Photography News

Today I’m going to examine the benefits of using a tilt-shift lens with the help of the brand-new Laowa 24mm f/2 Zero-D Tilt-Shift. 

First, an admission. I’m not an architectural photographer. In most of my work, faces take precedence, and buildings are essentially set dressing. But there is something magical about a well-made tilt-shift lens, so when given the opportunity to try one out, I wanted to have a look and see what it is that makes a tilt-shift lens useful in so many photographers' workflows.

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Nikon's Z 120-300mm f/2.8 TC VR S is up for preorder at $13,996, and for that money, you get a constant f/2.8 zoom with a 1.4x teleconverter built into the barrel. If you shoot sports, wildlife, events, or anything else where you can't simply walk closer, one lens that covers the territory of several fast primes changes what you pack and how quickly you can respond to what's in front of you.

 

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A standard prime is often the second lens people buy, and on Nikon Z, the inexpensive autofocus options have long trailed what Sony E shooters can pick from. SG-image, a brand mostly known for small pancake lenses, now offers a 55mm f/1.8 autofocus prime with a metal body and a look that suits retro-styled cameras.

 

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Almost every Photoshop edit beyond a global adjustment starts with telling the software which pixels to touch. Get that step wrong, and every brightening pass, color shift, and composite you build on top of it shows its seams.

 

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Photo walks are probably something you associate with summer, however with autumn shades decorating our countryside and lights getting switched on sooner in cities, you can capture just as interesting shots at this time of year.

Where you walk and how long for really depends on how long you have and what you want to capture but here are a few tips you'll find useful no matter where you walk.
 

Gear Choices  It can be tempting to take various lenses, however if you can pack a zoom that covers various focal lengths, you won't be as weighed down with gear. It makes your walk more of a challenge too, making you work closer to subjects and thinking slightly more out of the box. If you do spot something you really can't capture with your zoom you can always revisit the location on another night / day. A tripod or monopod will be useful, particularly when you're using longer shutter speeds at night or capturing the movement of autumn trees.

A sling-style bag is great for city shoots as they make accessing gear quick and easy. If you're planning an autumnal walk that'll last a few hours or even all day a rucksack would probably be better as you'll be able to pack other supplies and weight will be distributed evenly across your back.

 

Check The Weather

If a clear night is forecast you should plan an early start as frost will be decorating fields and leaves. Closer to home, look for cobwebs and if it's really cold, ice forming on ponds or puddles if it's rained the night before.

Misty sun rises work well as do snowy landscapes and shots of wet streets after the sun's set and lights are switching on.

Photo by Peter Bargh.

 

 

Dress For The Weather

By taking the time to check the weather forecast you'll have a good idea on what clothing you'll need for your walk. Sticking your head out of the door is also a good idea as weather forecasters aren't guaranteed to get it right every time! For cold days, wear lightweight layers rather than a couple of thick bulky items as you can always remove layers if you're too warm or add more if you need them. A good pair of boots or shoes that support your ankles, have a good sole and are ideally waterproof are also essential.

 

Have A Route

A quick, short route that circles back on itself will be fine. Taking a path through woods is good at this time of year and shouldn't be too strenuous. It's also the season when towns begin putting up and switching on Christmas lights so a quick route around your town's streets should also give you plenty of opportunities to capture some interesting night-themed shots.

 

What To Look For

In towns, get up high to stop problems with converging verticals, plus it'll give you the opportunity to capture some cityscapes. Don't be afraid of getting in close to capture some abstract shots of buildings and capture unique perspectives by changing your angle. 

 

Tell People Always tell someone where you're going, how long you'll be and give them an idea of the route you are going to take. This is particularly important at this time of year when cold and icy conditions can make routes harder to navigate. Even if you are only going for a walk around your town, it's still a good idea to let someone know where you'll be, especially when heading out after the sun sets. In fact, if possible, take someone with you on the walk.
  Be Aware Of What And Who Is Around You

Traffic in towns, crowds on busy shopping streets and ice at the side of rivers are just some of the dangers you need to keep an eye out for. It's easy to get carried away when you have your eye stuck to a viewfinder, and you can soon be falling over something because you took too many steps forward while you had your eye glued to the camera. This is another good reason for taking someone, especially if they are a non-photographer, with you as they'll be an extra pair of eyes looking out for hazards on your route.

