Photography News

 

Maono has launched the PD500W Hybrid Microphone, a dynamic microphone for podcasting, streaming, video production and interviews. It connects via compatible 2.4GHz wireless, USB-C or XLR, and records internally to 32GB of onboard storage in 24-bit or 32-bit float WAV, with a selectable -9dB safety track as backup. It is available through the Maono website and Amazon US, following a Kickstarter campaign that more than doubled its original funding goal.

 

From Maono:   Maono, a leading global professional microphone brand, today announced the availability of the PD500W Hybrid Microphone, a professional dynamic microphone system designed to support modern creators across podcasting, streaming, video production, interviews and live content creation. Combining 2.4GHz wireless, USB-C and XLR connectivity with optional 32-bit float internal recording and safety-track backup, the PD500W offers a flexible audio solution for a range of production workflows. The Maono PD500W is available globally via the Maono website and Amazon US with pricing starting at US$399 for the B asic Version and US$429 for the Desk Stand Bundle.

The retail launch follows a successful 60-day Kickstarter campaign, which concluded on August 30, 2026, with 279 backers pledging US$100,124—more than double its original US$50,000 funding goal. The PD500W was developed around a practical challenge facing modern creators: a single recording session may begin at a desk, move to an on-location interview and later transition to a mobile or studio setup. By combining three connection options—USB-C, XLR and compatible 2.4GHz wireless—with internal recording, the PD500W gives creators the flexibility to adapt to different devices and production environments without switching microphones.

 

 

Designed for Modern Production

EnvironmentsProfessional dynamic microphones are widely valued for their ability to capture clear vocal recordings while minimizing unwanted background noise. However, conventional setups often require external audio interfaces, preamps, complex gain staging and separate backup recording solutions, which can make it challenging to move between different production environments.

The PD500W addresses these challenges with a hybrid connectivity platform that supports USB-C, XLR and 2.4GHz wireless operation. USB-C enables direct connection to computers and mobile devices, while XLR integrates with existing audio interfaces and mixers. Wireless connectivity, through compatible USB-C or multi-output receivers, supports mobile recording and camera-based production. Beyond these connection options, the microphone also features internal recording, allowing creators to maintain a local copy of their audio while recording through a computer, camera or other compatible device.

This versatility allows creators to use one microphone across a range of production environments, from desktop podcasting and livestreaming to mobile content creation, on-location interviews and professional studio recording, without having to rebuild their audio setup for each workflow.

Maono has also refined the product's industrial design to support cleaner production environments. The microphone integrates concealed cable routing through its U-shaped yoke system, while a dedicated rear I/O hub consolidates USB-C, headphone monitoring and XLR connections to create a streamlined workspace.

 

Integrated Recording Protection

A key feature of the PD500W is its focus on recording reliability. Interviews, podcasts and live recordings frequently contain moments that cannot be recreated, making redundancy increasingly important for professional content production.

To address this need, the PD500W features 32GB of onboard storage and supports internal WAV recording in both 24-bit and 32-bit float formats. While 32-bit float provides greater flexibility for adjusting recording levels in post-production, internal recording creates an additional audio file directly within the microphone.

The system also includes a selectable -9dB safety-track feature that generates a lower-level backup recording to help mitigate unexpected volume spikes. Together, these recording safeguards reduce reliance on a single recording path and provide added confidence when capturing important content.

 

 

Enhanced Production Workflows

Beyond audio capture, the PD500W has been developed to streamline post-production workflows. When paired with the multi-output wireless receiver, the PD500W supports timecode synchronization to simplify alignment between internal recordings and compatible camera footage.

The microphone also integrates with MaonoLink, Maono's companion software platform, which provides access to AI-powered transcription, translation and summarization capabilities. These tools are designed to accelerate content review, highlight key discussion points and assist with the creation of production notes, transcripts and supporting content assets.

Developed with input from creators and beta testers, the PD500W has undergone refinements based on real-world feedback. Updates include an improved Mute Lock function to help prevent accidental muting, enhanced wireless stability, upgraded metal controls and an extension component for broader boom arm compatibility. These refinements reflect Maono's focus on making professional recording tools more practical and reliable in everyday production environments.

 

Pricing and Availability

The Maono PD500W is available globally via the Maono website and Amazon US with pricing starting at US$399 for the B asic Version and US$429 for the Desk Stand Bundle.

Maono also offers an affiliate program for the PD500W, paying up to 20 % commission. For further details, please click here.

 

About Maono 

Maono is a global professional microphone brand dedicated to making professional sound more accessible to creators, streamers, podcasters and music enthusiasts. Guided by the belief that “Your Voice Matters,” Maono combines professional audio performance with intuitive usability across gaming, livestreaming, podcasting, music recording and video creation. As a pioneer of hybrid microphones, Maono brings wireless creative freedom, USB plug-and-play simplicity and XLR professional expandability into its product innovation. Maono believes professional sound can be simple.

