Photography News

Choosing a standard zoom in the $1,300 range quietly decides how your everyday kit feels in your hand and how long you can stay fresh on a long shoot. When you put a compact 24–50mm against a heavier 24–70mm, you are really choosing how you want to move, react, and work.

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Usage fees are one of the easiest ways to undercharge on commercial jobs without realizing it. When a small local client pays the same rate for images as a national brand running a big campaign, you leave serious money on the table and take on huge responsibility for a fraction of its value.

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Flat-looking images usually are not about the camera or lens at all. They come from choices about light, contrast, and viewpoint that quietly cancel any sense of depth.

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Photo by Joshua Waller

Working with just one light, or indeed natural light at dusk, is a great way to create moody portraits that can be full of character. It's a perfect technique for shooting subjects who are a little older as low light can really exaggerate lines and wrinkles but don't let this put you off photographing low light portraits of younger members of your family. Shots of kids converted to black and white or shots of women in candlelight can be really atmospheric. Just remember to have your tripod to hand as you'll be using long exposure you won't be able to hand-held without it looking like you took your shot in the middle of an earthquake.

 

Photo by Joshua Waller

If I need to use a light, which kind should I go for?

When it comes to picking a light source a studio flash is always an option but if you're working from home try using a torch, light from a window or a table lamp to add a little light to your scene. If you find the light's a little too harsh, try moving your subject further away from it or if you're using a window, diffuse the light with material such as muslin or parchment paper. If you're using flash try fitting a softbox or use barn doors to direct the light to where you want it to be.

Having the light to one side of your subject will mean one side of their face will be really bright while the other's hidden in shadow. For something less dramatic use a reflector to bounce light into your shot, adding detail where it was originally lost. If you want to add more light move the reflector closer to your subject and experiment with different reflector shades to change the colour balance of the light. To create really strong shadows try positioning your light source under your subject. Just be warned that this won't work with everyone!

One final note: Don't take your exposure reading from the dark part of your set-up as this will cause the lighter parts of the image to appear overexposed.
 

Photo by Joshua Waller

   

The times when you had to buy a new camera to take your photography to the next level are long gone. Cameras haven't been a limiting factor for most genres of photography for many years now. Other types of equipment are much more critical.

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If you thought the first batch of weird lenses was strange, buckle up. The history of photography is deeper and weirder than anyone gives it credit for, and manufacturers have tried some truly bonkers ideas in pursuit of solving problems both real and imagined. Some of these experiments were brilliant engineering achievements that the market simply wasn't ready for. Others were solutions so specific they could only ever appeal to a handful of users. And one of them literally reinvented what a camera lens even is.

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Canon’s new RF 85mm f/1.4 portrait lens sits right between the compact f/2 option and the huge f/1.2 flagship. If you care about how your RF setup balances on a gimbal, how clean your files look at wide apertures, and whether a lens really earns a premium price, this one deserves attention.

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High ISO noise is still one of the toughest challenges for photographers, even with today’s advanced sensors. Concert shooters, wildlife photographers, street artists, and event professionals often return with images full of grain, color speckling, and smudged detail, issues no camera can fully eliminate. 

Aiarty Image Enhancer tackles these challenges with a powerful suite of AI tools, combining smart denoising with deblurring, upscaling, color correction, and photo restoration, all while preserving natural texture, tonal depth, and fine detail in every image. Built as a desktop application running fully offline, Aiarty provides a reliable, privacy-safe workflow that caters to photographers who expect exceptional detail preservation.

 

Limited-Time Offer: Lifetime License at 49% Off

The AI photo enhancer is available at 49% off during the time-limited holiday deals. The license works on up to three computers (Windows or macOS), includes future updates, and avoids recurring subscription fees. Grab a lifetime license with the year’s biggest saving!

 

Clean High-ISO Shots with Fine Details

Noise continues to challenge photographers working in low-light, indoor, or fast-action situations, where even high-end cameras struggle to maintain clarity. Aiarty Image Enhancer’s Smart Denoise engine is designed to reduce unwanted grain while preserving natural detail and tonal depth. 

