The Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026 shortlisted entries were announced last week, and one contender in particular caught the eye — a photo of a swift in flight as an aeroplane looms overhead, shot by 16-year-old photographer Jack Crockford, from the UK.

'Great shot!' chimed a few people in the 500 or so comments on TechRadar's Facebook post, which also received almost 25k reactions. The majority of the comments, however, focused on the camera gear element of the headline (not the photo itself or the age of the photographer), which pinpointed that the photo was captured with a 10-year-old Nikon DSLR.

In case you were wondering, the camera in question is the enthusiast-level Nikon D500 (APS-C), and Crockford paired it with the Nikon AF-S 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR telephoto zoom lens to get the shot.

Cue the age old photography debate I've read time and again in my 15+ years writing about camera gear — is it the gear, or the photographer, that gets a great photo?

The correct answer, of course, is that there's no simple, single answer — it depends on the context and subject being photographed — and that the end result is the work of both tool and creator. For Crockford, however, gear certainly empowered him to get his WPOTY award contender.

Sometimes, gear really does matter

I'm all for celebrating the photographer, and rightly so. The craft and dedication (and, sometimes, a dash of fortune) required to create an image that stands out is undeniable, and deserves appreciation.

I see it in myself — I have a better eye for a photo now than I did at the start of my career, and I'm still improving (emphasis on having an eye for it to begin with).

But to those that simply said in the comments section; "it’s not about the camera", or "photography was never about the equipment", and “it’s the singer, not the song", I say you'll need more than luck to get a photo like the image in question — a distant bird in flight.

Skill alone doesn't reach 600mm, a lens does. Nor is your iPhone bagging you that shot. You need telephoto reach, and decent autofocus helps.

Technically speaking, enthusiast-level and pro-level mirrorless cameras are the most advanced cameras today for wildlife photography, thanks to dedicated subject tracking modes (which, in many models, includes bird detection autofocus), and faster-than-ever burst shooting. You are more likely to get a technically sound image with modern camera gear.

Many of the comments defended DSLRs, but the point of the article was never to attack the format, which in the current market has essentially been replaced by mirrorless, but to highlight how popular (and capable) these systems are still.

DSLRs are still seemingly the camera of choice for wildlife photographers — if the shortlisted entries for WPOTY 2026 are anything to go by. I still rock my Nikon D800 which precedes Crockford's camera, and its age doesn't stop if from taking good photos.

You don't need the latest gear to get the (wildlife) shot, but it does help. But for the incredible shortlisted entries in WPOTY 2026, it took skill and gear to get the shot. There is a gear bottom line required to stand a chance.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026 winners will be unveiled in October, and you can see the winning images in the flesh when the exhibition begins in October at London's Natural History Museum, UK — you can grab tickets here.

A near-total lunar eclipse occurred last week. I was on vacation at the time, with no serious camera gear for a few windy and soggy days camping on the southwest-facing Wales coastline in the UK. However, I had packed the Oppo Find X9 Ultra, together with its 300mm (13x) teleconverter lens.

The eclipse felt like a perfect test for the flagship phone's camera skills. Where I was and Europe, the maximum 96.2% eclipse took place an hour before moonset / sunrise, meaning the moon would be low in the sky, while in North and South America it was in the middle of the night with the moon higher up.

Having set my alarm for a horribly early hour, I poked my head out of my tent at 4:15am to check on the weather, and was greeted with an enticing view of the eclipse underway in its partial phase, ahead of its maximum.

Excitedly, I threw on some clothes, picked up the Oppo kit and a tripod, and hiked down to the beach to get set up ahead of the eclipse's maximum, which would take place about an hour later.

Clouds covered the moon before I was able to fire up the camera, but I patiently waited. And despite not being able to see much of the partial phase of the eclipse, fortunately, a break in the clouds meant that I got to see the moon's eclipse at its maximum — and I was able to see what the Oppo kit was capable of.

Setting up for photographing the eclipse with a phone

The Oppo Find X9 Ultra is the only current phone with a 10x optical lens (the Galaxy S23 Ultra was Samsung's only previous effort), with a 230mm effective focal length that works pretty well for moon photography by itself. However, for an even closer view, the teleconverter lens is a better bet.

The teleconverter is a proper add-on lens that's designed to work with the phone's better-quality 3x optical lens, providing a 300mm equivalent focal length. Oppo notes this as a 13x zoom in the dedicated 'Hasselblad Teleconverter' mode in the camera app, which can be increased to 30x (690mm) or 60x (1380mm) digitally.

You'll need to use a tripod to stabilize the phone, and to capture sharp shots of distant subjects, especially in low light — I used a Heipi 3-in-1 tripod, which includes a dedicated phone clamp within its ballhead.

I like taking manual exposure control for astrophotography, but sadly the phone's dedicated mode for the teleconverter is stripped back (I've previously tried it for sports photography and came away frustrated by the experience).

There are the three zoom settings, a 'stage' mode, ±2EV exposure compensation, and then a basic array of controls which includes Auto HDR, aspect ratio, timer and interval shooting modes. That's about it.

I missed having the option to shoot in RAW format, exposure bracket (to get more detail from the light and dark parts of the moon), increase resolution from 12MP to 50MP and manually set white balance, shutter speed and ISO, which would otherwise be possible in the phone's 'Hasselblad Master' mode (Oppo's version of a Pro mode).

My desire for manual control was magnified when the phone completely underexposed the moon when in photo mode (see above), which felt odd given that when I switched to video mode — where 4K up to 60fps with Dolby Vision, Ultra Steady stabilization and focus lock are available — the exposure was fine.

It's actually possible to use the teleconverter lens in the Hasselblad Master mode with the 3x camera and gain those manual controls, instead of the simplified dedicated mode. However, the image is upside down (since the teleconverter's optical construction comprises mirrors, to keep its size down), plus you lose the digital zoom capabilities — so composing the shot was highly impractical when working in reverse.

The teleconverter is a serious bit of gear, but the mode that's designed to work with it would benefit from inheriting some of the serious controls the phone is capable of (which could be entirely possible with a firmware update).

Still, I found a workaround — with a quick response taking the photo immediately after switching from video recording to photo, I was able to snap shots of the moon before the exposure went too dark again. Not ideal, but it worked.

How good are the images?

I wasn't able to compose a shot with the moon framed by landmarks or a point of interest but, simply put, the tripod-mounted Oppo Find X9 Ultra with teleconverter lens delivered the best-quality eclipse photos I've got of the moon so far with a phone.

The 13x setting of the teleconverter is best, but the 30x digital zoom setting is usable too. Detail using the 60x setting was too soft for my liking. But the fact that I've been able to get such a close-up image of the moon during a near-total eclipse, with a phone and teleconverter lens, shows how far smartphone cameras have come.

I'd still opt for my mirrorless or DSLR camera with telephoto lens for the best-quality moon photography but, having previously written off phones for the task, I could happily pack light with just the X9 Ultra instead.

• The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition has released a preview of select winning images for its 62nd year
• Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London
• The full set of 100 winning images will be exhibited at the Museum following the full winners’ announcement on October 16

The winners announcement of the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is one of my favorite dates in the photographic calendar. It seems like every year the winning and commended photographers outdo themselves in capturing vivid, fascinating stories from the natural world.

One thing I also love doing is poring over which cameras the winning photographers are using to capture their spectacular shots. As such, when the Museum released this set of preview images to whet our appetites ahead of the full announcement, I headed straight to the caption information — and discovered to my great interest that the two most-used cameras on the list so far are both Nikon DSLRs!

The full list of cameras used to capture the sixteen shots on the full list is a real mixed bag. As well as a selection of pro and prosumer mirrorless and DSLR cameras, there’s also a DJI Mavic drone and a Leica Q3 43 compact. However, the two cameras that featured most prominently — with two images apiece, representing a quarter of the full list — were the ten-year-old Nikon D500 and the Nikon D850!

The highly commended image ‘Eye of the Storm’ by Dewald Tromp from South Africa, depicting a chameleon battling its way through a sandstorm in Nigeria (above), was captured using the Nikon D850, as was American Ralph Pace’s image of a sea hare gliding through eelgrass in Monterey Bay (below).

Jack Crawford in the UK has been highly commended in the 15-17 Years bracket for his perfectly timed moment of a swift flying underneath the looming bulk of a plane — shot on a Nikon D500 (below).

And Canadian Shane Gross strapped his Nikon D500 into an Aquatica AD500 underwater housing to capture his highly commended, half-in half-out image of a school of bigeye trevally off the coast of the Seychelles (below).

One thing’s for sure — the DSLR isn’t dead just yet!

If you want to be able to see these images for yourself when the exhibition begins in October, you can grab tickets here.

The D850 and D500

The Nikon D850, released in 2017, is a wildlife photography legend. A full-frame DSLR with a generous 45.7MP resolution, its 153-point AF system may not be as sophisticated as the flagship mirrorless cameras that have succeeded it, but it’s still incredibly tenacious and accurate for moving subjects.

With its pitch-perfect handling and large optical viewfinder, the D850 is a joy to shoot with and has captured many spectacular wildlife images since. There’s a reason that when Nikon came to release its mirrorless wildlife specialist the Z8, the manufacturer branded it as a new D850.

The D500, meanwhile, was released a year earlier — meaning it has just marked its ten-year anniversary! Even so, this capable APS-C shooter made a reputation for being a speedster, thanks to its 10fps burst rate that could go up to 200 RAW files, as well as its simply superb autofocus system. As such, it has been embraced over the years by many wildlife photographers without the budget for the D850 — and as this year’s WPOTY results go to show, this stunning camera still has its share of devotees.

August's celestial wonders aren't done yet. Following the stunning total solar eclipse and the peak of the Perseid meteor shower a couple of weeks ago, we're set for another extraordinary show this week — a lunar eclipse.

On August 27-28, night sky observers in North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Western Asia are in for a treat, with a 96.2% lunar eclipse and 'blood moon' occurring.

It's not a total lunar eclipse — the next one of those takes place on December 31, 2028 (yes, new year's eve!) But for many, this week's eclipse will be the best until then, so it's well worth staying up late/getting up early for.

Here's exactly when and where the lunar eclipse can be seen — and my pro tips for capturing it with your camera of choice.

When and where to see the August lunar eclipse

The lunar eclipse can be seen on the night side of Earth, which on August 27-28 means that large portions of North America and South America, plus the western half of Europe and Africa, will enjoy the best of the eclipse — its maximum.

Further afield, viewers in eastern Europe and western parts of Asia will catch a glimpse of the eclipse — the penumbral and partial phase, but not the maximum 96.2% — while Australia won't see it at all. In total, 44.4% of the global population can catch a glimpse.

A large portion of the US is ideally placed to see the lunar eclipse, including Washington DC and New York, because it reaches its maximum at 12:12am ET time, and the moon will be relatively high in the night sky.

Across Europe, the maximum eclipse occurs at 6:12am (CEST), which is 5:12am BST. In cities including London, Paris and Madrid, the maximum eclipse is around one hour prior to sunrise and as the moon sets, meaning the moon will be very low in the sky — offering the prospect of superb photography opportunities.

Those timings are for the maximum eclipse, but the 'penumbral' eclipse begins almost three hours before, and ends almost three hours after. Even as much as 90 minutes before maximum, the moon will start turning red as it moves into a partial eclipse phase.

• The timeanddate.com website provides exact times, dates and places for every eclipse, including for August 27-28, wherever you are in the world. It's a comprehensive resource, also covering eclipse FAQs, such as what is a lunar eclipse is, why the color of the moon changes and more.

Planning your photos of the lunar eclipse

The full eclipse cycle will last for about five hours in total, but you don't need to be on the alert for all of it. Let's take New York city as an example.

There, the event kicks off with a penumbral eclipse at 21:23pm ET (August 27), but viewing starts to get interesting from 22:33pm when the partial eclipse begins. This is a good time to set up your camera gear, because the moon will begin to lose its brightness, and will start turning reddish at its edge.

You'll soon see the weird sight of a crescent moon with a blurry straight line between the bright and dark areas. That's the line of Earth's atmosphere being projected onto the lunar surface.

At 00:12am ET (August 28), the eclipse reaches it maximum, and the moon will be at a viewing altitude of 38.3 degrees, which is relatively high in the sky. At 96.2%, a sliver of bright area of the moon surface remains, but the rest should be a reddish color to the naked eye. This is the maximum phase, when you should takes lots of photos.

From then on, the bright area of the moon increases once more during the partial eclipse phase, which finishes at 1:51am ET, and the eclipse is fully finished at 3:02am. You may wish to stay up for the entirety in order to capture key phases of the eclipse — great for a montage — but the main activity will be in the hour around its maximum.

Meanwhile, in London the timings are less favorable, but the components for photography could be ideal. The penumbral eclipse begins at 2:23am BST (August 28), the partial eclipse begins at 3:33am, while the maximum eclipse is 5:12am, at which point the moon is close to the horizon, and it's approximately an hour before moonset/sunrise.

In the UK, you'll need a clear vantage point looking west to southwest to see the moon (and a dose of luck, if the forecast for cloud is accurate), and if you can plan to include landmarks/points of interest in the frame, it should make for dramatic images of the eclipse's maximum phase. The moon will have set below the horizon before the partial eclipse (after maximum) ends.

Camera gear for the lunar eclipse

So, how do you do photograph a lunar eclipse? The good news is that you don't need any filters, as you do with a total solar eclipse. The bad news is that since the moon is so small, you're going to need some magnification for the moon to fill most of the frame. That means either using a telephoto lens, whether that's on a DSLR or a mirrorless camera, or a superzoom compact/bridge camera. Taking decent photos of the moon with your phone is going to be a tougher challenge.

In terms of focal length, a 600mm-equivalent lens (25x zoom on a phone, approx) should fill most of the frame with the moon. You might want to use a slightly wider-angle lens to include landmarks in the frame.

On a smartphone, typically the best optical zoom reach you'll have is 5x. The quality of a digital zoom is poor, and only gets worse the more you zoom in. Some flagship devices such as the Oppo Find X9 Ultra have better telephoto reach — 10x in the case of that phone — and a teleconverter accessory to further extend the maximum reach. My advice for most people is to use a camera with a telephoto lens instead.

Whatever camera you opt for, I recommend attaching it to a sturdy tripod support — especially if you're capturing multiple phases of the eclipse with landmarks in the frame. A tripod minimizes camera shake for sharper shots, and delivers the continuity you need for capturing the phases. Alternatively, find a secure surface to rest your camera on. A self timer or a remote shutter further minimizes camera shake, while shooting in the RAW format rather than JPEG/HEIF gives you more flexibility for editing.

A lunar eclipse isn't easy to capture, but you will have plenty of time to play with various settings of your DSLR/ mirrorless/ superzoom compact camera. As well as a wide range of colors, lunar eclipses bring a lot of changes in brightness. Also bear in mind that when zoomed-in, the moon is a very fast-moving target (blame our rotating planet).

Consequently, I recommend setting the white balance manually — the Tungsten setting will maintain the color accuracy of the bright moon and rich blue of the night sky.

You'll also need a high shutter speed. So, as the moon dims in brightness, increase the ISO (try ISO 200 during the partial phase, and ISO 1600 during the maximum phase) and open the aperture (start at about f/11 and experiment).

However, it's not just about getting a sharp image, because during the partial eclipse, the moon will be part-bright and part-dim, so you have to make a choice about which side of the moon to expose for. The answer, of course, is to try both, many times over.

Take a spare battery out with you, make sure your memory card has plenty of space on it, and prepare for a marathon post-processing session. Most of all, cross your fingers for clear visibility — cloud cover puts paid to the best-laid plans!

• Get more tips on how to photograph the moon

As TechRadar's Cameras Editor and a professional photographer, I regularly have my hands on top-rated camera gear. However, my absolute favorite photo that I took this month was casually snapped with my Google Pixel 8 Pro smartphone.

I used my Pixel's dedicated Long Exposure photography mode, which, unlike the latest iPhones, has its own space in the camera app and makes what is otherwise a fairly complicated technique with my pro mirrorless camera really quite simple.

Is my photo technically perfect? No. I took it and several similar shots handheld while taking a walk on a beach with a friend. If you look closely at the fine detail, it's a little blurry in parts. To really get the best out of this mode, a tripod support or firm surface would have yielded technically better results, but it really wasn't the moment for serious gear.

And considering these images were made with my phone, handheld, the results really are something. I'm not surprised, mind you — the Long Exposure mode was made available to Pixel phones a few years ago, and I have regularly been using it ever since.

If you use a Pixel phone, it's a mode well worth playing around with — you might just bag a frame-worthy shot. And if you shoot with an iPhone, I'll quickly explain how to get this effect in the camera app.

Long exposure, explained

There's very little to run through with the Google Pixel's Long Exposure mode. It has its own place in the camera app, and you simply try to keep the camera as steady as possible during capture, much like you would with the Night Sight mode.

Long Exposure blurs movement, while keeping stationary subjects in sharp focus. It works particularly well for blurring fast movement, say, of moving water or traffic light trails at night, but a Pixel is less suitable for truly long exposure photography — of moving clouds, for instance — because there's a limit on the time of exposure.

Once you've taken a photo using the Long Exposure, the image appears in your gallery alongside the standard photo without the effect applied (see below). For some of the photos in this article, I've taken them into the editor and played around with the exposure and color settings — I think the black and white edit looks particularly striking — and made other edits such as straightening the horizon.

If you shoot with an iPhone, it is possible to get the same effect, but not through a dedicated mode like Pixel has — instead, it's buried in the Live Photo interface (or you can try the Spectre app). At night, iPhone also has Night Mode Max for long exposure astro shots.

For daytime long exposures, you'll need to enable the Live Photo mode (which effectively takes a three-second video and selects the best frame for your gallery). Next, hit the Live button in the top left of your photo in the gallery, select Long Exposure, and your iPhone will produce a long exposure shot from the frames in that Live Photo sequence. This handy YouTube Shorts explainer takes you through the process.

The same advice for technique applies — keep the camera steady. However, we've played around with the iPhone's Long Exposure editor in the TechRadar office, and it's not quite as effective as the Pixel's.

Hopefully, one day we'll see Apple release a dedicated mode for this shooting style, because iPhone users are missing out — it really is the kind of effect that can bag you framable shots.

Have you tried long exposure photography with your Pixel, iPhone, or other camera gear? Do share your experiences in the comments below.

• Today is World Photography Day 2026, a celebration of all things photographic
• I've been enjoying a series of incredible Poalroid composites by the legendary British artist David Hockney
• Using cubist influences, Hockney shot dozens of Polaroids to create interpretations of real-world scenes

Since today is World Photography Day, it’s the perfect time for us camera nerds to celebrate our artistic medium and some of its greatest successes. For my part, I’ve been spending this day in the company of these stunning Polaroid collages by the late, great David Hockney.

Hockney, who was born in 1937 and sadly passed away in June of this year, was a long-time photography skeptic, doubting its ability to be useful in the making of great art. But in 1982 his friend, the curator Alain Sayag, suggested he use instant Polaroid photographs as a means of documenting his personal collection, and Hockney became fascinated by the medium.

In short order, he bought thousands of dollars’ worth of Polaroid film and started creating the incredible, fractal scenes, currently displayed on the David Hockney Foundation website — which I find absolutely transfixing. I’m a huge Polaroid fan so I was always going to be predisposed to enjoy these works, but I just love the way he plays with perspective and distance. The collages depict real-world scenes in a way that must have been absolutely painstaking to execute — but they stop short of naturalism.

Sometimes the same person shows up in multiple frames to create a sense of motion. Figures and faces are dismantled and reassembled in a distinctly cubist manner — critics have pointed out how many of the composites resemble the work of Picasso, one of the artists that Hockney most admired. The gaps between the images are folded into the fabric of the final collage, being embraced rather than resisted. It’s brilliant, obviously — not that you’d expect anything less from Hockney.

The artist subsequently became something of a photography convert, eventually replacing his Polaroid camera with a Pentax 110, a tiny interchangeable-lens SLR camera using 110 cartridge film. He travelled the world making more and more collages, even making one of the Grand Canyon! His composites were later shown at the André Emmerich Gallery in New York, in an exhibition titled ‘Drawing with a Camera’.

I think they’re absolutely sublime, a stunning example of a great artist turning his hand to a new medium and immediately making it his own. So, this World Photography Day, why not take a moment to spend some time with a photographer or artist whose work you love?

• Polaroid and Pokémon have jointly announced a range of Pokémon-themed instant cameras and accessories
• Cameras include a version of the Polaroid Now Gen 3 styled after a Poké Ball, and versions of the Go Gen 3 styled after Pikachu and Sylveon
• All the releases, including Pokémon-styled film and accessories, will be limited edition

I’m on the record as being a huge Polaroid fan — but this latest unexpected collab from the brand has me wishing I’d waited a little longer before buying my Polaroid Go Gen 3.

Polaroid has teamed up with Pokémon to help celebrate 30 years of the pocket-monster mega-franchise (the first Pokémon games were released for the Game Boy in 1996) and has produced a range of limited-edition Pokémon-themed cameras and accessories.

As you probably agree from the images above, the most eye-catching of the bunch is the Pikachu-styled version of the Polaroid Go Gen 3, colored in the character’s iconic shade of electric yellow, complete with a yellow hand-strap in the lightning-bolt shade of Pikachu’s tail and a drawing of the little guy on the camera body.

There's also the Sylveon-styled version of the same camera, with a strap in the Fairy-type Pokémon’s colors of pink, white and blue. Alternatively, you could pick up a version of the larger Polaroid Now Gen 3, which takes full-size I-Type film, in the classic red, white and black colors of a Poké Ball. Although, in a small touch that I absolutely adore, all three cameras have Poké Ball-shaped shutter buttons.

If you, like me, already own your Polaroid cameras, there are still ways you can get in on the Pokémon fun. The collab also includes Polaroid Go and I-Type film in Pokémon styling, with frames themed after iconic monsters like Charmander, Clefairy and Squirtle in addition to Pikachu and Sylveon, and a Pokémon-themed camera strap. And — I just love these — you can also get a camera case and photo album for your Polaroid Go in the shape and style of a Poké Ball!

The special-edition Go Gen 3 versions in Pikachu and Sylveon styles can be picked up for $99.99 / £89.99 (around AU$140), while the Poké Ball-themed version of the Now Gen 3 starts at $139.99 / £129.99 (around AU$198).

Special editions of I-Type film will be priced at $22.99 USD / £21.99 (around AU$32) while the Go film will be $24.99 / £21.99 (around AU$35). Basically, a couple of dollars over regular Polaroid film.

The whole lot will be available for pre-order from Polaroid and the Pokémon Center in the US, UK and Canada from August 25, and will go on general sale from October 6. And it’s all going to be in limited quantities — so if you’re a die-hard Pokémon fan who wants to get in on the instant-photography fun, you might not want to wait!

The 2026 solar eclipse has come and gone, and viewers across parts of Europe, where totality was visible for approximately two minutes before sunset, were treated to quite the show.

It was a different story for me, however. I was on a family break in the hours before the eclipse reached its 91% peak, where I was in the UK, and was entirely unprepared.

As a photographer in this kind of situation, normally I would be frantically fiddling with camera gear and searching for the best nearby location, but the stars didn't quite align to capture the experience on this occasion.

