Digital Photo Mentor

10 stories

Digital Photo MentorSoftwareGifts for photographers under $25, $50 and $100 Shopping for a photographer's birthday, Father's Day, Mother's Day, graduation or the holidays? Here are 25 gifts under $25, $50 and $100, each with my notes, plus photo gifts you can make.

10.23

Digital Photo MentorSoftwareImporting your Lightroom catalog into Luminar, what transfers and what doesn’t I tested Luminar's new Lightroom catalog import on a 55-image test catalog and a bigger one. Flags, ratings, virtual copies and most edits came across.

10.18

Digital Photo MentorSoftwareCan Luminar Web replace Luminar Desktop? My first look at the beta My phone edits from Vietnam were already waiting in my browser. Here's my verdict on Luminar Web after a beta test, how it handles raw files and GenErase, and which desktop tools it still lacks.

10.15

Digital Photo MentorSoftwareWhat is Quality of Light in Photography and How to Use it to Take Better Photos Why do some photos feel alive and others fall flat? It comes down to one variable most photographers misread: the apparent size of your light source. See it, and you'll shoot better in any light.

06.06

Digital Photo MentorSoftwareHow to fix masking halos in Luminar with Feather and Shift Edge Fix the halo. Blend the edge. Get the result you wanted. Luminar Neo's new Feather and Shift Edge sliders let you refine any mask after you've made it. No repainting. No starting over.

04.12

Digital Photo MentorSoftwareTaking Candid Photos at Home – 6 Tips for Capturing Memories Your home holds stories worth capturing. Learn how to photograph the moments that matter most, from everyday rituals to family milestones, using simple techniques Darlene shares from 16 years of…

02.15

Digital Photo MentorSoftwareTop 9 Settings to Reset on your Camera After Every Use Nine settings you want to check on your camera before you put it away, to prevent disappointment next time you do any photography.

2025.11.26

Digital Photo MentorSoftwareCan Mindfulness Make Your Photos Better? In this article, you’ll learn how you can apply mindfulness to your photography to help you take better photos.

2025.11.24

Digital Photo MentorSoftwareHow to Buy a Camera Tripod: Stress-Free Guide Stress free tips to to help you when choosing a tripod to purchase. Different features explained. Things to look for, and what pitfalls to avoid.

2025.11.22

Digital Photo MentorSoftware5 Tips for Using Shadows to Create Dramatic Images Many beginner photographers are afraid of having too many, or any, shadows in their images. While that can hold true, using shadows is also just as important, because a lack of them will leave you…

2025.11.07

The small bracket on top of every camera, from a phone rig to an ARRI.

The hot shoe is where the flash goes, and the microphone, and the monitor, and whatever the next decade bolts on. Every camera has one and nobody photographs it. This magazine is named after it because that is where the whole business meets: the body, the glass, the light, the sound, and the person holding it.

I shot news in Gothenburg for nine years and documentary for hire after that, then stopped taking assignments to write about the tools. Since 2021 I live in Tokyo, ten minutes from the used-camera shops of Shinjuku, which is not an accident: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Ricoh and Sigma make almost everything worth pointing at a subject, and their own press writes about it first, in Japanese. So this magazine reads it there, and in German, French, Italian and Spanish, and in English from the reviewers who actually put a card in the slot — around eighty sources and thirty channels, counted and plotted so you can see what is moving.

Bodies and lenses, cinema cameras and drones, film and the darkroom, firmware and the software that finishes the picture, the rumours before the launch and the reviews after it, and the photographers and shows the rest of it is for. I test what I write about on a job before a word goes down. I shoot film on Sundays and do not think that makes me interesting.

A story here is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the link to whoever reported it. We never reprint the article, and the picture belongs to the photographer or the maker. A story written in Japanese appears in Japanese, as its author set it down; the link goes to the original.

— Mara Lindqvist, Tokyo