With the latest V3.5 update, the new Strength slider gives users precise control over denoising intensity, letting them retain a subtle, natural grain or achieve a cleaner, more polished look according to their artistic preference.

The result is denoising that retains:

• Authentic skin and facial textures without appearing over-smoothed
• Depth and nuance in shadowed or low-light areas
• Subtle details in hair, fur, fabrics, and intricate surfaces
• Smooth, natural gradients without blotches or artifacts

 

 

Sharpen Soft or Slightly Missed Shots Naturally

Even slight focus errors, motion blur, or minor camera shake lead to blurry shots. Aiarty’s AI deblurring technology intelligently restores clarity and fine detail while avoiding halos or harsh sharpening, preserving natural textures and micro-contrast. The result makes handheld portraits, low-light interiors, and fast-moving subjects look sharp and ready for professional use.

 

 

Upscale Photos 4K and Higher without Losing Quality

Aiarty’s AI upscaler enlarges images while maintaining sharpness and detail, supporting workflows from 2× up to 8× and resolutions as high as 32K. For many photographers, modest upscaling, such as 2× upscaling, is sufficient to enhance prints, crops, or web delivery without compromising quality. The AI photo enhancer reconstructs textures rather than simply stretching pixels, ensuring results remain crisp and realistic even at higher resolutions.

 

  Restore Old Photos with Natural Detail and Color

Restoring old or damaged photos has never been easier. Aiarty’s AI face refinement enhances clarity while preserving identity and expression. Complementing this, the new V3.5 Color Correction allows precise adjustments to exposure, highlights, saturation, and overall tonality. Together, these tools provide a seamless workflow to restore both detail and color in archival, portrait, or everyday images.

 

 

All these tools are complemented by five dedicated AI models, letting photographers select the optimal approach for different subjects and shooting conditions. RAW, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, almost all photo files are supported, and batch processing allows large sets of images to be handled efficiently.

Aiarty Image Enhancer offers photographers a complete enhancement AI toolkit to restore clarity and detail from photos affected by high-ISO noise, focus blur, low resolution, and more. With the current 49% off Lifetime License holiday deal, photographers can secure permanent access to Aiarty’s full toolset at the lowest price ever. Take advantage today and elevate your images with professional-quality enhancement, all offline and hassle-free.

 

Have you ever wondered why some photographs stand out more than others? Let’s explore advanced compositional techniques that can elevate photography from simple practices to more artistic expressions. By carefully composing, you can also develop your own style and narrative through various methods. The techniques discussed aim to inspire a deeper understanding of visual storytelling in photography.

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Deciding whether to buy a Canon EOS R5 in 2025 means weighing a five-year-old body against newer releases while still needing high-end image quality and strong video performance. Can it still compete?

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As a landscape photographer, wide-angle and ultra wide lenses simply cannot be ignored.

The most common error made when using wide-angle lenses is simply using them solely for their wide-angle, by just trying to get everything into the shot. The resulting picture often simply has too much in it, and the subject is just lost in amongst everything else. Really, you should consider a wide-angle lens not as a way to get more into the picture, but as a way of emphasising foreground detail and perspective.

  Think about your viewpoint

In use, in a landscape situation, select your viewpoint carefully, as well as your foreground detail, and if possible, ensure that foreground element relates directly to the landscape and has a degree of shape harmony with the picture. If, for example, you choose a rock near the side of a lake on a calm day with reflections, ensure the rock is positioned to fit into the shape of the reflections. The benefit of working closely to your foreground subject is that repositioning the camera by only a few inches can make huge changes to the composition and visual balance of your photos. Roads, paths, walls, in fact, all lead-lines become powerful and dramatic, but make sure they are supporting the main subject of your photo rather than simply becoming the subject in themselves.

 

Photos By John Gravett. 

Remember - wider lenses give a greater depth of field

While front-to-back depth of field is useful in wide angle landscapes, it's important to remember that as an ultra wide-angle lens has an inherently greater depth of field than standard lenses, really small apertures might not always be necessary. Often f/11 or f/16 will give front to back sharpness without having to revert to f/22, where many ultra wides may suffer slightly from diffraction.