And despite a flood of spectacular eclipse images being shared online, and the fact that there won't be another eclipse this good in the UK in my lifetime, do you know what? I'm OK with how this eclipse played out for me.

Rather than getting bogged down with gear and camera settings and composition, I simply relaxed and enjoyed the spectacle with family. It was an otherworldly yet unencumbered experience, and I'll always remember that soft golden light over those few minutes, and the eclectic methods that people around us were using to watch the eclipse — from DIY pinhole cameras to colanders. It was a moment shared that brought communities together.

Sure, it might have been a different story if I were in northern Spain on an organized trip for eclipse totality, but to echo my former colleague Phil Berne's sentiments after the 2024 eclipse, I don't think any image I would have taken could do an ounce of justice to the real thing. Watching it, in community, was enough.

It still pains the photographer in me a little that the lead image in this article is of the marina where I watched the eclipse take place, along with the shadow of a colander projecting the sun's mostly eclipsed image onto a wall, both shot with my Pixel, rather than a perfectly composed, awe-inspiring eclipse photo.

However, I have gained more as a human being from making the eclipse a shared experience, and I'm still enjoying the best 2026 eclipse shots by the photographers and creatives who really went for it. You can vote below for your favorite from a selection of shots that stood out to us.

• This year's Perseid meteor shower is active up until August 24
• It peaked on August 12-13, but will be clearly visible in the Northern Hemisphere again tonight
• Head to a dark sky area and look up any time between 11pm and 5am

As if a total eclipse before sunset across parts of Europe wasn't enough, the Perseid meteor shower peaked on the same day, August 12 (with a rare six-planet alignment chucked in for good measure).

You'd think that as a professional photographer I would've had all the gear for the 2026 eclipse (which maxed at around 91% where I was in the UK), but I opted to simply enjoy it with my family and a colander. The Perseids on the other hand, were the celestial show that I got my gear out for.

Like the six planets, the conditions aligned for optimum photography of the Perseid meteor shower; a dark new moon and clear dark skies graced where I live during peak activity. It was warm enough to be out in shorts, too.

I set up my Google Pixel 8 Pro phone on one tripod and a Nikon Z6 II mirrorless camera with pro 24-70mm Ff/2.8 S on another side by side in my garden, and sat back with my son. And once our eyes had adjusted to the dark, the fun began within minutes.

How I photographed the Perseid meteor shower

For meteor photography, you absolutely need a method of keeping your camera completely still. I recommend a tripod support, though at a pinch you could prop your gear on a solid surface.

For my Pixel phone, I selected the Night Sight mode in the camera app. Once it had detected that the tripod-mounted device was completely still, the crescent moon on the photo icon changed to stars, indicating that the astrophotography mode had become available.

Hitting the photo icon on screen then starts a +4 minute timer on screen, at the end of which an optimized night sky image appears in the phone's gallery, together with one second-long timelapse video covering that entire sequence.

The alternative is standard the Night Sight mode, though to have any chance of a bright enough exposure, you'll need to manually increase the exposure time to the maximum possible six seconds. The astrophotography option yields much better quality results. For other devices besides the Pixel, check for equivalent photo modes.

Meanwhile, I set my Nikon lens to its widest 24mm focal length and an f/3.5 aperture, and set the Z6 II camera exposure settings manually to 20 seconds and ISO 3200. Any slower and the stars would start to streak (trail) rather than be distinct dots (the astrophotography rule of thumb for crisp stars is calculated as follows: focal length multiplied by shutter speed = 500 or less).

I usually shoot night sky photos in RAW format, and set the white balance to the tungsten setting for a rich blue color. I manually focus the lens to infinity and then dial it back a fraction.

Once the mirrorless gear was ready, I took the meteor photos with a self timer to avoid camera shake that occurs when pressing the shutter button by hand. The Z6 II can take up to nine consecutive images with the timer option, which in this scenario covered three minutes each time (given each photo is 20 seconds long). Alternatively, I could have locked the shutter button down with a remote release and the camera would run all night, which is what I do for star trail photography.

Smartphone vs mirrorless: which rig did I prefer?

Given the need for a tripod support, I didn't really feel that the phone was any more convenient than the bulkier mirrorless system, despite its simpler design.

Furthermore, the astrophotography mode remains illuminated on screen during the 4+ minute process of capturing a single image, which was somewhat of a distraction — you don't want a bright screen in sight when watching a meteor shower. Conversely, the Nikon camera's screen goes dark during each long exposure, which complimented the whole experience much better.

More importantly, I found that I couldn't rely on the Pixel's astrophotography mode auto editing. In almost all of the final photos, there were no visible meteors despite them clearly occurring during the four minute capture and being in frame, confirmed when I watched back the one-second timelapse video sequences (see below).

It seems as though for the most part, the Pixel device edits out meteors (and passing planes) in favor of a clean night sky image. It reminded me of my experience photographing the northern lights with a Pixel a couple of years back — I found the astrophotography mode over-edited.

The Nikon camera, meanwhile, faithfully recorded each meteor in frame during the 20-second-long exposures. And, with a little creative editing, I could composite multiple meteors from multiple photos into one (assuming from images with identical composition) to get a final image with multiple meteors. You can see some of my photos below.

Put simply, I preferred the handling of the mirrorless camera, and the faithfulness of the images it produces, over my experience using a Pixel phone.

The Perseids lowdown for tonight

The Perseids are active up until August 24, but your best best is getting out asap this week. Last night, August 12 into the early hours of August 13, was the peak, but you can expect to see plenty more meteors tonight and in the coming evenings.

During peak activity, you can expect around 50-100 visible Perseid meteors per hour under dark skies in the Northern Hemisphere. Pre-dawn hours are recommended, but I saw plenty at around midnight once I had settled down — you can try any time between 11pm and 5am local time.

You can follow my gear advice above but, honestly, just like with the solar eclipse, the Perseid meteor shower is arguably best enjoyed purely for the magical spectacle that is, without getting bogged down by gear.

I must've been sat with my son for over an hour in the warm weather, watching the night sky intently for where the next meteor would appear, delighting in each one, plus another hour by myself after he had gone inside to bed.

Some meteors appeared like faint white lines, others began as multi-color streaks and finished as blazing fireballs. Sods law the fiercest meteor I saw all night happened after I had packed up the camera gear to call it a night at around 2:30am. Trust me, it really was something.

I plan to head out again tonight to a nearby historic site with both cameras once more to get better framed shots including points of interest, but it's the Nikon that I'll be relying on.

Europe's 2026 solar eclipse has been and gone, leaving in its wake a flurry of once-in-a-generation images. I've picked out some of my favorites, which you can peruse below, but there's one shot that really outshone the rest for me.

Captured by a small camera crew in rural Spain, the photograph is of Olympic skateboarder Danny León jumping mid-air on a half-pipe as the moon eclipses the sun behind him. Since posting it on Instagram (see below), the image of the synchronized eclipse stunt has gone viral.

León hasn't yet disclosed the equipment used to photograph the epic shot, but has said that he'll share the backstory soon. All of the best images I've seen so far of the August 12th solar eclipse have been taken on mirrorless cameras, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is the same.

What I was surprised to hear was that the majority of TechRadar readers photographed yesterday's eclipse with just their smartphone's camera. Based on a poll of 825 people, close to 50% of respondents said they were planning to capture it with their phone.

Meanwhile, 30% said they wouldn't bother photographing it at all and instead planned to watch it with solar eclipse glasses, or, if you were like me, through a shadow made by a pinhole in a sheet of paper (my version of a DIY box projector or colander).

Of course I couldn't help but sneak a photo of it on my iPhone. Even though it isn't advised because of the potential damage it can do to the sensor, as long as you're only quickly snapping a pic, then you likely won't create dead pixels — it's more if you were to point it at the sun for a prolonged period of time.

If you didn't manage to capture the 2026 solar eclipse, enjoy this selection of some of my favorite shots of the major celestial event, and make sure to let me know which one is your favorite by voting in the poll below.

The Solar Eclipse did not bless my region with the full Monty, with the moon only managing to take a small bite of the sun. That, though, was enough for me. As soon as I donned my protective glasses and saw the celestial show, I had to document it in pictures.

Cue the struggle montage.

As I learned in previous solar eclipse events and, honestly, through years of photography, you can not shoot the sun or an event like a full or even partial solar eclipse with just your camera or smartphone. I don't care about how many megapixels you have or the size of your lens. In fact, shooting without lens protection could destroy the sensor on your digital camera or smartphone.

For this task, I pulled out a couple of tripods and grabbed both the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra. I also grabbed two pairs of protective Eclipse sunglasses I'd held onto since the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017.

Setting uop for the big eclipse show

First, I placed the phones in their respective tripods and smartphone holders. After aiming the cameras at the sun and figuring out which of the three lenses on each phone were the telephoto lenses, I took the eclipse sunglasses and positioned the filters over each telephoto lens.

On the iPhone 17 Pro Max, I immediately struggled to get the phone's camera system to stick with the right lens. I would uncover the lens array to find the sun and then flip the filter back on, which is so dark that the sun, when I could find it, would become an orange blur. Even when I held my finger on the screen to lock the exposure, as soon as I moved or made any kind of adjustment, I'd lose the lock. And, honestly, it was never in focus.

No matter what I did, I couldn't get the telephoto camera to match the necessary zoom, exposure, and focus. In fact, I soon realized that without a way to manually control the focus, this would never work.

Meanwhile, on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, I had more luck getting the right focus and exposure, especially once I switched to Pro mode (under More in the camera app), but the images didn't really come together until I zoomed past optical and into digital zoom. The photos look good, but I'm not sure I can trust them as representing reality.

I switched back to the iPhone 17 Pro Max Eclipse photo project.

For full control of the iPhone camera system, I downloaded the Halide app. It surfaces controls for everything from ISO to white balance and, more importantly, exposure and focus. Even better, Halide settings remain until you change them, just like a pro-level camera. Once I found the right combination of exposure, ISO, zoom (8x sensor crop), and focus, I just kept shooting.

In my haste, I neglected to switch to Apple's RAW shooting mode, and the filter slipped a bit, so it wasn't perfectly flat or positioned against the lens, which may account for the purplish hue of my photos and the slightly 3D effect. Even so, I like the results.

Obviously, these are still smartphone photos and don't compare to what I could capture with my Sony A6000 and the right filter, but they are pretty cool nonetheless.

• A total solar eclipse can be seen today across select places in Europe
• To enjoy the spectacular celestial event you'll definitely need solar glasses
• And to photograph it, you'll want a solar filter to protect your gear

If you didn't already know it, there's a total solar eclipse today, August 12. Totality will occur in parts of Spain, Portugal, Greenland and Iceland, and a partial eclipse will be visible further afield across Europe, including the UK, and even as far as northern North America. If you're in any of those regions, it promises to be a truly unmissable spectacle.

A poll on the TechRadar WhatsApp channel showed that plenty of you are planning on photographing the 2026 eclipse (voting is still open, and you can vote below). That's great, and you should definitely go for it — but you should definitely also read our how to photograph a solar eclipse guide and, most importantly, taking precautionary measures to protect both your eyes and your gear.

You'll need solar glasses to protect your eyes while looking directly towards the Sun — with astronomical demand, good luck buying some at this late stage — but also a solar filter for your camera gear.

If you're in any doubt about the risks to camera kit, take this post by Lensrentals, as your warning. The risk to unprotected camera gear when you point it directly at the Sun, even for short periods, is clearly seen in the photos of damaged rental gear returned to Lensrentals following the 2017 solar eclipse in the US (and in the YouTube video below).

Photographing a solar eclipse — the risks to camera gear

Sensors were the most commonly damaged component, whether that was in a DSLR or mirrorless model. The intense light and heat generated as it was focused through the lens without a solar filter attached literally melted sensors — and you can see the permanent damage in the image above.

That's not all. Lensrentals shared photos of melted shutters, lens aperture blades (see the lead image), mirror damage in DSLRs, and even damage to a built-in ND filter system in one of its cinema cameras. All this damage is permanent, and repairs are costly.

You really don't want to take any shortcuts for today's solar eclipse. Protect yourself, and protect your gear! You can find further eclipse safety at the NASA site.

Will you be watching the solar eclipse? If you're photographing it, what gear will you be using? Make sure you vote in our poll below, and share your favorite shots with us at news@techradar.com — we'll feature your best images in our follow-up coverage.

• A total solar eclipse takes place on August 12, 2026
• It can be seen in its totality across select places in Europe, and in part as far afield as northern North America
• Read on to find out how and what to photograph, and be sure to pack your solar glasses!

A total solar eclipse is happening on August 12, with totality occurring in parts of Spain, Portugal, Greenland and Iceland; but even if you live further afield across Europe and even as far as northern North America, you will be able to see a partial eclipse.

The spectacular event, which occurs when the Sun disappears behind the Moon, happens every 18 months or so, with areas that experience totality falling into darkness during daylight hours.

However, only a small fraction of the Earth has a good view of each total eclipse, meaning it's effectively a once-in-a-lifetime event in any single place — North America experienced one in 2024, but won't again until 2044, in different parts of the continent.

Former TechRadar Phones Editor Philip Berne shared his experience of the total solar eclipse in 2024 and described it as a "silent, dazzling fury" that proved to be a tough photography challenge. For him, though, simply experiencing the event, photography aside, was magical.

Whether you plan to photograph the eclipse or simply take it in (wearing solar glasses essential to protect your eyes), the event is not to be missed. Below I'll outline key location and timing details about the 2026 total solar eclipse, and share my top tips for capturing this moment with your camera, whether that's a mirrorless, DSLR, or smartphone.

I'd love to hear from you too. Will you be watching the solar eclipse? If you're photographing it, what gear will you be using? Make sure you vote in our poll below, and share your favorite shots with us at news@techradar.com.

Total solar eclipse 2026: where and when

The totality of the 2026 solar eclipse will be visible from the northern half of Spain, the northeast corner of Portugal, eastern Greenland, and western Iceland.

Snæfellsjökull in Iceland will get the total eclipse for the longest period, at two minutes and 10 seconds, from 5:45pm, while at Gijón in Spain totality begins at 8:26pm and will last for one minute and 46 seconds. Barcelona and Madrid will enjoy a 99%+ eclipse at 8:29pm and 8:32pm respectively.

The sun will be 91% obscured for viewers in London at 7:13pm. Fairbanks, Alaska gets a maximum 37% eclipse at 8:27am AKDT, while Presque Isle, Maine will experience 28% at 1:50pm EDT.

Our sister site space.com has a more detailed breakdown of locations and times. For an even more detailed breakdown of the precise time and places to watch the total eclipse you can visit the European Space Agency website, or consult an interactive map at the Time and Date site.

Total solar eclipse 2026: how to photograph it

Pick your spot
Once you've researched if / when the eclipse is taking place where you are, you'll need to figure out a good place from which to observe it. Open areas with a wide, clear view of the sky are a safe bet. Better still, if the sun will be low in the sky during the eclipse where you are, consider including landmarks or points of interest in the shot during the eclipse phases. Bear in mind that the sun's position in the sky will move during the phases.

Gear essentials:
As for the best gear, there's no single right answer, because it all depends on the kind of image you're hoping for. A closeup of the sun requires a telephoto lens (around 500mm, or 20x zoom with a phone), whereas a shot that includes the landscape, other viewers, or points of interest for context works with a wider, standard optic. A DSLR or mirrorless camera with manual exposure control will give you the best chance of nailing the shot, but the best camera phones which also have these features can work too.

I'd advise using your camera's screen to compose the shot rather than a viewfinder — a tilt or articulating screen will make setup easier, as will a tripod support for eclipse sequences, freeing you up to enjoy the experience rather than getting bogged down with gear.

Protect your camera gear:
You'll also need dedicated accessories to protect your gear and get the best shots. A solar filter protects your camera sensor and ensures proper exposure. You'll need the filter for all the eclipse phases when the sun is visible, except the brief moment of totality.

Protect yourself:
Finally, before you settle down to basically look directly at the sun, you absolutely need to be wearing eclipse-approved solar glasses to safely experience the event.

For more detailed advice, check out our breakdown of how to photograph an eclipse, compiled for the previous 2024 event. It covers gear, camera settings and more.

Total solar eclipse 2026: what to photograph

The good folks at mpb.com have shared the following breakdown of the eclipse phases with us, together with photo ideas, and supplied images for this article.

First contact:
The Moon visually begins to overlap the Sun. Opt for a telephoto lens, and a suitable solar filter to capture the eclipse’s progression.

Partial phase:
The Moon gradually covers an increasing portion of the Sun. Use this moment to create a sequence of multiple images from the same frame, or to look for crescent-shaped shadows cast on the ground.

Baily’s Beads and diamond ring:
Just before totality, sunlight filters through the irregular lunar limb, creating small, bright points of light called Baily’s beads. When only one intense flash remains, this creates the 'diamond ring' effect for a very brief moment.

Second contact:
This marks the beginning of totality, when the Moon completely covers the Sun and the corona starts to become visible. It’s at this moment that you can remove the solar filter from your camera — but only for the period of totality.

Totality:
The solar corona appears and the environment changes in a matter of seconds. The light dims, the temperature may drop, and some bright stars may become visible.

Third contact:
This marks the end of totality, and Baily’s beads and the diamond ring may reappear. Replace your filter as soon as sunlight reappears.

Final partial phase and fourth contact:
The Moon continues to move until it no longer covers the Sun. Use this moment to complete your sequence.

Total solar eclipse 2026: share your experience

We'd love to see your solar eclipse photos. Share them with us at news@techradar.com, and vote in our poll below to let us know what camera gear you plan to use to photograph the event with. We'll share the results of the poll, and the best snaps, in the coming days.

I've been a fan of Zoner Studio since first reviewing it in 2025 - it's a fusion of Lightroom and Photoshop-style tools for photographers, with some compelling advantages over both.

My team recently re-reviewed the photo editing and organizing software, complete with its big summer updates roll-out, where it earned an even higher score for 2026 (read our Zoner Studio review).

I spoke to Zoner's Thomas Urban to find out what's new in this Windows-only photo editor, why the devs prefer meaningful features over flashy gimmicks, and how the software handles the messy realities of shooting.

Adobe has a near-monopoly on creative software. What is the elevator pitch to a photographer who is locked into the Lightroom/Photoshop ecosystem to try Zoner Studio?

Great point, they are a household name. If you want a single interface for all your editing, faster culling and RAW capabilities, not being stuck in a catalog while being able to work with local files if you’d like and all of this for a lower price, then you should try out Zoner Studio.

In your summer update, you intentionally avoided “flashy new features you’ll use once a year.” Why do you think so much of the industry is chasing AI gimmicks instead of fixing core editing speed?

Perhaps they think people will find these types of upgrades boring? Maybe the core issues are more difficult to address? And, some of these features like a completely revamped search engine, just aren’t visually that striking, for sure.

When you’ve taken thousands of photographs though and just want to get through the culling in a responsible and effective way with quality metadata and organisation, these less flashy things are going to save your time down the road and your mental state.

It seems the entire world now has the attention span of a few seconds and everyone is fighting for a fraction of your attention, god forbid your undivided attention. It may be that in order to actually present those important features, you need the flashy stuff to catch the attention first.

I hope with time, society as a whole, we make our way back to authentic things that matter, things that last and things we’re proud of because they’re done well.

Most suites force you to lock in your RAW edits before moving to layers. What’s the practical advantage of keeping a photographer’s entire pipeline inside a single workspace?

Simplicity. We all started this whole photography thing because it was fun and gave us something we kept coming back to. Photo editing should match that and complement this process instead of being a chore.

We want photographers to have a proper partner to their camera and being able to do everything in a single UI just felt like the natural solution.

The fact that each photographer can stay in the same interface allows them to stay in the creative flow rather than worry about whether or not this particular photo is now good enough to move on to layers. That just seems counter to what we're trying to do as photographers.

Cleaning sensor dust or portrait blemishes across a massive shoot is soul-crushing work. Where does your Smart Healing excel, and where do complex textures still force a photographer to step in manually?

Our tools still require manual inputs as we don’t have automatic detection of dust or blemishes. Our tools however, are non-destructive and fast compared to our competition (which is a rare combination).

Source search is on the verge of being possible without the use of AI and they also allow for very complex retouching. Retouching is divided into individual layers, and individual strokes are separated on the layers.

Within strokes, the user can utilize entire strokes (some only allow circles) or subtract from them, brushes have all parameters and we have the best tablet pen integration on the market. It’s possible to customize and map out your parameters based on your pen pressure.

Again, I wanted to remind you of the non-destructive model because this combination is not common for most of these operations in other photo editors. Users have to go to bitmap editors like Ps or Affinity whereas with Zoner Studio, you don’t even have to leave the Develop module.

This makes it easy and there’s no need to make a complicated trip from one program to another while also considering the correct order of operations.

Manual keywording and file tagging is a major chore. How does your Search engine let someone instantly pull up shots without forcing them to build a rigid catalog first?

Yes, this is a core issue with many photo editors. To start, the difference between Zoner Studio and most of the competition is that you don’t need to create a Catalog as a blackbox per se but rather a Catalog built on market standard files or data that sits next to these common files.

Because of this, our Catalog serves more as a cache and does not contain unique data that the photographer could lose and is always “rebuildable” based on the data stored in those photos. Therefore, the photographer is not locked into Zoner Studio’s infrastructure.

We still rely on manual keywording and tagging (unfortunately, the program cannot replace manually entered data because it’s our interpretation of structures) and we’re also working robustly with names and the folder structure, which are an important part of manually entered data and are often ignored by other photo programs.

We also focus on working effectively with them and also with regards to the data that is inherently in the photos themselves. Then based on your knowledge of your data, you can effectively find a lot of things.

Automatically grouping and merging panoramas or focus stacks sounds great in theory. But how did you design the software to handle the messy reality of real-world shooting?

For us, it’s not only good in theory but is great in practice. Of course, we can always improve but we have been optimizing the algorithms for several periods and are still working on them.

If the photographer uses the automatic camera functions like exposure and focus bracketing, and doesn’t make major mistakes when taking photos, we have an almost 100% hit rate.

Of course, it’s ideal to catch those deviations and we are very grateful to the user base for supplying us with samples. We’re really happy that in most cases it simply boils down to a shooting error. In our opinion, a large number of future disruptive technologies will be built on automatic stacking.

It’s necessary to realize that it’s not only about stacking panoramas and others that form a fraction of what a photographer processes but also continuous shots and generally similar images with which the user works as a whole and, for example, selects the best shot.

From turning burst sequences into time-lapses to simulating long exposures without an ND filter, what do you think are the most underrated creative tricks hidden in Zoner Studio?

Back to the basics; LUT's. There are plenty of them on the internet and they are great for everyone.

They'll be liked by the user who still can't click and use sliders to achieve their desired results and by the user who has the ability to accurately utilize the entire RAW processing pipeline.

We aren't exactly fans of the sort of "tricks" philosophy idea but if we had a choose an underrated function that can pull some serious weight, it would be the preview function in the Manager module that allows photographers to preview multiple images at once

Ready to start shooting? We tested the best cameras for photography.

In my work, my absolute favorite days are the ones where I just get to take pictures. I’m testing a new camera or a new film stock, and so I’ve got nothing on the agenda other than heading to some locations that are beautiful or interesting (or, ideally, both) and capturing images of them. At the end of the day I’m normally tired, sweaty, have new blisters on my feet — and feel fantastic.

