I don’t tend to use V-Mount batteries all that much for my gear. At least not recently. Battery power isn’t all that important when you can’t actually go out and film anything on location. But V-Mount batteries are hugely popular in the world of video, particularly when it comes to lighting, but they also often power cameras, monitors and countless other devices. V-Mount batteries are not without their potential dangers, though, as this video from Gaffer & Gear explains....

Japan’s space agency (JAXA) recently successfully landed its MINERVA-II rovers on the surface of an asteroid. After sending the first photos back to Earth, now there’s also a video that shows the rocky surface of the asteroid Ryugu. It’s a short, but awe-inspiring clip that will spark your imagination. The video was captured by MINERVA-II2 or Rover-1B. It was dispatched from Hayabusa-2 spacecraft and landed on the asteroid Ryugu on Friday, 21 September....

An auction house based in New Zealand sold two historically significant glass plate negatives as NFTs and allegedly encouraged the buyers to smash the originals in order to increase the value of the NFT. The photographs were of the artist Charles Goldie who was well known for his Portraits of Maori elders. The photographs were taken by Rupert Farnall and date back to anywhere between 1910 and 1920. Webb’s auction house based in Auckland listed the plates as NFTs on the platform OpenSea, and included a framed contact print of the image and the original glass plate negative presented in a custom-built pine box....

Film photography seems to be returning, so here’s more great news for film shooters: Holga is making a comeback! The legendary plastic toy camera will find its way back on the shelves in July this year. In 2015, Freestyle Photographic Supplies confirmed that Tokina had shut down the factory producing Holga. The competition was too large in the revitalized film market. Also, many manufacturers were producing and selling cameras that were too similar....

The season of giving is upon us – which becomes immediately obvious whenever you walk into a store and you’re overwhelmed by Whamageddon. If you want to avoid the Christmas music and prefer to do your shopping online, then have no fear, DIYP’s 2021 Holiday Gift Guides are here to rescue you with some of our favourite new releases of the year, as well as a few old favourites that always seem to find a place in our gear bags....

High speed sync flash is typically associated with shooting outdoors. You’re in the bright light, and you need to take your shutter past your camera’s sync speed in order to overcome the bright outdoors and bring it under control. High speed sync lets you keep using flash beyond these speeds. But there are times when you might want to use them indoors, too. In this video, Gavin Hoey shows us why we might want to use high speed sync in the studio or other indoor settings and how to use it to get the shots we want....

The issue of how much to charge for photography have been chewed to death. If you want another point of view on the subject, have a look at this breakdown by Tony & Chelsea Northrup. It’s quite interesting that the duo chooses to start with Location as a pricing factor. Something you have very little control over. As sad as it is, it makes sense to me. Where you are, or rather where your clients are, probably have the biggest impact on the fees you can charge....

For centuries, church buildings have been a mainstay feature of villages, towns, cities and rural areas throughout Europe. From luxurious and majestic cathedrals to quaint country chapels, many places in Europe are home to religious sanctuaries. Today, some of the religious buildings are maintained in pristine shape, regarded as national treasures, while others meet a rather different handling. Whether on a busy city corner or being taken over by nature somewhere in the countryside, there are many religious buildings slowly getting lost to time and fading from collective memories....

When editing portraits, especially in beauty photography, there’s a lot of work to do. But Unmesh Dinda of PiXimperfect will show you a quick editing process that makes a lot of difference. In this tutorial, he takes a minute to demonstrate how you can add shine and depth to hair with a pretty simple technique. It will take you just a little bit of time, yet it can make the hair of your model really “pop....

If you missed the explosive report by KGO-TV reporter Dan Noyes on the theft epidemic in San Francisco, I want to both share his stories, and offer some common-sense solutions to a problem that’s gotten way out of hand. You know that thieves in San Francisco (and elsewhere) are smashing the windows of cars to rob stuff, sensing that the police won’t chase or arrest them. Photographers have been followed by thieves, had their gear taken, which got quickly resold on the streets....

Maps are wonderful things. They don’t just let us figure out how to get from here to there, but they can also provide context, especially in travel videos. They let the viewer see how far we’ve gone, or get an idea of the surrounding area, or one of a million other reasons you might want to put a map in your video. Fortunately, thanks to modern technology, doing this is now easier than ever....

We’ve seen several different ways of creating double exposure photos in Photoshop. Photographer Leo Rosas shares an interesting tutorial on how to do it on a digital Nikon camera, in-camera. Well, sort of. You take the individual photos and blend them in-camera to create a RAW file. You can later fine tune it in Adobe Lightroom or Camera Raw. Take a look. Before you take the photos, think about the scene you want to compose and create....

How do you make $100,000 as a photographer? Start with $200,000! Sorry, jokes aside, it is technically possible. I mean, there are photographers out there earning 6 figures. And I’m sure that even if I was making that sort of money from photography I’m sure I’d still be writing for DIYP! But that aside, how do you even get close to making that sort of money from your passion? It’s something that most of us just dream about....

Once you’ve made the decision to invest in a beautiful artwork that you absolutely love, it is important to know that there is one last step involved that will really make your new art piece get the attention it deserves- and that is to give it proper accent lighting. Correctly illuminating art is essential for showing off the details, colors, and three-dimensionality that make it so amazing. You have to make the choice as to whether you are content with the natural light in the room or if you will illuminate your art to maximize its potential....

For some of us, especially when we’re just starting out, we’re limited on gear. Maybe we can only afford a single light or perhaps we can afford more, but we want to experiment with just one before laying down a huge amount of cash. Either way, having just a single light for our work is not uncommon. It is possible to make one light look like many though. In this video, filmmaker Brandon Li shows us a technique for multiplying a single light using multiple takes and compositing....

For those who’ve never come across it before, the Arri Trinity is an insane $50,000+ (and the camera) gimbal/steadicam hybrid type device that lets you make some really cool and unique shots. We featured it here recently when Potato Jet got to see and try it out for himself and it offers many obvious advantages over other filming techniques. But most of us don’t have $50k lying around. So, what can we do?...

At this time of year, having Christmas lights in the background of your shots is not only common, it’s desired. Especially for those bokeh fanatics. The last few years, though, there’s been a trend away from the more traditional Christmas lights toward low energy LEDs. Being in the room with them, just looking at them, it’s likely that most people will never see the difference. To a camera, however, it’s a different story....

Making cameras see things that our eyes cannot is something that’s always really fascinated me about photography. Whether it’s super extreme macro, infrared & ultraviolet or, as is the case here, heat and shockwaves. In this video, Kelly Hoffer at Theory of Curiosity talks us through Background-Oriented Schlieren (BOS). It’s a technique that lets you see heat and other atmospheric distortions in photographs. Here, Kelly shows it off using just a regular camera and Photoshop....

This is quite interesting, and not something I’ve come across before, although it appears the idea has been out for a little while now. As more users are starting to use Linux on the desktop, they’re starting to turn to GIMP for some of their photo editing needs (after all, Adobe doesn’t do Linux). It’s a somewhat unfamiliar interface if you’re coming from Photoshop, but this GIMP patch could make life a little easier....

Have you ever had a repeated inconvenience that finally makes you say to yourself “okay, I’m done with this garbage”? Well, that’s the exact feeling I had with using contrast filters on my enlarger. Anytime I wanted to use a contrast filter, I needed to use tape to hold it in place while I was printing. The design of some Omega enlargers requires a removable “cradle” that holds the filters underneath the lens....