Photography News

Getting my hands on the new DJI Osmo 360 II was an interesting experience, largely because the first generation was already so well-built. The original gave us solid specs that made it a serious contender right out of the gate. Because it set that bar so high, a quick glance at the Osmo 360 II’s spec sheet might initially feel like a letdown. But if you look past the paper specs, there are clear hints that DJI actually listened. Instead of chasing blind spec bumps, they focused on further refinements, better core image quality, and real-world usability.

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The railing you pass on the way to the shop, the peeling door down the street, and the traffic marker on the corner rarely look like photographs, which is why most people never point a camera at them. Learning to see images in those ordinary things means you can shoot well on any free evening, without a long drive or a planned trip.

 

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Canon has released a wave of new RF primes since the RF 35mm f/1.8 Macro IS STM arrived, including a fast 35mm in its VCM line and an inexpensive 45mm f/1.2. That raises a fair question about whether the older, cheaper lens still deserves to be the first one you put on an RF body.

 

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A white wall behind your subject can go pure black in the final frame, even when the light never moves. You can get two completely different portraits from one setup in a room the size of a spare bedroom if you know how to use the light already in the room and how to shut it out.

 

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A car shoot can easily produce 1,000 or 2,000 frames, and the time you spend sorting and editing them often decides how many images you actually finish. The order of your Lightroom steps, from culling to tone curve to masking to Denoise, shapes the final look as much as any single slider does.

 

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Mountain photography, both on and off these magnificent natural structures, is something photographers can capture images of all year round, but there's something about the Autumn and Winter seasons which add an extra level of 'wow' to these landscape shots. For your next venture up a mountain or to one of our many national parks where mountain ranges decorate the horizon, here are 8 pieces of advice that'll have you capturing breathtaking mountain shots in no-time at all.

 

1. Safety First 

This can be a tricky subject in winter as you need to ensure you remain safe at all times. Walking in snow is one thing but mountains tend to also be covered with ice and have erratic weather conditions. Before you set off, know your ability, wear the right clothing and take the right walking equipment including phone, compass and map. You should also carry a whistle which can be used to attract attention if you need help.

2. Pack Your Filters

Don't leave home without a UV filter as not only does it protect the lens from the elements but it will cut the levels of UV which are often high in the mountains, especially in sunny conditions.

If it’s sunny and there’s snow use a polarising filter. The polariser is a great tool to help control glare and light reflection from the snow. Take care not to over polarise a blue sky in the mountains, though.

The ND Grad filter is essential for reducing the contrast difference between the sky and ground. Landscape photographer Robin Whalley tends to carry a 2 stop and 3 stop (0.6 and 0.9) wrapped in a filter cloth and placed in his pocket when photographing mountain landscapes.

 

 

3. Lens Choices 

The lens choice for shooting in the mountains is wide-angle. A longer lens can also be useful for picking out details, but a zoom will probably allow you to capture the best the mountain has to offer. When using longer lenses, don't forget that you need a tripod that can support their weight.

 

4. Capture Distance And Height 

When shooting from the mountainside or summit the best approach to composition is to emphasise distance and height. Use a wide-angle lens and include something to act as foreground interest. Lenses wider than 24mm can be used successfully but the feeling of distance and height tends to diminish the wider you go.

 

 

5. Use Small Apertures 

The need to include foreground interest as well as keep the distant hills in good focus probably means you need to stop your lens down to quite a small aperture, perhaps f/16.0 or smaller. If you are also using filters, for example, a polariser you might find slow shutter speeds a problem. Robin Whalley says: "I used to use a walking pole and place the camera lens through the hand loop to support it, giving me a few extra stops of stability. Now I use a monopod which doubles as a walking pole and which I have used successfully with shots with over 0.5-second exposure."

 

6. Creating The 'Wow' Factor When shooting from the mountain you want the viewer to gain a sense of the place, so when they look at the shot they almost feel like they were actually there with you. To do this, as well as using a wide-angle lens, use a panoramic composition as this will help the viewer appreciate the scale of the location but again, it doesn’t emphasise the dramatic height of the mountain, something we'll discuss further down the page.      

