Kodachrome Ended in Parsons, Kansas: Dwayne's Photo Ran the Last Roll on January 18, 2011
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.
The Feature Nikon Never Shipped
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.
Why a Sub-$100 Godox Is the Most Versatile Flash in a Wedding Photographer's Bag
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.
What 30,000 Free Doritos Commercials Can Teach You About Spec Work
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.
Lumix vs. TTArtisan vs. Viltrox: Why the Priciest 40mm Isn't the Clear Winner
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.
High-Speed Sync vs. Global Shutter for Flash Portraits in Bright Sun
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.
The Preacher Who Patented Flexible Film in 1898 and Died Before Kodak Paid $5 Million for It
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.
You Don’t Need a Macro Lens for Mushroom Photography. There, I Said It.
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?
Why One Superzoom Might Be All You Need on a Long Hike
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.
Why a Rained-Out Race Is Worth Photographing on Film
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.
Why the Panasonic Lumix S1RII Is a Great Buy for Everything but Sports
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.
Why It's OK to Come Home From a Landscape Shoot Empty-Handed
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.
Critique the Community: Unique Edit
Welcome to the November installment of the Critique the Community! This month's critique theme is going to be "Unique Edit," and we want to see your best photographs that were brought to life with a new or unique editing style or specific editing software.
In 2013, Researchers Pulled Recognizable Faces of Bystanders Out of the Eye Reflections in a Portrait
An anonymous peer reviewer worked through a manuscript, looked at one of its figures, and recognized one of the authors. The face was a reflection in another person's eye. Across the study's bystanders, those extracted faces ran 27 to 36 pixels wide and covered roughly 322 pixels apiece, and that accidental recognition became the paper's second experiment.
The Luminar Fall Update Has Some Powerful New Tools
Luminar has released a solid fall update with some new features and some enhancements. The update is free to current owners and can, of course, be purchased by photographers who are interested.
This new update is version 1.29.0. The update should appear automatically, or you can click "Check for Updates" in the Luminar dropdown menu.
Can’t Afford a Leica? Buy One of These Instead
If you’re pondering a Leica rangefinder film camera but can’t bring yourself to spend a crazy amount of money, maybe give this a go.
Having reimmersed myself back into the wonderful world of analog about five years ago, my collection of film cameras has slowly been growing. And like many analog enthusiasts, there’s one camera that has a certain allure, especially as all the cool kids on YouTube seem to own one: the Leica M6.
Chasing a Vivid Fog Bow and a Golden Gate Bridge Shot Years in the Making
Fog in the San Francisco Bay Area can bury a scene in seconds and hand it back a minute later with trees, towers, and light arranged in ways you won't see again. Shooting it well means working quickly, reading the direction of the light, and resisting the urge to stick with the first composition that looks good.
The Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.4 Pro Is Sharp in the Corners Wide Open
The Viltrox AF 35mm f/1.4 Pro sells for $829, and it brings a metal body, weather-sealing, and a clicked aperture ring at that price. Few focal lengths stay on a camera as long as a 35mm does, so how a lens like this behaves wide open, in the corners, and while tracking a moving subject affects a big share of everything you shoot.
The Case for Photographing the Place You Already Know
The places you see every week are the ones you're least likely to photograph, since they feel too familiar to bother with. Familiar doesn't last, and the village fair or street corner you skip this year is exactly what someone will want to see decades from now.
Why You Don't Need Focus Stacking for Every Landscape
Focus stacking has become close to a default step in landscape work, with plenty of people blending 20 or even 50 frames so every rock and grass blade is sharp from front to back. Whether that effort shows up in the final image, or whether a single frame focused at the hyperfocal distance would look the same, decides how much of your time goes into focus while the light keeps changing.