The same extensive depth of field can often affect choice of graduated filters to use. With longer focal length lenses, hard-edged grads work but when used with an ultrawide lens, they often show a distinct line where they are used, so usually, a soft-edged grad is a better choice, particularly for the stronger ones.

Wide-angles are so often prone to over-use, but used properly and with care, can produce truly amazing, powerful pictures.
 

Article by John Gravett of Lakeland Photographic Holidays - www.lakelandphotohols.com

If you want a compact cinema body that can shoot serious 6K while still fitting in a travel bag, the Nikon ZR hits a very specific need. It lets you rethink whether you actually need something like a more expensive cinema camera once you factor in raw codecs, audio, and how easily it fits around everything else you already carry.

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If you lean on f/1.8 blur every time you want depth, you are missing what actually makes an image feel three-dimensional. This video shows how to build that depth so your frames feel like spaces you could stand inside instead of flat postcards.

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- Partner Content - 

 

 

Imagen is an AI-powered, cloud-based workflow solution for busy photographers offering fast and efficient culling, professional-standard editing and secure storage.  All this and more in one, easy to use platform with a choice of packages to suit photographers of all levels.

Digital capture is wonderful because it gives complete shooting and creative freedom. The downside is the copious amount of time, effort and energy needed post-shoot to sort and edit all your brilliant shots. 

Imagen could be the answer with the potential of cutting down your editing time by up to 96%. The first step to a faster workflow is to sign up – you get up to 1500 free Imagen edits as a reward – and download the Imagen app.

In the app, start building your Personal AI Profile by uploading some of your previously edited shots and you can do this from existing catalogues. Imagen works seamlessly with Adobe Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop and Capture One so you don’t have to learn a new software. A minimum of 3000 images is needed and any tweaks you make over time will refine your profile further, so you’ll get consistent results that’ll match your style and vision, and all in a few minutes.

 

 

To start using Imagen immediately, you can create a Lite Personal AI Profile by uploading your favourite preset and answering a few questions. Another quick start option is to use one of the pre-built Talent AI Profiles which have been made by leading photographers using Imagen, and these are available free within the app.

Once you have a Personal AI Profile, Imagen has the ability to adjust editing characteristics and to take Talent AI Profiles and refine them to match your vision.

Of course, image editing is time consuming but so too is culling, and it’s arduous too. Going through thousands of high res RAWs, rating, flagging and deleting, is a trudge. Imagen’s Culling Studio streamlines the process with its advanced AI skills. Duplicates, blurred photos and shots with people blinking or with eyes shut are automatically removed.

Your images and all the editing that’s linked to them are valuable assets but here again, Imagen has a solution. Its Cloud Storage automatically backs up your projects, and you don’t have to do anything extra in the workflow. Edits are saved alongside your full-size RAW files so if there is any issue with your own storage, the Imagen-edited work is safe.

If Imagen sounds like your ideal workflow solution, sign up and download the app, which is available for Mac and Windows. The process is quick, no credit card is needed and you can start uploading files straightaway. As an ePHOTOzine user, sign up here and you will get 1500 free Imagen edits to get you on the road to a faster workflow.

 

 

Three pricing plans are on offer so just choose the one that suits your budget and needs best. The no-commitment, Pay-as-you-go option is the most popular and this offers unlimited Personal AI Profiles, access to Talent AI Profiles, 24/7 support and 100GB free storage for three months.

Click here to read more about Imagen and to take out the Black Friday 50% off workflow essentials deal. 

Grab the deal now

Ultra-wide primes let you stretch space, push perspective, and still keep entire environments in frame when you are stuck in tight locations. Here's a look at an incredibly affordable option.

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When it comes to group shots, there's not just one genre of photography it sits under. From weddings and Christmas parties to school events and sports, there are many occasions when a group shot will be needed. However, getting them right so no one's blinking, looking the wrong way or are hidden from view by someone else in the shot can be a little tricky so here are a few tips to help you perfect that group shot.

 

Start Small If You're Unsure

The less people there are in your group the easier they are to co-ordinate so if you've not done group shots before, try splitting the people you have into smaller groups rather than shooting them all together.

