Fstoppers Originals

The 24-70mm f/2.8 has been the default first professional lens purchase for at least 25 years. Almost every working photographer has owned one. Every photography forum recommends one to every newcomer asking what to buy after the kit lens. Every wedding educator names it as the foundation of a working kit. Every camera store stocks it at eye level. The lens has been so culturally dominant within working photography that the question of whether it should still be the default has rarely been asked seriously. It should be asked now. 

If you dream of owning a Hasselblad XPan, you might want to consider this much more affordable alternative. Or, given how stupid it is, maybe not.

The biggest hurdle many photographers face when jumping into off-camera flash isn't the gear or the settings; it's the "where." We often find ourselves in a beautiful location with boring light, and we struggle to know how to fix the issue. If you've ever looked at a scene and felt stuck because the lighting didn't match your vision, the solution isn't more gear. The solution is learning how to "see" light patterns and then recreating them from scratch.

More cameras, fewer photographers. As this new day dawns outside my window, I pose a simple yet profound question: Is there still truth in photography?

As with every fast-paced, tech-driven industry, the cycle time for each incremental update in photography equipment seems to get shorter and shorter. Though it has become better for the past few years, each product launch is still not given sufficient time to mature before the next iteration is shoved down our throats. While this might contribute to a better-looking balance sheet from a business standpoint, in the long run, it might lead to a massive disconnect between what camera manufacturers are building and what the market actually demands.

Photography has spent most of its digital era chasing technical perfection. Sharp focus, clean files, controlled lighting, smooth skin, perfect exposure across the dynamic range. The pursuit was reasonable. Each generation of cameras and editing software made these standards more achievable, and working photographers who failed to meet them risked looking unprofessional. By 2020, a wedding photographer delivering a slightly soft image was apologizing for it. A portrait photographer leaving visible skin texture was risking client complaints. The technical-perfection ceiling kept rising, and the industry kept rising with it.

There is a kind of photography that pretends to be neutral. Flat surfaces, clean lines, ordinary spaces. Nothing dramatic, nothing loud, nothing that asks to be looked at twice. It's often dismissed as cold, detached, even empty. But that reading is too easy. What we call indifference is rarely indifference. It is a position.

Most photographers will tell you the same thing: don't use a fisheye for portraits.

In March 2026, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released an online ad featuring a minute-long video of Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico speaking into the camera, reading statements the real Talarico had not spoken on camera. The Talarico in the video was generated entirely by artificial intelligence, voicing content drawn from the candidate's old social media posts. The words "AI Generated" appeared in small text in the corner of the frame at the start, then faded into even smaller text that remained on screen while the fake Talarico continued to speak. 

Artificial intelligence has quickly become part of the workflow for many photographers. From culling thousands of images to automating complex edits, there's now a tool for almost every part of the process. But not all AI is built for the same job.

Most working photographers have a portfolio problem. The problem is not that the work is bad. The work is usually fine. The problem is that there is too much of it. Portfolios that should have 12 to 18 images contain 40 or 50 or 80. Websites that should load three galleries fast contain eight galleries that load slowly. Instagram grids intended to function as portfolios contain two years of inconsistent work that blurs the photographer's identity rather than sharpening it. The photographer has spent years building the portfolio and cannot bring themselves to remove anything from it.

Hunter S. Thompson is certainly one of my references — not because he ever cared about photography, but because he understood something most photographers avoid.

Most photographers put the camera away when it rains, but I believe this is a huge mistake. I've found that some of my best photos are made when it's raining, and I make the effort to embrace it. Let's talk about why.

Discover the art of minimalism in landscape photography and learn how the deliberate removal of distractions can elevate your images. Join me as I share insights from my recent trip to Namibia, highlighting the beauty and purpose behind each frame.

Nearly everyone has a smartphone in today's world. They have come so far, and the technology inside them is extremely impressive. When you think back 20 years ago, they had a small screen and could only be used to make calls. Now, you can use them for pretty much everything: to call people, to listen to music, use them as GPS to get around, and in a lot of cases as a camera.

The photography business has a strange relationship with specialization. Almost every working photographer starts as a generalist. The first few years of paid work are a scramble: weddings on weekends, headshots during the week, a real estate gig when a friend asks for a favor, some product work to pay for a lens upgrade, maybe a few corporate events when the calendar is thin. The logic is obvious and reasonable. Early in a career, any paying work is better than no paying work, and saying yes to every request builds both experience and cash flow. That first phase of generalist scrambling is not a mistake. It is how most photographers who become successful actually learn their craft. The mistake is staying there.

When Olympus sold its imaging division to Japan Industrial Partners on January 1, 2021, the new company was called OM Digital Solutions. The OM SYSTEM product brand arrived later, announced in October 2021 as the name the company would put on its cameras going forward. Most of the photography press wrote the obituary in advance of either event. The division had been unprofitable for years. Olympus itself, after more than eighty years of making cameras, was exiting the business. Micro Four Thirds had lost the sensor-size argument in the public imagination to APS-C and full frame. The buyer was a private equity firm, not a camera manufacturer. The standard expectation was managed decline: a few years of catalog padding, a thinning lens roadmap, and eventual fade.

It seems everybody is retiring their gimbals. Every time I look at social media, I hear people talking about: does anybody use a gimbal anymore? Or you'll see videos where people are talking about gear they regret buying, and a gimbal is usually on that list.

There's a strange misconception in street photography: that more is more. More chaos. More layers. More subjects. More "decisive moments."

The Fujifilm X100VI has been supply-constrained for more than two years. The camera launched in February 2024, and as of April 2026, availability remains spotty: Fujifilm's own US shop typically shows it as "Notify Me" rather than in stock, and major retailers list the camera as temporarily out of stock with rolling expected availability windows rather than steady inventory. The company raised the US price from $1,599 to $1,799, and the camera still moves for above MSRP on the secondary market. Two years of reported shortages is not a production problem that got solved. It is a demand problem that Fujifilm is openly uninterested in solving.

If you produce short-form video for clients or your own brand, take a second and count the number of apps, browser tabs, and subscription logins sitting between the moment you have an idea and the moment you hit publish. There's the scriptwriting tool (or a blank doc you've been staring at for twenty minutes). The generation or editing platform. A separate captioning service you pay for monthly. Something for thumbnails, maybe a dedicated generator, maybe you're still screenshotting frames and adding text in Photoshop. A background removal tool. Possibly a video enhancer you bookmarked six months ago and keep forgetting to cancel.

I sold my Mamiya 645AFD, and I regret it every time I think about it, which is more often than I would like to admit. The film got too expensive, and the scanning costs added up, and I told myself the rational thing to do was to let it go and put the money toward something more practical. I was right about the math. I was wrong about everything else. 

Somewhere around 2010, camera design stopped mattering to the photography industry. The DSLR era had produced bodies defined by ergonomics rather than aesthetics, and the first mirrorless wave carried forward the same logic. Cameras were tools, tools looked like tools, and any photographer who cared about how a camera looked was suspected of being a poseur. The mainstream press reinforced the assumption. Reviewers evaluated bodies by their grip comfort, control layouts, button feel, and weather sealing, and any discussion of aesthetics was treated as either irrelevant or faintly embarrassing.

After three decades as a professional filmmaker and photographer, I have learned a lot of things. Most of them, I learned the hard way.

Photography has a spending problem, and it starts early. The moment you get serious enough to move past the kit lens and the auto mode, the industry opens a firehose of recommendations pointed directly at your wallet. Better bodies, faster glass, studio lighting, editing software, bags, straps, filters, presets, printers, and accessories that promise to make your work look professional before you have figured out what "professional" means for you.