Fstoppers
25 stories

FstoppersReviewsThe Two Questions Every Client Is Really Asking About Your Work Clients ask about your style constantly, and most of the time they're actually asking two separate questions without realizing it.

FstoppersReviewsSkip the Sky: Shooting Details When the Vista Fails When the sky gives you nothing, the smart move is to stop shooting it. That single decision turned an overcast, drizzly afternoon at the beach into a productive session built entirely around red…

FstoppersReviewsI Tested Every Aperture on the iPhone 18 Pro Since Apple's keynote I have made two videos about the iPhone 18 Pro's new variable aperture lens, and in both of them I made predictions about how it would actually perform.

FstoppersReviewsThe Famous World War I Armistice Recording Is Actually a Photograph Made on 35mm Stock At 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, an American crew near the Moselle River was pulling a strip of light-sensitive material past a beam of light while a tuning fork laid a hundred timing marks a second…

FstoppersReviewsIs the Panasonic LUMIX L10 the Perfect Travel Companion? A couple of months back, Panasonic kindly allowed me to take the new Panasonic LUMIX L10 to the Italian Dolomites, with the rather simple brief of finding out what it was like as a travel companion.

FstoppersReviewsWhy Your Sunset Photos Look Empty and How to Fix Them Empty sunsets, gray black-and-white frames, and lavender fields that turn red under the wrong white balance all trace back to a short list of repeatable errors.

FstoppersReviewsIs This $400 Fujifilm Kit Lens Worth It? The Fujifilm XC 13-33mm f/3.5-6.3 OIS carries a $400 retail price and a reputation as a forgiving first lens for people stepping up from a phone.

FstoppersReviewsSony's $3,699 Path to 600mm Without the $14,000 Price Tag Sony now offers a 600mm super telephoto that weighs under a kilogram and costs $3,699, roughly $10,000 less than the f/4 version most shooters assumed they'd never afford.

FstoppersReviewsWhy This L-Mount 50mm Is the One Most People Should Buy Panasonic sells two 50mm lenses for L-mount, and one costs five times the other for just two-thirds of a stop more light.

FstoppersReviewsCanon Has Grown Crystals in a Furnace Since 1967 to Fix a Color Error Ordinary Glass Cannot Correct In March 1967, Canon researchers pulled the company's first synthetic fluorite crystals out of an electric furnace.

FstoppersReviewsHow Do You Become a Commercial Photographer? (Sort of) Sometimes it feels like the photography industry is one magnificent, well-oiled grift. It will happily sell you a two-thousand-dollar lens, the romantic illusion of being an artist, and the sweet…

FstoppersReviewsFive Ways a Single V-Flat Can Fix Your On-Location Lighting A single black-and-white board can do the work of a reflector, a flag, a backdrop, and a negative fill panel, all in the same shoot.

FstoppersReviewsWhy This f/2.8 Travel Zoom Starts at 20mm Instead of 24mm Most full frame zooms start at 24mm, but this one opens at 20mm and weighs less than a pound. That extra width changes what a single travel lens can cover, and it forces a real decision about reach.…

FstoppersReviewsFive Experimental Film Tricks Tested on a Zero-Dollar Budget Experimental film photography rarely gets a fair shake because most of the ideas floating around live in old technical manuals or die in a single frustrated attempt.

FstoppersReviewsThis Incredible 'Lunch Atop a Skyscraper' Bobblehead Puts All 11 Ironworkers on a Beam, Limited to 1,932 Pieces The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum has unveiled the first bobblehead version of "Lunch atop a Skyscraper," the 1932 photograph of 11 ironworkers eating lunch on a girder 850 feet over…

FstoppersReviewsWhy Your First Tripod Spot Is Almost Never the Right One Most photography tutorials show you the winning shot and skip everything that came before it. This one does the opposite, walking through six attempts at a single long exposure until the composition…

FstoppersReviewsApple TV Will Shoot Friday's Giants-Dodgers Game With 14 iPhone 18 Pros Hidden Around Dodger Stadium Apple TV will shoot part of Friday's Giants at Dodgers game, the last "Friday Night Baseball" broadcast of the season, with 14 iPhone 18 Pro units built into Dodger Stadium, including inside the…

FstoppersReviewsSeven Controls on Your Mirrorless Camera Still Shaped by Cameras That Loaded Film The 1/125 on your shutter dial is a rounding error that stuck. The scale it sits on halves at every step, which puts that rung at 1/128, and 1/128 is an ugly number to stamp into metal.

FstoppersReviewsThe iPhone Aperture Controversy Four days ago I put out a very nerdy video about the variable aperture lens in the new iPhone 18 Pro, and it has since become the most watched thing I have made all year. I did not see that coming.

FstoppersReviewsThe Sharpest Lens You Probably Shouldn't Buy for Landscapes Five years of hesitation, one impulse purchase, and the result confirmed every doubt. The Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 delivers some of the sharpest image quality you can put on a Sony body, and that…

FstoppersReviewsWhy Apple Put an Aperture in the iPhone 18 Pro Apple announced the iPhone 18 Pro, and the headline camera feature this year is a physical variable aperture on the main camera.

FstoppersReviewsI Watched Apple's Entire Keynote So You Don't Have To Apple just had a gigantic keynote. New iPhones, new AirPods, new Apple Watches, and the one everybody was waiting on, a folding iPhone.

FstoppersReviewsiVanky FusionDock Ultra Review, The Most Expensive And Powerful Dock On The Market Laptops have finally gotten fast enough to be true desktop replacements. The one problem is that no laptop can connect to everything on your desk.

FstoppersReviewsThe Tiny Ultra-Wide Lens That Punches Above Its Size An ultra wide full frame prime that weighs just 142 g and stays sharp wide open is a rare find, and the Lumix 20mm f/2.5 pulls it off.
Nothing matches this filter yet.