convenience comes the expectation to scratch an itch you never knew existed. One of them will be surrounding the myth of resolution. Specifically, having more resolution will somehow magically improve the quality of your images.
Broncolor announced two battery-powered strobes today. Coming in 400-joule and 800-joule variants, offering flash durations of as little as 1/19,000s, and in a similar power option, the new Siros L strobes are clearly aimed at the 500-watt Profoto B1 with nearly identical features in all but one area, depending on what's most important to you.
We've all seen the Instagram feeds where people post a daily painting, photo or post that displays their art. I've attempted it and lasted about a month before I missed a day or didn't have the time to post. As inspiration I follow the people who make it though, like the woman who made a paintings for ants and posted them to Instagram every day, and the guy who made a movie poster every day for a year, and then the daily vloggers like Casey Neistat who once posted a video once a day. The determination is what inspires me the most, and seeing the development of that person's skills and the following grow and the success coming from that.
What do you do when your heart wants a Sony RX10 IV, but your stock portfolio just took a beating since the start of the year? You turn to superzooms of yesteryear, and that's where I've come up with this interesting specimen from 2006: the Panasonic Lumix FZ50.
Have you heard of "Star Wars"? John Oliver? Maybe Tom Hanks? Still no? What about Tom Brady? Perhaps you’ve heard of one of the other hundreds of stars Jesse Dittmar has photographed.
For some people, the magnitude of this pandemic doesn't seem all too real. Unfortunately, these photos prove otherwise.
