As someone who produces a lot of timelapses and video content for YouTube, nothing excites me more than testing out a new piece of gear. So, when edelkrone asked me to review their latest motorized slider and panning head unit, I jumped at the opportunity to see what this kit could do.
While you are waiting for me to finish the video edit on our last Puerto Rican Photo Challenge, we have a new competition for you guys to judge. This time I take a back seat and let Lee Morris and Pye Jirsa of SLR Lounge battle head to head in the streets of Old San Juan.
This week, we have a new photo challenge that pits two photographers against each other as they battle to see who can create the best image in a limited amount of time. Click the full post to cast your vote, and tomorrow, we will reveal the winner to the two challengers!
Are you in need of a powerful, versatile, and compact RGB LED light that won't break the bank? I was and this might now be my favorite hot light for shooting on location.
Building a shooting space in your home can be difficult to say the least. For most photographers, a home studio is never large enough and every inch of space becomes a commodity. In this video we show you perhaps the easiest and cleanest way to hang seamless paper in your studio space.
A few weeks ago, I beat Lee Morris in our Puerto Rico Landscape Challenge. With that victory, many of our readers said my edit in Photoshop was simply too over the top. Today, I try to re-edit my photo to see if I can create something a bit more realistic.
All photographers can agree that you won't stay in business long if you do not charge for your work. But what if I told you that the best way to gain exposure to high-paying commercial clients was to give away your images for free? Today, we sit down with commercial and composite photographer Josh Rossi and explore the concept of free.
Last week, we continued our exploration of Puerto Rico with our second shootout challenge. This time, we mixed it up a little bit with a guest photographer, and the results were pretty interesting.
This week we continue our Puerto Rican Photo Challenge. In our second challenge, two photographers explore the elaborate cave systems hidden deep within the central hills of Puerto Rico. In the full article, you can vote which image was the best and later this week we will reveal the winning image.
In today's video we take you behind the scenes in our new Fstoppers studio and show you exactly how we built and designed our latest video set. We will show you all the microphones, cameras, and lighting gear as well as our thought process in tackling this empty canvas of a room.
As many of you know, Lee and I recently moved to Puerto Rico, and with that move, we are having to completely redesign our new studio space. In today's video, we tackle our in-home network and wireless Internet connection. Surely the limitations in Puerto Rico will prove to give us trouble... or will it?
Last week Lee Morris and I embarked on something I like to call "The Puerto Rican landscape challenge." The goal of this series is to not only showcase some of the most beautiful locations on the island of Puerto Rico, but to also find out, once and for all, who is the better landscape photographer. Today is the beginning of this ultimate challenge.
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.
In today's competitive marketplace, successful photographers are finding themselves creating more and more content that isn't strictly photo based. Platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook are reaching more and more people with video content. In today's article, I outline 10 simple tips you can use to polish your video content.
Every photographer needs a good website; that's a given. What isn't so obvious is should you have a contact page? What about a photo on your bio? Is it best to have multiple galleries or everything on one landing page? Today Lee and I review a few websites to show you what does and doesn't work when displaying your work.
Every well-rounded photographer needs to be able to tell a story in three images or less. This is particularly important when shooting editorial content for online publications and in print magazines. On today's assignment, I explore three different focal lengths to capture a well-rounded story of a local musician.
Most photographers have invested in several camera bags over their career. Often, you need something that can hold everything including the kitchen sink, but other times, you might want something a bit more stylish and compact. Today, I check out one of the most compact yet stylish bags I've ever reviewed: the Wotancraft Sniper Backpack.
Today, we are excited to announce the newest adventure in Elia Locardi's Photographing the World series. Welcome to Photographing the World 4!
Looking for a photo-editing alternative to Adobe's Lightroom CC that won't break the bank? Today, I test-drive Alien Skin's new Exposure X4 editing suite for the first time.
What should a photographer do when surrounded by thousands of dead fish, some of the fastest ocean tides in the world, and wild bears that want to eat anything in sight? You take a deep breath and attempt to capture the beautiful scenery. Welcome to Valdez!
As another summer season comes to an end, Fstoppers is offering $10 off our pocket sized light modifier: the Fstoppers Flash Disc. Both BH Photo and Amazon are offering this sale now until Sept 4th.
As more and more photographers are starting to dabble into video, the need for versatile yet affordable constant lighting gear is ever changing. Today I test the new Boling BL-50 lights to see if they could be the best bang for the buck.
Most photographers are familiar with using a neutral density filter to create dreamy, long exposure photographs, but should you use a neutral density filter when shooting time-lapses too? In today's video, I explore why using a 10-stop ND filter might be perfect for more than just still photography.
Most landscape and cityscape photographers prefer to have images that are void of tourists, traffic, and other distracting elements in their scenes. One way to remove these eye sores is to meticulously clone them out in Photoshop, but what if there was a way to get a scene to look empty with a single exposure all in camera? Today I explore using a 15 stop neutral density filter for the first time.
