photography

Pocket Spotlight, for better photography lighting

Smartphones can take great photos, but we all know the on-board flash can produce harsh and ugly shadows.

Well, the Pocket Spotlight is an accessory that not only provides a softer and more flattering quality of light, but also lets you adjust how the light falls on your subjects before image capture.

The Pocket Spotlight consists of a bank of LEDs that's capable of generating a continuous stream of light for up to one hour on a fully charged battery. … Read more

Full-size photos arrive for real on Google+

Google now lets Google+ users override a setting that limited photos they uploaded to a maximum width or height of 2,048 pixels, a move that photo enthusiasts will welcome but that will mean people will have to keep a closer eye on how much data they have stored at Google.

Previously, Google+ photos were limited unless they were uploaded automatically from an Android device using Google's software, or unless people embarked on a somewhat complicated workaround using Google's Picasa photo editing and cataloging software. Now, by changing Google+ settings, people can upload full-resolution photos through the usual … Read more

Lightroom 4.4 brings Nikon D7100 support, Fujifilm fixes

Adobe Systems has released Lightroom 4.4 with support for two mainstream SLRs, Nikon's new D7100 and Canon's Rebel SL1, and with better image quality for a Fujifilm cameras with unusual sensors.

Lightroom is designed for editing and cataloging photos, especially those shot in cameras' proprietary raw image formats that offer higher quality but impose an image-processing burden on photographers. Adobe periodically updates the software to support new cameras -- and in the case of version 4.4 to fix problems with existing cameras such as the Fujifilm models.

Fujifilm's X-Trans and EXR sensors each vary from … Read more

How to shoot a 360-degree time-lapse video with your phone

Editors' note: This guest post is part of a five-part series on Photojojo's best photography tips. Check out the rest of Photojojo's tips here.

Time-lapse videos aren't just for pros. With the right accessories and apps, you can shoot, edit, and publish a 360-degree time lapse with just your phone. Let Photojojo guide you through the setup.

What you need:

Tripod Your phone Rotating tripod attachment (like the Camalapse) Smartphone tripod mount (like the Glif, or your own DIY solution)

1. Pick your subject Maybe you've thought about what you'd shoot if you made a … Read more

DIY: Hack a rotating time-lapse tripod

There's something about time-lapse videos that grabs your attention a little more than your average YouTube video. Especially popular on Vimeo, these videos often capture scenes like a starry night, a cityscape, or snow piling up over the course of a particularly rough storm.

Sometimes, the camera stays in one spot, monitoring a scene from just one angle. But the most beautiful time lapses involve movement -- the camera pans across the scene over the course of an hour (or longer) to capture change over time on a 360-degree angle.

It sounds complicated. Like, too much work. But, the … Read more

See a pro photog's beautiful Instagram view of baseball

San Francisco Bay Area photographer Brad Mangin -- a veteran shooter of baseball games and other sporting events for Sports Illustrated -- uses a high-powered dSLR for most of his work, but turned to an iPhone and Instagram to capture a more personal view of the 2012 Major League Baseball season. His upcoming book, "Instant Baseball: The Baseball Instagrams of Brad Mangin," features many sights only a pro photographer would have the chance to observe. The book comes out in late April. … Read more

How to get started with freelensing

Freelensing is a technique where you remove the lens from the front of your SLR or interchangeable lens camera, and hold it in position rather than locking it in place in the lens mount.

Tilting the lens back and forth gives you an effect that looks somewhat similar to that of a tilt-shift lens or a selective focus lens like a Lensbaby. Expect light leaks and lots of bokeh, or blur, thanks to the shift in the plane of focus.

A word of warning, freelensing is not for the faint-hearted, as you could drop your lens or get dust and … Read more

Stocksy aims to bring the soul back into stock photography

Bruce Livingstone, founder of the iStockphoto site that grew from a small stock-art community to a multimedia juggernaut, is launching a competitor called Stocksy United today that he hopes will bring the business back to its roots.

Stocksy is a startup, but it won't attract venture capital, won't be acquired by a larger rival, and doesn't have an exit strategy. Instead, it's a cooperative run by its own photographers who get paid a relatively high percentage of the royalties generated by each image sale: 50 percent. On top of that, photographers split the profits left over … Read more

Sorry, DNG iPhone app won't let you shoot true raw photos

Photo enthusiasts already pleased with the iPhone's generally superior camera can be forgiven for getting excited about the possibility of shooting photos in the higher-end raw file format.

Cypress Innovations on Wednesday released a new app called Digital Negative that might raise that very hope by offering a way to take photos that are stored in Adobe Systems' DNG format for raw photos. Alas, although the app does store uncompressed image data, it doesn't actually store the raw data taken straight from the sensor.

The Digital Negative app collects the uncompressed red, green, and blue color information for … Read more