If you are working with a big group where you have lots of lines of people stood one in front of another, do check that everyone is in focus. If they're not, use a smaller aperture to keep everyone sharp. If you're struggling to get everyone in shot, try shooting from a higher vantage point. Not only will it help you get everyone in frame, it'll give you an interesting twist to your group shot.

Be A Director

Don't let the group take control, you're the one behind the lens after all so can see what works and what doesn't. Don't be afraid to give instruction and actually walk people into position if needs be. Generally, tall people wander towards the back and those who are shorter tend to find a position towards the front of shots but this isn't set in stone. If you have a person who is the main focal point (birthday girl, top scorer etc.) try to position them towards the centre of the shot. To be more creative, try to position the rest of the group so they're looking at them or change your aperture to blur some of the group out of focus slightly, leaving your main subject sharp.

Enjoy Yourself

If you smile and seem relaxed, your subjects are more likely to be. Talk to them and don't be afraid to have a bit of fun as the more relaxed your subjects are, the better the photos will look.
 

Lighting

If you're working outdoors, a slightly overcast day's good for portraits, however if you're working outdoors on a bright day, pose your group with the sun behind them and use a pop of fill-in flash to fill in any shadows.
 

Backgrounds

As with all portraits, you don't want a background that'll distract from your main subject so take a good look around the frame to make sure there's nothing to the sides, front or above the group that'll pull the eye, taking the viewer's attention away from the people in your shot. Having said that, don't be afraid to use a background that adds to the shot. For example, a swim team at the side of a pool or a family at Christmas stood near the tree and fire surrounded by stockings etc.
 

Make Sure It Looks Like They Know Each Other

You may need to squash people a little closer together as what they think is close may not look very close in-camera. Try to fill the frame but take care not to remove anyone's limbs by accident as it's easily done to people who are at the side of the frame.
 

Shoot Lots And Often

People have a habit of talking, moving, pulling odd faces and blinking when you don't want them to so make sure you take plenty of shots. Switching your camera to continuous shooting mode will help increase your chances of getting a good shot as you'll usually find the first shot isn't that great, but shot two or three could be a winner.

 

 

The updated version of Meike’s popular 85mm f1.8 SE Mark I lens, the 85mm f1.8 SE Mark II, brings noticeable improvements in image quality, focusing speed, and chromatic aberration control. It also features a closer minimum focusing distance of just 0.65m, making it more versatile for portraits and close-up shots. The lens is offered in Nikon Z, Sony E, and Leica L mounts.

This lens is available now and ready to ship for $229.99 USD.

 

 

Specifications:

• Aperture Range: F1.8-F16
• Focal Length: 85mm
• Filter thread: 62mm
• Diaphragm Blades: 11
• Weight: about 369g
• Focus Mode: Auto Focus
• Minimum focusing distance: 0.65m
• Lens Construction: 11 elements in 7 groups
• Full frame Angle of view: Diagonal 27.8°, Horizontal 23.4°, Vertical 10.8°
• APS-C Angle of View: Diagonal 18.67°, Horizontal 15.53°, Vertical 10.38°

 

To order the Meike 85mm F1.8 SE Mark II lens, please visit the Meike website and Amazon.

An inquiry hits your inbox. "We love your work! What are your prices for a wedding?" Your heart races. You're afraid of scaring them off with a number that's too high, or worse, undervaluing yourself with a number that's too low. You're tempted to fire back the one question that quietly wrecks your positioning more than almost any other: "Thanks! What's your budget?"

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Most photographers start with a subject or theme. Conceptual photographers start with a question. What does isolation feel like? Not, “Where can I shoot next?” Entering the world of conceptual photography is a beast of its own. It comes with its own challenges and rewards. My biggest question was, how do I start?

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It’s that time of year again, when retailers compete for pre-holiday spending with some tempting offers across a range of great products. Whether you’re just beginning your creative journey or looking to upgrade the tools you already rely on, with prices dropping across a wide range of gear, now is the perfect opportunity to pick up what you need for less.

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