I’m a huge fan of old and weird lenses. They have unique qualities to them that can be difficult or impossible to achieve in post. So, when I see new a new video from Mathieu Stern, it always piques my interest. His latest video shows off a very strange lens. Designed for military and police night vision systems, this rare C Mount 75mm f/1.3 manual focus AstroScope lens produces some pretty wild results....

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a number of cameras over the years for its credit card-sized single-board computer, the Raspberry Pi (and it’s variants). The first iteration was a relatively mediocre 5-megapixels. The Pi Camera 2 brought this up to 8.1-megapixels. Now, the new Camera Module 3 bumps this up to a little more useful 11.9-megapixels. It’s also the first Raspberry Pi camera with phase detect autofocus. Sure, it’s not the 60+ megapixels of high-end mirrorless cameras, but this is a Raspberry Pi we’re talking about....

Realistic Composites (basics) – €85.00 by Adrian Sommeling is a workshop that teaches you how to create lively, funny composits from start to finish. And when I say start, I mean from pre-planning a shoot so your photos are “composing ready”, until putting the last coloring touch on the final piece. As someone who is just starting out with compositing (not to be confused with composting) I totally loved it, here is why:...

Rumor has it that Canon is killing off its EOS M lineup, and this has been going around for a while. After all, the company already discontinued the EOS M6 Mark II without announcing the successor. As the latest addition to the rumor, it appears that Canon has now killed the EOS M200 as well, and now only the EOS M50 Mark II remains. To remind you, this whole thing started way back in 2020....

The Retouching Toolkit has become a very popular addon for retouching in Photoshop. It’s seen a number of iterations, and a massive update with version 3.0 just over 6 months ago. Now it’s received a 3.1 update with more big changes. The new version comes with reinvented dodge & burn as well as frequency separation techniques, selective saturation, and the Configurator – a tool which lets you create your own Photoshop panels....

Well, the specs appear to be as disappointing as the leak suggested but the Ricoh Theta SC2 has now been officially announced. It’s a 4K entry-level 360° camera with 14GB of internal memory and no microSD card slot. But, the price actually seems to reflect the specs, coming in at only $299. The shipping date is a little sooner than previously rumoured, with units expected to go out on December 2nd instead of Friday the 13th....

A rock climber in Japan managed to film the moment that a bear attacked him as he was descending after a climb. The incident happened on Mount Futago near Chichibu City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. The climber was wearing a GoPro Hero 10 attached to his helmet and captured the whole ordeal in first person close up. All seems well at the beginning of the video as we watch the climber carefully descend from his climb, his breathing steady....

With as much as Samsung gives Apple a hard time in its promotional material, Apple fans will probably get a chuckle over this one. Samsung has, apparently, been using stock images from Getty to show off the capabilities of the Samsung Galaxy A8 front camera. Samsung Brazil has been found to have downloaded and used at least two stock images to show off the Galaxy A8’s capabilities. Uncovered by Twitter user “feliperas“, screenshots showing the Samsung tweets alongside the Getty listing for the image were posted....

Samsung has announced its newest portable SSD, the Samsung T7 Touch. Building on the popularity of the Samsung T5, the new T7 Touch is designed to operate with the fastest speeds possible on the USB 3.2 Gen 2 spec. It doubles the speed of the T5, coming in at around 1GB/sec. The Samsung T7 also comes with security in mind, adding a Touch ID fingerprint scanner on top of password protection and AES 256-bit hardware encryption....

Well, this is a surprise. It seems that the second-hand market is following suit with new purchases. According to used gear retailer KEH, who reported on their blog, mirrorless sales have overtaken DSLRs in the used market for December 2020. This is the first time that this has happened in the company’s history and they say the trend looks to continue for 2021. KEH notes that DSLRs has been a huge part of their business and that they ruled their top 10 best selling cameras from 2010 to 2019....