But those days are quite rare. Often I’m consumed with other things, the nitty-gritty of writing, work, life-admin and everything else. Trying to be more efficient, for money and time reasons, means that I tend to do my photography in big infrequent chunks — and some research I’ve seen is making me reconsider that approach.

The benefits of a regular photography habit for mental health are well-documented. British photo retailer MPB, in announcing its partnership with mental-health charity Mind, points to a study in the peer-reviewed journal Health which finds that taking a photo every day provides tangible benefits in terms of mental well-being.

British photographer, broadcaster and passionate nature advocate Chris Packham is a huge believer in the power of photography to effect a positive mental change. ‘Photography has always been a conscious way of addressing chronic or specific mental health issues in my life,’ he says.

‘When I'm peering down the lens, I'm so engrossed in the objective, so intensely involved with the technical and creative process, that the rest of the world vanishes. It's just me and the photo. The exterior anxieties are relegated to oblivion, and I get maximal relief.’

‘For me, photography is a key part of a portfolio of tried and tested therapies which consistently enhance positive mental health outcomes.’

And it’s not just taking photos! Even the simple act of viewing them can have a positive effect. MPB also cites a 2024 survey undertaken by Fujifilm, in which 80% of respondents reported that viewing old photos brought them feelings of happiness and calm, and helped to reduce anxiety.

Building a daily habit

I'm grateful to MPB and Mind for making me think more mindfully about how I engage with photography. It's also worth noting that the retailer is putting its money where its mouth is, and donating £1 to Mind for every item bought or sold on its marketplace this August, working towards its goal of £50,000 a year for the charity.

The campaign has got me thinking that I’m missing out on the mindful benefits of a daily (or near-daily) picture-taking habit. When I’m using my camera, I’m not looking at my phone. I’m not even thinking about the cursed thing; it’s normally in my backpack. I think this could be of much greater mental benefit if I were doing it regularly for shorter sessions.

Our cameras editor Tim Coleman tried screen-free photography for a week and found it made him feel more immersed and connected with his shooting. Even when using a digital camera, it felt like a digital detox — something that people frequently say they want more of!

So if you, like me, tend to plan your photo-taking around long days that you only get to enjoy every so often — it might be worth thinking about ways you can incorporate a more frequent habit, too.

Bringing the camera on a walk to the station to capture details of your local community. Building a twenty-minute walk into your lunch break to see what sights unfold around you. It won’t just benefit your photography, but could also have a real, positive, tangible impact on your mental well-being.

• The Valoi easy35 V2 is an at-home film scanner for digitizing 35mm film negatives
• It requires a digital camera, a 1:1 macro lens, and negative conversion software
• It's a compact, portable unit with a built-in light source

Shooting film is an expensive business, and I’m always on the lookout for ways to make it cheaper. As such, the Valoi easy35 v2 immediately caught my attention, with its promises to make the process of scanning film negatives at home into something, well, easy. Okay, I’m interested.

Paying to get negatives scanned and digitized is an ongoing cost that adds up over time — and since I live in a fairly small apartment in a city, a large flatbed film scanner isn’t a practical option for me. The Valoi easy35 V2, however, is a compact cube with about the same desk footprint as a large coffee mug. Even with its raft of accessories, it’s easy to store, easy to transport — and at $272 / £199 / AU$337, it’s cheaper than high-end scanners, too. Color me even more intrigued.

But before you get too excited, be aware that this is not a standalone film scanner. Portable self-contained film scanners do exist, like Kodak’s ultra-cheap Slide N Scan, but their quality is pretty poor. Instead, the Valoi Easy 35 V2 works by connecting to your high-resolution camera and your 1:1 macro lens. You do have a high-resolution camera and a 1:1 macro lens, right?

Indeed, this isn’t necessarily the super-simple, anyone-can-do-it film scanner that the word ‘easy’ in the name perhaps implies. But if you’ve got the kit and you scan a lot of film, it could save you money in the long run — and as I found when I tried it out, the process can get pretty addictive.

Valoi easy35 V2: In use

The Valoi easy35 V2 comes as a kit — as well as the cube-shaped scanning module itself, with its built-in light source, you also get a couple of extension tubes for ensuring your lens can operate at the correct focal distance, and some step-up adapters that allow you to connect lenses of various filter thread sizes to the 62mm-thread tubes. While the unit itself is smooth plastic, these accessories are all metal, and feel suitably premium as a result.

In terms of compatible lenses, the distance between your negative and the front of your lens needs to be less than 230mm. Valoi recommends that if you’re using a full-frame system, you’re best off with a lens with a focal range between 55mm and 105mm; for APS-C, it’s 40mm to 70mm; and for Micro Four Thirds, the makers recommend between 35mm and 60mm.

I was using a Fujifilm X-T5, since with its generous resolution of 40.2MP, it would easily offer enough pixels to make the scanning process worth the effort. I paired it with the TTArtisan 40mm F2.8 — an affordable manual focus macro lens that is Valoi’s budget recommendation for use with the scanner.

Fitting the parts together is simple enough — I only needed to use one adapter and extension tube, but depending on your lens, you may need to stack multiple. The unit itself has one-button operation; you simply turn it on to activate the light (it's battery-powered and recharges via USB-C). Negatives are loaded carefully into the holder at one side, fed through the scanner for your camera to snap, before emerging out of the other side. You'll need to ensure that the negative is correctly focused — it helps to use a nice clear shot with a well-captured subject, ideally a person. And then, you’re away.

That’s when I started to get addicted. See, I have a lot of negatives. Like, a lot, a lot. And once the Easy 35 V2 is in position and your lens and camera are set up correctly, the process of scanning is incredibly quick — feed, snap, feed, snap. You can scan entire rolls in minutes. I will say that on my first few attempts, a lot of my scans came in a little crooked and I couldn’t quite figure out what I was doing wrong — but fortunately I had enough latitude to crop and straighten without impacting the image too much.

Of course, once you’ve got those digitized negatives, you still need to convert them. You have a number of options — it brings me no pleasure to say this as I am on the record as an Adobe critic, but by far the quickest and best is pairing Lightroom Classic with the plugin Negative Lab Pro, the latter of which offers a free trial of 24 conversions and then costs a one-time price of $99. There are other options, but they tend to be either excessively complicated (Darktable) or a bit too rudimentary (Lomography’s free online tool).

Negative Lab Pro takes the RAWs of your digitized negs (oh, yes, you really should shoot in RAW) and automates the conversion process into a single click. Once this is done, it provides an editing panel, and you shouldn’t be afraid to get stuck in and make the final image look the way you want it, editing attributes like color temperature and tint to taste. If you don’t have the time or patience to tweak sliders, NLP offers a few presets for a quick spruce-up — I found that the ‘Kodak’ profile generally delivered pleasing results from Kodak negatives, naturally. You can see a few of my resulting scans below.

Valoi easy35 V2: Is it worth it?

I love this thing. I really love it. Setting it up was a pain — I had to get hold of some pretty specific gear, and lay it all out on my floor for want of a better working surface. It all feels a bit rustic and inelegant — for me, the camera and the box didn’t sit level when connected. I ended up wedging the spare film holder underneath to balance it, and was later amused when I watched a video on Valoi’s YouTube channel and they recommended doing exactly that.

However, the scanning process itself was unbelievably fluid, easy and even fun. I could have fed my negatives through this thing for hours. I still might! And having this setup on standby at home would mean I’d never have to pay to have negs scanned again, which is a mightily tempting thought.

I don’t think it's true to say that the Valoi Easy35 V2 makes scanning accessible to the masses. The masses don’t all own sharp macro lenses with the correct filter thread size (you should have heard the noise I made when I realised that the Fujifilm XF 30mm f2.8 R LM WR Macro wasn’t going to fit, even with all those step-up adapters). But for those who have the capacity, it makes negative scanning at home joyous and fun, and on that note I’m going to step away from my keyboard so that I can go scan some more.

With thanks to Wex Photo Video (UK) and Fujifilm who loaned some of the equipment used for this article.

Multiple exposure photography is nothing new; it has been a staple of creative imagery since the earliest days of analog photography. However, in the digital age, it has never been easier to blend images together for creative, abstract effects. This can be done in a range of ways, from in-camera techniques using dedicated multiple exposure modes to post-processing methods using layer blend modes and complex masking.

Possibly due to the convenience of in-camera approaches, both on high-end mirrorless cameras and using smartphone apps, there has been a spike in interest in this area of photography over the past five or six years.

When leading photography workshops in urban areas, for example, I have noticed far more students of all ages who are keen to explore textures and color through the medium of stacked exposures rather than capturing literal records of famous landmarks.

Admittedly, I never used to be a huge fan of this type of imaging. It’s not that I disliked double- or multi-exposure images; I simply never found much motivation to try all of the in-camera features on offer. However, I’m also an enthusiastic painter, and quickly discovered that creatively pairing different scenes could give beautifully painterly impressions of subjects that could never be featured together in any single frame.

When shooting a city or any famous location, blending shots in-camera or at the computer can capture a collage-style image that pulls together the most interesting elements of the place in unique ways. This impressionistic approach is ideal when you find yourself unable to pick out one or two elements that truly encapsulate how a location makes you feel.

The danger in these cases is that you attempt to cram in too many details by using a wide lens, which simply turns out as a busy-looking shot without any proper focus.

A double- or multi-exposure shot is intentionally abstract and minimizes negative space, allowing the viewer to focus on several areas of the scene at the same time. It also has the power to make a subject out in what might otherwise be an unassuming element. Let’s take a closer look at how to use the technique to create shots that pop in your portfolio.

Multi-exposure modes explained

Using layer blend modes has become a staple tool in the photo-editing process, and many photographers have become accustomed to how each one functions with the layers below the working layer in the layers panel, in Photoshop, Affinity, or similar. Learning to create blended images in-camera can therefore take a bit of acclimatization.

Many cameras today have a range of modes listed in their respective Multiple Exposure menu. Older models, especially older DSLR cameras, might only have a single Off/On option, but the latest mirrorless models, such as the Fujifilm X-T5, Canon EOS R6 Mark III, or Nikon Z5 II, all have sophisticated systems.

The common modes across all of these brands are Additive, Average, Lighten, and Darken, although the exact terminology does vary. Additive pretty much does what it sounds like – the pixels from one frame are added to the subsequent ones.

This has the effect of summing together the exposure of each frame, which can lead to overexposure if you’re not careful. Where two already bright areas of each frame overlap, for example, the resulting blended image can suffer from highlight clipping where there was none in the individual files.

To combat this, it’s often necessary to underexpose each frame by around a stop in Additive mode, thereby producing a final image with a neutral (centered) exposure. Many people choose this mode if they prefer a similar experience to traditional film-era multiple exposure photography.

Next up is Average mode. With this selected, the camera will automatically adjust the exposure of each frame to compensate for exposure variations. This will give you a shot with the same brightness as a correctly exposed single frame.

Meanwhile, Bright or Lighten mode will only allow the brightest pixels from the underlying image to show through the second. This is ideal if you want a bright neon sign to show through a darker brick texture, for example.

Conversely, Darken mode has the opposite effect and prioritises the darker pixels. If you want texture from the second image to only be visible in the sky of the first, or through the breaks in the tree line of a forest, this is the mode to choose.

In many cases, trial and error play a part in successfully crafting in-camera multiple exposures, although experience definitely helps with identifying the perfect pairings of subject matter and overlays. On some cameras, there will be a mode where you can see a live preview of the blended image, which can be a big help when finalizing the composition of your shot.

A pro tip to consider here is to ensure the continuous multiple exposure option is selected in the camera menu. This gives you the option to have double- or multi-exposure mode cancelled after a preselected number of shots have been taken, or to keep it active after each frame blend is complete.

When you’re not sure when the next opportunity will come along, it’s best to use the auto-cancel option, so you don’t get caught out and produce a blended frame when you actually wanted a single frame.

However, where crafting abstract images is the whole purpose of your shoot, keeping the mode active at all times speeds up the process and allows you to shoot many variations of a composition until you have found the perfect alignment of objects.

Some cameras will also give you the option to keep the individual frames which is useful if you want to try blending manually in software.

Mulitple-exposure in-camera steps

Step 1: choose your blend mode

If you have a darker subject that you’d like to combine with a brighter overlay, select the Darken mode. For the forest shot (above), I wanted the darker flowers to fill the bright spaces between the trees, where the sky was visible.

Step 2: work out your exposure

Don’t forget your basic exposure calculations, but tailor them to enhance the blended image. I exposed the first base image for the shadows which quickly clipped the highlights. Since I wanted a clear separation of tones for the blend, this was perfectly acceptable. For Additive mode, underexpose each frame by around one stop.

Step 3: take your first frame

Compose your base image carefully since this will determine the overall framing of the final shot. Trigger the shutter and preview it if your camera allows live previews of the blend in progress.

Step 4: shoot your overlay

Using the preview image if available, align the live view image with the ghost-like base frame until you are happy with the composition. Take the shot and preview the blended frame, checking for unintentionally excluded details. This can occur where pixels are brighter or darker than expected and are therefore missing (or over-exaggerated) in the final blend.

Fujifilm workflow

With a heavy focus on creative photography, the best Fujifilm cameras really lean into the Multi-exposure technique. While they feature similar blend modes to other brands, the terminology varies slightly. It’s therefore a good idea to compare modes to ensure you select the right one in any given subject-specific condition. Both Additive and Average modes are the same, but the following need a little decoding:

COMPARATIVE LIGHT - this is largely the same as Lighten or Bright mode on Nikon and Canon cameras, making bright pixels stand out against darker backgrounds.

COMPARATIVE DARK - the equivalent mode to Darken or Dark modes from other camera manufacturers. This will essentially fill bright areas with the underlying darker textures.

If you are using a Fujifilm model that has tactile controls, such as the X-T5 or X-T30 III, make sure you control your exposure by using the manual shutter speed dial, rather than by altering the f-stop from a lens-based aperture ring. This will essentially apply exposure compensation, which is critical when using Additive mode. However, this method will also ensure your depth-of-field doesn’t change between frames.

I also recommend checking out @bewaremyfuji on Instagram, who is a master of this technique — some of his multi-exposure nightscapes are particularly dynamic.

What should you shoot?

Put simply, anything with a clear outline can make a great multi-exposure shot. That’s because there is a sharp outline between the light and dark areas, which makes it easier to see where the pixels from one frame have blended with those from the next. It’s for this reason that skylines and profile portraits are popular subjects for this type of imagery. Creating a silhouette of buildings or the outline of a person makes a defined shape within which you can overlay the detail from another scene.

Equally, base layers with lots of texture or brightly colored patterns are ideal for creating those painterly style impressionistic images mentioned earlier. I like to bring together elements that look like they belong together, where natural subjects appear in the frame, but for urban images, I enjoy playing with heavy contrasts. Think natural structures like leaves, combined with industrial ironwork or brick walls.

If the baseline detail is already quite chaotic, such as in an image of a forest, I’ll often select Additive or Average mode to create more of an overlap, leaning into the ‘messy’ state of the natural environment. For shots of cities though, I try to create sharp silhouettes where the shapes have minimal overlap, thereby crafting clearly defined zones within the composition.

Combining multiple exposures with other creative techniques, like intentional camera movement ('ICM'), can also introduce some excellent effects.

Double or multi-exposure?

Once you’ve decided to experiment with these techniques, it raises further questions: what is the difference between multiple- and double-exposures, and when should each one be used?

Double-exposure mode is the classic choice and will simplify your workflow. It’s the mode to choose while you are learning how each blend option works and are just starting out with this technique. For standard urban photography or abstract landscapes, capturing just two frames is often enough, and I’d advise you to only consider shooting more frames once you fully understand how each frame is going to impact the others.

Multiple-exposure sequences, in other words combining three or more frames, can be great for complex textures or when you want to convey the movement of a subject in motion. Capturing the subject in multiple positions in the same frame – an athlete or dancer in several positions, for example – can produce a stroboscopic look that follows a perfectly timed sequence of planned movements. This is best done from a tripod to keep the camera stationary.

• International Aerial Photographer of the Year 2026 winners announced
• Azim Khan Ronnie and Vitaly Golovatyuk scoop the top 'Photographer' and 'Photograph' prizes
• Both winners shoot aerial images with a DJI Mavic 4 Pro

If you love jaw-dropping aerial images, the International Aerial Photographer of the Year contest is well worth checking out — and the contest's 2026 winners have just been announced.

A total of 101 images were shortlisted by the contest's three judges, and Azim Khan Ronnie scooped the top prize with his portfolio of scenes from around the world, including vibrant images of chili pepper harvesters in his home country of Bangladesh.

Ronnie said: “From above, everyday scenes reveal patterns, geometry, textures and relationships that are often invisible from the ground. Aerial photography allows me to tell stories about people, nature and the environment from a perspective that inspires curiosity and offers a deeper understanding of the world."

A minimum of four images are required to be considered for the top 'Photographer' prize won by Ronnie. Vitaly Golovatyuk of the Russian Federation took 1st place for the International Aerial Photograph of the Year, with their individual image of a bird standing in a perfectly still lake in Elk Park, outside Dongtai City in the Zhejiang Province of China.

You can take a look at Azim Khan Ronnie's portfolio below, with the variety of scenes including migratory seagulls in Yamuna Ghat, Delhi, India and a perfectly synchronized rowing team gliding over the mist-covered surface of Lake Zurich in Switzerland.

'Unique and extraordinary'

I reached out to Azim Khan Ronnie, who described his images as "unique and extraordinary", and the result of much hard work, repeat visits and early starts.

I was particularly drawn to his series of chili pepper harvesters in Bogura, Bangladesh, where more than 2,000 people work on approximately 100 chili farms — you can see more of his images from this particular series at his Instagram page, linked below.

The vibrant colors grabbed my attention first, then the abstract patterns and astute composition kept me engaged.

I also enjoyed his use of manual exposure and a slow shutter speed to blur the motion of the migratory seagulls, in contrast to the still (and sharp) boat they're surrounding, in his image from Yamuna Ghat, Delhi, India.

In the International Aerial Photographer of the Year press release, learn that Ronnie takes his aerial images with the DJI Mavic 4 Pro drone — a professional triple-camera drone which scored a maximum 5-star rating in our in-depth review.

Ronnie says, “For aerial photography, I use the DJI Mavic 4 Pro and DJI Mavic 3 Classic, allowing me to create images that reveal scale, patterns and perspectives impossible to capture from the ground. I always shoot exclusively in raw to capture the maximum amount of image data, giving me greater flexibility during post-processing while preserving image quality."

Vitaly Golovatyuk also used a Mavic 4 Pro for his winning individual image (above), taken in China, where the still lake appears like an eye, with the bird framed in the center among the reflected clouds and the surrounding rich red landscape.

The winners from the 101 shortlisted entries can be found at The International Aerial Photographer of the Year website, whose founders are on a mission 'to encourage and share the wonders of aerial photography'.

If you scroll to the bottom of the page linked above, there's a flip book containing all of the shortlisted entries — trust me, it's well worth a look.

• Merlin Bird ID is a go-to app for bird identification, with more than 40 million downloads
• It can identify over 2,000 species of birds by sound recognition
• A future update will share sound recordings with eBird, a huge biodiversity database

If you're into birdwatching, you'll need no introduction to the popular Merlin Bird ID app, by Cornell Lab of Ornithology. With over 40 million downloads worldwide, and over two million monthly users in the UK alone, Merlin is the go-to app for bird identification for many.

I'm in my forties, and birding has become one of my recent new hobbies, after years of photographing birds while testing cameras and lenses. And while I'm learning, I simply can't identify all the birds I see or hear, especially in my local nature reserve, which is a migration route for varied and sometimes rare birdlife throughout the year, and a popular birding spot.

The app helps me to identify the birds I'm unfamiliar with by their call / song, using machine learning sound recognition, and gives me lightning-fast and almost always reliable results, with an image for each identified bird. It's super helpful.

I can also feed the app one of my photos for identification, such as those taken during a recent outing with the Sony 400-800mm lens, with the results based on location data and other information from a database of more than 2,000 bird species.

So I was delighted to hear that the app — which is free for iOS and Android, with downloadable offline bird packs by location including US, Canada and Europe — is getting an update which will help users like me give something back: integration with Cornell's own eBird database, as reported by the Guardian.

A new wave of citizen scientists

eBird is a huge citizen-science biodiversity database, with over two billion recordings logged worldwide since its 2002 launch. And it's set for an influx of new data — the Merlin Bird ID app update will in future allow bird identifications to automatically flow directly into the eBird database.

Jessie Barry, of the Merlin project, told the Guardian, "Upcoming feature developments will make an even better link to the eBird systems so that we can use the data from what users ‘hear’ with Merlin to monitor bird populations."

Bird conservation is a hot topic, what with bird numbers declining. The UK, for example, has 70 million fewer birds than it did 50 years ago. So here's the good part: these records could provide vital information to conversation efforts for at-risk birdlife around the world.

Barry added: “This data helps create tools that can be used to further conservation, inspire support and inform ecological management strategies.”

Notwithstanding the cautionary note of the app's outright accuracy, with concern from some about it occasionally misidentifying birds, the Merlin Bird ID app update could be a huge boost for bird conservation efforts.

Being directly connected to the go-to bird identification app, eBird stands to receive more data from millions of users, who don't need to make any special effort to take part; they just need to carry on using the app as before to record and identify birdsong.

I love the idea that I will be one of a new wave of citizen scientists across the world, with the recordings I make playing a small part in monitoring bird populations. And the surge in recording data will likely further improve the app's performance.

Right, I'm off out with my phone, I hear the birds calling...

Fireworks nights are full of pure magic. The bright, colorful explosions, loud whizzes, and the heavy smell of gunpowder in the air always make me feel like a kid again. They are also the perfect excuse to pull out your camera!

Last year, the iconic Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular over the Brooklyn Bridge reportedly cost $6 million. And for this historic 250th Independence Day on July 4, 2026, your own photos really could look a million bucks!

Taking pictures in low light, however, is no easy feat. Add in the complication of fast-paced explosions going off haphazardly and a tight time restriction, and capturing the perfect shot can feel stressful.

Fear not! I’ve compiled my favorite tips to help you take better photos of fireworks. Whether you shoot on a professional DSLR, a mirrorless camera, or plan to capture everything on your iPhone – I’ve got you covered.

1. Find a vantage point

Rather than shooting close up details of singular fireworks, it’s better instead, to include them in a wider landscape for extra context. You’ll only have a limited time to capture your shots before the fireworks display is over, so it pays dividends to do your research beforehand – try to figure out where the fireworks are going to be set off from and plan your shoot to make sure you can capture a wide landscape plus the fireworks in the sky above.

Some of the best vantage points for fireworks displays are well known and very popular so it can be well worth getting to the location well in advance of the display and setting up your gear to stake your claim in the best position before the crowds arrive.

2. Steady your camera or phone

For the best quality photos a dedicated camera such as an interchangeable mirrorless or DSLR camera is preferred. You’ll want to set up on a tripod to remove camera-shake caused by the vibrations picked up when shooting handheld. It’s also beneficial to switch off and disable any image stabilization your camera may have as this can actually introduce blur when your camera is locked off on a tripod as it might try to correct for motion that isn’t there.

