It has been 26 years since development started on the eventual successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. In that time, after numerous delays, cost overruns, one major redesign, and 10 billion USD, the James Webb Space Telescope has finally taken its first images.
Landscape photographers have a love/hate relationship with clouds. Too many or too little in our shot can be cause for grief while trying to compose a landscape image, unless the clouds are interesting, of course, like during a storm.
Machine learning and AI are quickly becoming commonplace with the tools every photographer uses. There are neural filters for Photoshop, AI enhancement tools in Luminar Neo and PortraitPro, and even programs that use AI to generate captions for photos.
Wide field astrophotography is quickly becoming an established niche that is increasingly available to more hobbyist photographers with the availability of better, smaller, and cheaper tracking mounts. But the smallest galaxies, nebulae, and planets have always been prohibitively expensive to capture. Can this lens change that?
Are you using the right lenses for landscape astrophotography? The traditional goto lens for landscape used to be a 16-35mm or thereabouts, as long as it had a maximum aperture of f/2.8, it could double for night duty.
About a month has passed since Skywatcher officially announced the Star Adventurer GTi, the smallest and lightest purpose-built GoTo astrophotography mount. But is it actually any good?
If you’re at all interested in astronomy or astrophotography, there is no escaping the effects of light pollution. Whether that means traveling to darker skies or using post-processing to reduce gradients, we all kind of wish it wasn’t there. Right?
Astrophotography can be divided into two camps: terrestrial and deep space. Both can be equally challenging for different reasons. But recent advances in technology have also made both more attainable and enjoyable.
Many of you are likely familiar with the company Skylum. They make the ever-popular Luminar photo-editing software. Some of you may know that Skylum was founded in Ukraine, and the majority of their team resides there.
It’s springtime, which means that for most of us around the world, the core of the Milky Way galaxy, or the “Galactic Bulge,” will be prominently visible in the night sky roughly through the end of summer.
If you have ever seen images of deep space objects like nebulae and galaxies while perusing the internet today, you may have wondered why they look the way they do. I mean, it’s not all difficult to point your camera up and take pictures of the night sky. But there’s a lot more to it than that.
Let's face it: as photographers, we are crazy about saving our files. I have terabytes of images and videos spanning multiple hard drives in different arrays in my studio, and it drives me nuts that it's in disarray. Maybe you’re in the same boat, looking for a better way to safely store all your important images in one place.
So, you’ve gone out and bought an iOptron SkyGuider Pro. You’ve assembled it, read the instructions, maybe even watched a YouTube video on how to use it, and you’ve got the basics down. But you find yourself wondering if it could be better. Yes, it can be heaps better.
The works of classic painters are some of the most revered artifacts from antiquity. The Baroque style in particular exudes portrayals of dramatic light, color, and fantastic events. But for centuries, they have been relegated to two dimensions.
Shooting products in a studio environment is not the easiest form of photography. It takes patience, knowledge of light sculpting, and clever post-processing. People also incorrectly assume that you must have a great deal invested in equipment.
Are you a fan of the 4:3 aspect ratio? There's definitely something nostalgic about the nearly square framing that instantly transports me back to my childhood in the late 1980s. Aside from that, I’m overjoyed that it’s no longer in widespread use.
Five years ago, I made a video about creating time-lapses solely in Lightroom Classic using the Slideshow Module. It was an experiment in pushing the boundaries of what Lightroom could feasibly do, and over the years it has garnered over 175K views, which was completely unintentional, but a very welcome surprise.
With all the fanfare this past year over the latest developments in camera technology, it's easy to get caught up in gear envy. And that's completely natural. But what if there's a better camera out there that most of us have forgotten about?
Astrophotography has become more popular than ever, in no small part due to the global pandemic, but also due to the availability of inexpensive portable tracking mounts.
After all the excitement we got last year from the comet NEOWISE, it's hard to believe that right now, there's another potential naked-eye-visible comet screaming through the solar system at 158,000 miles per hour.
I have only been to a fire lookout once, and it was by accident. The experience of being high above the landscape was exhilarating, and the views were outstanding, but I didn’t stay long, as I thought I was trespassing.
If you’ve ever thought about getting into astrophotography, you may have been dissuaded by the task of correctly processing your own images. There are countless guides online using a variety of programs, but they are either expensive and difficult to use, or are only available for a single operating system.
The idea of commercial use permits is ubiquitous in nearly every country. If you want to perform a commercial activity in a public space, you need permission, and probably a fee, to do so.
If you have been using your digital camera for astrophotography, you’re probably aware that there are special astro variants of some of the more popular cameras. But how exactly are these special variants different, and can you modify yours?
If you are at all interested in astrophotography, you may have wondered if your current lenses are up to the task of capturing sharp, distortion-free images of the stars. Something most modern digital lenses weren’t intended for.
Prepare to be wowed. Up until this point, Adobe has been pretty mum on the capabilities of the new AI masking coming to Lightroom and Camera Raw, except for a single “sneak peek” video that didn’t go into very much detail.
If you haven’t already heard, Instagram has recently shed some light on how to use hashtags appropriately on the platform, and what you should avoid to get the most out of adding them to your content.
Nearly everyone today knows about the effectiveness of Google Maps for finding locations anywhere in the world and even perhaps saving them for reference later. There have been countless articles, written even here on Fstoppers, which exhibit its usefulness. However, many fundamental deficiencies arise upon using Google Maps when you take away the one thing it needs to be functional: an internet connection.
Astrophotography has quickly become incredibly popular these days, with the advent of increasingly smaller and affordable star trackers, and not to mention the global pandemic, which has forced people to make do with photographing what is immediately around them, or above them.
With all the sharpening techniques available to you in Photoshop, sometimes, it can be hard to find the right one for you to use. And I am always amazed when someone finds a new way of doing something that we all thought we understood.
So, what are the best settings for wildlife photography? Most people would argue that aperture priority would be the best way to tackle shooting fast action like wildlife and sports. It gives you the best balance between automatic camera settings (like picking the correct shutter speed) and manual control (like the ability to compensate for exposure).
There is not a more confounding and mysterious element of digital photography than ISO. And just when we've all thought we've figured it out and it starts to make sense, another wrinkle appears and threatens our conceptions all over again.
