News entries for February, 2016

 

 

If you're a fan of photography, chances are that you pay close attention to the photos when you crack open a newspaper or pull up your favorite mainstream news website. So do we, but we also like to pay attention to a variety of press photography contests around the world for iconic shots we might have missed at...

 

 

Last week, we told you about an iconic shipwreck in California that was gutted by a fire which, it's believed, was started by an irresponsible photographer. Today, news reaches us from Japan of the equally heartbreaking loss of another local landmark, after photographers wouldn't stop trespassing on a farmer's land...

Following up on the well-received and impressive low light Sony A7S, the Sony A7S II brings with it numerous improvements help make the A7S II an even better camera overall. To start, the A7S II's body has received the same redesign and improvements that debuted on the A7 II and A7R II, including repositioned buttons, a revised handgrip, and a...

 

 

Quick: What do you get when you marry a premium 1-inch sensored pocket camera with a premium 1-inch sensored long-zooming bridge camera? The Panasonic ZS100, of course! Almost as svelte in size as the popular Sony RX100 line of pocket cameras, the ZS100 can zoom 3.5 times farther than the latest RX100 IV. That's a...

 

 

We've mentioned Japanese tech blog Egami more than a few times over the years on our news page, and today we note that they've uncovered yet another interesting Canon patent application. This time, it's continuous autofocus using contrast detection which the company seeks to improve with an interesting sensor...

Fstoppers' co-founder Lee Morris compiled a list of five fantastic timelapse videos -- a selection that's sure to inspire and amaze. Three of the timelapse videos focus on beautiful outdoor scenes whereas the other two are timelapses of bustling cities.

I've actually written about one of the videos on Lee's list, Vista by Leif Erik Smith, so...

 

 

Surreal intrigue can be found in the prize-winning images from our Photo of the Day contest in January, and they're all well worth taking a look. Reflecting the middle of winter in the northern hemisphere, the top three images from January are low on color and high on stark beauty, and we're honored to display them...

 

 

Wake up with IR! Here's today's dose of Caffeine Priority...

We've long since wrapped up our review of the excellent Panasonic LX100, the world's first fixed-lens camera with a Four Thirds sensor, and one that we named the "Best Compact Camera" in our round-up just a few years ago. Here in 2016 that title still...

In collaboration with Nikon SnapBridge, which will be included in many of Nikon's new cameras moving forward, Nikon has updated their Nikon Image Space photo sharing service.

The free service, originally launched in January of 2013, has received three new and improved modes. "View" mode provides users with "intuitive browsing of photos." The...

In 2014, while working on Franz Josef Land, the world's most northern archipelago, National Geographic photographer Cory Richards spent over a month trying to capture a great image of a polar bear. This was Cory's first experience working with polar bears in their natural habitat and he wanted to show the animal up close.

Getting up close...

Macphun has taken a fresh approach to selling their popular Aurora HDR Pro software for OS X. Instead of offering the software exclusively for a $99 USD one-time payment, Macphun has now given consumers the option to buy the software in three $33 USD monthly installments.

In order to make their software more affordable, they wanted to reduce...

Unsharp mask, smart sharpen, sharpening plug-in software…there are numerous ways to sharpen your image files. Portrait and glamour photographer Nino Batista created a Photoshop action for a high pass sharpening technique and created a tutorial covering how to use it. I've previously covered using an unsharp mask for sharpening, so Nino's...

The Panasonic FZ300 takes what made the FZ200 a good bridge camera back in 2012 and adds numerous performance upgrades and features.

During my Field Test for the FZ300, I found the 25-600mm f/2.8 equivalent lens to be one of the camera's strong points. The lens is unchanged from the FZ200, but then again, there wasn't a lot of room for...

Leica is apparently entering the smartphone market in some capacity, having recently announced that it is pairing up with the Chinese company Huawei. In 2015 Huawei sold over 100 million mobile phones, becoming the first Chinese company to achieve this milestone. This past fall, Huawei partnered up with Google to develop the Nexus 6P...

Sigma continues to announce new products during this week's CP+ show in Japan. In addition to a pair of new lenses and new mirrorless cameras earlier this week, Sigma has also announced a new EF-630 electronic flash.

The new, more powerful flash includes numerous reported performance improvements over the Sigma EF-610 flash, including rear...

While many instances of photographing in public are protected by First Amendment rights in the United States, a federal judge ruled last week that photographing or recording video of police officers is not always protected.

Federal District Court Judge Mark Kearney ruled in the cases Fields v. City of Philadelphia and Geraci v. City of...

Manfrotto produces a wide array of aluminum tripods. In the video below from the Science Channel television series How It's Made, you can see workers assembling one of their tripods.

After the tubes are anodized and cut to their correct lengths, some of them are laser engraved with Manfrotto's name and the tripod's model information. Next...

 

 

It's been a while since we had a camera deals round-up, but we've now gathered up a nice handful of discounts and rebates on a variety of cameras and lenses for you to browse through. For starters, we have a bunch of instant rebates on a wide variety of Fujifilm X-series cameras, including the X100T, X-T10 and X-T1...

B&H has uploaded an excellent video showcasing bird photography and tips and tricks from professional photographers Arthur Morris and Denise Ippolito. This is a must-watch video for any photographers out there who enjoy capturing images of birds.

The full talk is nearly 100 minutes long and available here, but B&H has conveniently also...