Rather than trying to focus on each and every firework exploding, you’re best bet is to shoot a wider landscape and manually focus on something in the scene so that your camera isn’t struggling to autofocus on the fast action of a firework. If your scene has street lights in it, for example, use these as a guide to lock focus, thus preventing the camera from hunting in those high stakes split-second moments.

Apple’s latest iPhones automatically enable Night Mode in low light environments, as do most leading Android phones. While it is easier than ever to shoot handheld with recent phones, thanks to the latest and greatest image processing and stabilization tricks, for best results I'd still recommend using a tripod, fixing your phone to it with one of the best smartphone tripod adapters. Failing this, try to find a fence, railing or wall you can prop your phone up on to make it steadier.

3. Starting settings: DSLR & mirrorless cameras – the ‘card’ method

One of the best tricks to create incredible fireworks images is to use the ‘card’ method, for which you set your tripod-mounted DSLR / mirrorless camera to its bulb mode, in which the shutter is open for as long as the shutter button is held down. To minimize vibrations caused by your hand, you’ll want to use a tripod and plug in a shutter release cable to your camera, which allows you to keep the shutter open without directly touching the camera.

It’s called the ‘card’ method because you place a black piece of black card in front of the lens while the shutter is open. When a firework goes off you can quickly whip the card out of the way to expose for the firework and then cover the lens again.

It's possible to repeat this process multiple times for multiple fireworks, to build up a single exposure with lots of the best fireworks going off in it for a more impressive photo.

4. Starting settings: iPhone & Android – long exposure & burst modes

To capture an entire firework, with its long trail and then vibrant colorful burst when it explodes, go into your iPhone’s Live Photo mode and tweak the setting from Live to Long Exposure. To capture the split-second action with better sharpness your best bet is to use your iPhone’s Burst Mode and slide the shutter button to the left to take a brace of photos in fast succession. I’ll show you how to blend your best shots together in Photoshop in my final tip.

Android smartphones may also have something similar to the iPhone, for example my Android has a Light Painting picture mode which extends the shutter time in a similar way to the Long Exposure mode on the iPhone, while recent Pixel phones have a long exposure setting. Camera apps in Android phones vary between manufacturers, do the best settings will vary depending on the model. You should be able to find tips specific to your model through a simple internet search.

5. Blend your best fireworks together

To make your fireworks photos more impressive, it can be a good idea to blend the best fireworks into a single image with editing software — I recommend Adobe Photoshop or, if shooting on a phone, apps such as Photoleap, Snapseed or Adobe Photoshop Express.

If you use a mirrorless or DSLR camera I highly recommend shooting in the RAW file format as this will provide much more exposure information – essential for editing images especially in low light situations like a fireworks display. Select and edit all of your RAW files at once to make sure your edits are consistent, then stack them all together in Adobe Bridge using Tools>Photoshop>Load files into Photoshop Layers.

Now select all of the fireworks images in the layers panel and go to Edit>Auto Align Layers, to make sure all of the pictures are lined up perfectly (which only works if you have a consistent landmark in the frame, hence my advice for shooting wide and including the landscape).

Then in the layers panel, change each of the firework blending modes from Normal to Screen and you’ll see them become blended with the layer below. You may also want to add a Layer Mask and mask off each layer so only the firework is blended with the layer below and not the landscape – you can mask off unwanted areas with a soft black brush tool.

Et voila! You now have a single scene with all of your best firework explosions lighting up the night sky.

You can find more software options in the photography sections of our best Android apps, best free Android apps, best iPhone apps and best free iPhone apps guides.

• iPhone Photography Awards 2026 winners announced, with top prize going to Robyn Jensen
• Their winning image of a volcano eruption was taken on an iPhone 15 Pro
• 12 other category winners announced, along with the varied iPhones used

The iPhone Photography Awards has announced its prize winners for 2026 — and the image that received the Grand Prix genuinely stopped me in my tracks.

Shot by Robyn Jensen from the Cayman Islands and submitted in the 'Nature' category, the winning image is a stunning low-light capture of a volcanic eruption in Yepocapa, Chimaltenango, Guatemala. Showing the moment a gout of ash erupts from the crater of the volcano, with red-hot trails cascading down around it, the image frames the moment of drama perfectly against a starlit night sky.

What's more, this image wasn't even shot on the latest iPhone, but was captured on a phone two generations old — the iPhone 15 Pro. I love how effectively it uses the phone's inherent qualities to its advantage; for instance, the smaller sensor of the iPhone 15 Pro, or any smartphone, is going to have a more limited dynamic range than a mirrorless or premium compact camera.

Robyn has made use of that, exposing for the brightest spot in the image — the lava and the light it's casting on the underside of the ash cloud — and allowing the rest to be shrouded in darkness. This heightens the impact of the image, sacrificing detail in the mountain for legibility of the key subject. But fortunately, we just about get those beautiful stars in the background.

Robyn has also used the wider 24mm equivalent lens, resisting the temptation to zoom in with the telephoto, and doing this allows us to appreciate the moment in its fuller context, giving a sense of scale. Her exposure is a full second long, meaning either the phone was mounted to a support, or she was aided by the iPhone 15 Pro's excellent OIS (optical image stabilization). And the phone has pushed her ISO to 12,500, and still come away with a pretty clean shot. It's a superb image, and a deserving winner.

Right place, right time

Something I particularly love about the iPhone Awards is the sheer breadth of style and subject matter, and this couldn't be better illustrated than by the contrast between Robyn's image and the winner of the Gold award, an image submitted in the 'Children' category by Hungarian photographer Gellért Gombai. A beautiful grab shot of a precious summer moment, its interplay of light and shadow is heightened by the decision to convert to monochrome — and it was shot on an even older phone, the iPhone X released in 2017!

And this sense of breadth continues when you look at the Silver and Bronze winners (below) — even though they're both by American photographers and are both images of animals! Arnold Plotnick's street shot of a cat, Silver winner, has a feel of total serendipity, a perfectly framed moment well-spotted. Also note how again, the lower dynamic range from the iPhone actually helps the image, with the loss of detail in the cat's fur and the doorway shadow increasing the shot's contrast and impact.

Catherine Wang's Bronze winner, meanwhile, couldn't be more different. It's a meticulously set-up still life, with the elements of the watermelon, mug and parrot clearly having been arranged very precisely, and the end result looking like something from a gallery wall.

For me, almost all of the winning images exemplify one of the iPhone's strongest assets for photographers — it's the camera you always have on you. While there are exceptions, such as Catherine Wang's still-life, most of the images have the unmistakeable feel of grab shots, of a photographer who was at the right place at the right time, and had the means to make the most of it.

Images like the pattern of frost on a car, a pair of dogs peeking out of a window, a child preparing for a leap over a puddle. These aren't things you set up; they're moments you spot, and many of them are moments that anyone might have spotted.

I'm particularly galled by the fact that the Gold prize was won by a shot of a cat in the street. Do you have any idea how shots of cats in the street I have on my camera roll? Loads! And do you have any idea how many of them are as good as Arnold Plotnick's? None!

But my personal bitterness notwithstanding, the iPhone Photography Awards have produced a superb crop of images this year, and in doing so have provided some pertinent reminders of two of photography's most important lessons. First, you don't need the latest tech to make great images. Second, the best camera is always — always — the one you have on you.

You can see the full selection of images, including second and third place winners, at the iPhone Photography Awards website.

• Capture One has added native Hasselblad .3FR RAW file support
• Hasselblad's X2D II 100C, X2D 100C and CFV 100C are included
• Tethered capture is set to follow later this year

Hasselblad photographers, I have the news you've been waiting years for: Hasselblad cameras finally have native Capture One support.

The support covers Hasselblad's 16-bit .3FR RAW files and includes three of its 100MP medium-format cameras: the X2D II 100C, X2D 100C and CFV 100C digital back (which is the sensor module for the 907X). You'll need the latest version of Capture One 16.8.3 or Mobile Version 3.3.4.

It's truly a match made in heaven; Hasselblad's 16-bit RAW files and 'Natural Color Solution' render possibly the most true-to-life colors I've seen in my 15 years of testing cameras, while Capture One is industry-favorite editing software for color correction and tethered shooting.

This partnership between two Scandinavian companies had to happen some time, and now it has, with tethered shooting support (a studio setup where you can control the camera through the software) also promised for later this year.

It's a big deal for both parties — Hasselblad shooters can ditch Adobe, which is held in lower regard among pro colorists, in favor of Capture One and its precise photo-editing toolset.

The move might also attract new professional and commercial photographers, who have previously been put off because of the lack of Capture One support, to Hasselblad's medium-format digital cameras.

As for Capture One, it can potentially attract a new wave of existing Hasselblad photographers, with a seamless workflow from capture to the finished image.

Letting Hasselblad cameras sing

Until now, workarounds were needed to bring Hasselblad RAW files into Capture One, at the cost of color accuracy and editing latitude. Meanwhile, Adobe's photo-editing platforms, such as Lightroom, are held in less regard than Capture One for outright color fidelity.

Now Hasselblad's 100MP medium-format RAW files are supported, with profiles for Hasselblad's entire range of XCD lenses and the ability to organize files as well as edit them and, later this year, tethered capture.

I reached out to Hasselblad for comment, and a spokesperson told me: "One of the most consistent requests has been native support for Hasselblad RAW files in Capture One. This partnership is a direct response to that feedback, and we've been working with the Capture One team for some time to make it happen."

Capture One echoed Hasselblad's sentiment about the new partnership, saying "Giving Hasselblad photographers the native Capture One workflow they've asked us for is genuinely rewarding. Both of us are firmly rooted in the commercial and professional space, and that's a big part of why this partnership makes sense."

And when I asked about the challenges in bringing native support to a new format, Capture One told me, "The real challenge was less about simply reading the files. Getting a new format right means dedicated color profiles for each of the three cameras, so Hasselblad's files render with the true-to-life color our users know Capture One for, plus lens profiles for the XCD lenses that correct distortion, chromatic aberration, and light falloff.

"Throughout, the priority was making sure the unique character of these cameras comes through with the image quality we pride ourselves on."

You can sign up for a free Capture One 7-day trial if you've yet to try it, with subscriptions starting at $18 / £16.67 AU$27 per month, or a one-time purchase costing $349 / £336 / AU$523.

• Though mostly known for photo lighting equipment, Godox has announced a small 'transparent viewfinder camera' that weighs just 65g.
• It features a transparent(ish) window for composition that also doubles as a settings display — and it can also function as a light meter.
• We don't yet have information on key internal specs like sensor size and resolution (but you can expect them to be low).

Very cheap cameras are back in vogue these days, so I wasn't necessarily surprised to see another one released — but I was surprised to see it coming from Godox.

The Godox C100 is a 'transparent viewfinder camera', announced by the Chinese firm who heretofore have been better known for producing the kind of high-end lighting equipment you'd find in the studios of professional photographers, as well as more affordable flashguns. However, with an announced price of just ¥199 and a recommended US price of $44.99 (about £34 / AU$64), the C100 is considerably more affordable than anything else on the Godox books.

As you can see, the C100 is built around quite an unusual form factor. A palm-sized rectangle, it doesn't feature a display exactly, but instead a transparent window that you use to compose your images. This window is also able to display key information like exposure settings and battery life.

Now, I said 'unusual' form factor, not 'unique'. This is because, as a few people have already observed, the Godox C100 looks a lot like a camera that debuted at CP+ in 2025, the Escura InstantSnap. The Godox version looks a bit more advanced, offering a few interesting features that the Escura version doesn't. But we can make a few inferences — the Escura camera produces images at a resolution of 1.3MP, and I'd be surprised if the Godox offered a great deal more than that.

The Godox C100 features a USB-C connection for charging and file transfer, and it accepts 128GB micro SD cards for storage. It also records video and can do so continuously for up to 1.5 hours, and offers shooting in a number of different aspect ratios: 16:9, 4:3, 3:2 and 1:1. There are a couple of physical buttons for shooting and changing settings, and it weighs just 65g.

A handheld light meter

At first glance, the Godox C100 looks like another cheap novelty camera in a market beginning to be saturated with them. However, there was one feature announced that really caught my attention, since I'm an avid film photographer — the C100 can also act as a light meter.

Like any good handheld light meter, Godox C100 can read the levels of brightness in a scene's central area, and provide the optimal exposure settings with which to capture a balanced image. Once hugely invaluable tools, light meters have been rendered mostly entirely redundant in the digital age. However, anyone who habitually buys a lot of old film SLRs will tell you that the metering system is always one of the first things to go. I have several beautiful Pentax SLRs in the drawer beside me that still shoot and wind on beautifully, but can't meter a scene because the electronics are shot.

So, the idea of an elegant little pocketable device, costing just $29, that I can carry everywhere with me and use to quickly meter a scene, and maybe even use to take a couple of comparison shots for reviewing alongside my developed and scanned frames — that interests me.

Granted, the metering functionality is only going to be of interest to a small percentage of users. But still, I wouldn't be surprised if the Godox C100 is a huge hit, if and when it eventually arrives at international retailers (it's currently only announced in China). Tiny cameras have been big hits of late, most notably the keyring-sized Kodak Charmera, and screen-free cameras that offer a purer, more immersive shooting experience have also seen success, the poster child for the movement being the Camp Snap.

People like cute cameras. People like cheap cameras. And the Godox C100 is both! I'm sure once we get hold of it for a review we'll discover that the image quality is no great shakes — but did that stop the Kodak Charmera? No, it did not.

If you’re thinking about buying your first proper mirrorless camera, or upgrading your current system, Amazon Prime Day is the time to do it. I’ve just found one of the best deals I’ve seen on a full-frame camera in a long time — but you might have to act fast to take advantage of it.

The Canon EOS RP was one of the first cameras in Canon’s EOS R series, released in 2019. Designed to be a lightweight alternative to the then-flagship EOS R, it puts a 26.2MP full-frame CMOS sensor into a lightweight SLR-styled body with ergonomic controls and excellent handling.

The EOS RP was designed to be the camera for everyone, a user-friendly and inexpensive route into what was then a new system. However, time marches on, and while the EOS RP hasn't been officially discontinued, Canon recently added the 'Sales Ended' tag to its page on its official Japanese store — which is a sign that a camera is about to ride off into the proverbial sunset.

Currently, you can get hold of this full-frame mirrorless camera for as little as $799 in the US, and an amazing £645 in the UK. For such a popular camera of such high quality — one that launched at a body-only asking price of $1,299/£1,399 — that is absolutely incredible.

But you might want to act fast. That 'Sales Ended' tag means no more Canon EOS RP models will be coming off the factory lines — once current stock gone, it's gone for good!

Today's best Canon EOS RP deals (US)

Today's best Canon EOS RP deals (UK)

The ideal gateway into full-frame

Shooting with a full-frame system camera feels like a tangible step up. The level of depth and dynamic range achievable with a physically larger sensor is immediately striking. If you've only ever been shooting with a smaller-sensor compact camera, or just your phone, you'll immediately notice the difference.

The EOS RP is currently one of the most affordable routes into full-frame. It offers sumptuous image quality backed by Canon's excellent color science, and also benefits from advanced features like Canon's Dual Pixel CMOS autofocus, with 4779 selectable points. Long regarded as one of the best autofocus systems in the business, Dual PIxel CMOS continues working quickly and accurately even when the light gets low.

When Matt Golowczynski reviewed the Canon EOS RP back in 2019, one of his key criticisms was the lack of native lens options for the RF-mount. Well, seven years down the line that is categorically not a problem any more — Canon has been busy releasing RF-mount upgrades to all its major lens archetypes, from wide-angle zooms to telephoto primes.

There are loads of affordable options to pair the camera with, too — you can pick up the RF 50mm f/1.8 STM for as little as $199 / £189. That would still see you spending less than a grand for a complete full-frame setup — and believe me, that's not always an easy thing to achieve!

Or, if you prefer a zoom lens, Amazon will let you bundle up your EOS RP with an RF 24-105mm F4-7.1 lens, a lightweight travel-friendly optic designed for day-to-day photography, spanning wide-angle to telephoto. In the US, this combination will run you a still-respectable $1,099, while in the UK, it's a frankly mad £791.99

Also, if you already own a Canon DSLR and a couple of lenses — perhaps ones that have been sitting in a cupboard untouched for a few years — it's easy to adapt your EF-mount lenses to work with the EOS RP. Simply add the EF-EOS R adapter, and all of your DSLR lenses will work with full electronic functionality of autofocus and stabilization, if they have it.

Granted, the EOS RP is an older camera. This means you're not going to get some of the more exciting features we've seen in cameras from the past few years, such as AI-powered subject-recognition autofocus, which has even started to appear in more entry-level models.

But the best thing about the EOS RP, in my view, is that it's a gateway into one of the most comprehensive and exciting mirrorless camera systems in all of photography. If you get to a point where you think you've outgrown it, you have a broad range of fantastic EOS R cameras to upgrade into. You'll be able to offset some of the cost by trading in your EOS RP — and all your RF or EF lenses will still work with the next model.

So, if you're thinking of jumping into full-frame photography, this could well be your moment. But like I said — don't hang around for too long!

More of today's best Canon deals

More Prime Day deals in the US

• Amazon Devices: Fire Sticks & Echo from $18
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More Prime Day deals in the UK

• Amazon Prime: sign up for a 30-day free trial
• Amazon Devices: Fire TV, Ring & Blink from £24.99
• Amazon Haul: up to 30% off
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• Appliances: up to 45% off Ninja, Tefal & Sage
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• Essentials: household goods from under £10
• Fashion: up to 50% off
• Father's Day: up to 50% off gifts & drinks
• Headphones: up to 50% off
• Laptops: from £149.99
• Tablets: Samsung & Lenovo from £125
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• TVs: from £129.99
• Vacuums: up to 40% off Eufy & Roborock
• Wearables: Garmin & Huawei from £36.99

If you’re looking to buy an instant film camera, there are only two serious names in the game: Polaroid, and Fujifilm Instax. While some manufacturers like Canon and Kodak offer digital instant-print cameras that use techniques like dye-sublimation to create instant prints of digital images on specialist paper, it’s not the same. For the true alchemical magic of instant film, you Polaroid and Instax are the big hitters.

Polaroid is undoubtedly the better-known brand name due to its long history, dating back to the 1940s (though hitting major popularity in the 70s). It spent a few years in the wilderness following a bankruptcy in the early 2000s, before being purchased and revitalised in 2017 by an analog film collective called The Impossible Project. All the proper Polaroid cameras you can buy new today have been released since this renaissance.

Instax cameras may not have the historical cachet of Polaroids, but they are massively popular — Fujifilm reported last year that its Instax line has sold more than 100 million units since its inception in 1998. I don’t have similar sales data on post-revival Polaroid, but frankly, I don’t think it’s anywhere close.

Ultimately, there are compelling reasons to choose either brand. The Instax mini 12 is TR's pick as the best instant camera, and I can see why — it's a great option for the majority of users. But for me personally, it’s Polaroid all the way.

Why I’ll pick Polaroid every time

It’s not a question of print size, as both brands have similar offerings. Fujifilm Instax Wide film is about the same size as a Polaroid I-Type (or SX-70) print, just rectangular rather than square. Polaroid’s smaller ‘Go’ film produces prints of comparable dimensions to Instax mini.

What it’s all about is vibe. Scoff if you want, but come on — you’re shooting instant film. You’re not here for accurate colors or pitch-perfect sharpness, you’re here because you love the tangibility of holding a print in your hands, the transportative lo-fi look of a format that’s been around for half a century. It’s all vibe.

I’ve shot Polaroid and Instax prints side by side before for comparison. Once, while I was viewing them, my partner made an astute observation that I have since stolen and made my own: the Instax catches your eye first, but you end up liking the Polaroid more. Instax prints are bright and vivid, with naturalistic colors and a decent level of detail, especially the Wide format. They’re fun and kitschy.

But Polaroid images just have that inimitable retro glow that instantly transports me back in time. The softer, more muted color palette makes images less immediately striking, but more satisfying the longer I look at them. There’s a richness to them, a greater sense of depth and subtle tonality. If I were embarking on an artistic project with instant film, there’s no question which format I’d choose. It wouldn’t even be a decision.

Instax cameras are easier to use for sure — most are just point and shoot. If I were recommending an instant camera for a family, or for someone who isn’t an experienced photographer, I’d go with Instax. But for me, as someone who knows my way around a camera, the depth of control offered by the top-end Polaroid cameras leaves Instax in the dust.

Connect to the Polaroid app, which works very smoothly and is highly intuitive, and you can completely program in your settings, taking total control over your images. Want to try your hand at creating long exposures on instant film? It’s straightforward on a Polaroid Flip or Polaroid I-2, and impossible on an Instax Mini 99.

Sure, Polaroids aren’t perfect. The ongoing cost of I-Type film is a sore point, with packs of eight shots costing the same as a pack of 20 shots of Instax Wide or Mini. This sucks. No way to pretend it doesn’t. Buying in bulk can help a little, though honestly not a lot. At least the smaller Polaroid Go film is much cheaper, and I prefer it to Instax Mini. Again, its subtler look is less striking, but richer.

Do you agree? Let me know which is your preferred instant-film format in the poll above. And if you’re looking for an instant-film camera to buy, see my explainer on why the Polaroid Go Gen 2 is the best buy you can make this Prime Day and click on today's best deals where you live using the links below.

Polaroid Go Gen 3: Two-minute review

Cards on the table: I love Polaroids. I’m of the right generation to have grown up with these instant-film wonders on holidays and at parties, and I was thrilled when the brand was properly revitalised in 2017 under new ownership. From the early OneStep cameras to more recent efforts like the Polaroid Flip (which I currently own), I’ve used a lot of nu-Polaroid’s offerings, and I was thrilled to try out the Polaroid Go Gen 3.

The Go series are Polaroid’s range of super-small instant cameras. They use their own dedicated ‘Go’ film, producing prints measuring 66.6mm x 53.9mm with an image area of 47mm x 46mm (for context, a full-size I-Type print measures 107mm x 88mm with an image area of 79mm x 77mm). They still have that Polaroid look, that lo-fi charm, that iconic square format. They’re just smaller.

The Go Gen 3 is the smallest camera the series has yet produced. It is clearly pitched at a younger crowd — festival-goers, beach-enjoyers, selfie-takers, and it has a selfie mirror to facilitate this. Its controls are extremely simple; you can’t control settings, you just point and shoot.

Most of this was also true of previous Go cameras, such as the Go 2, so what exactly is new here? Well, as well as the reduced size, Polaroid has outfitted the Gen 3 with a boosted flash and a redesigned lens sporting a narrower focal length of 63.75mm, compared to 51.1mm on the Gen 2. This gives you a slightly tighter perspective, gets you closer to your subjects, and makes your selfies that little bit more flattering.

So, it's a much simpler offering than the Flip, which has a fancy four-zone focus system and offers full settings control via the Polaroid app. The Polaroid Go Gen 3 does have a shutter speed range of 1/500–1sec and aperture settings of f/14.4 and f/32, but it will be selecting those for you. However, that’s not to say you’re completely without agency. You can turn the flash on and off via the flash control button, which also activates a self-timer mode and a double exposure mode — meaning you can expose the same frame twice for surreal, creative effects.

