Seven Cameras Famous Photographers Actually Used for Their Most Iconic Work
One of the most recognized photographs in the history of National Geographic was made on a camera you can still buy used for a few hundred dollars. Steve McCurry pointed a Nikon FM2 with a 105mm lens at a girl of about 12 in a Pakistani refugee camp in 1984, loaded Kodachrome 64, and came away with "Afghan Girl." No autofocus, no built-in motor drive, no computer in the box. A manual mechanical camera and one prime lens.
7Artisans 40mm f/2.5: Remarkable Performance for The Price
I love small prime lenses and cameras for travel and street photography, so I was curious to test the new 40mm f/2.5 from 7Artisans. It's a tiny full frame lens for Nikon Z cameras, weighing a mere 97 g and measuring just 2 inches long. And at $159, it's also considerably cheaper than Nikon's 170 g NIKKOR Z 40mm f/2, which currently sells for around $277. Sony E and L-Mount versions are also available.
Why New Printer Owners Should Start With Basic Manufacturer Paper
Buy a new photo printer, and the next temptation is a shopping cart full of baryta, cotton rag, and sampler packs of photo paper from every maker you've heard of. Paper shapes how a print looks, but telling which paper suits your images depends on a skill you can only build by printing a lot.
Why Focusing on the Background Makes Photos Feel Dreamy
Nearly everything you learn about focus points in one direction: keep the subject sharp and let the background fall apart. Reversing that, so the person in front of the lens goes soft while the scene behind them stays crisp, is one of the simplest ways to make an image feel dreamy and a little unreal.
4 Affordable Compact Cameras, From a Used Sony ZV-E10 to the Lumix L10
Every small camera between $500 and $1,500 gives something up, whether that's stabilization, battery life, a viewfinder, or a mechanical shutter, and the Sony ZV-E10, Fujifilm X-M5, Lumix S9, and Lumix L10 each make a different sacrifice. Picking the one whose weakness you rarely run into is what separates a camera you carry every day from one you regret buying.
Why a Long-Term Project Makes Photography Feel Less Repetitive
Landscape photography can settle into a loop: scout a spot, wait for light, take the frame, go home, and do it again next weekend. That routine produces some beautiful single images, but a hard drive full of unrelated pictures rarely adds up to a body of work you can show someone.
Why Kodak Film Sensitivity Depended on Cows and Mustard
The working dose Samuel Sheppard wrote into his patent was 2 to 3 grains of thiosinamine per 100 pounds of dry gelatin, which works out to roughly three or four parts per million. Added to a gelatin stripped of its natural sensitizer, that trace could raise the emulsion's sensitivity by a factor of ten or twenty. Nudge it upward and the film fogged.
Wandrd’s Magnetic Camera Straps Are Here and the New Features Just Click
Almost every camera strap on the market from a couple dozen brands right now makes use of links that make it a lot easier to connect the camera to the straps. This smart yet simple solution made straps a lot more efficient, and WANDRD's take on the quick-release camera strap has a few extra features that make it better.
How Using a Team Approach to Camera Purchases Can Be More Effective Than One Size Fits All
Finding the perfect camera that will fit every job is the dream. But sometimes, it’s more effective to build a team than rely on the power of one.
We Review the MacBook Pro With PROLED XDR Display and M5 Max: The Screen Changes Everything
The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is the first Mac laptop with a tandem OLED panel, and after two days with the 16-inch M5 Max I keep coming back to the same thought: Apple did not just bolt a nicer screen onto last year's computer. This is a major step forward all around.
The review unit is the 16-inch with the M5 Max, 18-core CPU, 40-core GPU, 128 GB of unified memory, and a 4 TB SSD, in Space Black.
Why the Best Forest Photos of the Day Were Steps From the Truck
You drive out to a waterfall the day after a downpour, expecting a torrent, and find the creek almost dry. A blown plan like that tests how quickly you can switch to a backup spot, and how much you can pull out of an ordinary forest scene later with focus stacking in Photoshop and some careful masking in Lightroom.
3 Reasons To Use A Tilt Shift Lens Featuring The Laowa 24mm f/2 Zero-D Tilt-Shift
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.
Why Nikon's Z 120-300mm f/2.8 TC Is Like Carrying 4 Fast Primes in One
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.
The Budget SG-image AF 55mm f/1.8 Is Sharp Corner to Corner by f/2.8
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.
3 Ways to Select Anything in Photoshop, From the Lasso Tool to AI
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.
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.