 

7. Correct Exposures 

If you are shooting in snowy conditions, you should also watch out for the cameras light meter being fooled into underexposing the scene. Check your histogram regularly after shots and use your cameras exposure compensation adjustment if necessary to increase the exposure.

 

8. Off The Mountain 

This option is far more accessible to most people and can provide equally if not more impressive images. When people think of dramatic mountain scenery, it’s often shots taken of the mountain from a normal altitude that they think of.

When shooting off the mountain the best lens is a long telephoto, probably in excess of 100mm. This may seem counter-intuitive but wide-angle lenses seldom give the most drama. They will emphasise the foreground but diminish the background, almost making it shrink into the horizon. The telephoto lens in contrast will emphasise the size of the mountain and allow you to focus in on the rugged details. 

In summary, decide on your approach, on or off the mountain, then use the right equipment to give a composition that will best connect the viewer with the scene.

On October 5, 1986, the New York Times published the closest thing to an honest tally the milk carton campaign produced. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children knew of 107 children located because somebody recognized a picture of them, at least four of those from a milk carton. The National Child Safety Council's own estimate of cartons then in circulation was two billion to three and a half billion, down from a peak it put at three to five billion.

 

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Threads of Time is an exploration of legacy and lens. It is a collaborative project between kesi artist Jingwei and photographer Jing Huang, presented at the Leica Gallery in Amsterdam. I went along to see how this collaboration was woven together in a gallery setting.

 

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Panasonic's Lumix L10 puts a Micro Four Thirds sensor and a fixed zoom into a body small enough for a jacket pocket, and it sells for $1,500. A fixed-lens camera at that price asks you to give up a lot of flexibility, so how it holds up after months of daily use tells you more than a launch-week impression can.

 

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Every year around late summer, my inbox and DMs start filling up with some version of the same question: "What actually happens at Sony Kando?" 

It's a fair thing to wonder. From the outside, Kando looks like a mystery box. A few hundred creators disappear to some beautiful corner of the country for a few days, flood everyone's feeds with incredible work, and then go quiet. There are no badges for sale. There's no public schedule. If you weren't invited, you're left watching from the outside, trying to figure out what the whole thing even is.

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An f/2.8 zoom usually costs more, weighs more, and takes up more room in your bag than its f/4 counterpart, and the price gap between the two versions of the same focal range can run to hundreds of dollars. A wrong choice in either direction tends to end the same way, with a second purchase or an expensive lens that keeps getting left at home.

 

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Ask whether the Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550 or the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1100 makes better prints, and you'll get answers about gamut volume, D-max, and how many centuries pigment inks last. Those figures steer where hundreds or thousands of dollars go, yet they say surprisingly little about how a print looks once it's framed and hanging.

 

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Fisheye lenses have usually forced a choice between a circular image and a frame-filling one. Sony's FE 8-14mm f/3.5 G does both in one small zoom for $1,600, so deciding to buy it comes down to how often you'd actually use a lens this specialized.

 

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A good support is a particularly important tool for landscape photographers. Even if you're a compact camera user you should consider purchasing a tripod. If you're still not convinced that fastening a tripod to your rucksack isn't a good idea when you're off on your walk, have a read of our ten reasons why we believe you should.

 

1. Use longer lenses more comfortably with a tripod

If you planning on taking some long as well as wide lenses out with you they tend to be more prone to camera shake so having a tripod will keep your shots sharp. However, if you do want to work hand-held make sure you don't use a shutter speed that's lower than your focal length. Some take this further and say your shutter speed should be at least double the focal length you're using.

  2. Easily adjust height

If you have a sky that's bursting with colourful sunset shades and want to make more of a feature of it, adjust the height of your tripod so more sky is in frame than land. We know you can just raise your hands up higher but holding your hands up in the air isn't very comfortable and any movement, even a small sway, could add unwanted blur to your shot. If you do want to adjust the height, make sure you pull all the legs out to their maximum length before using the centre column. Why? Well, even though it's easier to adjust than three legs, the support won't be as sturdy.