I used the Polaroid Go Gen 3 for about a week, mostly capturing shots on photo walks outdoors, but also making use of the selfie mirror to shoot some self-portraits indoors. I’ve been very impressed with the level of quality those little prints are able to display — when the light’s been right, I’ve found myself absolutely poring over images, appreciating all the subtle details that are conveyed in these tiny prints. Even in the smaller size, you still get the feeling of Polaroid’s signature lo-fi tones.

It’s not perfect. I found ultra-bright sunlight to be a problem, with the prints easily becoming blown out and overexposed on sunny days — which also seem to me like the days you’re most likely to want to use the camera. However, the relative affordability of Go film compared to I-Type makes me much more willing to play, experiment and have fun with the Go Gen 3, and not sweat my mistakes too much. Which as far as I’m concerned, is what instant photography should be all about.

Polaroid Go Gen 3: price and availability

Polaroid has been cannily stalking the Instax market share with the Go series, and part of that has been keeping the cameras nice and cheap. The Go Gen 3 comes at a reasonable launch price of $89.99 / £79.99 / AU$150, which is about the same as the comparable Instax camera, the Instax Mini 13, and similar to cheap lo-fi digital cameras like the Camp Snap.

However, as it’s a film camera, you have ongoing costs to factor in. Polaroid Go cameras use dedicated Polaroid Go film, which costs around $21.99 / £18.99 / AU$39 for a pack of sixteen shots (two cartridges of eight). Again, this is similar to Instax mini, which is slightly cheaper at around $20.99 / £14.99 / AU$34.95 for a pack of twenty.

Happily, it’s much more reasonably priced per shot than full-size I-Type film. As much as I love proper Polaroids, $18.99 / £16.99 / AU$32 for just eight shots is really quite brutal, and makes the experience a bit less fun. You don’t kick yourself for a fluffed Go shot in quite the way you do for a fluffed I-Type shot, and it makes the Polaroid Go Gen 3 a more realistic option for kids and families.

Polaroid Go Gen 3: Design

• Super small, trop mignon, fits in the palm of your hand
• Very simple operation with just three buttons
• No tripod thread, but there are lugs for a strap (and one is supplied)

Polaroid Go cameras have always been cute — it’s practically their key USP — and the Go Gen 3 is the cutest yet. The makers call it the world’s smallest instant camera, and I certainly can’t think of a challenger. This thing is tiny, sitting comfortably in the palm of a hand. It measures 106.5 x 83.8 x 64.6 mm and weighs just 8.9oz / 251g.

As such, there isn’t a whole lot of room for bells and whistles, and operation of the Polaroid Go Gen 3 is no-frills. There are just three buttons — power, shutter, and flash control, the latter of which also activates self-timer and double-exposure modes. The entire bottom of the camera is taken up by the film door, meaning there’s no tripod screw thread — best find a flat wall if you actually want to use that self-timer. There also isn’t any of the app-based camera-trigger functionality that you get with the likes of the Polaroid Flip, which also means you won’t be capturing long exposures or anything like that.

The viewfinder is small but lovely. I really enjoy looking through it; I just love that square frame. It really fires my imagination compositionally, and if I hadn’t been limited by how much film I had on hand, I would have been firing off shots left and right. Flip the camera around, and you’ll see that the front of the viewfinder is reflective. This is the selfie mirror, and I have to say, it works exactly as intended.

On the side, there’s a USB-C port for charging, and at the back are two lugs on the right and left for attaching straps, and a rope-style wrist strap is included in the box. And, well, that’s pretty much it! This is a very simple offering, something that works in its favor as a lo-fi camera for fun, friends and family. It’s a camera so simple a child could use it, something I tested by giving it to a three-year-old, who — with a little coaching — did indeed manage to capture a photo. If you’re looking for a camera with kid-appeal, I can attest that the Go Gen 3 has it in abundance.

It’s available in five stylish colorways: white, black, teal blue, ice blue and purple. As you can see, I had the white version, and as I took it out and about, it did draw a few comments and compliments from passers-by. This is a nice-looking camera.

Polaroid Go Gen 3: Performance

• Lovely detail and tonality in prints, even with small size
• But ultra-bright sun can easily overwhelm images
• Flash is always on, so you need to remember to turn it off every time if you don’t want it

When a Polaroid works, there’s nothing like it. Even in the smaller Go size, I’m really impressed by the level of detail and tonality you can get out of this thing. For me, it beats Instax any day of the week. In good light, with a well-chosen subject, you can make images that absolutely sing, and I genuinely adore some of the shots I’ve captured with this camera.

One thing that really impressed me was the selfie-taking capability. The Polaroid Go Gen 3’s reworked lens and powerful flash are designed to facilitate just that, and using the mirror as a compositional aid, I was able to capture selfie images that were vivid, detailed and true-to-life, the flash comfortably illuminating the scene without blowing it out.

Out in the big wide world, of course, you can and will run into issues. While I was testing the Gen Go 3, we were blessed with several days of glorious sunshine, and in very bright conditions — you know, the exact kind of conditions where you might find yourself saying something like, ‘Darling, it’s lovely out, shall we bring the Polaroid?’ — it’s easy for those little frames to just be overwhelmed.

More than a few of my images were quite significantly bleached by very bright sunlight, even when I remembered to turn the flash off — and you have to do this manually every single time, because the camera will always turn it back on. Even, as I discovered, halfway through a double exposure.

I’m generally a bit wary of double-exposure modes on instant cameras; I feel like most of the time, I’m likely to end up wasting a frame on a blurry, muddled mess. However, the lower cost of the Go film made me much more willing to give it a try than I ever am with my Polaroid Flip, and I ended up with a decent image — though I think it would have been better without that unexpected blast of flash halfway through.

Ultimately, as with any Polaroid camera or indeed any instant camera, the Polaroid Go Gen 3 is solid knockabout fun. You’ll get some images you like, and some that feel like a bit of a waste of film. That’s just the game, and it’s a much easier game to enjoy when the film is more reasonably priced than full-size I-Type.

Polaroid Go Gen 3: Should you buy?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

How I tested the Polaroid Go Gen 3

• I received a sample camera from the manufacturers, along with some Go film
• I took the camera on several photo excursions, mostly shooting outdoors
• I shot with and without flash, and tested the double-exposure mode

I’ve had the Polaroid Go Gen 3 with me for the past couple of weeks, and I’ve taken it on excursions around London, as well as on a trip to Bradford-upon-Avon. During that time I’ve gone through a double pack of Polaroid Go film, and have tested out the camera in different scenarios and lighting conditions, with a particular focus on seeing how it renders different colors.

I have shot outdoors and indoors, both with and without the flash. I also gave the double-exposure mode a whirl, using it to create a composite image of my own face from different angles. I shot selfies with flash using the selfie mirror as a compositional aid.

First reviewed June 2026

Camp Snap 2: two-minute review

From a simple idea, Camp Snap is building an empire. The concept of an ultra-cheap point-and-shoot digital camera with no screen — meaning you can’t see the photos you take until you download them after the fact — proved to be a massive hit, and the original Camp Snap camera has since been joined by the video-focused Camp Snap CS-8, and the upgraded CS-Pro, which doubles the resolution from 8MP to 16MP. And now, we have the Camp Snap 2.

The makers are clearly keen not to mess with success, because the Camp Snap 2 keeps the feel and concept of the original camera very much intact. This new model keeps an 8MP sensor, and it once again has no screen, just a small panel with a running shot counter, a fixed-focus lens, and an LED flash. So, you might ask, what actually is new?

A few things, but the most significant is the new ‘Filters’ button, which allows you to select from a series of vintage-style looks for your images. This was an idea already explored on the CS-Pro, but the Camp Snap 2 ups the ante with six filters rather than the Pro’s somewhat paltry four. While you have to invest some time into learning which filter is which and what they look like (since you can’t check your images mid-shoot), this makes the Camp Snap 2 a more varied and versatile camera to use than the original, adding greater scope for creativity.

This is an important addition, given that there's little room for creativity elsewhere — the lens is fixed-focus and there’s no settings control. Furthermore, the Camp Snap 2 adds a tripod mount, a 33.5mm filter thread on the lens and lugs to attach a strap (though one isn’t supplied). These additions combine to make the Snap 2 feel a bit more like a proper camera than the original ever did. Its image quality is still no great shakes, but the Camp Snap 2 offers more scope and variety without sacrificing its identity as a camera that basically anyone can use — like the original, it’s very kid-friendly.

I’ve taken the Camp Snap 2 everywhere with me for a couple of weeks, and I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. The newly slimmed-down body makes it easy to slip into a pocket and pull out for quick grab shots here and there, and with no screen, you can’t spend time fussing over them after the fact.

Normally, when a successor camera is this iterative and minor an upgrade, we reviewers tend to say things like 'If you already own the original, save your money.’ But this is a bit of a different situation. Because the Camp Snap 2 is so cheap, I’d say that if you already own, like and use the original Camp Snap — hell yeah, you might as well upgrade. The filter button adds depth and variety, and one of the most irritating features of the previous model — the shutter lag — has mostly been dealt with.

I’d also go so far as to say that for many users, this is probably a better buy than the more expensive CS-Pro. You get a more pocketable camera for a lower price, and for the types of people who are shooting with Camp Snaps, I don’t think an extra 8MP of resolution is all that useful, particularly when the sensor is not especially larger. The main reason you might prefer the Pro is that its filters are more dramatic and distinctive, though there are fewer of them.

So, if you like the original Camp Snap, and like the sound of the Camp Snap 2 — yes, I feel comfortable recommending you buy it too. At this price, why not?

Camp Snap 2: price and availability

Camp Snap hasn't got carried away with its success, and the Camp Snap 2 is still very attractively priced indeed, launching at $69.95 / £53 (around AU$130). This is at about the same level as the original Camp Snap, and comes in way less the CS-Pro, which goes for $99 / £90 (around AU$180).

Snap 2 is currently available from the Camp Snap website, and I expect before long it’ll also make its way to major retailers, the way the original Camp Snap has.

Frankly, this pricing is perfect. For a fun, knockabout digital camera that doesn’t offer much in the way of image quality and is all about the ultra-simple point-and-shoot vibes, nobody should be paying more than this. It’s a camera that pretty much anyone can instantly pick up and use, at a price that lots of people can afford.

Camp Snap 2: design

• Even slimmer and lighter than the original, just 3.8z / 108g
• All-plastic build with LED flash and fixed-focus lens
• Point-and-shoot operation, but adds button to switch filters

The original Camp Snap was already slim, but the Camp Snap 2 is even slimmer — around 15% slimmer according to the manufacturers. It is genuinely pocketable in a way that not all cameras that make ‘pocketable’ claims actually are, and at 3.8oz / 108g it’s a true featherweight. The body is all-plastic, of course, but the front has a nice textured surface for a bit of extra grip, and there’s an indentation on the rear panel for your right thumb to rest. On the sides there are lugs for attaching a strap, though no strap is supplied with the camera.

On the top you have just a single button: the shutter. This is of course a point-and-shoot, so you won’t be fiddling with settings dials. On the front you have the LED flash and the fixed wide-angle lens — and, a new addition, a 30.5mm filter thread on the lens. Though this was on the CS-Pro, it wasn’t on the original Camp Snap, and it allows you to attach screw-on filters to imbue your images with specific effects — as one reader suggested, a good fit for the Camp Snap would be a mist filter to enhance the lo-fi, retro feel of images. Camp Snap has also not-so-subtly hinted that Camp Snap-branded filters will be coming in the future.

At the rear you have the simple screen, which displays a shot-counter and lets you know which filter you currently have selected. As well as the aforementioned thumb groove, you also have the power switch, which doubles as a flash toggle, and the tinny speaker that plays the stock ‘shutter release’ sound effect. The viewfinder is a perfectly serviceable optical type — if you’ve ever used an old-school disposable, it’ll be familiar. It’s nothing special but it does the job.

To the right of the screen, there’s the new filter select button. Pressing this button allows you to cycle through the filter selection. It can also be held down for ten seconds to activate ‘Camp Lock’ — which locks the button to make the camera more useable for children (negating a scenario in which they accidentally take all their pictures in black and white). Hold down for ten more seconds to unlock. Also, while testing this, I inadvertently discovered that tapping the filter button twice in quick succession will cause the camera to take two photos. Not sure why, but there you go.

At first it seems like the Camp Snap 2 doesn’t have a battery indicator like the four LEDs on the CS-Pro. In fact, it does, but you could be forgiven for not noticing it. When you boot up the camera, the screen will briefly display a number between 0 and 100, before reverting to your current shot counter. This is, I believe, a percentage-based battery indicator. It’s not exactly advertised, and easy to miss given that your shot counter will likely be a quite similar number, but it is there.

Color-wise, the Camp Snap 2 is available in a selection of standard shades — green, black, white, yellow and brown. However, it can also be bought in a selection of rather stylish translucent ‘jelly’ colorways, evoking the early-millennium trend for translucent tech. I’ll admit that I think these versions are pretty cool, and my partner (who isn’t into cameras) independently showed me them on Instagram because she liked the look of them. I suspect they’ll be very popular.

Camp Snap 2: performance

• Image quality is a bit scuzzy, but it's part of the lo-fi charm
• Operation is very easy, and the shutter lag from the original has been dealt with
• New filters add creative options, but aren't as striking or distinctive as those on the CS-Pro

As mentioned, the Camp Snap 2 uses the same sensor as the original, so raw image quality is identical. You still get 8MP images with limited dynamic range. Blown-out highlights are a fairly common sight, as are muddy and indistinct shadows. In the latter situation, the LED flash can be helpful, though it’s nowhere near as powerful as a proper Xenon flash (which the CS-Pro has).

The new filter dial really does add some welcome creative depth. You have six options — first there’s the Standard (S) look, which produces naturalistic but warm colors. Then you have Vintage 1 to 3 (V1, V2, V3). V1 ups the saturation and has a slight purple tint; V2 is almost identical to Standard, but slightly cooler; V3 has a distinctly sunny yellow cast.

Next, there’s the black & white mode (BW), which delivers decent contrast for striking monochrome. And lastly there’s the interestingly named Analog (A). I was expecting this to be covered in artificial film grain, something that Camp Snap experimented with on the CS8. But in fact, it’s the warmest look of the bunch, with muted colors and a slight magenta cast, and it proved to be my favorite.

I was surprised by how subtle the filters were, especially coming off the back of the CS-Pro, in which they are very striking. Someone looking for a dramatic image effect might come away a little disappointed; V2 in particular is so similar to Standard that I questioned the point of having it. I think in practicality, most users will probably just figure out which is their favorite and stick with it, occasionally switching to BW when the moment calls. I can't exactly picture myself agonizing over whether this pub garden sunset deserves V2 or V3.

One oft-criticized aspect of the original Camp Snap was its shutter lag — the appreciable delay between the user pressing the shutter button and the photo actually being taken. This was significantly improved in the CS-Pro, with a more powerful processor, and in the Camp Snap 2 it seems to have been somewhat improved.

However, I would note that the lag seems to be mostly confined to the cosmetics — the shot counter and the shutter release sound effect. On a few occasions, I pressed the shutter and then heard the MIDI ‘clunk’ half a second after moving the camera away, and chastised myself for missing a shot through impatience. But later, when I reviewed the image, I seemed to have gotten away with it. And I can live with the sound effect being slow if I still have the shot in the bag.

It’s also worth noting that the Camp Snap 2 has a new feature called QuickDraw. After a period of inactivity, the camera sleeps to save power, but you can press the shutter button while it’s in this state, and it will wake and quickly take a picture. Note that I said ‘quickly’, not ‘instantly’ — it does take a moment to bestir itself. I’ve seen a few comments online complaining about shutter lag, and I actually think this is probably what they’re referring to. When the camera was awake, I experienced no real shutter lag issues.

Should I buy the Camp Snap 2?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

How I tested the Camp Snap 2

• I received a loan unit of the Camp Snap 2 for testing
• I have taken it out on a number of photo excursions, as well as to a sporting event and to a concert
• I’ve shot in variable light conditions throughout June, though with mostly very bright and sunny weather

I received a review sample of the Camp Snap 2 from the manufacturers, and had it in my pocket and about my person for a couple of weeks. I took it on excursions around London, as well as on trips south to Bradford-on-Avon, Frome and Bath, during which time I used it to capture more than 100 photos using all of the filters, in a range of weather and lighting conditions.

First reviewed June 2026

• Aura has added Google Photos support for its digital photo frames
• Albums / individual photos can be uploaded to frames from linked accounts
• Aura Frames can also be pre-loaded with existing Google Photo albums

Aura features heavily in my best digital photo frames guide. In fact, I have two of its frames in my home; the Ink with its natural, print-like E Ink display, and my absolute favorite, the punchy and classy Walden. Now, as a Google user, those frames just got better with the addition of Google Photos integration.

To add the feature, you'll need the Aura app (which is super handy for syncing frames anyway). In the app, select the 'Add Photos' option, tap 'Connect' on Google Photos, sign into your Google account, and then select which albums / individual photos you'd like to add. It's as simple as that.

Those photos will be added to your frame, and any new photos added to albums later will be included automatically.

Aura frames are collaborative too, in that you can invite family and friends to add their own photos to a frame, from anywhere in the world through the cloud. There are plenty more ways to add images besides the Aura app and now Google Photos, including iCloud, email, web and even by text message.

I've enjoyed personalizing an Aura frame as a gift before; photos can be pre-loaded to a frame, and that now goes for the new Google Photos integration too.

Photos shared, the proper way

I regularly find myself huddled around a phone with my wife and children when curated memories pop up from our Google Photos albums. We've got years worth of memories stored in a Google Photos account, with new photos added automatically.

As much as I love the spontaneity of our family slideshows around the small screen of a phone, there's something that little bit more special seeing those photos in a slick wall-mounted frame or one on a sideboard.

This Aura update, therefore, massively improves my experience with Aura frames, especially for displaying family memories. Most Aura frames also play video with sound, but not the Ink frame, which has the most authentic print-like quality, but is photo-only.

If you're totally new to digital photo frames, I've included links to the best deals for my favortire Aura frames below, and for more buying advice, check out my digital photo frames guide.

It's too early to draw firm conclusions about Apple's take on AI in the iOS 27 Dev beta, but I have been busy trying out new features, including the Apple Intelligence image-altering tools in Photos: specifically, Spatial Reframing and Extend.

I've already had some fun with both, and was immediately impressed with their raw power. To generatively alter your images, Apple uses a powerful private-compute cloud-based diffusion model built, in part, with Google. It's unlike any AI Apple has ever presented before, and, as I've written, it opens Apple up to a lot of questions about whether it still prizes image truth over aesthetics.

I'm not here, though, to critique these tools. After all, this is the developer beta, and some tools and features will likely change quite a bit before they arrive fully baked on, we expect, the iPhone 18 in September.

Still, this platform update marks the beginning of Apple's journey as a card-carrying AI citizen, fully capable of standing alongside OpenAI and partner Google. Siri can talk and pay attention, Image Playground can generate images from whole cloth, and Photos can alter and extend photos with a gesture.

Having spent time with Spatial Reframing and Extend, I remain somewhat startled at just how far Apple is taking the AI image-altering strategy. Spatial reframing, for instance, lets you turn photo subjects to see elements the camera never saw or captured.

Seeing beyond the edge

I've had more fun with Extend, though, not necessarily because I plan on filling in the lost information in my photos, but thanks to how Apple's image-generation tools guess at what was never captured in the first place.

The thing about a tool like Extend is that, if you're using your own photos, you already know what was cropped out. Perhaps you chose that framing, but as Apple noted in its keynote, it can be difficult to frame a portrait-mode photo in a landscape frame. Sometimes you need those extra bits.

Apple's approach for the moment appears to be "let guesswork be your guide." It doesn't know what's missing, but Apple Intelligence can use its smarts to read the rest of the image and fill in the blanks.

To see how this early version is doing, I took a bunch of photos of things and places, doing both a tight and a wide shot. In other words, I shot what was really there, and then cropped in to see just a smaller section. The goal: how close could Photo's Extend tool come to filling in the blanks?

Considering what it had to work with, Photo Extend did a pretty good job, though a couple of the results were unintentionally comical.

One other thing I learned is that the Extend tool in the current version of iOS 27 Dev Beta will not extend, for instance, body parts. I took a photo of my hand, cropping out a few fingers, but no matter what I did, the app wouldn't extend the frame to fill in the rest of my hand. This is actually good news; I had worries about ending up with six fingers.

I'm also learning that Extend likes order. It seems almost allergic to clutter, so whatever it does generate is usually clean, orderly, and has as few elements as possible.

Below are some examples of real wide shots alongside the more tightly framed ones, where I let Apple Intelligence Extend do its thing. If you hadn't seen the originals, you might never know that significant portions of the images were generated by AI.

For the majority of these images, I took one photo for which I stepped back enough to capture more of the scene, then I took a second, tighter photo. I applied Extend to the latter image, and then compared Apple Intelligence's guesswork to reality. You can see the original, unextended photo in the center.

Extending the frame and stretching reality

This is the only image where I took just one photo and extended it with Apple Intelligence's latest Photo tools. This is a dev beta, so I won't offer much criticism, but some might take issue with the Empire State Building redesign.

The home office

On the left, you can see my home office as it is. The orchid is a plant I've nurtured for years (I even fully replanted it almost 18 months ago). Extend's gift is that it tries to leave original reality alone, but the more information you ask it to fill in, the wilder the flights of fancy.

I love, for instance, that my closet now has three doors, and I have been staring at the glass door on the right for hours. What is that? Why did Extend add it? No matter; it's early days, and these generative skills are impressive.

Foliage

I think Extend already has a solid grasp of how plants and trees work, and shows off that knowledge here. The extended tree looks quite realistic. As for the sky, it now has a rather dramatic, almost beatific look. My shed got an odd redesign.

Guitar on the wall

The guitar work shows off a little of Extend's penchant for cleanliness and order. The suggestion of a lampshade is turned into a perfectly round, brightly colored tube, and, based on the two visible supports, it might no longer be a lampshade.

The blinds also got a bit of a cleanup. As for my guitar, it looks essentially the same. In other words, Extend appears to be, even in Dev Beta form, ensuring that the image's original subject remains — even if extended a bit — essentially untouched.

Office shelf

Something as busy as my office shelf can present challenges for any generative system — so many objects, so many options.

I took a picture (at left) of the actual shelf, and you can see the second, tighter photo in the center, and then the extended image on the right.

It makes sense that in the extended photo, Extend chose order over my clutter, but the best part is the transformation of the USS Enterprise into a quasi-jetliner. I think a couple of book titles also got a rewrite.

Backyard furniture

Extend did a nice job of decluttering my backyard space. I noticed that when Extend detects a cube-shaped object (in this case, my fire pit), it will just turn it into a featureless box, instead of trying too hard to guess.

Jetliner

I was impressed with how effectively Extend completed the jetliner. Notice, though, how once again it assumes order where, in truth, there's chaos.

There you have it — some fun, early experiments with Apple Intelligence's newest and most powerful image generation tools. That it does so well at the dev stage is especially encouraging, since Apple still has months to refine it.

Ultimately, I don't think people will push Extend as far as I have. They may only use it to recenter a subject, adding just a few inches to one side or another, or to extend a solid background or even an evening sky, efforts that won't detract from or alter the subject.

How do you think you'll use these new Apple Intelligence Photo tools? Let me know in the comments below.

