Photography News

Sometimes it feels like the photography industry is one magnificent, well-oiled grift. It will happily sell you a two-thousand-dollar lens, the romantic illusion of being an artist, and the sweet, intoxicating hope of making a living, right up until the point when you're in your garage, on a Monday, with all the gear, no clients, and a bank account in the red.

 

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A single black-and-white board can do the work of a reflector, a flag, a backdrop, and a negative fill panel, all in the same shoot. Learning to read light and shape it with one tool beats buying five separate modifiers.

 

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Most full frame zooms start at 24mm, but this one opens at 20mm and weighs less than a pound. That extra width changes what a single travel lens can cover, and it forces a real decision about reach.

 

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Experimental film photography rarely gets a fair shake because most of the ideas floating around live in old technical manuals or die in a single frustrated attempt. Testing them yourself takes time, cheap filters, and a willingness to waste a few rolls to learn something you can actually use.

 

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The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum has unveiled the first bobblehead version of "Lunch atop a Skyscraper," the 1932 photograph of 11 ironworkers eating lunch on a girder 850 feet over Manhattan, in the week of the picture's 94th anniversary. All 11 men have bobbing heads, the scene is 13 inches long, and the run is limited to 1,932 numbered pieces at $100 each.

 

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Most photography tutorials show you the winning shot and skip everything that came before it. This one does the opposite, walking through six attempts at a single long exposure until the composition finally comes together.

 

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Apple TV will shoot part of Friday's Giants at Dodgers game, the last "Friday Night Baseball" broadcast of the season, with 14 iPhone 18 Pro units built into Dodger Stadium, including inside the pitch clock, behind the backstop, on a foul pole, and in both bullpens. Eight of the phones will feed live video into the broadcast over a private T-Mobile 5G network, so what they see reaches your screen as it happens rather than as a replay package.

 

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    1. Be Patient  Photographing lively animals like cats is all about patience – try not to get frustrated if your animal won't do what you want. Remember, it is at heart a wild animal and they won't always do what you want them to do. You might want to sit around with your camera without taking photos a few times too so they get used to seeing the camera and won't attack it or run away when you take it out of its bag.   2. Be Ready The most difficult thing about photographing animals, no matter how large or small, is that they move at the most inopportune moments. Setting your camera to continuous shooting mode may help you capture a good shot as they run off in a different direction. DSLRs feature quick continuous shooting modes but don't worry if you're not a DSLR owner as many compacts also have a continuous shooting mode built-in. Compact camera owners can also switch to sport/action mode to increase your chances of getting a blur-free shot.    

 

3. Ask For Assistance 

If you are looking to capture some action or movement shots, get someone else to play with your cat, distracting them so you can get some shots of them swiping and jumping without them going for your camera. Try getting your cat to run by throwing a toy or treat, and snap it in full run. Quicker shutter speeds or switching to sports/action mode will help you freeze your cat's movement. To further enhance the feeling of speed, pan your camera, following your cat as they run. This will, hopefully, keep your cat sharp while the background is thrown nicely out of focus. If you don't want to have a go at panning, pre-focus on a spot where you know your cat will run through and hit the shutter button when they come into frame.

 

4. Candids & Close-Ups

Another technique, to create a more wild effect, is to watch your cat outside for a while and snap more candid style shots of it hunting or climbing on a wall. Try shooting side-on so you can get a shot just as it leaps into action.

If you want some close-up shots of your feline friend, try dangling a toy above it to get it to look up from the ground. You could also try getting your cat to paw at you to give the impression that it's leaping. Dangling a toy will also encourage your cat to keep still and keep its attention focused, to stop it from wandering off. For less action-based shots, why not try capturing it lying down or stretching. Some really lovely shots can be taken while they're resting/sleeping, for example.

 

You've read the technique now share your related photos for the chance to win prizes: Daily Forum Competition  

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Remember when you could look at a photo and know that it was, well, a photo?

If this year’s AI announcements from Apple, Google and Samsung left me with anything, it’s the certainty that those days are well and truly behind us.

From the 2023 discovery that Samsung was using AI to “enhance” photos of the moon taken on its flagship phones, to the latest round of generative tools added to Apple’s Photos app, the now-clichéd question “What is a photo?” has never been more complex or more necessary to answer.

For the record, my favourite answer to that question is the old superstition that when your photo is taken, a part of your soul is taken with it. Presumably, as you’re reading this, you don’t agree.

