Send your kid to summer camp with this awesome snapper! The Camp Snap Photo Camera was designed for parents to buy for their kids. When we reviewed it, we noted that it has a bit of a vintage look. Now, we’re giving one away to a lucky reader. When the Phoblographer’s Membership program was created, …
These deals are almost over! May is a wonderful month to get in on the latest Tamron deals because rebates like this don’t exist again until the holidays. Something that Tamron does better than others is really striving to make something very unique. For example, their 28-75mm f2.8 lens gives you more reach in the …
For years, many photographers in the community have requested Micro Four Thirds cameras that were more rangefinder-style and could cater to street photography. In fact, I could find tons of channels that asked for this on YouTube. More importantly, we’ve been asking for it for years. Finally, today, Leica is announcing the development of something that street photographers and others will possibly want: the Leica D-LUX 8. From what it seems, it’s a variant of Panasonic’s LX100 Mk II. The Mk II was a slight variant of the original LX100 that we reviewed in 2014. So does that mean that Leica is releasing a slight variant of a 10-year-old camera?
There are very few things better than shooting a camera at a slow shutter speed, having motion in the photo, and also having many of the details crystal clear. Most experienced photographers would think that you need a flash for that, but you really don’t. Like a Michelin Star meal, it starts with good ingredients and leans on good technique to create a masterpiece. Best of all, you don’t need the latest and greatest cameras to get these looks — though what Sony and Nikon do are great. But what helps are well-built and lightweight lenses like those from Tamron.
It’s really hard to not like the Nikon z8. It does everything so incredibly well and just keeps getting better with all the firmware that they pack into the camera. On top of that, the number of lenses available for it continue to grow at an outstanding rate. Not too long ago, the z8 got a new firmware update. And so we’re announcing that we’ve updated our review accordingly.
It didn’t occur to me to use the Panasonic S9 with M-mount lenses until a colleague reminded me of it. But they’re perhaps the most perfect pairing for this camera, especially if they’re smaller lenses. The S9 is a range-finder style camera that in many ways, reminds me of the older Leica MDa cameras that didn’t have viewfinders. Instead, you zone focused or you used a visioflex. But in this case, you use the LCD screen or you shoot without it. With M-mount lenses, you’re then going to zone focus instead of manually focusing them each and every time. Essentially you’re going to have a lot of fun.
This lens is a love letter to street photography: and always remember that sharpness is a bourgeois concept. The Panasonic 27mm f8 is a manual focus lens that’s small and designed to go everywhere with you. Is it hard to use? At times, yes. Can be deliver sharp photos? Yes. But overall, it’s a conversation with how good you as a photographer.
I like to describe love as a caterpillar that stumbles over itself past the cocoon stage to become the butterfly in your stomach. It isn’t perfect, and the Panasonic S9 isn’t perfect either. But it’s so gorgeous I had to use it just to know what its shutter sounded like. And for the first time, I’ve experienced an electronic shutter that whispers Persian poetry in my ear. Shooting with it is kind of like working like Daido Moriyama — and shooting blind. You might need an EVF but if you’ve done enough work on yourself as a photographer to be so in tune with the focal length that you’re using, then you realize that you won’t need it. The Panasonic S9 is a camera that’s targeted at being more entry-level, but it caters to a cadre of photographers who see but don’t look. These photographers can see something in front of them, connect their emotional side to their technical side, and take photographs. At the same time, it doesn’t want to come off as something just for the more regal shooters amongst us. It wants to be held by you too.
Everyone needs a starting point! We call them the photojournalism presets, and so we’ve based them off a bunch of different looks we’ve seen over the years. Lacking inspiration? We’ve got your back! Over the years, the Phoblographer’s staffers have tested various cameras and lenses as well as film emulsions. So we decided to make Lightroom presets that look like the classic film look that you’d see in magazines. In fact, we based it off of old-school photojournalism. That’s what we named them for; and we think they’re some of the best lightroom prests that you’ll get your hands on. This article gives you visual examples of all 20 presets in our Photojournalism Presets Pack, as applied to various portraits we’ve taken over the years. And if you want, you can purchase them right here at our store.
Lightroom truly seems to be having a bit of an identity crisis right now. For many years, photographers have used the Lightroom suite of products for mostly basic edits. With the past few updates, they proved to us that you more or less didn’t need Photoshop anymore unless you were retouching. Even then, retouching could be done via Lightroom. But now, it’s getting more generative AI features. The biggest update is called Generative Remove — and Lightroom is touting that you can eliminate anything from any photo non-destructively with a single click. Essentially, it means that you won’t need to clone or heal out specific things when it comes to shooting weddings or portraits.