I don't know about you, but my fridge at home is decorated with numerous snapshots of family and friends spanning many years, precariously fixed in place with souvenir fridge magnets. It's into this mix that I've recently added a few Vidabay Snaps.

A Vidabay Snap looks like an instant-film print, but it is in fact a tiny, magnetic E ink display. So, unlike an actual print, you can change the picture displayed and easily attach it to a range of surfaces.

It's optimized for iPhone (and compatible with various Android devices), and any image from your gallery can be uploaded via the (free) Vidabay app using NFC, whenever you like.

Think of Vidabay Snaps as, like, tiny digital photo frames, just set within a Polaroid-style border, and with an E Ink display that's much more basic than the fabulous Aura Ink.

Vidabay Snaps are available from the Vidabay website in white, black, yellow or red (see below), with prices starting at $29.99 for a single Snap (was $35.99) or $86.99 for a pack of three (was $99.99). Vidabay ships to most regions, including the UK and Australia, and price is calculated at checkout.

A genuine instant print from the likes of a Polaroid Go Gen 3 or Fujifilm Instax Mini 13 costs around $1 / £0.80 / AU$1,50 a go — much cheaper than a Vidabay Snap. Even pricier (and larger) formats like Polaroid I-Type are around $3 / £2.50 / AU$4.50 per print, while regular photo prints from the lab are typically the cheapest of the lot. However, the image on a Snap can be changed as often as you like.

I have a small collection of the best instant cameras, and am not short of instant prints to put on my walls (and fridge). And now that it's been a month since I got my Vidabay Snaps, I can tell you they don't hold the same magic as an instant print.

My experience using Vidabay Snaps with an Android phone has been mixed, which I'll unpack next, but there's one fundamental flaw to the product — the frames don't display the color blue (not for me, anyway), which is very limiting for color images.

However, I can totally appreciate these neat, low-cost E Ink devices for what they are, and the concept is pretty well executed. And even though they feel pricey compared to prints, I believe Vidabay Snaps are great little gifts. Let's take a look at how they work.

How to get started

To get started, you need to pair a Vidabay Snap with your NFC-enabled device — they're optimized for iPhone, but I've done the whole process with an Android phone. Once that's done, you select the desired picture from your phone's gallery, choose the paired Snap, and then hold the two devices together to upload to the frame.

Using a recent Oppo Find X9 Ultra phone, I found the NFC connection for image uploads — which takes around 30 seconds to complete — exceptionally fiddly, but persevered for around 15 attempts each time before my first success.

The trick is locating NFC in your device, and Vidabay does point out that not all Android devices will work. The company says there's a Bluetooth dock on the way, which will simplify the process and widen compatibility for Android. Until then, you'll need to check with Vidabay if your device is compatible. I haven't tried a Snap with an iPhone, but I imagine the process will be much easier.

The Snap's display flickers as the uploading image appears, and then there you have it — a lo-fi E ink (aka E Paper) image in a handy magnetic display.

E ink displays like this are typically lo-fi — don't expect fine detail or a vibrant and wide color range. Quite the opposite, they don't even display the color blue, meaning that in a photo of my son with two teammates in their blue-and-black-striped soccer gear, the jerseys were essentially monochrome. You can imagine what happened when I attempted to load a photo of a sailboat out on the water on a sunny day. The screenshot (above) demonstrates the difference in quality between an original image and how it appears loaded on a Snap.

I picked up five Vidabay Snaps and had mixed success. Three of the five loaded fine (after several attempts); the other two refused to load in color, period, and I eventually gave up.

The app could also do with some work; there's no way of recomposing / cropping the photo within the square frame, nor can you rename a frame once it's registered. I had five frames all identically named, making it extremely difficult to track which frame was which in the app. Writing a number on the back of each one with a Sharpie was my solution.

Each Vidabay Snap has a magnetic back for attaching to surfaces like a fridge. It's also fitted with NFC for image uploads and charging. Being a tiny E Ink display, it consumes next to no power – a true lo-fi product. An individual Snap can be purchased with a leatherette tag to attach to something like your bag, and this bundle costs $48.99.

If you have that sentimental person in your life who happens to be an iPhone user, then Vidabay Snap is an easy, low-cost gift recommendation. Until the Bluetooth dock lands and it proves to address my user experience issues, I'm hesitant to recommend the product for Android users.

• Polaroid has announced the third generation of its tiny 'Go' series of instant cameras, the smallest yet.
• Like previous models, it uses Polaroid's dedicated 'Go' film, a smaller format producing 2.6" x 2.1" prints
• With a selfie mirror and self-timer for group shots, the Go 3 is courting a younger user

Summer is here, festival season is upon us, and Polaroid has unveiled what it's hoping is the perfect camera for it all. The Polaroid Go Generation 3 is the latest, and smallest, in the rejuvenated firm's line of tiny instant-film cameras, shooting and printing smaller-format photos in the iconic square Polaroid format.

With research indicating that many members of Gen Z are fatigued by modern tech, the Polaroid Go Gen 3 is pitched as a tactile and authentic means of experiencing (and documenting) an 'analog summer'. It's small enough to take to concerts and festivals and on road trips, and Polaroid is betting that its lo-fi aesthetics will charm a screen-weary generation.

Preceded by the Polaroid Go 2 in 2024, this new version is apparently somehow even smaller. Polaroid hasn't yet provided precise size and weight specs, though the firm is calling it 'the world's smallest instant analog camera'. It uses the same dedicated Polaroid Go film, which produces prints measuring 66.6mm x 53.9mm (2.623" x 2.122"), with an image area of 47mm x 46mm (1.851" x 1.811"). This is about four times smaller than the standard I-Type format.

The Go Gen 3 has a selfie mirror, a self-timer for group shots and a double-exposure mode — which allows you to expose the same frame twice for creative effects. All this was true of the Go 2 as well, and indeed, it sounds like the Go Gen 3 is going to be a very similar point-and-shoot affair, with fixed focus and fully automatic settings. I'll be able to confirm this once my review sample arrives — en route at the time of writing.

It'll be available from today in a choice of five colors — white, black, teal blue, ice blue or purple — at a starting price of $89.99 / £79.99 (around AU$150).

Camera of the summer? It could be!

I'm a big Polaroid fan — I love instant photography and I own a Polaroid Flip. Even so, I can admit that the Polaroid Go Gen 3 doesn't look like the most exciting release, more an iterative update on the Go 2. And far as I can see from inspecting the early release materials, the main iteration seems to be that it's a bit smaller.

Still, I think in many respects it has the makings of a hit. Polaroid is not wrong to point out that many younger people are craving low-tech, lo-fi experiences, as demonstrated by recent hits like the Camp Snap and the RewindPix. And people like cute cameras too, as seen in the huge viral success of the Kodak Charmera keychain camera.

Plus, there's the perennial popularity of Polaroid's key rival in the instant photography space: Fujifilm Instax cameras, which consistently sell like hot-cakes.

With its cute, pocketable form factor, the Go Gen 3 could quite easily take a big bite out of Fujifilm Instax's lunch. It's priced at about the same level as the Instax mini 12, and the price of its 'Go' film is comparable to Instax mini. With Go film you get 16 shots for $21.99 / £18.99, while Instax mini will give you 20 shots for around $20.99 / £14.99.

(This is a sharp contrast to the larger I-Type film — as much as I love it, forking out $18.99 / £16.99 for just eight shots is a bitter pill.)

I'll reserve full judgement on the Polaroid Go Gen 3 until I've been hands-on with it for myself, but for now, I think Polaroid is in the right place at the right time for a storming success. Don't be surprised if you see quite a few of these little cameras at festivals and on beaches this year...

Camp Snap CS-Pro: two-minute review

Forget your high-resolution mirrorless camera, your beautiful full-frame sensors — 2026 is the year of the cheap compact camera! Retro-styled, ultra-affordable cameras are back in a big way, following greatly exaggerated rumors of their death at the hands of the smartphone.

The original Camp Snap, released in 2023, was one of the big beneficiaries of this trend. A digital compact costing around $59 / £65, its USP was a feature that it didn't have – a screen. By removing the LCD, the camera evoked the feeling of shooting with an old film disposable — you literally could not see the images you'd taken until you downloaded them onto your computer, just as you couldn't see your images from a disposable until they came back from the development lab.

The Camp Snap CS-Pro, or Camp Snap Pro, is an upgrade of the original, adding a few improvements and gaining a refreshing visual makeover that calls to mind premium compacts like the Fujifilm X100VI. The core concept hasn't changed, though; it's still a screen-free digital compact camera, with a small sensor that's going to produce images that are almost certainly less detailed and high-quality than the ones produced by your phone. But if you're looking for top-notch quality, you are very much missing the point.

The guts of the camera are built around a 1/3.06-inch sensor with 16MP of resolution — double the pixel count of the 8MP original Camp Snap. This sensor is paired with a fixed-focus lens with an equivalent focal length of 22.5mm — nice and wide to fit plenty in the scene — and a fixed aperture of f/2.2. Just as with the original Camp Snap, there's nothing in the way of settings controls; you point, you shoot.

Well, not quite nothing. The CS-Pro adds a dial to its top plate, which provides access to a number of filmic looks. As well as the Standard (STD) look, you also have VTG-1 and VTG-2 ('VTG' meaning 'vintage'), which are stylized color filters that give your image a distinct and decidedly retro-style look. VTG-1 provides an overall warm tone, while VTG-2 pumps up blues and yellows for a hyper-saturated look (think Kodak Ultramax film). Finally, you have the monochrome 'B&W' dial.

So, it's not a reinvention of the Camp Snap wheel. Far from it. Having used the CS-Pro on a few photographic excursions over the past few weeks, I can safely say that if the original Camp Snap wasn't your cup of tea, the CS-Pro won't be either. The resolution upgrade adds a bit of detail and definition, but the small 1/3.06-inch sensor still limits its dynamic range and ability to handle contrasting light situations. It's going to get blown out of the water by even your smartphone, never mind a compact with a proper-sized sensor like the 1-inch chip in the new Panasonic Lumix TZ300 / ZS300.

But again, quality isn't the point. The Camp Snap was a knockabout hit of nostalgic fun for a generation raised on disposable film cameras and cheap digital compacts, and the CS-Pro is all those things too. Once again, the screen-free design serves to create a relaxed shooting experience, and adds a sense of anticipation that recalls the good old days of waiting for your film to come back from the chemist. And if some of your shots turn out to be a bit crap (and they will) — who cares? It's all part of the fun.

I'm glad that Camp Snap didn't let success go to its head and come out with too expensive a camera. By keeping its price to two figures, the CS-Pro sits firmly in the realm of fun, a camera so simple that a child can use it, but with enough retro charm and style to appeal to adults.

Camp Snap CS-Pro: price and availability

The CS-Pro is available from Camp Snap's website. Its initial launch price is $99 / £90 (around AU$180), but discounts are frequent — in the UK, at time of writing, it's currently sitting at £68. This is a little more expensive than the original Camp Snap, but not by much – Camp Snap are clearly aware that affordability is a big part of their camera's USP and aren't messing with it. This was the main mistake I felt the firm made with its Super 8-aping CS-8 video camera — at a starting price of $199 / £152, it was just a bit too expensive for a low-quality camera whose main attraction was its novelty factor.

Even with the slight uptick in price, the CS-Pro is one of the most affordable options in the retro-styled digital compact arena. It's cheaper than the more complex and sophisticated RewindPix, which offers a huge range of film-style filters via its app-based digital darkroom.

Camp Snap CS-Pro: design

• Styled after popular premium compacts like the Fujifilm X100
• All-plastic build, lightweight and doesn't feel too robust
• Point-and-shoot operation, with dial for selectable retro filters

As mentioned, the Camp Snap CS-Pro looks at first glance a lot like a premium retro compact in the Fujifilm X100 series, with its black body and silver trim. However, if you were to actually hold both cameras side by side, this illusion would fall apart very quickly. Fujifilm's cameras are gorgeous, all-metal things, their build reflecting their four-figure price tags. The CS-Pro, meanwhile, consists of nothing but plastic and more plastic. It feels cheap, because it is cheap, and doesn't even pull the RewindPix's trick of adding internal metal weights for a bit of extra heft.

Interface-wise, on the top plate you have just the shutter button and the dial with the selectable film filters, the latter of which also functions as the on/off switch. On the rear you have a simple LCD panel that provides a running shot counter — useful if you're a forgetful sort and aren't sure when you last offloaded your pictures.

Beside the screen, you may notice two rows of small holes — amusingly, these are actually for a speaker, which plays recorded stock sounds when the camera is turned off and on and when the shutter is fired. These tinny, generic 'clunks' sound like they were downloaded from a website with a name like 'freemidisoundfx.com', and for all I know they probably were. Unnecessary, but harmless — and you can turn them off.

In the bottom corner is a row of four LEDs which serve as battery indicators — and I must say, I've been shooting with the Camp Snap for weeks without charging it once, and my battery level is still very healthy. Camp Snap rates the battery to 500 shots, and I believe it.

In the top-left corner is the optical viewfinder. It's a tiny thing — a far cry from the big, lovely viewfinder on the RewindPix — and the fact that it's both above and to the left of the lens means what you see through it bears only a passing resemblance to what your captured image is going to look like.

On the front, beside the viewfinder, there's a flash. One of the common complaints about the original Camp Snap was the rather weak-beer effort of its piddly LED flash, and the manufacturer has compensated in spades by throwing in a powerful Xenon flash. I'll talk more about this in the next section, but for now it's worth noting that a switch on the front allows you to toggle it between 'Off', 'Auto' and 'Forced'.

Also, surprisingly, the lens on the front has a 37mm filter thread, meaning you can attach protective UV filters, NDs, polarisers or special-effects filters if you have them in the corresponding size. I'm going to be honest — I think the crossover between 'Camp Snap buyers' and 'lens-based filter enjoyers' is vanishingly small, and I find it hard to imagine many people using this feature. But I'm not complaining.

There are lugs for a strap, but no strap is included in the package — no pouch or case either, though Camp Snap did at least find room to pack in a USB-C cable for charging. The port is located on the bottom of the camera, along with a screw thread for mounting on a tripod, and a screwed-on panel that houses the built-in 4GB micro SD card, which you can unscrew to access directly if needed.

Camp Snap CS-Pro: performance

• Images are bright and punchy, but fine detail is lacking, and it can't handle high lighting contrast
• While fixed-focus lens makes operation easy, it can be creatively limiting, and there's no close-up ability
• Xenon flash is ludicrously overpowered — you can thankfully stick with the sensible 'Auto' setting

I'll say it straight out — I find my images from the CS-Pro to be very likeable. Are they high-quality? Absolutely not. They do not stand up to close scrutiny on a pixel level, and I would not make prints from them. But in good light, the CS-Pro produces images with bright, punchy colors — vivid blue skies, pleasant greens, and rich, golden sun.

The wide lens allows you to reliably fit plenty into the frame. Running a few shots helps you get used to finding the sweet spot of distance from your subject — being too close gets you a blurry mess. As a rule, if you're trying to capture an image of a specific object, animal or person, you want at least a meter's distance. Close-ups are a no-no, and you're not going to get creative effects like shallow depth of field.

The extra megapixels on the sensor has definitely improved matters compared to the original Camp Snap, with landscape-style images in particular looking much better thanks to greater detail for delineating distant subjects. However, the small size of the sensor means that dynamic range is still an Achilles' heel. Contrasty light situations are pretty much a no-go – you're all but guaranteed to get blown-out white highlights, or murky impenetrable shadows, or if you're really up against it, both. There's just a physical limit to the kinds of shooting situations the CS-Pro can handle.

However, one thing that can help matters here is the filter dial. Giving your images a retro glow with VTG-1 or VTG-2 can be a handy way to make a blown-out highlight look like an artistic choice, rather than a technological limitation. Indeed, I am generally a fan of the filter dial, even if I do think offering just three options other than the Standard look is rather tight-fisted.

VTG-1 is lovely and warm — great for sunny evenings. I can see it getting a lot of use in pub gardens and the like. VTG-2 is bright and saturated, giving your images just a bit more zing; like Kodak Ultramax, I'd take it to a day at the beach. And the B&W filter delivers a nice level of tonal contrast for moody monochrome, ideal for days when the weather is overcast and uninspiring. Dull light makes Camp Snap images very dull indeed, and the B&W filter is an excellent way to get around this.

As mentioned, a few more filters would have been nice by default — though there is a library of community-made filters to explore, as well as the option to create your own, so that does have the potential to extend the camera's lease on life. Camp Snap also sells its own downloadable add-on packs of filters, which goes some way to explain why there are so few to begin with.

I was excited by the idea of the Xenon flash, but having tested it out, I feel that a hammer is being used to crack a nut here. It is an incredibly powerful unit, much more powerful than the CS-Pro needs, frankly, and every time I have set it to the full-power 'Forced' mode, I have ended up with a blown-out, overexposed mess of an image. Thankfully, the 'Auto' mode does much better, providing balanced exposures that illuminate the subject well.

It also merits mentioning that the shooting experience of the CS-Pro is nice and brisk. One of the common complaints about the original Camp Snap was that it had some truly deleterious shutter lag. This has been corrected for the CS-Pro thanks to an upgraded processor. While there's no burst mode per se, I was able to fire off successive shots at a rate of about 1 per second — the only feature that fell behind, amusingly, was the artificial free-midi-download shutter-release noise. And I can live with that.

Should I buy the Camp Snap CS-Pro?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

How I tested the Camp Snap CS-Pro

• I received a loan unit of the Camp Snap CS-Pro for testing
• I have taken it out on a number of photo excursions in London and on a short rural mini-break
• I’ve shot in variable light conditions throughout April and May, with a mixture of bright and overcast weather

So far, I've used the Camp Snap CS-Pro to capture more than 100 images, over a period of several weeks, during which time I took it on several days out in London as well as on a countryside mini-break in Gloucestershire, UK. The weather was quite variable during my time with the camera, though predominantly bright and sunny. I used the CS-Pro indoors and outdoors, and aimed to capture a broad range of subjects and situations.

First reviewed May 2026

RewindPix: two-minute review

It's 2026, and retro is in. To be fair, retro is never not in — the definition of what's currently 'retro' just changes. Right now, in photography, the current retro hotness is the idea of a digital camera that 'takes pictures like film'. This is a very popular idea at the moment, and many cameras have tried to deliver it, from Fujifilm's expensive analog love letter the X half, to cheaper offerings like the screen-free Camp Snap.

Into the cheaper end of this arena steps the RewindPix PS135. Funded on Kickstarter, it's the brainchild of former tech worker Xiao Liu, who had grown frustrated with what he viewed as the poor quality of most analog-like digital cameras, and set out to create the new benchmark for a digital camera that feels like shooting film. The camera that I've been out shooting with over the past couple of weeks is the result.

At first blush, it might not be obvious what's different about the RewindPix. It's a plastic-bodied digital compact, equipped with a 13MP Sony-made sensor, a fixed 35mm equivalent lens, a flash and a viewfinder. So far, so standard, besides a cutesy wheel that you have to wind on between photos.

The real trick comes in the RewindPix companion app. Through this app, you have access to a huge number of film-like filters to imbue your images with specific look. Color-rich looks simulating slide stocks like Fujifilm Velvia; crunchy black & white looks; smooth-toned color looks that put one in mind of Kodak Portra; intense pink- and purple-hued looks that resemble specialist Lomography films – there's a lot in there.

From the selection, you can pick three of these looks, 'load' them into your camera as a 'roll' of 36 shots, and switch between them as you shoot. Once you've hit your 36, you reconnect to the app to 'unload' your shots and see what they look like (remember, the camera has no screen). From there, you can reload with three new film stocks, and repeat.

It sounds a bit nuts. And it kind of is. But honestly – it works.

Having spent a considerable amount of time with the RewindPix, I'm not completely without my reservations, but I am quite charmed. One aspect of shooting film that none of the film-like digital compacts have managed to recreate for me is the excitement – that nervous anticipation of loading a new stock, and seeing what the results will be. Not even a beautiful piece of premium kit like the Fujifilm X100VI can give you that.

The RewindPix is as close as I've ever come to that feeling with a digital camera. That film-look selection screen is incredibly addictive; I genuinely felt like a kid in a candy store, and was carefully considering my choices every time I went back to reload. The shots certainly aren't perfect, and I came away with a share of duds as well as images I liked – but that's what happens when I shoot film, too.

Lightweight and well-designed, with a considerable fun factor, the RewindPix is a winner for the price. And with the potential for more film looks to be added to its repertoire via app updates, I can see it having long-term appeal, too.

RewindPix: price and availability

The RewindPix is still in pre-release, following a mind-blowingly successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter where it incinerated its initial $15,000 (£11,214) funding goal to the tune of more than $1.1 million (more than £800,000) at time of writing. You can still pledge a minimum of $119 (about £89) to secure yourself a camera, though shipping timelines are still to be confirmed.

I think this is a good price, pretty much exactly where a retro-styled digital compact should be pitched. It's a little more expensive than the Camp Snap, though offers considerably more functionality, and is much cheaper than the overpriced Fujifilm X half.

RewindPix: design

• All-plastic build, but has a satisfying weight to it
• Beautiful big optical viewfinder
• Operates like a real film camera, complete with wind-on wheel

Those who aren't immune to a bit of retro kitsch (guilty) will likely be very charmed by the look of the RewindPix. It physically resembles the old-school analog compacts it's aping, with a simple rectangular body design that's centered around a big, round fixed lens in the versatile 35mm focal length. The lens also has a 43mm filter thread.

On the top plate of the camera is a big, honking, unmistakeable red shutter-release button (swappable to other colors), next to a shoe mount for attaching flash units if desired. The RewindPix does have its own built-in flash, and it's a proper Xenon flash, not an LED, meaning it fires with the proper level of intensity. You activate it via the sliding switch on the front of the camera body. On the bottom there's also a standard screw thread for use with a tripod.

Sitting at the top left is one of my favorite features: the big, beautiful optical viewfinder. So many new compacts — digital and analog — come equipped with tiny, boxy, fiddly viewfinders that are awkward and unsatisfying to compose an image with. Not so with the the RewindPix. You get a beautifully clear view of your scene, marked with framing lines. Of course, the fact that it's offset from the lens means that it only semi-accurately represents what your image is going to look like — but that's the case with all compacts in this mode.

Elsewhere, there's a genuine wind-on wheel, just as you'd find in a real film compact, and you do actually need to wind it on between frames. The RewindPix isn't the first digital camera to tap this well — the X half did the same thing with its wind-on lever, but personally I find this level of kitsch a lot more endearing in a $119 camera than I do in an $849 one.

In the center of the rear of the camera is a small LCD screen that tells you which film filter you're using and how many shots you've taken, and next to it is the sliding 'C' switch that lets you toggle between your three loaded filters. On the bottom left is the Wi-Fi button for connecting the camera to your phone, and on the bottom right is the 'M' button that switches to 'In-camera' mode if you don't want to fuss with the filters (more on that later).

Despite its all-plastic build, the RewindPix has a surprising amount of heft to it. There's a reason for this: two metal weights have been placed inside the body. According to RewindPix, this is for stabilizing the camera and balancing its weight, and is not an attempt to make the camera feel more premium than it is — but doing the former does still accomplish the latter.