Unless we choose blur for creative artistic expression, most of us want our photos to be as sharp as possible. However, it may sometimes be difficult or even impossible to achieve, which is especially the case if you’re brand new to this wonderful hobby of photography. But Julia Trotti has you covered. In her latest video, she shares six reasons for blurry photos and how to fix them. And since I have my own experience to share, I’ll add one more at the end....

I just love low-budget ideas that still get you great results. Partly because my gear budget is low, and partly because I simply enjoy experimenting. If you’re anything like me, you’ll love this video from Justin Jones and Ted Sim of Indy Mogul. They share seven tips for shooting a commercial like a boss, even if money’s tight. In the video, the guys shoot a commercial or $18 headphones with a Canon 6D MkII....

Documentary portraits are becoming more popular than ever. While once more the domain of magazine features, they’ve become a lot more widespread over the last few years and can offer insight into a who a person is, rather than just what they look like. In this video, photographer Joris Hermans talks us through his seven top tips for shooting documentary-style natural light portraits. 1. Talk to your subject Talking to your subject can bring out a whole host of expressions and emotions that you wouldn’t otherwise see on your subject’s face....

Shooting wetplate is a bit of a feat all by itself. Sure, it’s getting a little more common than it was a decade or two ago, but it’s still not all that easy, especially if you want to do it well. Photographer Markus Hofstätter is no stranger to large format wet plate photography, but he’s had a burning desire to shoot it handheld. Obviously, the giant plate camera he uses in his studio is a little large for this type of thing, so he went on the hunt for something a little more manageable....

One of the first things we learned about composition is that our photos need to have a dominant subject. Photographer Ben Horne explores the topic I find very interesting – should we step away from the “rule” and create photos that are quite the opposite, without dominant subjects? I like to think that rules should be broken sometimes, and I find this video interesting because Ben tells us what we can achieve by breaking this rule....

Pricing and release information for Sigma’s upcoming 105mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art series lens has finally been announced. We figured it was pretty much a certainty that it would be less expensive than the Nikon 105mm f/1.4E, but I didn’t expect this big of a difference. Coming in at a mere $1,599 ($600 cheaper than the Nikon), the lenses will be shipping in June. When Nikon announced their new 105mm f/1....

Sirui has announced a new 75mm T2.9 full-frame 1.6x anamorphic lens for RF, L E and Z mounts. Naturally, they’re launching the lens via Indiegogo – because that’s what Sirui always does – where it’ll be available for an early bird price of $1,199 (20% off the full retail price). It adds to the Sirui 50mm T2.9 1.6x anamorphic lens announced last October, doubling the number of lenses in their full-frame anamorphic lineup....

If you hate the way you look in selfies, here’s some good news for you. Firstly you are not alone. Big noses, squashed ears and weak chins make selfies looks less attractive (maybe this is why duck face is so common). Secondly, this may change as researchers at Princeton University developed an algorithm to convert selfies into long lens portraits (and vice versa). Their method uses an automated mesh places on a photo, which calculates the face warp (and then adjusts it)....

Sony’s live event has just come to a close and the earlier rumours were true. The Sony A7R IV is here. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any sign of an A7S III, but still. The A7R IV comes with a 61-megapixel sensor, 15 stops of dynamic range, 4K UHD video with 5-axis in-body image stabilisation (IBIS), with what Sony claims is “medium format level” image quality. The Sony A7R IV boasts compatibility with 52 native Sony E Mount lenses, and many of the specs and features we’d expect from Sony given what we’ve seen in the A7R III and A7 III....

Syrp has just announced the new Magic Carpet Pro slider. Designed to handle some seriously heavy duty filmmaking the Magic Carpet Pro offers some very cool and interesting features. For a start, the flywheel is located in the carriage itself, removing the need for belts and pulleys for manual control. But this also allows for another perk. Combined with new “Track Joiners”, you are able to create a slider of just about any length you wish by simply adding more lengths of track....