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Whatever your spin is on the SpaceX launch of the Falcon Heavy and the stunt of Starman and the Roadster, it put on our radar topics such as space and space missions, rockets, interplanetary travel or technological advances. In my case, once footage of the car and Starman started to arrive and people wondered if it could be observed from Earth, there was just one thing in my mind: to find the answer to that question and if yes, to try take a picture – better yet, a video – of it....

Many users of flash feel quite comfortable with it in the studio. The studio makes things fairly straightforward. You expose to eliminate all the ambient light and then you add it back where you want it with your strobes or speedlights. But when many newer flash users struggle when they get out on location, where you can’t or don’t want to completely kill the ambient light, but need to add flash....

Creating big soft natural looking window light on set presents some real challenges. Whether it’s for stills or photography, it’s not always straightforward. Sometimes we get lucky with our environments and they actually have great big windows. But often that is not the case. It’s a desirable look, and one that’s worth learning how to achieve artificially. In this video, Jay P Morgan goes over the lighting setup for a shoot he did with Zuma Juice....

If you enjoy taking casual photo walks without carrying lots of gear, you may sometimes find it challenging to find good light for street portraits. In this video from Adorama, Pye Jirsa of SLR Lounge takes you for a walk and lets you find good light and compositions with him. He shares some useful tips for finding light anywhere, anytime, and they will help you raise your street portraits to a new level....

Landscape photography by moonlight can provide a different way of producing wonderful and mesmerizing photographs in both color and black and white. The mood conveyed in moonlight photography can be quite different than in other lighting circumstances. Photographing by moonlight has its own set of challenges. But with a few setting and technique adjustments to your normal shooting routine, it can produce outstanding results. Planning Timing The best time to shoot is the night of the full moon, but a couple of days either side of that date will also work....

There are so many ways to set up an overhead camera rig, but many of them involve building some sort of structure, lugging around heavy C-Stands or drilling holes into walls. When photographer Daniel Shiffer was looking at overhead rigs, none of these solutions worked for him. He needed something portable that he could just throw in the back of the car and set up or break down at a moment’s notice....

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a video from Matthew Vandeputte, but now he’s back with a good one for all you aspiring hyperlapse shooters that don’t have high-end cameras and lenses, gimbals, or other expensive and fancy gadgets. During a recent social media meet up in London, Matthew borrowed a friend’s Canon EOS 200D (Rebel SL2) with the 18-55mm kit lens to provide us with some tips to show us how we can shoot hyperlapse sequences with very inexpensive equipment....

Getting professional-looking product shots doesn’t need to require you to have a studio and tons of expensive gear. With some DIY magic and good will, you can get neat product photos without too much money. Photographer Brandon Adam shows you a setup for product shots using only a single light source, a few DIY modifiers, and some cardboard. For his shot, Brandon chose a bottle and a glass of bourbon and shot them on a wooden table and background....

We’we all used video calls more than ever over the past few months, and we may stick with virtual meetings and teaching for a while longer. There are ways to turn your DSLR or mirrorless into a webcam, but many of them require a capture card such as Cam Link. However, Kim Farrelly has an easier way. He turned his Fujifilm into a webcam without a capture card, and it works with other cameras, too....

Having previously used the humble balloon as a soft light diffuser for a camera’s popup flash, the Koldunov Brothers received a question if you could switch out the balloon for a condom to achieve similar results. While they quickly determined that a condom didn’t work quite as well as the balloon as a softbox, the pair also experimented to see what other photography tricks could be pulled off with their little latex friends....

Liquid lens technology isn’t a new idea, but it hasn’t really taken off. We’ve seen a few gimmicky implementations over the years, but we’ve yet to really see anything implemented in a consumer device on a large scale. It looks, that Huawei might be looking to change that, though, as a new patent has recently been approved detailing a liquid lens smartphone camera module. Gizmochina seems to think that it might debut on Huawei’s next series of P50 smartphones, but Samsung’s been working on similar technology since at least 2005 with a company that’s been exploring them for even longer, and it’s still not here....

“Politricks is the word ‘politics’ altered to convey the empty-campaign promises often experienced after politicians get elected.” About a year ago I had this thought of making a picture from this word. I needed a suitable location and model that looked like a politician and had no problem to come and act one. Finding the right location was quite challenging because many of the locations were actively used by political organizations and obviously the content of the image does not flatter this activity so I had to find a sufficiently neutral place for the photoshoot....

There’s nothing better than receiving an email with a $2500 paycheck attached to it out of the blue. That was my cut of a settlement that Pixsy was able to secure on my behalf from a single unauthorized use of one of my photos. If you’ve ever had one of your photos published without a license (and who hasn’t), I am going to try to explain why and how you can get paid (in cash not credit) for the unauthorized use of your creative work....

I found a WWII British Air Ministry Pentac 8 inch f2.9 lens in a second hand store about a year and a half ago. It was made under a military contract during the war and a number of British manufacturers filled this contract. The best of the lot were made by Dallmeyer, the original designer of this lens. This lens sample isn’t marked to indicate the manufacturer, and it doesn’t have a traceable serial number, so the maker remains a mystery....

Canon Portugal sent me a Canon EOS R with the Canon RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens for me to test. Unfortunately, it was only possible to keep it for a little over a week, but I still managed to make the first day of the MEO Mares Vivas Festival where I am the official photographer. This gave me the opportunity to test it during the day in good light for the assembly of the venue, but also at night in concert, which was what I was most interested in seeing....

Advertisements https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_Jw60-WWn0 Manny used to shoot both Nikon and Canon. He used Nikon D600 and Canon 5D Mark III. When he tried out the Sony mirrorless system, it grew on him and he switched slowly but surely. He uses Sony A7R II and A6500, and this is his review of the system. Pros 1.Electronic viewfinder For manny, this is one of the options he likes best. With a Sony’s EVF, You can preview the image exactly as it’s going to look like when you press the shutter....

Well, Sigma said they’d be announcing a new lens at this year’s PhotoPlus Expo, which is about to begin in New York. A couple of days ahead of the show, though, it looks like images of the surprise lens announcement have already been leaked. According to these images, that lens is the 16mm f/1.4 DC DN Contemporary. Given the DN lens abbreviation, it looks like this will be available for Micro Four Thirds and probably Sony....

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to night photography is incorporating good foreground elements, but learning a few simple tricks will instantly elevate your game. If you’ve ever snapped a shot of the Milky Way in a very dark area on a moonless night, you will find that the landscape elements will often be silhouetted against the night sky. This is because star light alone does not provide enough light for the camera sensor to detect, even at the sensitive, long exposures used to capture stars....

Instagram’s anti-spam system is programmed to recognize and prevent repeating activity that quickly grows on the platform. However, it looks like it has been working too zealously since some users have reported that they were unable to share posts with #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. Instead of sharing the post, they would get an “action blocked” message from Instagram. At the moment of writing this, #blacklivesmatter hashtag has over 1.3 million posts. However, some users shared a screenshot of the message they got when trying to share posts that contains it....

Is Panasonic finally going to give us phase detection autofocus (PDAF) in their full-frame and Micro Four Thirds Lumix mirrorless cameras? Well… Maybe. This is one that seems to have skipped by most of us but last month, Panasonic announced a new PTZ camera. Now, we do cover PTZ cameras occasionally, like the Insta360 Link and that crazy Sony Cinema PTZ camera we saw at IBC 2022 in September, but mostly they’re kinda boring....