While they were once a fixture in every studio and photographer’s gear bag, light meters seem to have fallen out of fashion ever since digital photography came along. And while it’s true that we now have a lot more options for exposing our shots, the humble light meter can still play a very valuable role in nailing the shot quickly and consistently. The cost of messing up the exposure of a shot, twiddling some dials and shooting another isn’t as expensive as it was in the film days, light meters can still save you a lot of time and hassle....

At some point in their photographic journey, many people who take up arms with a camera, especially if they start shooting film, toy with the idea of building their own camera. There are a lot of options out there for scratch building, and not all of them easy, requiring a wide array of tools. Lomography wants to change that, though, with their new Lomomod No. 1, a DIY self-build 6×6 medium format camera....

The ideas and techniques behind timelapse videos keep getting better. But it seems that filmmaker Rob Whitworth even goes beyond possible. After big cities like Dubai, Istanbul or Shanghai, this time, Rob takes you to a smaller, but charming city. It’s his hometown – Norwich, England. The city is famous for its beautiful cathedral, and Rob’s video shows it in flow motion that will make you feel like you’re there with him....

Advertisements Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon which describes a relationship between fundamental properties of a particle, such as their momentum, position, spin, or polarization. As quoted on Wikipedia, “it occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the state of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance....

Last year, the first commercial-quality footage of the Earth from outer space was shot on a Sony Alpha a7S II. And now, the same camera was used for the first ever Hollywood feature-length movie shot on a full-frame mirrorless. A new horror thriller The Possession of Hannah Grace was not shot on a high-end movie camera but on a $2,200 Sony mirrorless. The executive producer Glenn S. Gainor explained that the gear had to fit both the crew’s schedule and budget....

For most of us, when we want an overhead camera rig, we set up a light stand with a boom arm or stick a modified TV bracket on the wall or something. Then we’ll throw up an LED panel, or maybe some Spekulars. But that’s not good enough for YouTuber GreatScott!. Oh no, he built his own custom design using PVC pipe, plywood, aluminium sheets and stuck a computer monitor to it to see the camera viewpoint and made his own LED control circuit to light the scene below....

Austrian photographer Janick Entremont recently performed an interesting experiment. He took a photo of himself and uploaded it to Instagram. Then he downloaded it, posted it again, and repeated this process 340 times to see what will happen. Thanks to Instagram’s compression, he ended up with a completely unrecognizable final image. Janick made a separate Instagram account for his project, which he titled @facetinction | A (con)temporary portrait. Here is the original image he took and uploaded:...

Grab your phone, open the front-facing camera, strike a pose, click, and you’re done. It takes only a few seconds to take the perfect selfie nowadays, but what was it like a century ago? Well, if you wanted to get into the shot, it took a bit more effort than today. And in a photo that recently emerged on Reddit, you can see a creative photographer who figured out a clever way to include himself in the shot....

I’m lucky with my photography. It’s almost all on location, but I mostly get to choose the location myself. They’re places I’m familiar with, that I’ve scouted regularly for several years. So I know what to expect when I show up, where the light’s going to fall at different times of day or year. For a lot of photographers shooting on location, though, you’re often in locations you’re only just seeing for the first time....

We see photo shoots and videos all the time with clickbaity titles like “amazing”, “insane”, “you won’t believe…”, etc. And they rarely live up to expectations. Photographer Mark Smith, however, did capture something pretty amazing. Many of us dream of having bald eagles in front of our lens. But Mark saw not one, but a whole bunch of them hunting and even fighting. Out with his Nikon D850 and 500mm f/4 lens, he had the perfect opportunity to shoot some great images of the magnificent birds, and he did exactly that....

Availability of 3D printers has opened new possibilities for creating all sorts of gadgets for photography. So, New Zealand-based photographer Nicholas Sherlock took advantage of his 3D printer to make himself an LED softbox. He designed it, printed and assembled it himself. It features a 3D-printed diffuser, honeycomb light shaper, and even rails on the bottom for adding mounts and accessories. Nicholas is primarily a software developer, experimenting with photography in his spare time....

