A Look Into the Latest Tripod Technology From Sirui: The BH-60 Hybrid Ballhead and SVS60 Rapid Tripod System.
As someone who relies heavily on a geared head for precise hospitality work, the increasing demand for speed and video applications has left me considering how to integrate a hybrid ball head system into my professional workflow. Specifically, I was looking for a unit that acts as a traditional fluid head, yet retains the multi-axis freedom of a ball head for dynamic still photography—all without lugging around two different support systems.
Should a Photo Project Start With an Idea or a Feeling?
Most advice on personal projects follows the same order: settle on a concept, write a rationale, set some rules, and only then pick up the camera. That sequence keeps a body of work coherent, though it can also screen out the images you keep returning to before you have any idea why they pull at you.
Create Beautiful Portraits With One Lens and Simple Light
Crafting beautiful portraits with a simple camera and lighting setup is possible, and limiting our gear choices can lead to even more creative results.
In my latest YouTube video, I demonstrate how I use natural light, strobe, and continuous light to create portraits. Instead of focusing on a ton of gear, I use simple setups, starting with just a window, and then show how I can use one Westcott FJ100 M hot shoe flash and a Joel Grimes Beauty Dish, and later one Westcott L120-B continuous light with the same modifier, to create varied results.
Is Shooting Wide Open Making Your Photos Flatter?
Background blur is usually the first effect you learn to create on purpose, and that early success tends to shape how you shoot for years. The settings you lean on, from aperture to shutter speed to exposure mode, decide whether your images feel flat or deep long before you open an editor.
Is Samyang's Compact f/2.8 Zoom Set Worth Carrying?
Samyang's three f/2.8 zooms, co-designed with Schneider-Kreuznach, cover 14mm to 180mm on Sony full frame bodies while stepping away from the familiar 16-35mm, 24-70mm, and 70-200mm ranges. Trimming a few millimeters here and adding a few there is how a lens maker cuts size, weight, and price, and those are the things that decide whether a lens leaves your house or stays on the shelf.
Is the Nikon ZR Enough Reason to Switch to Nikon for Video?
Nikon now owns RED, and the first camera to come out of that deal is the Nikon ZR, a compact body that records RED's raw codec for a little over $2,000. If you shoot video for clients or your own films, that pairing puts a codec once tied to cinema camera budgets inside a body small enough to balance on a basic gimbal.
The Hurricane Katrina 'Looting' Photo Controversy and What It Still Teaches Us About Writing Captions
Getty Images image number 53509740 is still on Getty's site today, and the caption still reads: "Two residents wade through chest deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area on August 29, 2005 in New Orleans, Louisiana." An Associated Press frame of a young Black man in chest-deep water, carrying what looks like a case of Pepsi under one arm and a full garbage bag, said he was looting. Two decades of argument later, the disputed wording is still there.
Hands On With the Light Lens Lab 35mm Double Ashperical Lens
Every Leica shooter has a dream lens they would love to buy. Price is usually the obstacle, but sometimes that lens is not only expensive but rare as well. Perhaps no other Leica lens is more sought after than the Summilux-M 35mm f/1.4 with the word “Aspherical” written in full on the rim. It is unlikely you will ever own this lens, but there is an alternative option in the form of the Light Lens Lab 35mm f/1.4 Aspherical “11873”.
How Nikon's Flagship 85mm f/1.2 Holds Up Against New Rivals
Nikon's NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.2 S sells for close to $3,000 and weighs more than many of the bodies you'd mount it on. For about three years, it has been the obvious pick on Z mount if you want the thinnest depth of field and the cleanest portrait rendering, and now cheaper third-party 85mm f/1.2 lenses are showing up to test how long that lasts.
How to Make Someone Comfortable in Front of Your Camera
Stiff portraits usually come from a subject who feels watched and unsure, and no lens or lighting setup hides that tension once it settles into someone's shoulders and face. If you photograph people who aren't professional models, how relaxed they feel shapes nearly every frame you take.