The design is charming, and meets the brief of what it needs to be almost perfectly. If someone described the RewindPix to you then asked you to sketch what you thought it looked like, you'd probably end up drawing something that looks almost exactly like the real thing. It's what it needs to be! Nothing wrong with that.

I do have a gripe. I've listed all the buttons and controls on the RewindPix's body, and the observant among you may have noticed that I didn't mention a power button. That's because it doesn't have one. You turn the RewindPix on by winding the shot-advance wheel, and it turns itself off after a period of inactivity.

Now, one of the reasons I enjoy shooting with analog compacts like the Olympus XA2 is that I can always be ready. I can walk around with the camera in one hand, my finger on the shutter button, and the second I see something to capture, I can raise the camera, shoot, then wind on to be ready for the next. Many, many times, I raised the RewindPix and fired the shutter button to capture a moment, only to discover it had turned itself off.

Sure, most digital cameras have an auto power-off feature – but most offer a quicker startup solution than winding a geared wheel (and will also let you turn that feature off if desired). If the RewindPix is going to pretend to be a film compact, I'm going to use it like one, and the ability to be 'always-ready' is one of an analog compact camera's chief advantages, in my opinion. If RewindPix are taking update requests, a way to disable the auto power-off is top of my wishlist.

RewindPix: performance

• App-based selection of films is brilliantly addictive
• Image quality is decent, if unspectacular – film-based filters do much to punch up images
• Settings are fixed, which is great for ease of use, but can be creatively limiting

The RewindPix is unavoidably a bit fiddly, the way all phone-interacting cameras are. You have to connect to the camera's independent Wi-Fi network to load your film selections, then disconnect to shoot, then connect again to unload. I was using a beta of the Android version of the app (the full version has since been released), and it was mostly stable – though I did experience a connection drop that caused an image to disappear during the unloading process.

The app is the only way to fully engage with the film-simulation process. The camera has 4GB of pre-installed memory, and you can access your shots by plugging it in via the USB-C cable; however, the majority of film looks are stored in the app and applied there, so you need to use the app to get the full experience.

Image quality is firmly in the realm of good enough. The 13MP sensor is a tiny 1/3.06-inch type, and the lens has a fixed f/2.2 aperture with four glass elements and two plastic ones. The level of detail is good enough for Instagram and other forms of online sharing, but isn’t at the level where you’ll be making prints from your images. Dynamic range is okay but not the best — blown-out highlights and murky shadows are a common sight. A well-chosen film look can help this look like artful choice rather than a technical limitation.

A stroke of design genius was the decision to allow you to load three films at a time, rather than just one. Having to complete the unloading and reloading process every time I wanted to try a new filter would have been a tedious chore; but having three at once is thrilling. It makes you much more flexible, with options for different lighting conditions, versus when shooting actual film where you must pick one roll of film at a time — I’ve been out with B&W film loaded while the light is rich and golden, or out with expensive color film on a muted day of drab, nothing-y light.

Whereas with the RewindPix, you can swap from one to the other with a simple switch of the ‘C’ slider. I found my preferred load out was generally to set C1 as a standard colour film look, C2 as a crazy or dramatic color look such as infrared or purple tint, and C3 as a B&W look. This made me feel well-equipped for all shooting situations – good and poor weather, indoors and outdoors.

The RewindPix does have the option of the ‘In Camera’ mode, activated by pressing the ‘M’ button on the rear of the camera. This allows it to function more like a conventional compact – there’s no requirement for a phone connection or a limited ‘roll’ of 36. It just shoots indefinitely, with three filter options: Sunny Warm, Breezy Cool and Simply Mono. (Pro tip: if the app-based functions aren’t working and you can’t figure out why, it is possible you have activated In Camera mode by mistake. I learn these things so you don’t have to).

Shots taken using In Camera mode can be accessed directly from the card, and will have the filters applied, meaning the camera can function without a phone. Though honestly, this mode is a lot less fun, and removes most of the RewindPix’s key USPs.

As this is a point-and-shoot compact, settings are not user-controllable. The shutter speed is variable — the specs say it can go as slow as 1sec, though RewindPix’s promotional material says it’s fixed at a sensible minimum of 1/60sec. This is slower than normal for point-and-shoots (a fixed setting of 1/125sec is more common), and is perfectly fine for handheld shooting, but does mean you have to take a little more care that you’re holding the camera steady; a few of my more optimistic one-handed grab shots came out blurry and useless. I think the trade-off is worth it, as 1/60sec gives the camera a bit more latitude in low light, but it’s worth being aware of. Like any tool, you have to get used to its quirks.

Ultimately, the RewindPix is unadulterated fun. It really is. The anticipation that builds up between loading the film looks and seeing how they come out, for me, is as close as digital photography has ever come to the excitement of waiting for film scans to come back from the darkroom. I shot more images than I needed to for this review, purely because I was enjoying myself, and because I wanted to see what the different film filters looked like. (What the hell is ‘The Hotel’? Only one way to find out!)

Can I see myself using it long-term, or does it feel like the novelty will wear off? I’m not sure, though I am still enjoying the camera after a couple of weeks’ of heavy use. The fact that RewindPix will be able to add new film looks via firmware updates to the app promises to extend the camera’s lease on life, as will the option to create your own filters. This requires upgrading to ‘Pro’, though you’ll be relieved to learn that this requires only a one-time cost of $9.90, not a subscription.

The small sensor, fixed-focus prime lens and lack of a settings control all place limits on the quality of images you can create with the RewindPix, as well as the types of images (you won’t be able to shoot portrait-style images with a shallow depth of field, for instance). However, I think the camera is sensibly priced for its type, and the huge groundswell of support for RewindPix on Kickstarter demonstrates that there is clearly an appetite for the idea.

Only time will tell whether the RewindPix sees mass adoption, and whether the many people who have been charmed by the concept are still using the camera years down the line. But I’d say if you like the sound of what I’ve described here, you have very little to lose by heading to RewindPix’s Kickstarter and securing a camera to try out for yourself.

Should I buy the RewindPix?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

How I tested the RewindPix

• I received a loan unit of the RewindPix for testing, and used a beta version of the app, which has since released officially.
• I’ve run three 'rolls' of film through the camera, as well as taking a number of images using the 'In Camera' mode.
• I’ve shot in variable light conditions and have taken the camera to several locations around London.

I've used the RewindPix to capture more than 200 images over a period of two weeks. I've used a beta version of the RewindPix app to apply several choices from the selection of film looks available, and have also spent some time shooting in the simpler 'In Camera' mode. I used the camera in various areas of London, predominantly focused on Hackney and the City, during which time the weather changed frequently between bright sunshine and overcast with showers.

First reviewed May 2026

There's an open nature reserve with a wetland, encircled by woodland, about a 10-minute drive from my house, and it’s one of my favorite places to go running. Sunrise on a cold morning here can be magical for photography too — the sun-kissed mist hovering over the water makes for dreamy conditions.

Throughout the year, the nature reserve attracts a range of migratory and rare species of birds, making it a popular spot for birding — people will drive a good hour or more to visit with their long lenses, spotting scopes and binoculars.

I've never tried serious bird photography myself, chiefly because I'm way too young for that (joking), but also because the longest lens I've ever owned is a 70-200mm, which doesn't get me nearly close enough.

Recently, however, I had the chance to test Sony's longest lens, the FE 400-800mm F6.3-8 G OSS, and the idea of trying bird photography suddenly became very appealing.

I paired the super-telephoto zoom lens with the new Sony A7R VI. My logic was that the camera’s stellar bird-detection autofocus skills, blazing-fast shooting speeds of up to 30fps, and 66.8MP stacked sensor were perfect for bird photography when armed with the 400-800mm focal length.

One visit led to another, and before I knew it, I was out the door at 5am every morning, gear in hand.

I had just found my new hobby. It happened a few years earlier than I care to admit, but why resist the inevitable? Yes, I'm now into birding, and I have this incredible Sony camera gear to blame.

The super-supertelephoto lens

When I first saw Sony’s 400-800mm lens in 2024, I thought it was a peculiar focal length. But after my bird photography testing, it feels like the perfect range for this genre.

For most bird photography — in the wild at least — you’ll want a focal length of at least 600mm to get close enough, but I found that even longer, at 800mm, was my most-used setting.

I wouldn’t want an 800mm prime lens, mind you, even if that meant benefitting from a slightly faster aperture. When you're locked in on a bird at 800mm, and it moves, which it will, it can be tricky to locate them again. That’s why quickly zooming out to 400mm is handy.

With a wider perspective at 400mm, you can locate the subject more easily, and then zoom back in again. In any case, about 10% of the time, the 400mm focal length was actually the better pick when I was lucky enough to get physically close.

Optical image stabilization is handy, smoothing out camera shake and consequently making this lens totally usable handheld. The focus range limiter is neat too, but I tended to keep the focus range set to 'full' given the birds could be located any distance from me at any point — in one spot, there are gauze bushes next to a boardwalk.

The one thing against the lens is its maximum aperture, which is f/6.3 at 400mm and reduced to f/8 at 800mm. I usually opted for a 1/1000sec shutter speed at 800mm to freeze action, and at f/8 in anything but good light, you’ll find ISO needs to be bumped up, which impacts image quality.

Depth of field is not an issue, though. At 800mm and f/8, backgrounds are delightfully blurred, just about all of the bird is in sharp focus, and the photos looks great.

An upshot of the limited maximum aperture is that the lens is much lighter than Sony’s professional fast-aperture telephoto primes, such as the 600mm F4, and it’s much, much cheaper, too. For amateur bird photography, I think the 400-800mm F6.3-8 is the practically perfect lens.

The speedy, highly detailed camera

If the 400-800mm F6.3-8 is the ideal lens for bird photography, the A7R VI proved to be its perfect partner. Like its predecessor, the camera features subject-detection autofocus with a dedicated option for birds, but it adds an auto option, which is handy when you’re regularly switching between subjects.

For bird photography, however, I selected the dedicated AF mode on the assumption that this could help improve the camera’s scan rate, with less in the scene for it to be looking for — after trying both options, I would advise you to do the same.

I also tried bird photography with the 400-800mm lens and the older Sony A7R V, and it felt like autofocus was slightly slower compared to the new camera. I don’t have numbers to back this up or give a measurable difference, just my experience.

I was impressed by how the camera could latch onto birds even when they filled just a small portion of the frame. Check out the example below — the A7R VI easily located the distant male stonechat.

With continuous burst shooting set to 10fps using the mechanical shutter, bird-detection autofocus in play, camera and lens image stabilization active, I had a dream setup, on the foundation of a high-resolution stacked sensor and extreme dynamic range.

Sony says the A7R VI has a 16-stop dynamic range, which is 1-stop more than the A7R V and most other professional cameras. It also has the most pixels in a full-frame sensor — all 66.8MP of them.

What I appreciated about the high-resolution sensor was the ability to crop into images where the subject filled a small portion of the frame, even when shooting at 800mm.

Just how much can you crop? Well, the camera's APS-C crop mode (1.5x) is still 28MP, and in that mode the 800mm setting of the lens effectively looks like a 1200mm lens (see the sequence above at 400mm, 800mm, and 800mm with the 1.5x crop mode). It's possible to crop in much more than that and still get a detail-rich image, especially for images displayed on mobile devices. You might not need such big files in terms of output, but for bird photography, being able to crop is supremely helpful.

The birdlife

That’s the gear covered — but how was my experience itself? I had an absolute blast — in the space of a week, I went from a complete novice to confidently identifying a range of bird species for inquisitive passersby impressed by the camera gear in my hand. Yep, I had become one of those guys.

The nature reserve is home to a wide range of birdlife. My very first snaps were of Canada geese on the water, mainly because the light and mist were magical. But venturing further along the boardwalk, I saw ground-nesting birds and more.

There were Chats, Finches, Woodlarks, and I even saw a family of Dartford Warblers. I tuned in my ear for birds; the car alarm-like shrill of a Lapwing and the peculiar call of a Curlew — I was told that I was looking at the only nesting pair in this county. Common Cuckoos were present too, though I never got the camera tracked onto one of those.

I photographed European Stonechats who had caught dragonflies and grubs, and watched a Reed Bunting go back and forth gathering nest-building material. The delightful contrast of a (European) Goldfinch amidst the pale green leaves of a birch was spectacular.

Seemingly, it was my time — I was becoming a bird enthusiast. I had given in to the inevitable. I was hunting for birds, enjoying the thrill of getting the shot, but with a camera and not a rifle.

And honestly, it was the most fun I'd had with the camera in ages. This didn't feel like work, but something that fed me. And, yes, I did ask Sony to extend the loan of the lens, because I wasn’t ready to give it back. Once I bid farewell, I’ll be looking into buying a super telephoto zoom lens of my own (but I'm not quite ready for a bird spotting journal...yet).

Interested in trying bird photography out for yourself? Check out our selection of the best wildlife photography cameras.

Often the most difficult part of improving as a photographer has less to do with equipment, and more with finding the time and opportunities to take photos in new places and expand your skills at pressing the shutter. What are the best settings for your camera? How does the aperture and lens focal length impact the bokeh? How should you frame a shot in order to best capture the emotions and beauty of a location, not just what you can see?

Which is why, for all it can’t entirely replace the feeling of using a real camera, Lushfoil Photography Sim does a great job of allowing experts and newcomers alike a chance to relax and hone their photography skills in some of the world’s most beautiful landscapes.

From Italy to Iceland, Australia to Japan, and so many places in between, only you and your virtual camera sit between a chance to explore painstakingly-recreated iconic touristy and visually-stunning locations, devoid of people and with as much time to explore and photograph as you could ever desire. It’s freeing, calming at times of stress, but it’s the benefits this game offers as a learning tool that make it such an appealing proposition.

Every frame a painting

On the surface, Lushfoil Photography Sim is exactly what it claims to be. There’s a serenity that comes when launching the title for the first time and being thrown immediately into the gorgeous Southern Italian mountainous landscapes of Lago di Braies.

Ironically, a place I personally have admired in photos but had never visited, I could now explore with a camera in hand. The music is minimal-lo-fi, and other than a few basic introductions to the controls and how to use your SLR camera, you’re left to it.

The goal is to experiment. There are some tutorials to teach you the basics of how to focus, how to adjust your flash settings and things like that, but the goal is to simply explore these locations and take photos.

Compared to the gamified photo modes of typical games, Lushfoil replicates the controls of any modern DSLR or mirrorless camera with intense attention to detail. It’s more than just ISO and aperture, or even the ability to switch between zoom, fisheye and prime lenses from 14mm to 100mm. You have exposure compensation tools, filters, an adjustable flash, white balance tools, manual or autofocus, and anything you could need to frame a shot.

It’s not cheap to buy a (real) top-of-the-line camera and all these lens options, either! Never mind the travel, and you certainly won’t get the luxury of what feels like a private tour devoid of strangers blocking your perfect shot. More than that though, these environments offer so much variety. Beyond the Italian mountains you have the glaciers of Iceland, Fushimi Inari Shrine’s many torii gates in Kyoto, Japan, the beaches of Castle Rock in Australia, plus locations in France, Nepal, China, and England!

After adjusting the mental memory of my camera tools to the buttons of a controller, I found myself tracing a slow, methodical journey around these locations. In Lago di Braies, the environment begs to be explored for a new vantage point of the miniature churches and vistas, but also the little details that provide their own beauty. Of course, you want to photograph the lake and mountains, but I was just as inclined to crouch and adjust my angle to capture the endless forests, or the posts in the road that gave a focal point to the winding hiking paths.

In a place I was intimately familiar with, such as the Kyoto where I regularly visit to meet friends and occasionally see the exact shrine that was on screen, I found myself gaining a new perspective devoid of the usual hordes of tourists and locals in their thousands, the streets serene and calm.

The thousands of torii gates hold spiritual significance that can be felt intensely when examining the age and importance they bear in the environment in real life, but also hold a beauty that the game successfully replicates. A number of smaller shrines amidst these gates can be found, accompanied by kitsune statues that act as guardians. In some locations, like Castle Rock, you can take to the water on a paddleboard to take photos from an aquatic point of view.

And it all can be done with minimal disturbance and ample time.

Photography Beyond the Guidelines

Sometimes, however, it’s hard not to wish Lushfoil Photography Sim did have more disturbances. These environments are large and open, but empty. Which can be great for perfecting landscape photography, and the fact you can export photos to edit them further is nice. But you can only take this style of photo.

There’s no way to photograph people, not even a posed mannequin, that could allow for portrait photography practice. As a result, I found I rarely used some lenses like the 85mm prime, because I would consider this for its bokeh alongside a more typical 50mm, but found it relatively useless here, similarly to the fisheye which only came out once or twice.

Some locations also feel eerie without other patrons. I’ve visited Fushimi Inari Shrine, Japan, both in times of minimal domestic and international tourism during COVID, and more recently, and compared to those newer occasions it’s wonderful to visit it without the overwhelming crowds. Storefronts and streets without people feel a little post-apocalyptic, though, and actually make some shots I think would be framed well with a physical presence feel empty.

This little bit of flexibility to allow it to replicate more real-world scenarios with people and more variance within the environments is the main thing holding back this experience. I appreciate the game isn’t limited to a DSLR by allowing players to find older camcorders and digicams that replicate the characterful analog photography styles people are increasingly embracing in a digital age, but these lack the flexibility to even zoom at times, have watermarks, and can only be used in the level they’re found.

There’s a chance to use drones and change weather which gives environments much-needed variance, but only after finding collectibles and shooting particular photos gaining certain skill levels. This is the same for unlocking new environments. While it can be nice for this to act as a incentive for less-experienced photographers as they can learn how to frame a photo, it can feel like an annoying holdback if you’re more experienced.

There’s still enough to recommend Lushfoil Photography Sim to anyone. For me, I can think of friends who want to get into photography, but struggle to use a camera and what to look for to elevate a good photo into a great one, for whom it’s a great game. Want to buy a real lens for your real camera? The varied in-game lens options give hands-on experience of sorts, before you spend a lot of money.

It is also calming, enlightening, and fun beyond its educational value. I would feel comfortable telling a new photographer to play this game to learn about photography because it replicates not just the tools but the feeling, and served as inspiration for what to capture when I visited Mount Fuji recently with friends on a road trip.

Where gaming photo modes are often flexible, I’ve often found them unengaging because the tools they offer and the way they’re created to be used by all players divorces them from this photography experience I adore so much.

Lushfoil Photography Sim is the first time I feel I’ve found a game that truly captures the photography experience and, even if it has flaws, it’s a tool for self-improvement worth the price for its potential to bring transferrable skills to your next real-world shoot. Few games can promise something like that.

Want a glimpse of the world's best aerial photography? DJI and SkyPixel's annual photo and video contest is the place to go, and this year's winners have just been announced after the early contenders were teased a couple of months ago.

The stunning winning photos and videos of the 11th edition of the contest were selected from over 95,000 entries and 96 countries and regions — and drone pilot Filip Hrebenda scooped the grand prize in the contest's $200,000 pot with his aerial image The Gate (see below).

Contest judge Zhu Jiong described the scene as "straight out of a fairyland — layered mountains wrapped in mist.

"The image feels calm on the outside, yet somehow breathtaking."

Four judges praised the grand prize winner, saying: "The location and conditions feel rare, especially with the fog and elevation, making the scene stand out."

Judge Daniel Kordan goes on to say: "I must admit I haven't seen such a composition before, so it is a unique and fresh shot."

The remote aerial scene was taken in Buskerud, Norway, with the DJI Mavic 3 Pro — a pro triple camera drone which we gave a five-star rating, and which has since been updated with the Mavic 4 Pro. We rank the Pro series as the best camera drones for consumers.

Details on the SkyPixel contest's site suggest Hrebenda used the main 24mm camera with variable aperture, which utilizes a micro four thirds sensor – that's bigger than those used in DJI's sub-250g drones.

Hrebenda had this to say about his winning image:

"Captured in the far north of Norway during the autumn of 2025, this photograph was taken in a remote and extremely difficult-to-reach location. At sunrise, the landscape was covered by dense fog that filled the valleys and concealed the dramatic terrain.

"After a demanding ascent, we finally rose above the cloud layer, revealing this surreal and almost otherworldly view. The natural stone arch, resembling a monumental gate carved by time, stands suspended above a deep valley, surrounded by rugged cliffs and distant mountain silhouettes emerging from the sea of mist. The lone figure on the rock emphasizes the scale and raw beauty of the landscape.

"To capture this composition, finding the perfect perspective was essential. This was made possible with the help of a DJI Mavic 3 Pro drone, which allowed me to position the camera precisely and reveal the full geometry of this extraordinary natural formation."

All the winning images can be seen at the SkyPixel site and also include the early front-runner Carpet Fields, which ended up being a finalist and was captured with the older Mavic 2 Pro.

It's truly amazing the standard of photography that camera drone pilots are creating with what is relatively affordable gear.

Polaroid Hi-Print 3x3: review

I’m an instant photography fan, and a firm believer that one photographic print is worth a thousand forgotten files mouldering away in a cloud-storage account – so new products from Polaroid always grab my attention. Since its revival in 2017 – following the acquisition of the brand name by a group of analog evangelists named ‘The Impossible Project’ – Polaroid has gone from strength to strength, building up an impressive range of instant cameras and printers (my personal favorite is the Polaroid Flip).

The Polaroid Hi-Print 3x3 is the brand’s newest Bluetooth printer, designed to quickly turn images from your phone’s camera roll into real, tangible prints measuring 3x3 inches. It doesn’t take classic Polaroid instant film, instead using a heat-based dye-sublimation to quickly transfer images to paper. Very quickly, in fact – the Hi-Print 3x3 can spit out a print in comfortably under a minute.

Polaroid offers two other similar printers – the smaller Hi·Print 2x3 and the larger Hi-Print 4x6. However, the Hi-Print 3x3 offers two key USPs that make it more than just a gap-filler in the lineup.

The first, and most significant, is that the Hi-Print 3x3 has a built-in slot for a square photo on one side, with a transparent protective cover that can be placed over the top. Thanks to its boxy rectangular shape, it can be stood vertically on a flat surface and used to display the inserted image – meaning it functions as printer and frame all in one. Nifty!

The second is the fact that it prints images in square format, rather than the rectangular 2x3” or 4x6” formats of the other printers. Your mileage may vary on this one, but for me, a Polaroid isn’t a Polaroid if it doesn't have that distinctive square shape, and even though the prints from the Hi-Print 3x3 are made using an identical process to the other two printers, they just feel much more like Polaroids than the rectangular prints do.

Printing is done via your phone, using the Polaroid Hi-Print app available for iOS or Android. Be warned that the printer can only connect through the app – at first I tried connecting via Bluetooth directly, and was confused as to why it wasn’t working. Once I booted up the app, the pairing was instant.

Once you’ve selected an image to print from your phone’s camera roll, you are presented with a fairly comprehensive selection of editing tools, including sliders for brightness, contrast, shadows, highlights, saturation, etc, as well as cropping and straightening.

It’s the latter two compositional tools that will likely get the most use. As far as color, dynamic range and exposure are concerned, the majority of modern smartphones have automatic photo-processing that probably beats anything you’re going to achieve with a set of fairly imprecise sliders. However, since you’re printing in square format and your phone will shoot wider than that, your images are always going to be cropped, so it’s worth getting into the habit of ensuring the crop is where you want it, and the composition is to your taste.