Using the term “potato” to describe what we feel are inadequate devices is commonplace. My wife refers to her computer as a potato, because it’s pretty old and getting kinda slow. Many consider some of the original DSLRs of a little over a decade ago to be potatoes by today’s standards. For Australian photographer Colin Lowe, it’s not just a metaphor. Colin actually built a pinhole camera out of a potato....

Wildfires are still raging across the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. The skies look surreal, making San Francisco look like Blade Runner. To show what it’s like to fly in the flaming red skies, San Francisco International Airport shared a timelapse video of an airplane taking off from one of its runways. And it looks like it wasn’t taken on this planet. PetaPixel notes that the timelapse was captured on Alaska Airlines flight #3458 while it was taking off last Wednesday and flying to Palm Springs....

My team and I were given the task to shoot the crew of a nightclub for their “summer” theme, where they open up a huge balcony for partying. While the nightclub organized everything neatly, unforeseen circumstances “killed” the set we were going to use. We took it upon ourselves to still give them a great set to match their summer theme, while still not completely breaking their budget. Building a set on a low budget To create a summer feel, we decided to go with Pink, so we gathered the materials needed to create a solid pink backdrop....

You know those videos you watch and think: “No way is this real, it must be some kind of magic?” A short movie Box by Bot & Dolly will make you feel this way. It’s an awe-inspiring video created with robot-powered projection mapping on moving objects. It transforms two moving flat panels into all kinds of optical illusions, bending, flying and teleporting across the stage. And as for the interaction of the actor and the illusions – there’s no CGI, but everything was captured in-camera....

I remember thinking during the confinement of 2020 that all the endless Zoom meetings would have been a lot more entertaining if we’d had holographic video technology like they have in the Star Wars movies. Well, now a company in Silicon Valley seems to have developed something just like that, which will give your photographs and videos a 3D holographic depth effect, almost indistinguishable from real life. The tech start-up called Light Field Lab calls the display ‘Solid Light’ and will render photographs and videos in 3D....

I’ve mentioned it before – I’ve always been enchanted with stop motion movies. If you also enjoy them, you’re gonna love “Golden Oldies” – a short stop motion film by Frame Order. First of all, they use real people for pixilation. Combined with dolls, lots of patience and an interesting story, they’ve created a video that will impress you, but also make you smile. “Golden Oldies” features two guys trying to get the prettiest girl on the dance floor....

Seeing the Moon up close through my crappy telescope was one of the moments that left a huge impression on me. And I’m sure that seeing it through a super-sharp super-telephoto lens would have been even more impressive. Well, Markus Stark did it and he created a stunning video of the moon using a Leica 400mm f/2.8 lens. He wonders if it could be the world’s sharpest super-telephoto lens, so let’s see – is it?...

Launched for iOS around five weeks ago, Prisma seems to have taken the world by storm. At least, it has if the images scrolling through my Facebook feed have been anything to go by. According to their website “Prisma transforms your photos into artworks using the styles of famous artists”. District 7 Media have taken it to the extreme by re-shooting timelapse of China using the Prisma app. Using the styles of famous artists like Van Gogh, Picasso and others, Prisma uses “a unique combination of neural networks and artificial intelligence” in order to help you “turn memorable moments into timeless art”....

Gavin Heffernan and Harun Mehmedinović of Skyglow Project are known for their captivating timelapse projects. In their latest video named SKYGLOW: NYC, they have tried something new. In honor of the Dark Sky Week, they created a timelapse that imagines what New York City would look like with starry skies, without light pollution. Gavin and Harun call SKYGLOW: NYC an “experimental timelapse.” They have combined the video of heavily light-polluted New York City with the night skies of Grand Canyon and Death Valley....