Photography News

Normally I don't promote software based on their promo video alone but this video was so compelling I had to share it. The ReelSteady plugin for After Effects appears to be made of pure magic, taking cheap looking footage and making it look like Hollywood CGI.

Happy New iPhone Day! Today, that small startup in Cupertino known as "Apple" released their latest and greatest iPhones, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. But with all the hype and cool new features, we were mostly concerned with the camera and boy, did they deliver.

Camera manufacturers have been in a megapixel race for some time. Canon has its new 5DS and 5DS R bodies, Nikon has its D810 and even the D810A for astrophotography, and PhaseOne, Hasselblad, Pentax, and even Leica are competing for medium format, high-megapixel territory. While Canon's 120-megapixel APS-H sensor is actually not entirely new (it was announced some time ago), the announcement that Canon is actually working to get it into a DSLR body and not just using it for bragging rights (their 250 MP sensor now lifts that crown) is a huge development. Meanwhile, Canon is among the first to announce some serious commitment to 8K video.

At this point, you've probably heard that the Virtual Reality revolution is coming. Seemingly every week, big companies are making announcements about dipping their toes into the 360 video technology game. For example: Facebook purchased the class-leading virtual reality headset company Oculus, Samsung released their GearVR headsets that work with their smart phones, and Nokia announced their stereoscopic professional VR OZO camera.

Professional hard drive and storage solutions company G-Technology unveiled a series of new hard drives that expand compatibility and flexibility with their growing Evolution Series solutions. Denoted with an "ev" in their product names, the Evolution Series products enable professionals to take portable project drives on the go, dock them to professional and extremely fast workstations in the office, and then go mobile again -- all with the same drive(s). Among the new devices is a creation from a G-Technology and RED Digital Cinema partnership: the ev Series Reader RED MINI-MAG Edition.

DxO (yes, the company best known for creating a rating system for cameras) has just released what seems to be the world's most powerful compact camera. Available today you can now pick up this incredible device that includes a 20.2-megapixel 1-inch CMOS sensor, 32mm fixed lens, and an outstanding f/1.8 aperture for perfect low light conditions. I have to admit, in my first week testing out the camera this might be one of the best compact cameras I have ever used and here are my first impressions.

Keeping track of contracts and payments can be somewhat cumbersome. If you're like me, sometimes you want to write everything down and have an excel spreadsheet just to double check everything. Along with that there is a neatly organized folder on your hard drive, external, and hard copied in a cabinet somewhere. Agree wants to eliminate a majority of the hassle we experience in our day to day when talking to clients.

The Department of Energy (DOE) recently gave final approval of $168 million in funding for what would be the most powerful (and likely most expensive) camera to date, created for the new, primarily National Science Foundation-funded Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) that will live on the peak of Chile's Cerro Pachòn.

Musicbed, the music licensing website in which many filmmakers rely on for quality pieces to accompany their videos, has launched a new site with big goals in the film licensing sector. Filmsupply is not content with the way stock footage tends to always stick out, and wants to change that with a highly curated library from hand-picked contributors.

PayPal just launched a new peer-to-peer payment service called PayPal.me. It’s your own personal URL for people to send you money. You can grab your personal link right now.

These days, if you don't own a GoPro, you're pretty much a person that doesn't own a GoPro. But if you ARE a person that owns a GoPro, then get ready to enjoy some sweet new features that will make creating and sharing your content even easier.

VSCO Keys is no more. There is no glorious explanation, no plans for a big, better, more badass version.

Today, mass emails filled the inboxes of photographers everywhere letting us all know that the maker of some of the most popular photography mobile software and editing presets was calling it quits with the beloved Lightroom shortcut plugin.

A couple of weeks ago, Serif released its powerful photo editing software called Affinity Photo. This Adobe Photoshop competitor has since been downloaded by numbers of users and has already seen a couple of improvement through an update. Its price and its speed are probably two of the most notable advantages the software offers over Photoshop. While the reviews are slowly making their way to different websites, many photographers and retouchers seem to be wondering if the software is worth its price.

Yesterday morning, as I was getting ready to meet up with a future bride and groom about their upcoming wedding, my phone began to blow up with messages from friends. A friend of mine from highschool had been shot and killed while on air reporting for a local news station. I was fortunate to have known Alison Parker personally in high school through athletics. She was always a caring, fun, care free individual, and a loyal friend. Our thoughts and prayers, as a community, go out to the Parker family and the Ward family as they struggle through the chaos and lost feeling that is losing a dear friend.

We never thought this day would come, but Instagram now allows you to natively post portrait and landscape oriented photos and video. The days of cropping, white backgrounds, and 640x640 pixel photos and videos are over (unless you don't want them to be).

My favorite on the go retouching solution just got even more mobile with Astropad Mini. The creators of Astropad have managed to scale down their app for use with iPhone and even added functionality for the Apple Watch.

Canon's EOS M was a good first-try mirrorless, compact APS-C camera that fell a bit short. After withholding the EOS M2 for other markets, the M3 comes to the United States after two generations of much-needed improvements. Those features, however, just might launch the platform into best-in-class territory -- at least on paper.

Canon's rumored 35mm follow-up is finally here. Apart from the obvious general increase in quality with the standard aspheric and ultra-low dispersion elements, the new lens specifically promises to further reduce chromatic aberration (important for wide-aperture lenses) while being the "ideal complement to the latest generation of Canon's high-resolution DSLRs" (i.e. the 50-megapixel Canon 5DS and 5DS R cameras).