I must admit that the demoed results of these AI features do look good, and the only real effect of removing a lamppost from a photo of your kids is a marginally nicer snap to show their grandparents. Nonetheless, the argument that photography has a negative effect on the soul has never been stronger.

Enter Photosynthesis, an iPhone camera app that promises to enhance the user’s photos using zero generative AI. And it delivers the goods.

The idea behind Photosynthesis is simple: the app takes photos with two of the iPhone’s lenses simultaneously, then stitches the results together into a seamless composite. This resulting photo, therefore, combines the detail of the closer lens with the context of the wider, giving users the rather pithy “best of both lenses”.

It’s an idea so simple that it’s hard to believe no one has done it in the 10 years since Apple brought out their first two-lens model (the iPhone 7 Plus, which paired the regular 1x lens with a 2x telephoto).

Photosynthesis is the second app from British indie developer Sam Shepherd, who came up with the idea as a shutter-happy new parent looking to take the best photos without upgrading his phone and, understandably, without AI generating his son’s first steps. Now, after what he describes as “days of prototyping, weeks of building, months of refinement, and over 2,000 test photos”, the results speak for themselves.

 

A band performing on stage, shot from the crowd.

 

A map board, shot from several metres away.

 

Tower Bridge in London, shot from Blackfriars station, 2km away.

 

Users with an iPhone Pro (three rear lenses) can choose to pair the 1x with the zoom lens, or with the 0.5x ‘ultra-wide’, or even combine them all (’All 3’ currently in beta), while the standard iPhone (two rear lenses) can pair the 1x and 0.5x.

When shooting, the viewfinder helpfully indicates where each lens sits within the field of view, then the in-app editor comes with a heap of features designed for composite photos. While the aim of the app is to automatically produce a seamless result from just one tap of the shutter, the ability to ‘paint’ through one lens to the other is a useful tool to correct any remaining parallax artefacts.

 

The viewfinder, with green brackets to indicate the zoom lens framing.

 

The reveal tool, allowing users to ‘paint’ through one lens to the other.

 

The align tool, allowing users to tweak the relative position of the lenses.

 

Photosynthesis then offers a range of export options, from HEIC, PNG and JPEG, to layered Photoshop documents, 3D options, and a custom ‘Photosynthesis’ file that maintains editability while showing as a normal photo in other apps.

‘Photosynthesis: 2-Lens Camera’ is available to download for free on the iPhone App Store, with a 14-day unlimited free trial, after which you can keep using it for free with some limits to exports and customisation options, or pay a reasonable amount to keep everything unlimited.

And as for taking two photos at once, hopefully the slivers of soul stolen by each lens cancel each other out.

 

Neurapix has launched Studio Crop, an AI-powered Lightroom plugin feature that automatically applies consistent crops across entire portrait series. Photographers set a single crop specification with their preferred framing, aspect ratio, and eye alignment, then the AI applies it to all images at once. It's particularly useful for school, sports, and event photographers who previously had to crop hundreds of similar shots individually. The feature is included free with Neurapix Unlimited plans.

 

From Neurapix:

 

Neurapix has released Studio Crop, a new feature for its Lightroom plugin. The AI developed by the Göttingen-based company can now crop portraits according to predefined specifications - while it is already editing the images in the photographer's individual style.

The development of the new feature was prompted by school, kindergarten and sports photographers who previously had to set every crop individually across large series of images. They now get near-identical crops across entire shoots. To do so, Neurapix Studio Crop is simply checked in the usual editing dialog, and the whole series then runs through without any further input.

Photographers themselves determine how tightly the subject sits in the frame - with a little room around the subject, as a half body or as a three-quarter portrait. The AI recognizes the person in the picture (without capturing any biometric data) and applies the chosen framing to every photo in the series.

 

Aspect ratios & alignment to the eyes

The aspect ratio can be chosen freely as well: classic 2:3 or 4:5, square 1:1, or 9:16 right away, for instance when clients need images for social media stories and reels. With the "Align to eyes" option, the eye line also sits at the same height in every image of a series - a detail that creates a consistent overall result particularly for class and team photos.

 

 

"Photographers have asked us again and again to develop an AI crop that positions subjects consistently across large series," says Neurapix co-founder and CEO Nils Sauder. "We have delivered on that with Neurapix Studio Crop. For school photographers, for example, the feature is a real game changer, because it saves them a considerable amount of additional time. And the image editing happens automatically along the way."