Does Lightroom's Open Eyes Feature Actually Look Natural?
Lightroom can now open closed eyes in a photo, a job that used to mean digging through a burst for a donor frame and blending it in by hand in Photoshop. If you shoot portraits, events, or group photos, a blink is one of the most common reasons a frame with good expression and good light lands in the reject pile.
Is the Nikon Z5IIC a Better Deal Than the Sony a7CR?
The Nikon Z5IIC puts a full frame sensor, in-body stabilization, and raw video into a $1,400 body by dropping the viewfinder, and people argued about that choice before most of them had held one. If you shoot weddings or travel, or if you're weighing a second body, the useful question is how that missing eyepiece and a pricier compact Sony rival play out over a real day of shooting.
A National Archives Archivist Enlarged a Mislabeled Glass Plate in 1952 and Found Lincoln at Gettysburg
The National Archives still lists the negative as "Crowd of citizens, soldiers, and etc. with Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg." Everything before the president's name is the label the plate wore in federal storage for most of a century. The rest is there because Josephine Cobb enlarged a broken piece of glass about 20 times in 1952 and found him in it.
Comparing Peak Design’s Travel and Pro Tripods: Which One Is For You?
Peak Design's Travel Tripod is probably one of the most talked-about tripods on this site, and opinions have been polarized. Since the brand has expanded its tripod lineup with three new Pro models, it's clearly important that we see their differences and optimal use cases.
The Great Tripod Debate: Twist Locks or Lever Locks?
You've noticed that tripods come with two basic kinds of locks: twist locks and lever locks. They're quite different. Which should you purchase? I'll tell you my experiences and observations.
Twist Locks
The Robus RC-5570 has high-quality twist locks.
I generally like twist locks, or collar locks, but I feel that you have to really go out of your way to make sure that they are locked down because occasionally, if you are not careful, they can slip.
Is the Canon RF 85mm f/1.2L Really the King of Portrait Lenses?
Ask a room full of people to name the best portrait lens, and most will point to something like the Canon RF 85mm f/1.2L USM, with its reputation for sharpness, flattering perspective on faces, and heavy background blur. If you're about to spend serious money on portrait glass, ask whether that reputation fits the rooms you work in and the apertures you actually use.
The Most Important Camera Setting You're Not Using
Any modern digital camera has thousands of settings and more features than most individual photographers will ever use. But there are some settings that photographers of all genres can benefit from using. One of the most overused terms in photography is "game-changing." It seems like every time a new piece of gear is announced, whether it's a camera, lens, strobe, modifier, tripod, or lens cloth, someone is out there to tell you why you need it and why it's going to revolutionize your photography. Spoiler alert—it's not! And you probably already know that.
DXO ViewPoint 6 Offers Image Correction Without Crops
DxO has been busy lately, updating its collection of apps, giving them new capabilities and gently using AI to keep the photographer in control while making editing easier.
Today, DxO is announcing ViewPoint 6, the latest version of its software for correcting geometry, perspective, and distortion. Version 6 brings AI masks to ReShape Fusion, the tool for adjusting the components of a scene from within the frame. Photographers can now concentrate a geometric correction on a single element of the scene instead of applying it across the whole picture.
How the Canon EOS R6 Mark III Holds Up After a Year of Paid Work
The Canon EOS R6 Mark III sits in the middle of Canon's mirrorless lineup, yet its feature list now overlaps with both the higher-resolution R5 Mark II and Canon's Cinema EOS bodies. If you shoot stills and video for a living, that overlap decides how many bodies you buy, carry, and maintain.
Should Your Next Filmmaking Camera Be a Lumix?
Picking a camera system for video locks you into a mount, a lens lineup, and a manufacturer's release schedule for years, and the features a brand ships early tend to shape how you work long after the purchase. Panasonic's Lumix bodies rarely dominate filmmaking gear talk, even though several capabilities now drawing attention elsewhere have lived inside them for a long time.