Up until a few years ago, I never used a crop mode outside of creating thumbnails. Honestly I thought they were kinda stupid because I could always just crop into the image later, why would I waste time doing it on my camera? Well, as it turns out with many things in life, I realized it was me who was stupid.

Now of course there’s nothing wrong with snapping full sized images and just cropping later but as time has gone on it’s become very apparent that the hardest part about photography is simply “seeing”. It’s not about the light, the shutter speed, the settings, or even the focal length. It’s just finding the hidden pieces too a complicated puzzle. Using a crop helps by being able to cut out a bit of the noise or simply piece together as much of the image right into the camera as I can. It helps to build something you otherwise might not even know was there.

There has never been a more affordable time to get into photography than now, contrary to the rising prices of nearly everything else in the world. The key is to find a gently used or well loved DSLR that grows more and more affordable as people migrate to mirrorless systems.

While there have been small improvements to image sensors over the past decade, image quality hasn’t progressed in the same way that auto focus or image stabilization has. Thus cameras pushing 15+ years old still produce fantastic quality images while lacking modern creature comforts.

So, I bought a Sony FE 24-50mm f2.8 for my Nikon Zf and if you’re like me, you probably have quite a few questions. Why this lens instead of a Nikon lens? How does this work and does it actually work reliably? There must be drawbacks right, you can’t just use another brands lens on a camera… Can you? 

I had all of these questions myself and couldn’t really find great answers online, thus I’ve spent the last 4 months living with this setup to test the auto focus, functionality, and discover all the quirks and features of mashing two brand’s together into what I think is an ultimate setup. The results? Well they were better than I expected and the best part was discovering what this means for the future of Nikon’s Z Mount.

If you’re like me, you’ve never been really happy with the images that come right out of the iPhone, specifically for anything photography related. Snapshot images or memories? It handles those swimmingly - they just have that “phone” look, typically associated with overly sharp images where dark and bright areas look too crushed.

I figured there had to be a better solution out there, thus a few months ago I spent a lot of time trialing different apps on the iPhone to see if something existed that allowed me to shoot pleasing images without any editing required. From that research, I discovered my current favorite solution, an app called No Fusion. In this article I want to go over the best ways to use the app and deep dive into what makes it great.

Have you ever been curious to know what spending more money on a camera system actually gets you? What if I told you that going from a $100 camera to a $10000 camera, you’ll actually lose features. To find out, I’ve got six tiers to showcase everything you could possibly gain, or lose when spending more money.

I’ve spent a couple months shooting with the Fujifilm X-E5 and put together my full review on it on my YouTube channel. Throughout that review I was testing a few new (and old) recipes on the Fujifilm X-E5 that I wanted to share here if you’re interested in using them yourself!

These recipes are not exclusive to the Fujifilm X-E5. Any camera with the X-trans 5 sensor can utilize these such as the Fujifilm X100VI, Fujifilm X-T5, Fujifilm X-T50, and a few others. Honestly these likely work great on other sensors as well (I got to use a few on the GFX100SII at some point), but your results may vary.

I credit Instagram for inspiring me to find landscape photography and push myself to travel. In 2014, Instagram started to shift from an app people used to add filters to their smart phone photos to a social platform where photographers dominated. This was the era when the chronological feed was still alive and before the algorithms changed everything. A place that platformed travel photography, grand landscapes to the masses, and inspired me to leave my home town to explore the world.

This started the golden era of Instagram for photographers… but golden eras don’t last forever.

Whether you’re a photographer or someone’s grandma (or both), you can identify “phone” photos. These are the photos that have no shadows or highlights, overly sharpened gritty details, and always make colors a bit more saturated than they are. For the masses, phone photos are great. They allow us to capture snapshots and memories with all the details we want, like our silly faces regardless if we are shooting directly into the light or not. The problem is, these photos suck for photography.

Is it possible to get photos straight from your phone that don’t look anything like “phone” photos?

The Nikon Zf firmware 2.0 update is quite literally why I bought my own Nikon Zf. If you’re unfamiliar, firmware 2.0 is what introduced what we now refer to as Nikon recipes. This opened up the camera to essentially be able to create imaging profiles similar to Fujifilm’s film simulations or recipes.

Film grain was the last separation between Fujifilm’s offering and what Nikon Recipes were capable of. In this article we’ll cover how the film grain is implemented, if it works with recipes or not, how pleasing the results are, and why I think it might be better than Fujifilm.

