Food can be a difficult subject to photograph. There’s all kinds of things to take into account about the colour and texture of the food. You’ve got to make it look appetising to the camera, even if it doesn’t always look that way in real life. Shooting a single frame is difficult enough. So, imagine adding computer controlled knives, robot arm and a slow motion camera into the mix. Then imagine dropping all the components of your meal from various heights and having them land perfectly....

This is either the silliest or coolest looking USB charger I’ve ever seen. I haven’t quite decided yet. USB chargers are a part of everyday life. Whether it’s for our phones, tablets, or even some cameras, we just can’t escape them. MAny of us dispense with the cheap chargers that come with our devices, in favour of more versatile options. We go for units that offer more sockets and power for charging several devices from a single plug socket....

This video recently surfaced on Reddit, after it was discovered by user TheKnightLife. It was featured in the 80s on ABC in the show “World of Photography”. As it turned out, the profile was on TheKnightLife’s father, sports photographer Bill Knight. Bill says in the video that he’d been on the tour for about 13 years, which his son believes puts the video at sometime around 1985. Bill retired in the early 2000s after never fully recovering from a double knee replacement surgery due to osteoarthritis....

There are many times where we share stories that make me lose hope in the human race. But every once in a while, we get to share an optimistic story about humankind. Today belongs to the latter. Photographer Adam Sherez found a Mavic Air 2 while shooting in Jerusalem. The drone was in one piece and looked quite new. With a price tag of $799, Adam was sure that someone is having a terrible day now, missing a drone....

Ilford Photo have been popping out some new videos lately. Amongst them is this cool little animation that shows, in simple terms, how a 35mm film SLR works. The 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera was a revolutionary development for photography. It was the ultimate compromise of quality and portability. But most importantly, it allowed the photographer to see through the lens of the camera and know exactly how the image would be captured on film....

Instagram has been cracking down on various tactics people use to try to get ahead of the others on the platform. They’ve killed off many of the third party services that tip-toed the TOS line. Pods are pretty much a thing of the past. And they’ve implemented “shadowbanning”. A shadowban is essentially a post-specific ban that you don’t know about. Instagram kills your reach without you knowing (except for the fact that nobody engages with your stuff anymore)....

Adobe’s Premiere Pro is one of the most popular video editing applications in the world. Like most non-linear editors, though, Premiere Pro can seem very overwhelming to new users, especially when it comes to effects. In this new video series, Justin Odisho is on a mission to go over every single effect available in Premiere Pro. Each video goes over a different group of effects available natively in the effects panel of Premiere Pro....

Iridescence is defined as the phenomenon of certain surfaces that appear to change colour as the angle of view or the angle of illumination changes, and that is highlighted especially well in these extreme close up images of these peacock feathers created by Canadian photographer Waldo Nell. Image stacking shots focused at different distances from a subject is a process I haven’t had much need to use myself, but it’s a technique I’ve always been fascinated by, so DIYP had a chat with Waldo to find out more about him and his process....

eBay is no longer the site it once was when it first started. Initially, you could find all kinds of great used treasures there. These days, it’s mostly a storefront for retailers selling new products. Occasionally, though, a rare treasure does still pop up. Sometimes, you can even get a steal of a bargain. This one, though, while rare, isn’t so much of a bargain. Photographer Bert Stern shot with Marilyn Monroe for years and this eBay listing purports to be a contact sheet from their Last Sitting....

We’ve seen all kinds of weird methods for taking down drones. But if you’ve been wondering what the most dangerous one may be – I think I’ve just found it. Russian defense manufacturer JSC Almaz Antey has created a monster: a drone that flies around and literally shoots at other drones with a shotgun. JSC Almaz Antey has filed a patent for the scary shotgun-wielding drone, according to Russian defense blog Dambiev....

This is a pretty interesting idea from Snoppa Tech. It’s called the Snoppa Rover and it essentially seems to be a motorised tripod on wheels. According to Snoppa, you can programme it with set paths with full camera control, it can climb up to a 30° slope, it has a 0° turning circle, runs on all terrains and features smart tracking, so you don’t even need a camera op to follow you around....

The tilt-shift effect has become quite common in regular ground based timelapse sequences. So much so, that we’re a little sick of seeing it. Not because we don’t like the effect, just that so many people do it quite badly. The same is true with drone tilt shift videos. I’ve seen a handful of really bad ones, and maybe one good one before this one happened to appear on my screen....

There was a time when it was hard to even give Canon FD lenses away. I remember picking up a Canon A-1 and 50mm f/1.8 FD lens about 12 years ago at auction for £3. Both camera and lens worked flawlessly, too. Now, though, FD lenses have become a big hit with filmmakers. Their prices have gone up a little bit in the last few years, but many can still be found for bargain prices....

Photography is more than a hobby or profession. Sometimes, it can be a life-saver, both figuratively and literally. In this video, Marc Newton of The School of Photography hosts Maureen O’Sullivan-Day. She shares how photography helped her recover and become her old self again after she suffered a stroke. Maureen had a stroke in January 2018. It affected her speech, her right side of the body, but also her memory and imagination....

When push comes to shove, the kinds of DIY solutions people come up with to solve photography and filmmaking problems really can be amazing. Take camera rigs, for example. DSLRs aren’t exactly the most ergonomic of devices when it comes to shooting video. But camera rigs can be very expensive, even relatively modest ones. So what can you do? For Ghana-based filmmaker Abass Safian, the answer was obvious. Make his own....

No matter what genre of photography you shoot, there are images you have in your head that you want to create as examples of “great” photographs. And if you manage to pull them off, then fantastic. You share them far and wide. But what about the pretty good, not terrible, above average, but not great photographs? Should you share those? That’s the question put forth by landscape photographer Ralph Goldsmith in this video....

I’m not the biggest fan of digital black and white conversions. They’re often just far too much work and effort to get the look that I want. There are a million different ways to make black & white conversions. Until you try a bunch of them, though, you usually don’t really know how quite they’re going to turn out. So, if I know I want black & white then I usually just shoot them on film....

If you have a limited space for a backdrop in your apartment, Rachel and Daniel from Mango Street have just the thing for you. In this video, they show you two DIY backdrops they made and attached to a beam in their flat. They’re both easy to make and quick to set up whenever you need a backdrop. They don’t take too much space, and on top of it all – they’re budget-friendly, too....

The Association of Photographers (AOP) have raised their concerns over a new exception to the UK’s data mining law which could have significant consequences for photographers. The new exemption proposes to freely allow the machine mining of all imagery published online for any use by anyone, including AI developers. It would cover both copyright works and those protected by the UK Database Right. Currently, the Text and Data Mining (TDM) exception to copyright protection permits non-commercial purpose machine analysis of online content, provided that there is lawful access (such as a subscription)....

The coronavirus pandemic has moved all teaching, learning, and test taking online. However, there have been some hiccups with the Advanced Placement (AP) exams for US high school students. Those with iPhones have been failing the test because the College Board’s portal doesn’t support HEIC image format. The schools across the US began closing in March due to the current pandemic. Therefore, the students were instructed to take their AP exams online....