For additional product information, visit: www.maono.com

 

Zoner Studio has released its Fall Update, built around a new Advanced Preset Workflow with 37 presets across six categories. Instead of applying one finished look, photographers can layer their edits step by step and develop their own style. The update also improves Luminance Range masking, Saturation Correction and Split Toning, and introduces AI Lab, a space for trying out Zoner AI tools such as Noise Removal, Remove Object, Generative Extend and Generative Rotate. It is free for all Zoner Studio subscribers, and new users can try it with a 7-day trial.

 

From Zoner Studio:

 

Zoner Studio introduces its Fall Update, led by a new Advanced Preset Workflow. Photographers can now build their edits step by step, achieving polished results with less effort. The update also adds better color controls and experimental Zoner AI tools.

 

 

Advanced Preset Workflow

The highlight of the update is 37 new presets across six categories designed for flexible, step-by-step editing. Instead of applying a single finished look, photographers can build their own style. They can start with a Color Style, add Film Glow or Microcontrast, apply Corrections or Creative Effects, and fine-tune the final result.

Advanced techniques become easier to use, without having to master every tool.

 

More Precise Color and Tonal Control

The update also gives photographers more control over fine adjustments.

The improved Luminance Range masking tool makes it easier to target highlights and shadows naturally. Expanded Saturation Correction offers greater control over how Tone Curve adjustments affect color saturation. And Split Toning now allows photographers to adjust midtones independently, alongside highlights and shadows.

 

 

AI Lab: A Space to Explore Creative AI

The new AI Lab brings selected creative and generative tools from Zoner AI directly into Zoner Studio.

Photographers can experiment with features such as Noise Removal , Remove Object, Generative Extend, and Generative Rotate . AI Lab opens up creative possibilities beyond conventional photo editing.

 

“AI is opening up a world of new possibilities for photographers. Our priority is to develop tools that genuinely make sense when working with real photographs. That's why we fully integrate AI features into Zoner Studio only when we're confident in their quality and practical value. At the same time, we don't want to hold back photographers who enjoy trying new things. That's exactly why we created AI Lab – a place to experiment with Zoner AI tools. It will be a living, evolving space where new features can appear, while others may change or be removed over time. And the tools that prove their value may eventually become part of Zoner Studio itself,” says Michal Prouza, Head of the Software Division at ZONER.

 

Other Improvements

The Fall Update also includes smaller workflow improvements, such as filtering by stacks in Search. The Zoni AI Assistant is now available directly inside Zoner Studio, helping photographers find answers about the software and its features without leaving their editing workspace.

 

Availability

The Fall Update is available to all Zoner Studio subscribers at no additional cost.

New users can explore the latest features with a free 7-day trial.

For more infomation, please visit the Zoner Studio website.

Plenty of the scenes worth photographing on any given day slide past your car window at highway speed, and you get a couple of seconds to decide whether to pull over. Most people decide not to, and that small decision repeated over years adds up to a lot of missing frames.

 

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Sony's a7R VI pairs a 67-megapixel stacked sensor with 30 fps blackout-free shooting and 8K video, yet a lot of the early talk has centered on its readout speed trailing Sony's dedicated speed bodies. If you shoot detailed work but also need a camera that holds up when things move fast, whether that gap ever shows up in your actual photos decides which body goes in your bag.

 

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Zoner Studio's Fall Update replaces most of the editor's presets with 37 new ones built to be layered. You pick a color grade, add a texture or glow look on top, fix the light, and finish with sharpening or grain, and each step adds to the one before it instead of overwriting it. The update, free for subscribers, also brings an experimental AI Lab with generative tools and finer control over masking, tone curves, and split toning.

 

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Client budgets are tighter, gear and software keep getting pricier, and the playbook that filled a booking calendar in 2019 barely works anymore. If you earn any money from your camera, even a handful of print sales a year, the ground has shifted under how you price, market, and spend your time.

 

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The Canon EOS R6 Mark III is the latest in the R6 lineup, with Canon having updated some photography features while also giving the video side a huge refresh. As somebody who is a heavy hybrid shooter, this camera definitely piqued my interest and had me wanting to give it a closer look. Even finding a rental to get my hands on was a little tricky, but eventually, I managed to scoop one up. Since then, I've had the opportunity to test this camera across the globe, shooting fashion campaigns, events, e-commerce, commercials, social content, and more.

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Most camera straps follow the same general design, although in the past few years, companies have taken things a step further with the ability to quickly attach and remove a camera strap. WANDRD has recently taken that one step further with the release of its magnetic camera straps.