Monte Isom is a super successful commercial photographer based out of New York City. However, before he made a career of his own, he assisted some of the biggest names in the photography world. In this video he recaps his experience shooting the president of the United States of America.
I recently got my hands on the new Tamron 100-400mm zoom lens and wanted to try a unique portrait idea. Unfortunately, this photo idea involved wind, tides, fast moving kiteboarders, and the ocean. What could go wrong, right?
For many photographers, taking portraits of celebrities, athletes, and government officials seems like the pinnacle of a successful business. Sometimes, however, those jobs require an insane amount of work, risk, and safety precautions to pull off the shot. In today's Story Time With Monte Isom, we look at how Gregory Heisler captured Time's Man of the Year cover with NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Time-lapses are an easy way to add spice to your video productions, but sometimes parts of your scene look awful when displayed over long periods of time. In this tutorial, I'll show you how you can use real-time video to improve objects with oscillating movements.
Breathing new life into your studio space shoot after shoot doesn't have to be difficult and it doesn't have to be expensive. With just a few simple DIY tricks, it's actually pretty easy to transform a plain white studio space into a stunning set.
For years photographers and YouTube commenters have been telling us that in order to get the most out of our Profoto B1 and D1 lights, we need to add the Profoto Frosted Glass Dome to our strobes. Today I test this add-on to see if it makes a difference at all, and the results are surprising.
Achieving soft, directional light outdoors can be difficult. Sure, you can use an overcast day for soft, natural light, but often, this will not give you the most flattering light on your subject's face. In this video, we use my largest light modifier to see how you can turn an overcast day into a professional looking catalog image.
When it comes to shooting portraits, photographers almost always reach for an 85mm lens or even the 70 - 200 mm lens. As great as these two lenses are for portraits, they often fall short when trying to capture an environmental style photograph. In this video, I'm going to show you the most widely used lens in my camera bag and how shooting wide angle can sometimes create a better photograph than shooting telephoto.
Piracy is a major issue among all types of creatives. Regardless of if you make handbags, design websites, create beautiful paintings, produce movies, or craft amazing photographs, at some point or another, someone is going to steal and rip off your work. Recently, we decided to run a social experiment; we actually pirated one of our own tutorials and put it online for free before it was even released to the public. What happened next was pretty interesting.
Our latest series of behind the scenes episodes with Elia Locardi are almost over. In today's episode we continue to explore the rooftops of Dubai in search of the perfect cityscape photograph of the city. We then head out to a remote desert to photograph the stars only to find out our guide had other plans. This is “Photographing the World III” behind the scenes episode 12!
Concert photography is probably one of the most appealing genres to shoot for any photographer. When I first picked up a camera, the only thing I wanted to photograph was my favorite bands as they played live. Our good friend and Canon Explorer of Light ambassador David Bergman is launching a pretty unique live workshop called Shoot From the Pit that will not only let you work side by side with David himself but also shoot a variety of artists as they perform live.
For our New Year's Resolution, Lee and I decided to attempt to post 30 new videos to our YouTube channel throughout the entire month of January. We were not only curious if we could find the drive and motivation to complete such a feat, but we also were curious what sort of traffic, advertising income, and excitement it would bring to Fstoppers.com. Here is what we found out.
We are now up to episode 10 in our behind-the-scenes adventures with Elia Locardi. After photographing some of the most beautiful locations in Italy, it was time to travel from Europe to the Middle East. For the next part of “Photographing the World,” we wanted to capture images of one of the most modern cities in the world: Dubai. As you will see in this episode, Dubai has some of the most ridiculous yet awesome activities out in the desert.
The lust for better photo gear is something every photographer struggles with. In our photography industry, many people swear by the quality of light of this brand verses that brand, but in the end isn't light just light? In this video I create a classic beauty lighting setup with $10,000 worth of lighting equipment and then replicate that same setup with only $425 worth of lighting equipment. Will they look the same? This is the Rich Photographer vs Poor Photographer lighting test.
If there is one thing photographers are obsessed with it is lens bokeh. Even if you shoot landscapes or interiors at f/22, your mouth will surely drop the second someone pulls out a fast f/1.2 lens from their bag. One of the most sought after ultra-fast primes in the Nikon lineup is their manual focus 50mm f/1.2 lens. Can this 35-year-old design compete or even beat Nikon's newest 50mm f/1.4 lens in a studio setting? Today we find out.
One of the most frustrating things a photographer has to deal with in today's market is having their work stolen or used for free. If you post images online, the chances of your work being used without your permission isn't just likely, but inevitable. How then can you as a photographer protect your images while at the same time publishing your work so you can promote your brand? In this free excerpt from our Making Real Money tutorial, Monte Isom shares the exact steps you need to take to both protect your work and recover damages caused by illegal infringements.
