You might know the Pixelstick. “nothing compares” is one of their statements. And this is true. At least price-wise. The Original Pixelstick retails for EURO 399,– here in Germany. I have always wanted one to at least try out some lightpainting with it. The Pixelstick is a 188cm RGB lightstrip on a stick that plays bitmap files. It weighs 1,6kg, has a nice display to select files, has a remote release and runs on 8 AA batteries....

I have a confession to make. I often shoot in aperture priority mode. I’m a reasonably competent photographer with a solid grasp of the factors that drive exposure, but I don’t want to fiddle with multiple dials when I just want to take a photo. There are, of course, exceptions. I shoot manually when using strobes or stars, but those niches don’t represent the bulk of my photos. While doing some casual weekend reading about ISO invariance and signal-to-noise ratios, (SNR), I started to ponder whether understanding the science and technology behind photography made any difference to the end product....

Over the years we shared quite a few little planet videos. Most involved building an elaborate gopro rig which can hold six cameras. Kinda like this one. But, camera makers realized the potential in photographing at 360 degrees, they’ve started making dedicated 360 cameras. This means that instead of 3D printing (or worse, buying) a 360 rig, you can buy a small camera like the Theta S and only use one camera....

So you had a photo shoot on Saturday morning and it seems that your model partied hard the night before? She’s holding up well, but there are eye bags that give her away. This video tutorial from Mathieu Stern will show you how to remove the eye bags in under a minute. Instead of using the Healing Brush or Clone Stamp, it relies on modifying curves and masking. It preserves the texture of the skin and removes the dark areas under the eyes, and it takes a few steps in Photoshop....

If Murphy’s Law has taught us anything, it’s that when you forget something, that’s when you will need it most. If you need to protect your external hard drive and you have forgotten the protective case, Zach Ramelan has a solution for a quick fix. He’ll show you how to turn the hard drive’s packaging into an emergency protective case. Basically, what you need to do is just take the plastic packaging and cut off a piece so you can attach the hard drive’s cable....