For most of my photography career, I’ve only ever owned between 16-35mm and 70-200+mm. In the past year I’ve been dabbling in the world of more portable cameras utilizing prime lenses, typically between 35mm and 40mm. When I decided to go on a photography trip with only a single camera and lens, I really wanted a bit more versatility than the Fujifilm XF 23mm f2.8 that came with the Fujifilm X-E5. Thus I hesitantly picked up the Fujifilm XF 16-55mm f2.8 II, my first ever mid-range lens for photography. These are my first impressions with the lens.

Photography isn’t really known for being an inexpensive hobby or profession. Sometimes that can be a huge barrier to entry for anyone looking at picking up their first camera to start learning photography. As of writing this, the least expensive new camera and lens (that’s been released in the last 5 years) is the Canon R100 which costs over $600. While that camera is mostly capable, we can stretch a lot less money for even better results.

As technology has improved over the years, it means there are actually quite a lot of very sufficient cameras out there collecting dust. Everyone has moved to mirrorless technology which leaves used DSLR cameras and lenses sinking lower and lower in price. Simply put: there has never been a cheaper and easier time to start photography.

Every year I take the new iPhone Pro model and compare it to my Canon R5. This is my 5th year in a row conducting this comparison, and over those years I’ve been extremely impressed and sometimes disappointed. This year I was hopeful to see an improvement on the new Telephoto lens but as you’ll see from the images, it is not all about a stat sheet. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves and also you can download a few of the raws I’ve taken this year to explore them yourself.

I was lucky enough to get delivery of my Fujifilm X-E5 plus the Fujifilm XF 23mm f2.8 right as it came out thanks to B&H. I’ve had a chance to spend a full day using the camera, thus giving me a really good first impressions of the camera. Normally I wouldn’t talk about a camera after only using it for a single day but considering how similar (nearly identical) this camera is to the Fujifilm X100VI, I feel more at ease giving you my thoughts. To summarize: I really wanted to love this camera but there are a few design choices that leave me questioning if they actually used the camera before manufacturing it.

Not long ago the sub $1,000 camera was a competitive segment of the photography market but as costs increase and inflation rises, the options have become less and less. More importantly are any of the cameras you can get for under $1,000 even worth buying in 2025? In this article I’ll cover all your options for new cameras that fit a budget of $1,000 or less and exactly the ones you should consider. One of them is so good, I bought it myself!

I recently got to spend some time with the Fujifilm GFX100S II (thanks Fujifilm!) and from the moment I took the first shots, I was skeptical. Not because the images weren’t great, they were incredible. So much so that it seemed too good to be true. Was it just the moment, the light, or was there something more going on with this sensor?

Recently I owned the Hasselblad X2D and while those images were full of detail, they never made me question my camera choices, which is why I was so confused by my first shots with the GFX100S II as they have the same sensor.

I’ve spent the past couple months taking lots of images on the Nikon Zf, and I haven’t needed to edit a single one. This got me thinking, how often do we see reviews or content from cameras without editing? There’s quite a lot of people out there looking to take images without needing to edit at all, or at the very least have a great starting point before they sit down in front of a computer.

I didn’t expect to fall for the Nikon Zf. Honestly, I barely knew it existed. But with a long trip ahead and no Fujifilm X100VI available to buy, I gave it a shot—and it completely caught me off guard.

From the moment I took it out of the box, the Zf felt different. The dials are the most tactile I’ve ever used in 15+ years with cameras. The on/off switch has a deliberate resistance. The shutter sound? Addictive. Nikon didn’t just build a camera—they built an experience.

Glow filters (aka black mist or bloom filters) are nothing new in photography yet I feel like I don’t see them talked about very much in the space of nature photography. I suspect this is likely because the majority of people in that space are very technical and want to capture images in the flattest, purest ways possible. I must admit it feels a little wrong to put something in front of my lens that, for all intents and purposes, slightly reduces the sharpness and “pure” quality of the images I’m capturing.

Is that such a bad thing though in today’s world of pristine images?

In a recent video I decided to do something really stupid and try to take the same image on 5 different cameras at once. The idea was just to see the differences in things like sensor size, color science, and nuances between camera manufacturers. It’s absolutely not a scientific test and certainly one filled with more real world results rather than charts.

If you’re here to pixel peep and simply want to know which camera takes the absolute most pristine and highest resolution images, I’ll save your time - it is the Hasselblad X2D.

(I don’t use this system anymore) I spent years getting away without using a filter system. I watched videos where photographers wouldn’t leave home without them and others who said modern technology makes them unnecessary. I told myself I can get by with just my circular polarizer and honestly I did. So why did I decide to invest into a filter system if I was getting by without one? The answer is versatility, ease of use, and the usability of graduated filters (we’ll get to that one later).