Should You Ever Lower Your Price for a Real Estate Client?
Cutting your rate to win a listing feels like a smart move when your calendar is empty, and it's also one of the fastest ways to get stuck in real estate photography. The choices you make in your first year about pricing, gear, and which clients you chase tend to set the ceiling on what your business can earn five years later.
Does the 2012 Fujifilm XF 18mm f/2 R Still Hold Up?
The Fujifilm XF 18mm f/2 R came out in 2012, which makes it one of the oldest lenses still in Fujifilm's lineup and an easy one to dismiss next to newer glass. If you shoot street or family life on an X-series body, knowing whether a 14-year-old design can keep up with a 40-megapixel sensor decides whether you save money or spend a lot more on a newer wide prime.
Can a Used Lumix GX8 and Kit Lenses Still Deliver on the Coast?
Most cameras sold a decade ago still take perfectly good pictures, yet it's easy to assume the gear you own now is the main reason your recent photos look the way they do. A budget Micro Four Thirds setup is one of the cheapest ways to test that assumption, since older bodies and kit zooms sell used for a fraction of what current pro gear costs.
Aperty From Skylum Is a Goner in November
Aperty, the portrait editor from Skylum, will be discontinued November 4th. We reviewed Aperty in 2024 and found it a capable editor for portrait photographers. Using a mix of the usual develop sliders and some AI, I had heard positive reviews from people who purchased it.
In a note to users, a Skylum spokesman said:
Why Every Culture Poses Differently: A World Tour of Photographic Body Language
Hand a phone to a group of teenagers in Osaka and start counting. You will rarely reach three before the first two fingers go up beside a chin, while the same camera pointed at strangers in Moscow gets a level, unsmiling gaze that an American would read as hostility and a Russian would read as basic composure. The way a body arranges itself in front of a lens is not instinct but a dialect, learned young and specific to place, and this is a tour of how it changes as you cross borders.
Review of the SmallRig 25L Outdoor Camera Backpack
SmallRig is well known for its video-related accessories. Everyone knows about cages and all that comes with them. Perhaps also about the tripods and video lights. Now SmallRig has added a backpack to its ever-increasing product line. I’ve been using it for some time now. These are my findings.
I’ve been reviewing SmallRig products for some time now, ranging from the Tribex hydraulic tripods to the video and macro lights. Although a lot of the products are aimed at video work, these can also be of benefit to photographers, especially the batteries and lights.
Can Sony's $2,698 400mm Prime Keep Up With the 600mm?
Sony now has four lenses that can get you to 600mm or beyond for birds, and two of them weigh around 1 kg while costing less than many full frame bodies. Once teleconverters come into play, those lenses overlap in focal length, so the choice comes down to how much weight, money, and light each route to the same reach will cost you.
A Manual 50mm That Switches Between Clean, Soft, and Bubbly
The Brightin Star 50mm f/2 Tri-Sight is a manual-focus lens that puts three different optical personalities behind one turning ring, so you can switch between a clean normal lens and two softer, bubblier looks without changing glass. If you shoot a full frame mirrorless body and keep reaching for filters, plug-ins, or adapted old lenses to break up the clinical look of modern optics, a lens like this raises a fair question about whether one barrel can cover all of it.
Sony's New 400mm G Master Goes Trackside
Sony now makes a G Master 400mm lens that weighs under a kilogram, which puts a super-telephoto in the same carrying class as a standard 70-200mm zoom. If you shoot motorsport, wildlife, or field sports without a monopod, that weight changes how long you can stay out and how freely you can move.
Why Your Rim Light Looks Weaker Every Time You Raise the Fill
Rim light and fill light pull against each other in a high-key portrait: brighten one, and the other suddenly looks weak. Getting the two to share the frame is what separates a bright, clean beauty shot from one that looks flat or burned out.
Nearly Every JPEG on Earth Runs on Math a Reviewer Called Too Simple to Fund in 1972
In early 1972, a Kansas State University professor named Nasir Ahmed sent the National Science Foundation a proposal to study a cosine transform built out of Chebyshev polynomials. NSF declined to fund it, and in his own written account of what happened, Ahmed recalled one reviewer's comment coming down to the whole idea seeming "too simple." That idea is the arithmetic sitting underneath essentially every JPEG in your catalog.
Five Poses for When Your Couple Starts Looking Posed
I want to start by defending the thing this article might look like it is against. Static posing in wedding and portrait photography is the backbone of every couples session I shoot. The five foundations I teach are all static positions, and they are static for good reasons. They are fast. They are repeatable. They are flattering on almost everybody. When you have ninety seconds before the coordinator waves you off, you reach for a static pose, and you should.
Is It Time to Upgrade Your Camera?
A shelf full of older camera bodies brings its own kind of guilt: they still work, they still make good pictures, and they almost never leave the house. Choosing whether to keep shooting a camera like the Fujifilm X-H1 or sell it for something faster affects your wallet, your hit rate, and how much you enjoy the time you spend shooting.
Why Leaving Your Camera at Home Can Train Your Eye
Finding a photograph inside a crowded street or a wide-open landscape is the part of the craft that decides whether you come home with a handful of keepers or a card full of near misses. Settings and gear can be learned in a weekend, while knowing where to point the camera takes years, and few people explain how to practice it.
Can a Better Process Lead to Better Landscape Photos?
Two hours of loading sheet film at camp after a long day in the field can make large format feel like a job. How you handle the dull, repetitive parts of photography shapes how much you enjoy the rest of it, and often how the pictures turn out.
Photoshop Can Now Move the Light in Your Photo
Flat window light or a harsh shadow across a face used to mean a reshoot or an evening of dodging and burning. Photoshop's new Relight feature, currently in the beta, lets you reposition, soften, and recolor the light in a finished image with a handful of sliders.
What Diffraction Actually Is, and Why Photographers Worry About f/16
A 24mm lens at f/8 has an opening 3.00 mm across. A 600mm lens at f/8 has one 75 mm across, 25 times wider, and it draws a diffraction pattern on the sky 25 times finer. Both land a blur spot on your sensor exactly 10.7 microns wide.
Every other limit in photography has a price attached. Aberrations yield to better glass, noise yields to a bigger sensor, flare yields to better coatings. Diffraction yields to nothing, because it is not a property of your lens at all.
Hands On With Adobe's New Prompt to Edit Lightroom Feature
As part of its ongoing efforts to make photo editing as quick and easy as possible, Adobe is introducing Prompt to Edit in Lightroom. This feature lets you restore an old photograph by selecting one of Adobe’s example prompts or creating your own prompt. You can sharpen out-of-focus images, colorize black-and-white photographs, and adjust the color of photos with a dramatic color cast.
How to Get Depth in a Wide Angle Landscape Photo
A wide angle lens pointed at a mountain range can make the peaks look small and far away, which is the opposite of what most people expect when they carry one into big terrain. Getting around that problem by getting close to something in front of you and building the frame back toward the peak is what turns a flat record of a view into an image that pulls the eye through it.
The Nearest Wall Might Be Your Best Flash Modifier
A single speedlight sitting in your camera's hot shoe can produce portrait light that looks like it came from a big window or a softbox, as long as you know where to point it. Most people never get there, because direct flash looks harsh and the usual fix is a pile of domes, diffusers, and brackets that can cost more than the flash itself.