In the last week of December 2010, a railroad worker named Jim DeNike drove from Arkansas to Parsons, Kansas, and loaded a dozen boxes holding nearly 50,000 slides into an old maroon Pontiac. He had sent Dwayne's Photo 1,580 rolls of Kodachrome and paid $15,798 to have them developed, borrowing against his father's retirement account to cover it. Every frame in those boxes was a picture of a train.

 

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Every camera owner has their own list of things they wish their camera could do—features that seem easily achievable with a simple software update. Normally, that list dies quietly the moment a camera leaves the manufacturer's support cycle. Take the Nikon D3 as an example: unless you take matters into your own hands, nobody at Nikon is going to allocate resources to add new features to a flagship body from 2007. This is where I stumbled upon Marcus Low's firmware experimentation. He was kind enough to document and share his thoughts and the technical process of how he got there. 

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Rangefinders like Leica's M bodies and compacts like Fujifilm's X100 line have pulled a lot of people back toward on-camera flash, and finding a speedlight that fits those small bodies without overwhelming them has never been simple. The flash you pick decides whether you get harsh direct light, a softer bounce, or an off-camera look, and it decides how much weight hangs off your neck through a four-hour reception.

 

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Doritos once got more than 30,000 Super Bowl commercials made by fans, and most of the people who made them got nothing. If a client has ever asked you for a free test edit, a sample shoot, or a quick concept before they commit, you've been offered a smaller version of the same deal.

 

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Panasonic, TTArtisan, and Viltrox all make a compact 40mm autofocus prime for full frame L-mount cameras, and one of them costs noticeably more than the other two. When three lenses share a focal length and a mount, the choice comes down to build, rendering, and how much each extra dollar changes what ends up in your files.

 

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Pattern Recognition Company (PRC), the company behind the award-winning Excire software, released a major update to Excire Foto 2027, its standalone photo- and video-management program. The update – which is free for all Excire Foto 2027 owners – introduces an array of time-saving features for photographers and video creators, including advanced video indexing, tools to search for specific moments within clips, video frame extraction, and reverse geocoding.

Designed for photographers and content creators who work with both still images and video, the update makes it easier to browse, organize, and search for content across a mixed media library. Users can find specific videos via specialized AI-powered search tools: natural-language content search, visible text search, people search, face search, keyword search, and similarity search. Users can then open a matching clip to see the precise point where the desired content appears. Individual frames can also be saved as photos and managed alongside other images in the database.

“Photographers and visual creators increasingly work with both photos and video, and they need secure, practical ways to keep that content organized and accessible,” said Erhardt Barth, CEO of PRC and a machine learning expert at the University of Lübeck. “This update dramatically expands what Excire Foto 2027 can do with video while maintaining the local processing and privacy that are central to our software.” 

 

New Tools for Content-Based Video Search and Organization

 

 

Highlights of the November update include:

 

Advanced video indexing. Excire Foto 2027 analyzes each video file and extracts a range of frames that represent the video’s content. These frames are automatically keyworded; they also make footage searchable through natural-language prompt search, face and people search, keyword search, and similarity search, all of which help users retrieve specific clips based on their contents.

Find specific moments within videos. After searching for content, users can open a matching video from the results to review the precise point where that content appears. This makes it easier to locate a particular person, subject, or scene within a clip.

Control over extracted frames. Users can add or remove extracted frames, add metadata to those frames, and use individual frames as references for similarity searches. Adding or removing searchable frames is non-destructive and leaves the original video untouched.

Save video frames as photos. Individual frames can be saved as separate photos without leaving Excire Foto 2027. Once saved, these images can be brought into Excire Foto, analyzed, searched, culled, and exported just like standard image files.

Automatic location metadata with reverse geocoding. Excire Foto 2027 can use a file’s existing GPS coordinates to identify the city and country where it was captured and add that information to the corresponding metadata fields. 