GRIN (Greatest Release Images by NASA) is a huge collection of historical space culture images digitally scanned for public access. Intended specifically for media, publishers, and the general public looking for high-quality photographs, the GRIN database is full of striking digital and analog exposures taken throughout a pivotal point in American History.

Erik Almas, one of the best commercial composite photographers, has recently teamed up with the team at PRO EDU to create a fully comprehensive tutorial on his complete shooting and retouching process. In this video Almas takes us through an hour-long tutorial, retouching and completing the backplate for one of his tutorial images. I'm always impressed when photographers and retouchers, especially those at the top of our industry, open the doors and reveal their entire process and Almas has done no less here.

If you’ve been on the fence about upgrading or picking up your first copy of Exposure, now would be a great opportunity. I just got word that the team over at Alien Skin is offering 40% off ALL of their products until August 26th, starting today!

The tripod is an essential piece of gear for many photographers, and as they become lighter and more portable they become less of an inconvenience to carry. Gitzo has just released a sleek-looking line of travel-friendly tripods that aim to be smartly compact while increasing stiffness and performance over previous versions.

Earlier in the week, we shared Michael Dyrlands, HAZMAT Surfing photo series. To recap, HAZMAT Surfing is a photo series that gives a futuristic look at what surfing could be like twenty to twenty-five years down the road and spreads awareness of our oceans contamination. Dyrland came up with the idea after he was unable to enter the water on a trip to LA because of ten billion gallons of run off that had polluted the ocean after an evening of heavy rain. Dyrland has now released a video version of HAZMAT Surfing, which continues to spread awareness of the contamination of our oceans.

We have all been there when trying to pick a new lens. 14mm or 18mm? How big of a difference does that 4mm of focal length make? What sort of differences in depth of field will I see when comparing this zoom lens at f4 to this prime lens at f2.8? Well Fuji has come to the rescue and has released an app to iTunes and Google Play that will let you test all of their lenses from your phone or tablet.

We currently own 4 Canon Photo printers and they are the best printers I've personally ever owned. They never clog and they simply work every single time. Right now you can get a brand new Canon Pro-100 photo printer for just $50 from B&H with a little trickery. Let me show you how.

Big news comes out of Instagram this week as they open their advertising API to the masses of potential clients around the world. The third-party partners are now plugging their information and creative campaigns into the API making this weekend the most ads I have seen in years. Though the quality of the imagery doesn't seem to stray too far away from what I am used to seeing its interesting to see where this goes for Instagram, I believe it could be the next big advertising company.

The day has finally come, a camera the will automatically edit video for you. The Graava has five different sensors: a camera, microphone, accelerometer, GPS, and a heart rate monitor. It will detect objects entering the frame, your change of speed, changes in sound frequencies, and will even monitor your heart rate to detect excitement. These sensors help the camera determine which moments are interesting and which moments are boring. That way it know which parts to keep and which parts to delete.

If you hadn't heard of it before, the Stand Out! Photographic Forums is a huge photography industry event (taking place in New York City, Toronto, and Los Angeles) loaded with affordable workshops taught by some of the biggest and most successful names in the industry. You can learn directly from legends like Mark Seliger, Pratik Naik, and Michael Muller. Phase One was even nice enough to ask me to come and teach classes on digital teching and shoot pre-production. You should read below to learn more about all of the classes and offerings.

New York City Photographer, Walter Chang, has returned home after a trip many photographers would be jealous of. He traveled around the world, to 60 different countries, for three years, creating his photography and film project, "We Call This Home."

Do you want your sensor to shift in-body to create a higher-resolution image? Want 4.5-stop image stabilization built into the body so we can benefit from its use with any lens? Want to be able to decide for every shot exactly what level of anti-aliasing you want in order to balance moiré and sharpness? It’s all possible with the new 24-megapixel, APS-C Pentax K-3 II. And, it'll likely be possible in their rumored full-frame camera. Pentax is great, but why aren’t we seeing the “bigger” brands pony up with groundbreaking features?

If you’d asked me this question last week, I would have said no. What a difference a few days makes. Ruslan Pelykh, a New York City-based videographer and photographer, is creating outstanding video with a Leica D Lux 6, a 10 megapixel, $600 point and shoot. This post is a kick up the butt for anyone hanging on for a piece of gear as being the reason they can’t create with what they have. Welcome to creating more, with less.

Last year, I reviewed the Profoto B1 Strobe, and named it the best strobe on the market today. Phottix is looking to take that crown with their newly released Indra500 TTL, a 500w/s studio strobe with an optional battery pack. What puts it ahead of the competition? How about TTL built in, as well as High Speed Sync.

B&H has launched what is easily the most comprehensive platform for understanding Canon glass that we have ever seen: the Canon Lens Experience. Backed by 15 powerhouse photographers including Gregory Heisler, Jeremy Cowart, Jim Wark and Randy Kerr, the new platform lets you get a very in-depth look at lenses, what they do and what images taken with them look like.

A few days ago Frank Doorhof posted a great interview with headshot photographer extraordinaire, Peter Hurley. In the video Frank asks Peter what his thought process is while coaching the people that he's shooting and what photographers should do if they're wanting to get into headshot photography. Peter gives some great insight and advice on headshots and on how to to approach the people you're shooting to capture the perfect expression.