  3. Create slower shutter speed images easily

If you're planning on taking photos that turn the movement of waterfalls, rivers and waves into smooth, dry ice-like textures, you'll need slower shutter speeds. The problem with slower shutter speeds is they're not a great choice when working hand-held as you have to stay very still to stop shake and if you don't, blur will creep into your shot. However, stick your camera on a tripod and you can set shutter speeds that are many minutes long and shake won't factor into it. While we are talking about shake, try using a remote release or the camera's self-timer to fire the shutter to stop any small movement that you moving your hand away from the camera may create.

 

 

4. Create multiple exposures

If you're shooting a scene where the camera can't handle all of the different exposure levels present, you may want to try shoot a series of separate shots that each focus on the dark, middle and light parts of the image which are then combined to create one balanced exposure. If you're unsure whether the location you're at will work better with HDR, take a few sample shots and have a look at the areas that are in shadow. If you think there's detail that's lost in these darker areas that will improve your photograph then have a try at HDR.

A tripod is essential for this type of photography as the smallest of movements can adjust your framing which means your shots won't line up when you try to merge them together. As a result, once you've framed up, lock your camera's position, ensuring all screws are fastened tightly and that all leg locks won't come loose.

  5. Create smooth panoramas

If you want to shoot some landscape panoramas, having a tripod will help keep your shots steady and make them easier to stitch together once back in front of the computer. Start at either the left or right of the image, whichever you're more comfortable with, and allow for some overlap between each frame. It's always worth doing a 'dummy run' so you can make sure everything you want in the scene can be captured and to double-check you have enough overlap between each shot. It is important that focus is not adjusted during the panorama so take care not to touch the focus barrel once you have focused and set your white-balance manually so you don't have to make small tweaks to individual shots once back home. For scenes with details much closer to the front of the frame you'll need to use a panoramic head.

 

6. Take your time to compose properly

We know it's been said quite a few times but it doesn't hurt to mention it again, particularly to those who are new to landscape photography. What are we talking about? Well, the actual process of setting up your tripod, putting your camera through it and looking through the viewfinder does take some time and as a result, it slows you down and makes you think more about the shot you're taking. If you didn't have a tripod with you it would be very easy to take your camera out of its bag, fire off a few shots quickly and move on to a new location without really giving much thought about composition and the overall shot you're trying to achieve.

 

  7. More stability in windy weather 

If you find the weather turns a little blustery you'll need a sturdy tripod as unlike us photographers, they're better at balancing so won't get blown and pushed around as easily. If you find you need a little more weight and your tripod features a centre column hook, you can hang a bag of stones or other weighty objects off it to balance the tripod. For lighter tripods, use your body as a shield from the wind. Sticking spiked feet into the ground will also help keep the tripod still.

 

8. Set up low angle landscapes

For something a little different, adjust your tripod legs so you can shoot lower to the ground. This can give foreground detail more emphasis, really changing the feel of your landscape shot.

  9. Set up in water, use a remote trigger 

Sometimes you have to get your feet wet to get the shot you want but trying to stand upright in water that's moving on what can be slippy rocks is hard enough on your own, without a camera in your hands. To minimise the chances of you dropping your camera in the water, put it on a tripod. If the tripod doesn't have to be too far in the water you could also use a remote release/cable to fire the shutter from the water's edge rather than getting in yourself. Do make sure your tripod won't topple over and if you have them, use spiked feet to bed the tripod into the floor. If you're shooting at the coast, remember to clean your tripod after dunking it in the sea as saltwater will rust it.

  10. Capture images with low light minus movement blur

Shooting at sunrise, sunset or during the night so you can capture a sky full of stars, requires the use of slower shutter speeds, which, as mentioned, means you'll have to use a tripod as working hand-held can result in shake spoiling your shot. You can try nudging your ISO up to quicken your shutter speed but not all cameras produce good-quality shots when higher ISOs are used so the safest option is to take your tripod with you so you can use longer shutter speeds.

 

Photo by Joshua Waller

 

City life's not for everyone but as the sun begins to set find yourself a vantage point where you can see most of the city skyline and you'll soon have a photograph that may make you rethink your dislike for cities. One of the best times for photographing city skylines is when the sun's begun to set so there's still a touch of blue in the sky but the light's not too harsh so make sure you're on your chosen vantage point well before sunset. 