The new capabilities expand Excire Foto 2027’s existing tools for searching, organizing, and culling photo and video libraries. AI analysis runs locally on the user’s computer, which ensures complete privacy.

 

 

Price & Availability

The updated version of Excire Foto 2027 is available for both Windows and macOS beginning November 3rd, 2026; the program can be purchased directly from the Excire website. The software is offered for a one-time license fee (no subscription) of US$249 / €229 / £229 / CHF 229.

Excire Foto 2024 users can upgrade to the updated version of Excire Foto 2027 for US$99 / €99 / £99 / CHF 99, while Excire Foto 2025 users can upgrade for US$79 / €79 / £79 / CHF 79.

Existing Excire Foto 2027 users receive the update free of charge.

A 14-day trial version is also available for download. With the update, the trial period has been reset; therefore, users whose free trials expired can test the program a second time. 

 

About Pattern Recognition Company

Founded in 2005 by internationally recognized computer-vision and machine-learning experts from the University of Lübeck, Pattern Recognition Company (PRC) has developed a variety of cutting-edge AI products and applications in automated image analysis, including Excire’s award-winning line of AI-powered photo-management software. PRC’s offerings include Excire Foto 2027, a standalone application for photographers; Excire Search 2026, a Lightroom Classic plugin; and Excire Foto Office Edition, a network-enabled program for team-based workflows. The Excire API makes this powerful technology available to third-party platforms. For more information, please visit https://excire.com/en/.

Shoot a flash portrait at f/1.2 in midday sun and you run into a wall fast: most cameras stop syncing with a flash somewhere around 1/160 to 1/250 s, and anything faster leaves dark bands across the frame. Sony's a9 III and its global shutter offer a way past that wall, which puts high-speed sync, the usual workaround, in an interesting spot.

 

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Motion and movement is a wide and varied photographic subject and as a result there are many ways a photographer can create a sense of motion or movement in their shots. Slow shutter speeds can be used to exaggerate the flow of water while fast shutter speeds will freeze the force of a wave as it crashes against a sea wall. ePHOTOzine has written many tutorials that cover motion in some shape or form and as a result, we've decided to group the most popular ones together so, hopefully, you'll be fuelled with enough inspiration and ideas to make you want to head out to capture motion. Here's our top seven:
 

How To Capture Landscapes That Show Motion

John Gravett shows us how wind movement can make interesting and more dynamic landscape shots. Plus, he includes tips on capturing the popular 'blurry' water shots at the coast and with waterfalls.

 

How To Use Blur To Create A Sense Of Movement

Blur isn't always a bad thing as it can help emphasis speed and create motion in a shot. Read on for tips on using shutter speeds, flash and zoom lenses to create blur.

Photo by David Clapp - www.davidclapp.co.uk

 

Beginner's Guide To Capturing Motion

Mike Browne from PhotographyCourses.Biz shows how easy it is to capture a sense of movement.

 

Camera Panning Techniques

Peter Bargh talks through a few tips to improve your panning technique. Panning is a great technique for action and, once perfected, the main subject will be sharp against a blurred background.

 

Tips On Photographing Action And Movement

Here are a few tips on shutter speeds and how to focus so you get sharp action shots every time.

 

How To Capture Movement

Ben Boswell shares his tips on capturing movement. Tips include making sure movement looks deliberate, when to use a pan, what shutter speeds are appropriate and if a tripod is needed.

 

More Tips On Capturing Movement In The Landscape

Do landscape shots always have to be static? If you think about it you'll realise that they're often not. This tutorial adds to the tips John Gravett gave in his article, covering clouds, trees and people as subjects.

Photo by David Clapp - www.davidclapp.co.uk

Hannibal Goodwin's application for a photographic pellicle reached the Patent Office on May 2, 1887, and stayed there for eleven years and four months while a succession of five examiners rejected it. George Eastman's chemist filed his own flexible film application on April 9, 1889, and had a granted patent eight months later. By the time Goodwin's US Patent 610,861 issued on September 13, 1898, Kodak had been selling transparent roll film to the public for nine years.