 

At first, when I heard about this, I wondered how the magnet was going to work. I thought it might be the type of strap that was actually held together by a magnet, but the reality of the mechanism is actually smarter than that.

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Photo by David Pritchard

 

With the days growing shorter, there are great opportunities for night photography in the city. Urban and city areas can be accessed in the dark, often at rush hour when there are amazing shots to be had in relative safety.

Article Sections:

• Gear
• Set-up
• Safety
• Locations
• Skylines
• Wet weather
• Long exposures
• Exposure
• Time of day
• Colour

 

Gear

Click on the links below to find gear options to purchase - by cliking on these links and buying anything, you are helping to support the site at no extra cost to you - thank you. 

• Tripod - You can get by with other forms of support but they are never as good as a solid tripod. Many of your exposures are probably going to be 5-10 seconds or more.
• Cable/Remote Release - This will help prevent vibration and camera shake.
• Light meter/card with exposure durations written on it at 1/3 intervals - Exposures can get quite lengthy at night, especially for film users where reciprocity failure becomes a problem. As the longest exposure most cameras can calculate is 30 seconds, you will often find situations where this is exceeded. I find it useful to have a light meter which will cope with much longer exposures.
• Camera - One that lets you work at higher ISOs and has low noise.

 

Checklist

1. Ensure your lenses and sensor are clean. Night shooting tends to emphasise dust and flare from dirty equipment. You will be surprised at just how dirty your kit is once you start shooting at night.
2. Check to see if your camera has a mirror lock function (usually this is in the cameras custom functions) or be prepared to shoot in live view if your camera has this. Personally I like live mode / view as it’s very effective at seeing in the dark.
3. Getting the exposure right at very slow shutter speeds can be very tricky and often involves guessing. Shooting in RAW format can help give you a little more flexibility in post processing.

 

Safety

Before looking at possible subjects, just a quick word on safety. It might still be early but you still need to be sensible and keep personal safety in mind. Where possible work with a friend or two and look out for each other. Avoid being out too late as drunks seem to find cameras unusually attractive especially when mounted on those strange metal legs we know as a tripod. Stick to areas with good lighting and lots of people. These tend to make for better images but are also usually safer.

 

Photo by David Pritchard

 

Locations

Now you have your kit prepared, start to think about the type and location of the shots you want to take. It’s tempting to turn up somewhere and then look for something to shoot. A better option is to think about the type of work and then pick a suitable location. Sometimes however you just get lucky and providing you are prepared you can get some good shots.

 

Skylines

City skylines are the obvious targets for night photography as many office buildings tend to have lighting for the night. Monuments such as churches often have night lighting also as do many industrial sites which work 24 hours. If you do decide to photograph industrial sites stay a good distance from the location as you don’t want to be suspected as a terrorist. I was however surprised when I went around London at night armed with a camera and Gorillapod. I thought that I dare not be seen with a tripod at night. What I found were lots of other photographers all carrying full tripods and using them openly in the streets.

 

Wet weather

Don’t rule out poor weather as wet pavements can be particularly attractive as they reflect the lights of buildings and traffic. When shooting moving objects you should consider what effect you are trying to create and what a suitable shutter speed is to achieve this. If for example you are shooting a car, the headlights will show up well, but when the car is moving fast and the shutter speed is long, the only thing that can be seen are the light trails. With shorter exposures you will probably retain some of the car in the image as well as the light trails.

 

Long exposures

You can use longer exposures to your advantage, for example when photographing people at night perhaps outside bars. People sat or stood may look relatively well defined whilst those moving past don’t show up at all.

 

Photo by David Pritchard

 

Exposing

When exposing your shot, be sure to cover the back of the viewfinder to stop light entering and affecting the exposure times. Different cameras seem to have different levels of susceptibility to this but every camera I have used has underexposed if I haven’t blocked the viewfinder during a long exposure. Getting the correct exposure is quite a task and open to guess work, so if in doubt just take the camera's exposure. If you like to judge exposure based on the camera histogram be aware that the histogram is likely to be clipped at both ends. Areas will become pure black and other areas of bright light will have no detail. Sometimes it’s worth bracketing shots a stop either way to ensure you have one you are happy with.

 

Time of day

It may sound strange but the time of day, or rather night can be quite important. The temptation is often to time our shooting for the night when the sky appears inky black. Whilst this might provide a stark contrast to the lighting on the building it also means there is no interest in the sky so you probably need to minimise its inclusion. Earlier in the day however the lighting on buildings doesn’t appear quite so strong although there might still be some colour in the sky which is more appealing. So when considering your subject give some thought to the time of the day and also consider this when selecting your composition.