 

Free with Neurapix Unlimited

Studio Crop is part of the Neurapix plugin for Lightroom Classic and is available automatically after an update of the plugin or a first installation. On the Neurapix Unlimited plan the feature is included at no extra charge. On Pay-per-Picture, an additional 1 cent per image applies - as with all other optional features - bringing the cost to a maximum of 5 cents per photo.

The existing Neurapix AI crop, which optimizes image composition in general, remains unchanged. It continues to be particularly well suited to reportage photography, while Neurapix Studio Crop is tailored to portrait series.

 

About: Neurapix is a German AI start-up based in Goettingen that was founded in 2021. The company has developed an artificial intelligence that is able to learn a photographer's image editing style and apply it within Adobe Lightroom Classic. This allows photographers to have large numbers of photos edited in their own style, resulting in significant time savings of around 90%. For more information, please visit the Neurapix website.

The 1/125 on your shutter dial is a rounding error that stuck. The scale it sits on halves at every step, which puts that rung at 1/128, and 1/128 is an ugly number to stamp into metal. Your camera is full of settings like that: numbers and buttons whose shape was fixed by brass, gears, and gelatin, and that crossed into digital without anyone stopping to re-derive them.

 

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DJI just gave the 360 camera market something to catch up to. Building on more than 12 years of imaging expertise, the Osmo 360 II delivers new capabilities rooted in a shared lineage from previous generations of DJI's creative camera technology, from the Osmo 360 to the Avata 360. 

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Four days ago I put out a very nerdy video about the variable aperture lens in the new iPhone 18 Pro, and it has since become the most watched thing I have made all year. I did not see that coming. What I really did not see coming was the comment section. 

A lot of you disagreed with me, at length, and told me I had missed the point entirely. So I went back through every one of those arguments. I still think you are wrong, and this time I went outside and measured it.

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Five years of hesitation, one impulse purchase, and the result confirmed every doubt. The Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 delivers some of the sharpest image quality you can put on a Sony body, and that alone makes it a lens worth understanding before spending the money.

 

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The latest winner of our popular daily photography theme which takes place in our forums have been chosen and congratulations go to JonnyNI (Day 14 - Lights).

 

Daily Theme Runners-Up

If you didn't win this time, keep uploading your images to the daily competition forum for another chance to win! If you're new to the Daily Theme, you can find out more about it in the Daily Theme Q&A. 

Well done to our latest runners-up, too, whose images you can take a look at below.

  Day 9

Bridges In The Landscape

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Day 10

Music Photography

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Day 11

Shopping

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Day 12

City Skylines

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  Day 13

Stairs & Steps

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Day 15

High-Up

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Day 16

Rugged Landscape

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You’ll find the Daily Themes, along with other great photo competitions, over in our Forum. Take a look to see the latest daily photo contests. Open to all levels of photographer, you’re sure to find a photography competition to enter. Why not share details of competitions with our community? Join the camaraderie and upload an image to our Gallery.

Apple announced the iPhone 18 Pro, and the headline camera feature this year is a physical variable aperture on the main camera.  I have been shooting professionally for 20 years, and I sat through that entire section of the keynote thinking the same thing over and over: this does not make any sense. Why would anyone want or need a variable aperture on a phone? 

So I went and did a pile of research, and I think I finally know why it is there. It has almost nothing to do with the reason most people online are giving.

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Apple just had a gigantic keynote. New iPhones, new AirPods, new Apple Watches, and the one everybody was waiting on, a folding iPhone. I sat through the entire hour and a half and took detailed notes, and I came out of it more curious than convinced. 

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Laptops have finally gotten fast enough to be true desktop replacements. The one problem is that no laptop can connect to everything on your desk. A MacBook might only give you two or three USB-C ports, so you are going to need a dock. 

So I got the iVANKY FusionDock Ultra, which as far as I know is the most expensive and most powerful dock currently on the market. It is $649. I want to explain what makes it special, and then I want to talk almost all of you out of buying one.

 

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An ultra wide full frame prime that weighs just 142 g and stays sharp wide open is a rare find, and the Lumix 20mm f/2.5 pulls it off. If you shoot travel, vlog, or simply want a kit that doesn't weigh you down, a lens this compact changes what fits in your bag.

 

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Your Fujifilm camera ships with defaults that can quietly sabotage your photos, from blurry low-light shots to white balance that shifts without your say-so. Most of these settings sit hidden in menus you rarely open, which is why so many owners never realize anything is wrong until they review the files.

 

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