 

1. Gear Choices

Pack a wide lens for capturing the big picture and a telephoto for singling out individual buildings and pulling distant objects towards you on your evening jaunt. Taking a tripod with you is advised but do leave your flashgun at home and turn your on-camera flash off as if it fires, it can ruin your skyline shot.

Most cameras, even compacts and smartphones are capable of producing night shots of decent quality but if you're planning on using much lengthier exposure times, you'll want to pack a more advanced camera. 

 

2. Where To Stand With Your Kit

While on holiday (if you have a room with a view) make use of the balcony to give you a high vantage point of the city. You'll also find buildings with observation decks, bridges to stand on and if you're in a city such as Sheffield which has the peak district on its doorstep, try heading for the hills to give you a sweeping shot of the whole city. From high locations you'll be able to capture patterns you can't see at street level such as the lines street lights form as they turn on or the shapes created as city dwellers switch on their lights at home. Street lights look particularly good twinkling against the deep blue sky still lit by the setting sun. Just be careful where you meter from as you don't want the sky or building lights to 'blow out'. Keep an eye on your histogram and take a reading from a darker part of the frame. Another option is to take multiple exposures of the same view so you can combine them to create a shot with a balanced exposure where there's not under- or over-exposed areas in the image. 

 

3. Taking Photos Through Glass

If you've got to capture your image through glass do check for marks and smudges that will spoil your shot. If you can't remove them, experiment with your aperture to see if one particular f-number will remove them from the shot. You'll also need to put the lens as close to the glass as possible and cup it with your hand, a cloth or whatever else you have that will reduce the amount of interior light reaching your lens. If you don't, you'll end up with reflections and flare could spoil your shots. 

 

Photo by Joshua Waller

 

4. Depth Of Field 

You'll want to use an aperture that gives your shot plenty of depth of field, around f/8 is a good place to start, and try to stick to lower ISOs where possible. You may find you need to adjust this to increase shutter speeds but if you're using a tripod, longer exposures won't be an issue. If you have it available, the depth of field preview button can help ensure your shot is sharp from front to back. 

Foreground interest can add another level interest and 'fill' empty space that can occur when focusing on subjects in the distance. However, do make sure it's not stealing the spotlight and pulling the viewer's attention away from the skyline. 

 

5. Shoot Silhouettes 

Silhouetted cityscapes are popular subjects and they work well against a plain but bright background. Even though they're a little clichéd sunsets do work well particularly if it's one that's rich with colour. To create your silhouette you need to expose for the background and not the buildings you want to silhouette. You may need to fool your camera when it comes to metering as using the camera's automatic metering won't always give you the silhouette you're after. Try half-pressing the shutter button while focused on the brightest part of your scene before moving back to frame the shot but this means your camera will focus on this and not your subject. Manual focus or using a smaller aperture can combat this problem. Talking of manual focus, you should consider using this even when not shooting silhouettes as it'll always produce better results, plus auto-focus tends to struggle as light levels fall. 

 

6. Shots At Street Level

As well as getting up high working at street level can work well in the evening too. Try using long exposures (20-30 seconds) to set the dark sky and buildings against the streak of lights that come from the traffic as it moves through the city streets. You could even combine multiple traffic streak shots to increase the sense of speed and movement in your city shot. Another way to add a creative twist to your city skyline shots is by incorporating reflections from rivers, lakes or even wet pavements after it's rained. 

 

7. Tall Buildings & Straight Horizons

Pay attention to your horizon and the angle of the buildings as you don't want them to be slanting to one side of the image. A tripod with a spirit level can be handy although many cameras now have these or gridlines built-in. When home, check your city shots for distortion but this is something that can be easily fixed in image editing software. Playing around with the colour balance can enhance and evoke mood, too so don't be afraid to experiment with this. 

 

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Anyone who shoots regularly ends up with the same problem: a stack of external drives, each holding a pile of different projects, but none of them labelled well enough to trust. Finding one file often means plugging drives in one at a time until you get lucky. And knowing whether a project is safely backed up in two places usually means guessing, which is why so many photographers keep everything on the Mac far longer than they should, unsure what can be deleted and what can't.