  Colour of the lights

Another interesting aspect of night photography is the colour of the lights used in many settings. Street lighting for example is usually yellow and Fluorescent and mercury vapour lighting (often found in industrial settings) has a green appearance. Whilst these mixed lighting scenes can appear attractive in the image, you sometimes need to take extra steps to deal with these conditions. The most obvious step is to ensure your camera is set to AWB but even this doesn’t correct all the situations you come across. Film users might face an even steeper challenge as long exposures can cause unpredictable colour shift in the film although this can be quite attractive.

In summary, use the correct equipment with good technique, pick your subject, composition and approach and you will be able to capture some great night images in your city. Most of all, remember to keep to the busy areas and stay safe.

 

 

Photo by David Pritchard

 

Words and images by Robin Whalley from Lens Craft.

Florestine Perrault was fourteen when she started earning money in photography, hired as a clerk, photo finisher, stationery embosser, and developer by white-owned studios in New Orleans and by the Eastman Kodak Company. She got that work by letting her employers assume she was white. She was Creole of color, and in Jim Crow New Orleans, that fact would have kept her away from the picture-making end of the business.

 

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SIRUI has announced the launch of its new Swift series, a lineup of ultra-compact, full frame autofocus lenses tailored for photographers and content creators seeking lightweight glass without sacrificing optical integrity. This launch offers two lenses: a 20mm f/2.4 and a 40mm f/2.2. 

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Peakto has been around for several years. As a Mac-only media manager, it was one of the first to use AI for finding photographs. I've reviewed earlier versions and found it reliable and powerful.

 

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Sirui just added two new additions to its full frame autofocus Aurora lens lineup: the Aurora 15mm f/1.6 ultra-wide lens and the Aurora 24mm f/1.4 wide angle lens. Living up to the Aurora foundation, both lenses combine bright maximum apertures, STM autofocus performance, and dedicated video-friendly ergonomics for hybrid creators. 

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A few weeks ago, Profoto challenged me to do a full photo shoot using their new Essential Hybrid Kit. I told them to send it over, and I would use it on a real shoot. In this article and the video above, I'm going to show you exactly how I used this kit and take you behind the scenes on how I mixed constant light with flash to create the final images.

 

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Does dividing photographers into portrait, landscape, wedding photographers, and so on really describe professional specialization? Probably not. Specialization looks like a classification of photographic skills, but in fact it mixes personal traits, working conditions, and accumulated knowledge of the subject.

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A week of travel built around the Leica Q3 43 and its fixed lens puts every framing decision on your feet and your patience. Porto and Lisbon push that setup hard, with steep streets, tiled facades, river light, and weather that can swing from blue sky to downpour within a day.

 

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A matte black, ridged Tom Ford fragrance bottle and a Clinique moisturizer on pure white can both be lit cleanly and still fail if the light tells the wrong story about the product. Every lighting choice you make, from shadow density to color, pushes a viewer toward a feeling, whether you planned it or not.

 

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Nikon's Z DX bodies, such as the Z50II and Zfc, are small and affordable, yet Nikon makes only a short list of lenses designed specifically for them. Choosing glass for one of these cameras means doing crop math, sorting through third-party options, and deciding whether a single zoom can carry an entire day of shooting.

 

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A colorful lake scene photographed in Wales has won our ‘Photo of the Week’ (POTW) award.

Titled ‘A Reflective Mood’ and captured by Buffalo_Tom, this is a lovely early morning shot with a sky full of pink, orange and purple. The stone wall sitting in the water stands out nicely in the middle of the shot, and the dark patch on the left leads straight to it. We love how the calm water gives a clear reflection of the clouds, the trees and the wall itself. The dark trees on the left keep everything balanced, and the hazy hills in the distance finish it off. Lovely colors, great reflections and a well-balanced scene.

Every Photo of the Week (POTW) winner will be rewarded with a Samsung 128GB PRO Plus microSDXC memory card with SD adapter, providing top-tier storage for all your creative needs across multiple devices. But that's not all! In January 2027, we'll crown our 2026 Photo of the Year winner, who will take home the ultimate prize of a Samsung Portable 1TB SSD T7 Shield, courtesy of Samsung. See the terms & conditions and prize procedure for more information.

It’s time to shoot, submit, and showcase your best work for a chance to win these incredible rewards! Want to be our next POTW winner? Just upload an image to our gallery where you'll also find all of our past POTW winners.

A shattered filter or a scratched front element rarely comes from a dramatic fall off a cliff, and more often traces back to a loose ball head, a lens swap in the wind, or a tripod slung over your shoulder on the walk to the next spot. Those small habits stack up over years of shooting, and changing them costs far less than replacing glass.

 

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