Why Last Week's Photos Are the Hardest to Judge
The photos you hauled a heavy pack up a mountain to make will almost always feel stronger than the ones you grabbed on a walk to the grocery store. That gap between how an image feels to you and how it reads to everyone else shapes what you print, what goes into a book, and what you show the world.
How Photoshop Blend Modes Actually Work
Blend modes sit in a dropdown at the top of the Layers panel in Photoshop, and a lot of people choose one by scrolling until something looks right. Once you know what each mode does to light pixels, dark pixels, and everything in between, that guessing becomes a choice you can repeat on sky replacements, retouching, textures, and composites.
Fujifilm's X-Trans Sensor: The Rebel Design That Solved One Problem and Created Others
Fujifilm, a company that spent most of a century making film, looked at the tidy checkerboard of color filters printed onto every digital sensor and decided the tidiness was the enemy. Its answer was a scrambled 6 by 6 grid of red, green, and blue inspired by the random clumping of film grain, and once that grid was in place the company deleted the one component almost every rival still trusted to keep pictures clean. The X-Trans sensor has been dividing photographers ever since.
Behind the Shot: How Do You Even Go About Photographing Radio Telescopes Under the Milky Way?
How do you photograph something like this? Two enormous radio telescopes, the Milky Way rising between them, and a foreground that actually has detail instead of disappearing into blackness. The answer involves a little planning, some tricks to reduce noise, a way to light the radio telescopes, and access to one of the most extraordinary locations in California. Here's how I did it.
Is Photoshop's New Relight Tool Worth 30 Credits?
Photoshop's new Relight feature lets you move the light falling on a subject after the shot is already taken, a job that used to mean hours of dodging, burning, and hand-painted highlights. If you build composites or shoot people and products in flat light, a tool that reshapes direction and warmth in a few clicks could shift how much you fix in post versus on set.
Is the Fujifilm XF 400mm f/4.5 Worth $3,199?
Long telephoto lenses have always made you choose between reach, weight, and money, and wildlife shooting tends to punish whichever one you skimp on. Fujifilm's new XF 400mm f/4.5 R LM OIS WR gives X-mount shooters a 600mm-equivalent prime that tries to ease the first two compromises at once.
Can the Thypoch Voyager 24-50mm f/2.8 Keep Up With Sony's Own Zoom?
Sony's 24-50mm f/2.8 G is a compact fast standard zoom for full frame Sony bodies, and the Thypoch Voyager 24-50mm f/2.8 goes straight after it with autofocus, an internal zoom, and a much lower price. If you build a compact kit for stills and video, a cheaper lens that keeps pace with Sony's own glass changes how you split your budget between body and lens.
Is the TTArtisan AF 24mm f/3.8 Worth $99?
The TTArtisan AF 24mm f/3.8 is a $99 autofocus pancake that covers a full frame sensor and weighs under 60 g. If you've ever left your camera at home because it felt like too much to carry, a lens this thin shifts that math in a real way.
Tamron's 16-50mm f/2.8 A Brings a Fast Zoom to Four APS-C Mounts From $529
Tamron has announced the 16-50mm f/2.8 A, a constant f/2.8 standard zoom for APS-C mirrorless cameras that starts at 16mm and goes on sale October 29 for Sony E at $529 and Canon RF at $549, with Nikon Z and Fujifilm X versions following later in the year.
Why Fujifilm Survived the Digital Apocalypse That Killed Kodak
Walk into a department store in Tokyo and you can buy an anti-aging skin cream made by a camera company. It is called Astalift, and the collagen and antioxidant science inside the bottle came straight out of the labs that once kept your photographic prints from yellowing. That cream is one of the reasons Fujifilm is still here and Kodak, the company that arguably invented the whole modern imaging world, spent 2012 in bankruptcy court.
Hundreds of Photo Tips
Today is the last day you can get access to some of the best educational content in photography this year. Yes, it comes with a price tag but the value is pretty insane.
Woodland Photography Is Hard, But Does It Have to Be?
Woodland photography is something I have always found difficult. I am primarily a seascape photographer, and while I photograph other types of landscapes, the coast is where I feel most comfortable. When I arrive at a coastal location, I can usually start looking for the elements that might make up the photograph. A rock, a headland, a section of coastline, a wave, or perhaps the way the light is falling across the scene. There is normally something that immediately starts to draw my attention.
Woodland is different.
Is an Expensive Photo Printer Worth It?
A 17-inch pigment printer with a dozen inks looks like a sure path to better prints, and a modest ink tank model can feel like settling. Choosing between them affects your running costs, how often you print, and which papers you can use.
Soft Light Doesn't Have to Mean Bright Shadows
One softbox can produce a dozen very different portraits, yet most people set it up at the textbook angle and leave it there. The distance between a correctly lit face and an interesting one usually comes down to small moves with a light you already own.
Is Panasonic's Lumix S 20mm f/2.5 Sharp Enough?
Panasonic's Lumix S 20mm f/2.5 is a small, light, $498 ultra-wide prime for L-mount full frame bodies, and it sits at a focal length plenty of people treat as their everyday wide. At that price and size, the open question is how much optical quality Panasonic had to give up to keep the lens this compact.
What Can You Legally Remove From a Real Estate Photo?
California's AB 723 put real estate photo editing under state law, and similar restrictions are now showing up in other states and in MLS guidelines across the country. If you shoot listings, the difference between a harmless cleanup and an edit that needs a disclosure, or one that isn't allowed at all, now has real consequences for you and your clients.
The Psychology of Hating Photos of Yourself, Explained by the Mirror Problem
You have felt it a hundred times. A friend snaps a candid, hands you the phone, and the person on the screen is a stranger who happens to be wearing your clothes. The nose is wrong. The smile is crooked. You look tired, or lopsided, or somehow older than the face you saw in the bathroom mirror twenty minutes ago. Everyone else in the frame looks fine. Only you look off.
Feeling Stuck? Here's How to Jumpstart Your Creativity in Photography
Have you felt burned out? Stuck? Lacked motivation? Had a fear of failure or felt silly? I will discuss several approaches for creating opportunities for creativity to flourish. You never know, but for some, this might be one of the most influential photography articles they ever read.
7 Travel Items That Make Life on the Road Easier With a Camera
You stand at the baggage carousel for an hour, the belt stops, and your suitcase is nowhere in sight. When your camera, laptop, and a week of unbacked files are part of that trip, the small things you pack around your gear decide whether a bad travel day turns into a lost shoot.
Lighting Chrome Golf Clubs Is Harder Than It Looks
Polished golf clubs reflect everything around them, so a light that flatters one club can leave the one beside it flat and glaring. Shiny, curved metal is one of the hardest subjects to light, and the decisions that solve it carry over to watches, jewelry, cutlery, and anything else with a chrome finish.