 

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There is a tendency in photography to believe that if we want to photograph a particular subject, we need to buy the equipment designed specifically for it. Want to photograph wildlife? You need a long telephoto lens. Want to photograph the night sky? You need a fast wide angle lens. Want to photograph mushrooms? You need a macro lens.

But do you really? 

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The OM System M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100mm f/4 IS PRO covers the same range as a 24-200mm zoom on full frame, so it raises an obvious question if you hike long distances with a camera: can one lens stand in for the three you usually carry? A single weather-sealed zoom saves weight and spares you lens changes in wind and spray, but landscape work also asks for real wide angle coverage, close foreground focus, and sharpness from corner to corner.

 

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A storm that cancels an event usually sends everyone home, camera included. On a long trip, the days that fall apart often produce the frames you end up keeping, and with film you won't know which ones worked until the rolls come back.

 

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The Panasonic Lumix S1RII pairs a 44-megapixel full frame sensor with 8K video for about $3,300, and that sensor isn't stacked, so it reads out slowly. If you shoot both stills and video, that one design choice shapes nearly everything about how the camera behaves in your hands.

 

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Watch enough landscape videos and you start to believe the professionals walk out at golden hour and come home with a portfolio image every time. That belief shapes how you judge your own outings, and how hard you are on yourself when the sky catches fire and your card holds nothing you want to show anyone.

 

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We are only a few days away from this year’s Bonfire Night and we couldn’t really kick November off without mentioning a few tips that’ll help you capture spectacular firework photos.

Photos by David Clapp - www.davidclapp.co.uk

 

Gear Suggestions

As long exposures are a must you will need to take a support with you. A tripod’s great but at busy events you may be better off with a monopod that takes up less room and is easy to move around with.

If you’re a compact user, it can be harder to capture firework themed images but it's not impossible as most compacts have a range of scene modes and a firework mode can often be found among them. Plus, the longer zooms that are available on some compacts will now get you closer to the action too.

Wider lenses will capture more of the sky, increasing your chances of capturing a burst. You may want to try shooting a few in a portrait orientation, though, to capture the long trails left by the firework as it climbs to the spot where it explodes.

Finally, pack a torch as it’ll be dark and you may need it when making changes to your settings and for putting your kit away.

  Focus And Aperture

Switch to manual focus and turn your focus to infinity (check your manual if you’re unsure how to do this). This is to ensure the firework explosions stay sharp as they can be further than the maximum focus setting on your camera. Setting an aperture of f/8 or f/11 will increase your depth of field, further increasing the chances of capturing a sharp shot of a colourful explosion. Make sure your flash is switched off too.

 

RAW Or Jpeg?

If you shoot in RAW you’ll be able to tweak colours and brightness levels when you’re back in front of your computer once the display has finished.

 

Exposure Times

For shots filled with bursts of colourful explosions you’ll need to switch to Bulb mode. This mode allows you to keep the shutter open for longer but as you need to keep the shutter button pressed, it’s a good idea to use a cable release to prevent shake. If your camera allows it, you could fire the shutter wirelessly via a smart device. 

In Bulb mode, you basically need to keep the lens covered (a dark piece of card will work) until a burst erupts. At this point you need to uncover the lens. Replace the card until another burst occurs and continue to do this with however many bursts as you like. It can take a while to get right as timing is key but you can create some great shots when you’ve perfected the technique.

If you don’t have a bulb mode you can capture single explosions with exposure times between 1-4 seconds. This should give you shots that show a light trail as the firework climbs as well as the final burst of colour at the end.

 

Photo by David Clapp - www.davidclapp.co.uk

Watch The Display

As displays don’t tend to be short affairs it pays to watch a few bursts so you can see where the fireworks are being launched into the sky and you’ll also be able to see how long it takes them to climb, plus how long the explosions last for. This will make framing easier, although you can’t obviously guarantee every burst will appear where you need it to. It’s worth doing a few test shots to make sure you’re happy with the composition too before the big display begins.

 

Add Interest

Buildings and other structures can add an extra level of interest to your shots but if they are illuminated it can mean they end up looking ‘blown out’ so adjust your exposure accordingly.