Niklas Fischer, the developer behind Tusk, knows the feeling. "I've never had a drive crash or break, so that was something I didn't worry about too much. What was worse for me was the anxiety when I wanted to delete files from my Mac. I was often not sure which files were safe to delete and wanted one app that shows me exactly where a project lives, instead of plugging in drives one by one to check."

 

 

Tusk is that app. Released in August 2026 after a two-month public beta with photographers and video editors, it combines two jobs that have usually needed two separate tools: backing files up, and keeping track of where they went. "There are great tools like NeoFinder and Carbon Copy Cloner that each do cataloguing or backup well," says Fischer. "Before Tusk, nothing did both."

The setup is short. You pick a project folder, choose one or more backup destinations (external drives, NAS, Google Drive, Dropbox or S3-compatible storage such as Backblaze B2), and Tusk copies everything across, verifying each file with a checksum. From then on it watches the folder and backs up new and changed files as they appear, so a fresh export lands on the backup drive without you doing anything.

 

 

Every file gets a status per destination, and that status stays visible after the drive is ejected. Open a project from two years ago and Tusk shows which drive holds the master files, whether that copy was verified, and when it was last checked. Search covers the whole catalogue, whether the drives are connected or not.

 

 

That catalogue is also what makes it safe to free up space. Once a file has verified copies elsewhere, Tusk lets you delete the local copy. It checks the physical backups first and blocks the delete if anything is missing or unverified. Restore brings files back from the fastest connected copy in one click, for a whole project or a single folder.

 

 

Photographers with years of existing backups do not need to start over. Point Tusk at a drive that already holds your archive, select the folders, and it catalogues and verifies them in place, without recopying. A second drive with partial copies of the same shoot can be brought in the same way: Tusk matches what is already there and copies only what is missing. On a shoot day it can also offload a memory card to two or more destinations in a single pass, with a checksum report at the end.

Fischer built the first version as a command-line tool for his own course recordings. "When talking to other photographers and videographers, I realised that I'm not the only one struggling with this problem. I then decided to turn it from a terminal tool into a real desktop app, in close collaboration with some of my videographer and photographer friends."

Everything Tusk knows about your files stays on your Mac. No signup is required, and neither your files nor the catalogue is uploaded anywhere. Cloud backups go straight from your Mac into your own accounts. Tusk is focused on project-level backups, so it does not replace whole-Mac backup software such as Time Machine or Backblaze, and it runs on macOS only.

Tusk is available now from tuskbackup.com for macOS 12 and later, on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, as a signed and notarised download (it is not on the Mac App Store). A 14-day trial starts on first launch with no signup or card. A licence is a one-time purchase of $79 (USD); at launch, the first 100 licences are offered at $49. It covers up to five Macs and includes one year of updates, and the app keeps working after that.

The teal peaks and orange haze of the "Cosmic Cliffs," the Carina Nebula image that helped introduce the James Webb Space Telescope to the world in July 2022, do not exist. Not those colors, anyway. Almost none of the light Webb recorded is light your eye can see, and every filter used for that particular image sits in the infrared. The moment you understand why, the picture gets more impressive rather than less.

 

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Compact fixed-lens cameras have been getting more and more popular in recent years, and the Leica Q series holds a spot at the top of that category. While the Q3 is already more than a couple of years old, there are some updates to the camera that make it more enticing.

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The 50mm is the lens most people buy first because it's the cheapest prime in the catalog, and plenty of them spend the first few months shooting it wide open just to see the background melt. Fewer people learn to see at that focal length, and the habits that work at 28mm or 35mm tend to fall apart once you move to something tighter.

 

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Whenever I've photographed weddings, world events, landscapes, or anything else, it's not been uncommon for other photographers to come up and start a chat about gear. And as someone who's worked for a major camera company and taught photography for almost two decades, I've always been happy to engage in talks about megapixels, autofocus, and dynamic range. 

But then the other day, when photographing the 9/11 Tribute in Light in New York City, it happened, and it hit me: I don't really think about this stuff anymore. I haven't for a long time.

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