By JAAP VLEESKRUIJER A smaller camera is less luggage, but will it take lesser photographs? On the road with the Leica CL and Panasonic GX8. Originally I intended this article to be a somewhat technical one, with specifications, IQ comparisons, etc., but when I started processing and printing my images I started to realize that […]
By BRENDAN HUFFORD, PhotoMBA I remember once seeing a tweet from one of my favorite authors, Austin Kleon, where he said something to the effect of: We’re all struggling. Our Instagrams are lies. I’ve taught more than 800 photographers about how to improve their business. Every time I get to sit down and talk to […]
By MAX TERRY As photographers, we’re often looking for ways to compose our image so that our main subject is highlighted. We want to be able to direct the viewer’s eyes, to draw them in to our subject and let them rest there a moment. And while there are a number of different techniques you […]
By SAM FISCHER More and more smartphones today are coming out with cameras that are incredibly functional. A dedicated camera still will outdo smartphone cameras in most aspects. But even a consummate photographer like myself isn’t ashamed to take a quick smartphone photo anymore. Camera features to look for when selecting a phone: Camera resolution […]
By D. SCOTT CARRUTHERS Photography is among areas that have kept advancing for years with new ways of pursing the art emerging each day. These changes have been seen to bring to life different trends, which have defined the direction photography takes within a specified period of time. There have been interesting changes introduced to […]
By RALF L. Lighting plays a big factor in portrait photography. You need to think about how to compose flattering portraits for your subjects, including angle of view, face view, lighting ratio, and lighting pattern. Here are three top portrait lighting patterns that you can try out: Loop Lighting Put the light source slightly higher […]
By NIGEL FOGG A Portrait by Marsha Burns Can I begin by crying? She is so frail, so strong, so shocking, so beautiful, so young, so damaged, so afraid, so courageous, so angry, so old, so wise, so determined, so veiled, so strident, so hurtful, so full of life… More than we seem able to […]
By NIGEL FOGG Optics have been mystifying all of us since the 15th century. In an illuminating book called Secret Knowledge (there’s also a BBC series), David Hockney investigates a hunch that, down the centuries, the abilities of hundreds of artists in the small matter of draftsmanship has something very strange about it. With a […]
By MARC ANDRE One of the most critical decisions when composing and taking a photograph involves the selection of a focal point that will capture the attention of viewers. Going along with that, selecting the depth of field will have an impact on how the focal point is portrayed in the photo (for example, creating […]
By THORSTEN OVERGAARD Thorsten Overgaard is widely known as the Leica historian and for his website that offers free advice on photography. In this article exclusively written for THEME, Thorsten takes on automatic photography and how to take back control of your own photography. If you feel there is so much you need to still […]
By OLIVIER DUONG It’s a good day to be a camera maker. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, there’s Hasselblad who’s blowing full-frame out of the water, and Fujifilm is pulling out an X-T2. Cameras are supposed to be a companion to the photographer, or at the very least a tool, but, while I […]
By NEAL RANTOUL I’m old. Believe me, I know it. I’ll be 70 in a few months. That fact may make it hard for you to take me seriously, but bear with me for just this post. With age comes wisdom, right? What I want to write here is that I think the field of […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN Pixel peepers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your mind! Quite literally. All those infected by the bokeh bug ought to know that the verb form of this Japanese term, bokeh suru, means that you are losing it. The bokeh mania will be with us for some […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN Sony has inched closer to making it possible for us to realize even modest large format photographic quality from a camera body we can hold in the palm of our hand. Medium format quality is already within reach of its new 42MP sensor, and Hasselblad will have to come up with […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN Ever since Sony offered us a way to get traditional medium format quality photographs with the small and lightweight α7R, sharpness aficionados like me have been been made aware that most of our film era lenses are not quite a match for those wonderful small tools. What was still good and […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN If sharpness and general image quality are your goal, as it is with me, you avoid zooms and pick the prime lens that you think is right for your subject. But that habit, as we all know, means much fumbling in the camera bag and with switching rear caps while worrying […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN There is no question that the Zeiss 55mm F1.4 Otus Distagon T* represents a significant optical achievement. But more than once, as I placed it on my tripod mounted Sony A7R — feeling like a ceramics collector who with one slip loses a $4,000 investment — I wondered what kind of […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN You must have noticed that as popular cameras became smaller, to almost everyone’s delight, the lenses became bigger. Greater portability of one is offset by more weight of the other; unnecessarily heavy normal focal length lenses, some of them pretty monstrous. Could this involve some heretofore unknown law of nature, deserving […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN Quite a few times I have regretted not to have had a different camera with me as I viewed results from a photographic excursion. In the past year and a half this was mostly the case when I had the Fujifilm X-Pro1 or X-E1 with their marvellous lenses and image quality […]
By KAREL VAN WOLFEREN Unlike what happened in some other Asian cities, Japanese photographers did not rush out en masse to get hold of that full-format camera (digital’s new medium format) miraculously squeezed into a palm-sized mirrorless body when it went on sale in Tokyo on November 15. There was no one else besides me […]