There are also options to add stickers and text to your images, and the box contains a set of physical stickers for use on the finished print, if so desired. I did not desire, but you do you. The battery lasts well, and can quickly and easily be topped up via USB-C when needed.

The print quality itself, I would call pretty good. You’ll likely be pleased the first time a print comes out – the colors are big, bold and vivid. There’s none of the washed-out look that can plague some instant digital printers, especially those that use zero-ink (ZINK) printing like Kodak’s Printomatic camera or Canon’s Canon Ivy Cliq+2. In terms of visual impact, Polaroid has them both beat. It doesn’t quite have the lo-fi magic of Polaroid’s I-Type film utilized by cameras such as the premium I-2, but that’s what makes it much cheaper to run.

In my time with the Hi-Print I did run into one mis-print, caused apparently by paper misalignment. This necessitated a restart of the printer and a redo of the print, cutting my pack of ten down to nine. Not ruinous, but a shame, and since it was my first print, it wasn’t the best first impression!

The prints don’t hold up to super-close scrutiny, not that I’d expect them to. When inspected closely, fine detail can appear rather smudgy. Landscape-style images with distant detail tend to fare the worst – in general, the best subject for a print is one with a nice big subject, front and centre. The tonal range isn’t bad though – I fed through some images featuring sunset skies, and the printer did a better job than I expected of reproducing the subtle interplays of blues and oranges. Not amazing, but not bad.

The frame functionality may sound like a gimmick, but I found it rather charming, and I think it extends the fun factor of the printer. Being able to slot in different images whenever you want, according to your mood or the time of year or whatever else – it’s fun! I could especially see it appealing to a younger person who wants some changeable decoration for their room. The small dimensions and freestanding design of the Hi-Print allow it to easily be displayed on a shelf, windowsill or bedside table.

It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s a fun way to get photos off your phone and into the real world. I’ve enjoyed my time with it, and while digital instant printing doesn’t capture the alchemical magic of instant film, this for me is as close as it has ever come.

Polaroid Hi-Print 3x3: price & release date

Polaroid took the wraps off the Hi-Print 3x3 in April 2026. It’s available for a starting price of $119.99 / £99.99 / AU$ 194.00, and that’s with a set of ten sheets included. Once you’ve blown through those, a re-up cartridge of 30 sheets can be picked up for $24.99 / £22.99 / AU$44 (there are also bulk-buy packages that work out a little cheaper per sheet). True Polaroid I-type instant film is much pricier per print.

This starting price puts it in the middle of Polaroid’s printer range – the smaller Polaroid Hi·Print 2x3 Generation 2 is available for $109.99 / £89.99 / AU$176, while the larger-format Polaroid Hi-Print 4x6 starts at $149.99 / £129.99 / AU$264.

Polaroid Hi-Print 3x3: specs

Should I buy the Polaroid Hi-Print 3x3?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Polaroid Hi-Print 3x3: also consider

How I tested the Polaroid Hi-Print 3x3

• I tested the Polaroid Hi-Print 3x3 using two full cartridges of paper
• I transferred and edited photographs from my phone using the Android version of the app
• I mounted the photos into the frame and displayed them at various points around my home

Polaroid sent me the Hi-Print 3x3 to try, along with several cartridges of paper. I downloaded the app to my phone and used it to connect to the printer, testing out the editing functions before sending images to the printer.

I selected a variety of different images, including landscapes, selfies, pet images, food shots and more, with a range of colour tones and compositions.

Once images were printed, I displayed them in the slot as specified, and placed them in various spots around my home to see how they looked.

• First reviewed: April 2026
• Read more about how we test

I was delighted to interview top wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas at this year's Sony World Photography Awards, after he scooped the top Wildlife Category prize for his 'Crossing Point' series.

His stunning and highly detailed photos were captured over a 6-month period and provided vital data on Kenya's iconic Masai Mara National Park's wildlife to local agencies. The park's rangers were stunned by some of the discoveries, all captured using Burrard-Lucas' unique, self-developed camera trap system.

As a camera nerd, I was especially keen to understand his camera setup and how he went about capturing the photos, which are now very much in the spotlight since the SWPA 2026 awards.

What Burrard-Lucas shared with me was fascinating, and also goes to show that there can very much be life left in old camera gear yet.

'Where a lot of mirrorless cameras fall down'

You might expect the series to have been captured with one of the best mirrorless cameras. Burrard-Lucas does indeed primarily use Sony gear for wildlife photography in the field. However, for his remote camera traps used in this winning series, his gear choices were altogether different.

Burrard-Lucas' camera traps are based on his own 'Camtraptions' devices, specifically a highly advanced motion sensor for wired or wireless operation. He wirelessly paired the motion sensor with a full-frame Canon EOS 6D DSLR camera (fitted with a 35mm lens). That's right, a 14-year-old, enthusiast-level DSLR.

Given their age, and like most of the best DSLRs, you can only pick up EOS 6D's second-hand now, with 'excellent condition' models costing around $400 / £350 at leading retailers.

The fact that these old DSLRs are low-cost is part of the appeal for Burrard-Lucas, because of the number of camera traps he sets up and the harsh environments he typically works in — there's a real cost to performance consideration. He told me he needed affordable, "reliable and robust" gear with excellent low-light image quality, and the EOS 6D fit the bill.

Even so, there's actually a technical advantage to older DSLRs. Good lighting was crucial to the series, especially since many of the species being tracked are typically nocturnal and shy, such as rhinos, so Burrard-Lucas needed to use flash.

Burrard-Lucas told me, "Any old DSLR camera works really well in the camera trap setup — it [the camera] needs to work well with flash, which is where a lot of mirrorless cameras fall down."

The composition you see in his 'Crossing Point' series was decided at the beginning, with the motion sensor positioned to trigger the camera when the animal walked into the specific part of the frame (which Burrard-Lucas manually focused the camera's lens on), and the camera remotely triggered three flash guns to illuminate the subject and immediate lush surroundings.

Given that composition and focus are selected ahead of time, there was little need for Burrard-Lucas to pick a top-spec camera with leading burst shooting speeds and autofocus performance. His gear choice was determined by image quality requirements, reliability, and affordability, and the EOS 6D was his pick.

Burrard-Lucas regularly works using camera traps, and they are positioned where they are at risk of damage from wildlife. Therefore, he told me that whenever he sees cheap "old secondhand DSLRs, I snap them up".

When I asked about his use of camera traps, Burrard-Lucas said, "for nocturnal creatures, there's nothing better than camera traps, because really it comes down to lighting.

"For these elusive animals, a photographer could wait 12 hours, but you can't wait four months, so it's the only practical way when you've got this defined focal point."

I've decided to give Burrard-Lucas' camera trap system a go for myself, and he advised me, "It's super easy, and so many people are making new use of their old DSLR camera. You don't need a lot of additional kit; the sensor, a single flash to start with, keep things simple and leave it out for a few nights."

Burrard-Lucas sells every item needed for his photo award-winning system except for the camera itself on his Camtraptions website, where you will also find a much more detailed how-to.

I can't say I'll be photographing anything as exciting as a rhino or a leopard, but it'll be great to dust off my old Nikon DSLR and give it a new purpose, and I can't wait to see what sort of nocturnal wildlife visits my countryside garden. Hopefully, I'll share some of the best photos soon.

You can see more of the 'Crossing Point' project photos at the World Photo Organisation website.

The winners at the Sony World Photography Awards 2026 have been revealed, and once again the prestigious contest, which this year attracted 430,000 entries from over 200 countries and territories, was packed with incredible photography and stories.

I was fortunate to get a sneak preview of the exhibition — which is open to the public at Somerset House in London until May 4, 2026 — and its 300 plus works, to hear from the 10 category winners and attend the glitzy award ceremony. And best of all, I had the opportunity to sit down with the Wildlife category winner Will Burrard-Lucas to discuss his 'Crossing Point' series created in Kenya's Masai Mara national park.

The project was seeded in cooperation with the Safari Collection and local government to provide vital data of the iconic national park's wildlife, primarily to track rhino numbers, but the highly-detailed photos made many more discoveries that 'stunned' the park's rangers, despite them being intimately familiar with the park's wildlife.

I was already familiar with Burrard-Lucas' wildlife photography, but less so with how he makes the photos, so I was keen to discover more about his unique camera setup. What he shared with me was fascinating.

'For nocturnal creatures, there's nothing better than camera traps'

Will Burrard-Lucas' wildlife photography is captured using a variety of setups, from daytime shoots with Sony mirrorless camera gear in hand, to camera traps paired with 'old secondhand DSLRs' and left in place for long periods — the latter was his approach to the 'Crossing Point' project.

Low-cost trail cams are ideal for recording wildlife, but the image quality is typically poor and not detailed enough to distinguish specific animals. Burrard-Lucas, on the other hand, uses top-quality camera gear, paired with his self-developed camera trap system.

Burrard-Lucas' camera traps are his own 'Camtraptions' devices, and are based on a highly advanced motion sensor — the latest version being the culmination of years of development — which works with a number of leading digital cameras for wired or wireless operation.

For this project, Burrard-Lucas wirelessly paired the motion sensor with a full-frame Canon EOS 6D DSLR camera (fitted with a 35mm lens), which in turn remotely triggered three off-camera flashguns. As he tells me, "Any old DSLR camera works really well in the camera trap setup — it [the camera] needs to work well with flash, which is where a lot of mirrorless cameras fall down."

He had access to closed-off areas of the national park where there are a concentration of particularly rare wildlife species, including rhino — which are notoriously shy. A brook surrounded by lush vegetation was the stage for the vital project, an unusual setting for a park typically known for its wide open plains. "The moment I saw it, I knew it was the right place," Burrard-Lucas says.

The camera was fixed to a tripod and protected from the elements and was left in place for more than six months; the composition that you see was decided at the very beginning with multiple considerations. The motion sensor is positioned to trigger the camera when the animal steps into the specific part of the frame, and the camera's focus is manually set to that spot, with off-camera lighting ready to illuminate it in low light.

With such a project, Burrard-Lucas doesn't need the latest camera gear with blazing fast shooting speeds and AI subject detection autofocus. No, he needs 'reliable' and 'robust' gear with excellent image quality, and also that's affordable given the number of camera traps he sets up and the environments he works in. Whenever he sees cheap "old secondhand DSLRs, I snap them up," he tells me.

Many of the species that the park was particularly keen to get more data on are shy, nocturnal creatures, especially rhino. As such, lighting is key, and there are three flashguns positioned to illuminated the subject and immediate surrounding vegetation.

With the setup in place, Burrard-Lucas had trained the rangers to make a weekly check on the gear, change batteries and download the pictures from the camera's memory card, fresh for another week of motion-triggered capture.

The rangers believed a single rhino to be resident in the area, but over following months were surprised to identify eight different beasts. Yet it was another discovery that left them 'stunned' — when a kudu entered the brook one day. Kudu can be found in other parts of Kenya, but until these unique nighttime photos revealed their presence they had not been thought to live in the Masai Mara national park.

"You can never predict what's going to show up," says Burrard-Lucas, but over the course of six months his camera photographed a wide range of wildlife, from rhino to leopard, elephant, giraffe, the surprise kudu and many more.

For me, the thrill of photography is being there and experiencing what I'm photographing in the moment, so I was keen to hear how this alternative approach of setting the stage ahead of time for remote capture differed to when he's out with the camera in hand, reacting to what he's seeing before him.

"They both have their place for different species and different projects", says Burrard-Lucas, "but for me, for nocturnal creatures, there's nothing better than camera traps, because really it comes down to lighting.

"For these elusive animals, a photographer could wait 12 hours, but you can't wait four months, so it's the only practical way when you've got this defined focal point." For other creatures that don't stick to trails or are typically out in wide open savannahs, a camera trap is much less helpful.

I ask Burrard-Lucas about camera trap photography for beginners, and he tells me, "It's super easy, and so many people are making new use of their old DSLR camera. You don't need a lot of additional kit; the sensor, a single flash to start with, keep things simple and leave it out for a few nights."

I might just try this camera trap setup for myself; Burrard-Lucas sells every item needed for it barring the camera on his Camtraptions website, which also provides an in-depth how-to. Whether I can photograph anything as exciting as a rhino is a different matter, of course — but you have to start somewhere.

• SWPA is one of the most prestigious global photo contests
• This year attracted Over 430,000 entries from more than 200 countries
• The winner takes home a $25,000 top prize and Sony camera gear

I've had the pleasure of attending the Sony World Photography Awards 2026 in London, where the overall winner and 10 category winners have unpacked their photography projects to the press.

Legendary street photographer Joel Meyerowitz was also in attendance to receive the Outstanding Contribution to Photography award, and he was as engaging as ever.

It has been a real treat, and if you get the chance, I encourage you to visit the contest's exhibition, which contains over 300 works, is situated in London's Somerset House, and is open to the public from April 17 to May 4, 2026.

In previous years, it very much felt like AI was an inescapable subject around the contest, but in 2026, it feels like that AI storm has passed, and we purely enjoyed the photography and the stories inspiring the works.

I had a fascinating long chat with the wildlife category winner, Will Burrard-Lucas, and will share my conversation very soon, but for now, do check out some of the category award winners below.

Where the information is available — I've made a note on what camera gear was used in the gallery below — there has been such a surprising range this year, which once again proves that gear isn't the be-all and end-all of great photography.

SWPA 2026 category winners and their gear

Having covered photo contest news for the last three years working in a gear-focused role as TechRadar's Cameras Editor, I'm always happy to see a range of camera gear being used among winning entrants, and SWPA 2026 is no different.

Take Will Burrard Lucas's wildlife series — he fits his own camera traps with low-cost Canon EOS 6D cameras — a necessary compromise because he often requires several cameras in tough environments, but he still praised the quality these old DSLRs delivered.

Or how about the 'Documentary' and 'Perspectives' category winners, Santiago Mesa of Colombia and Seungho Kim of Korea, who used a Fujifilm X-Pro 3 and Fujifilm X100 VI, respectively, for their reportage photography projects.

At the other end of the spectrum is the 'Sport' category winner, Todd Anthony of New Zealand, who used a large-format Phase One camera, which costs tens of thousands, for his monochrome images of riders and their horses.

Photography can be a beautiful thing, and many of us already have the capable tools in hand to go and create. Who knows, if you find that story that needs to be told and the persistence and craft to do it justice, perhaps one day you could have your images hanging on the walls at Somerset House.

• A photographer has captured the "first-ever" underwater shots of a rare seal
• The Ross seal was photographed in Antarctica using a Sony A1
• The photographer Justin Hofman called it "a bittersweet encounter" due to climate change

Imagine this — it's your fifteenth expedition in Antarctica and you're snorkeling by the ice edge photographing krill, with a Sony A1 in hand, when you see an ultra-rare species enter the water close by.

This was the moment facing pro sealife photographer Justin Hofman recently as a Ross seal entered his view. It was only his second sighting of a Ross seal, and he knew that the species has never been photographed in its habitat underwater before.

I asked Justin about the encounter, specifically the story around getting the pictures you see in this article. After setting up for photographing krill, Justin said: "My camera setup was, on paper, the absolute worst thing you could use to photograph big animals.

"If I was going to shoot seals or bigger animals I would generally have a wide-angle zoom on a dome port and hope to work very close to the animal to maximize impact and make the viewer feel like they’re in the water with the animal. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect this to happen, let alone that I would shoot it with a 90mm macro!" he added.

There was also one non-technical factor that helped the stars align. Justin added: "The thing that saved me, and probably lead to a more natural behavior by the seal, was the early season super clear water. Since the plankton bloom hadn’t happened yet, the water was incredibly clear which allowed me to stay far enough away from the seal to not bother it, and allowed me to use the reach of a 90mm macro lens. It’s total dumb luck that the encounter happened but I’m so fortunate to be able to use the camera and the conditions to my advantage."

"I was shooting with an external monitor as well, which allowed me to get the camera a little deeper, away from the surface, and have more precision with my composition," he added.

These monitors are typically associated with shooting video, but they can be a godsend for tricky conditions like underwater shooting. "Some people think that external monitors are only for shooting video, but I always use a monitor on top of my housing," Justin said. "I find that it allows me to get the camera into more interesting positions because I don’t have to worry about shooting through the viewfinder or struggle with the back LCD. It has been a game-changer to me," he added.

Yet for such a memorable moment, it was also a "bittersweet encounter" for Justin.

A bittersweet encounter

The Sony A1 was able to pick up the face and eye of the seal and track it across the frame, despite the slow focusing speeds of the 90mm macro, which is an old lens now and has since been updated with the five-star 100mm F2.8 Macro GM OSS.

By using smaller autofocus zones, the camera could prioritize and track the face of the seal, for off-center compositions.

Justin used a continuous high burst shooting mode to make the most of this chance encounter. He uses manual exposure mode because underwater metering is tricky, on account of the shifting/flickering light. He often uses strobes, but given the water was so clear, there was enough light to get these photos, without disturbing the seal.

And despite not being able to use his favored lens, I think you'll agree that the resulting photos are stunning. However, Justin was keen to point out that "the only reason that I was able to get these photos is because of climate change impacts on sea ice."

There's a wider story at play here. Justin told me: "2025 had one of the lowest levels ever recorded for sea ice formation in Antarctica, which allowed our expedition ship to venture much further south much earlier than ever before.

"On a 'normal' year, the Ross seal’s habitat is inaccessible because of the thickness and extent of the sea ice. But last season the ice levels were at an all-time low which meant we could access the refuges that Ross seals were using to complete their molting after the breeding season.

"So it’s a bit of a bittersweet encounter that wouldn’t have happened if the polar ecosystems weren’t in a state of drastic change. Antarctica is one of the fastest warming places on Earth and in my 16 years of working down there, I have seen a lot of changes that concern me."

Since 2016, the company I'm Back has been tinkering with its digital 'film' roll concept, its way of ‘bringing historic cameras back to life’ and into the digital world.

Its previous attempt, the soon to be out-of-stock 2023 I’m Back Film, comprised a film canister fitted with a 20MP Micro Four Thirds sensor instead of actual film, that slotted inside a 35mm film camera – you can see how it works in this post on the company's Instagram.

A neat concept, but it fell flat for me because of the sensor format / film size mismatch, and more so because it required a bulky module which attached to the underside of the camera.

Well, the aptly-named company has returned this week, with Samuel Mello Medeiros, the company’s founder, lifting the veil on plans for an updated version; this time with a larger APS-C format digital sensor that can be mounted inside a 35mm camera in seconds.

We don't know which APS-C sensor is used yet, nor therefore how many pixels it has, but the device will shoot in RAW and JPEG and allow 4K video capture. Crucially, this time, it seems as though I'm Back has found a way to do away with the additional module, fitting the necessary tech inside the digital film roll, inside the camera.

The idea, just as with its (somewhat clunky) predecessors, is that photographers can continue to use their analog camera bodies, which have perhaps languished at the back of a cupboard in recent years, equipping them with digital smarts instead.

Beyond simply allowing photographers to capture digital images with 35mm film cameras they already own, some of them possibly even quite valuable, I’m Back hopes to bring some of the unique charm of film photography into the digital age.

“The goal of this project is simple: allow photographers to return to the cameras they love while embracing a contemporary digital workflow. No external display. No visible modules attached to the camera”, says Medeiros, whose comments on the dedicated Kickstarter page for the product also highlight some awareness of the past failings and the issues many people had with early prototypes.

“Everything stays inside [the camera]. The only external element is a small Bluetooth remote control used to synchronize the shutter.”

Currently, further details are a little thin on the ground, besides the aforementioned sensor size, photo formats and video chops. However, we do know that the roll will feature internal storage, along with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and a rechargeable, removable battery, rather than a built-in unit.

Interestingly, the Kickstarter page also refers to the inclusion of Presets, which bestow the image styles of iconic film types. In the post-Fujifilm film simulation era, this makes sense, and there probably isn’t a more appropriate imaging device to feature such picture styles.

Ten years in the making

I’m Back first attempted its digital film concept around 10 years ago. The first model was anything but compact and featured a modest 16MP resolution, squeezed onto a tiny 1/2.33 sensor. Of course, ideas have to start somewhere, nevertheless it gained a significant amount of interest, paving the way for further development.

In 2020, the I’m Back Film was unveiled, featuring a larger 20MP Micro Four Thirds sensor. While half the size of full-frame, it was a step in the right direction, and Yashica showed interest in the project.

Next came 2023’s I’m Back Film, which sought to compress the system into a truly film-canister-sized package, helping to preserve the original handling properties of the host camera. It was much smaller than earlier models, but it still required a base unit.

The arrival of the I’m Back 'Roll' with APS-C sensor marks the biggest step change to date, removing the base unit from the picture, and potentially bringing the quality in line with some of the best entry-level and enthusiast digital cameras of today.

I'm curious which APS-C sensor is used – whether I'm Back has played it safe with a dated 18MP to 20MP, or upped resolution to 24MP or greater. I'm hoping for the latter.

“I’m Back Roll does not aim to replace analog photography or compete with modern digital cameras. Its purpose is to offer a new possibility: bringing historic cameras back to life and allowing them to continue telling new stories”, says Medeiros.

I’m keeping my eyes peeled to see if the final product can do either. The latest effort is still on the drawing board, with its crowd funding page launching soon (note, the previous version was delivered to backers quite some time after its crowd funding page went live).

It's still might not have a full-frame sensor to match the size of a single frame in a roll of 35mm film, but with it's truly compact setup, the latest I'm Back product has me more convinced than ever to try the digital film roll out, in the hope that I might be able to resurrect my collection of 35mm cameras with convenient digital smarts. What do you make of the project? Let me know in the comments below.

Aura Ink: review

Aura makes stunning digital photo frames. The Aura Walden, for example, currently sits atop a sideboard in my home with its sleek frame, slick mount and punchy 15-inch display — and it also sits atop our list of the best digital photo frames.

So when Aura unveils an entirely new frame with a display that's unlike any other I’ve tested, naturally it has my attention. Said frame is the Aura Ink.

The Ink features an energy-efficient 13.3-inch color E Ink display, for a print-like rendering of your images. Unlike other LCD digital frames, the Ink is Calm Tech Certified — consider it a digital detox thanks to its natural, muted display.

Its E Ink Spectra™ 6 display can render millions of colors, but look closely and detail is dotty, despite its 1600 x 1200 resolution and 150ppi density. The Ink lacks the vibrancy and clarity of Aura’s other LCD digital frames, such as the Walden and Aura Aspen, or Lexar’s Pexar and Starlight, but it does work well in bright interiors, especially for artworks and minimalist photography rather than detail-rich photos. Ultimately, it's much closer to the look of printed photos.

What’s disappointing, however, is that Aura has kitted the Ink out with a somewhat glossy-finish panel, which can suffer from glare. I suspect it's no worse than the Walden and Aspen frames, but those LCD displays are illuminated, and as such they're significantly punchier.

Given that the Ink reflects light rather than emits it (like LCD does), it is, in reality, a niche frame. It needs the right conditions — well-lit rooms, but not too sunny — to shine, where it's probably my new favorite digital frame. If I had to choose between the Ink and Walden frames, though — and I've observed both side by side — it’s the latter that gets my vote for display versatility, even if it's yet another digital display to look at.

That said, the Aura Ink has super-low power consumption and a run time of around three months without a continuous power supply. No cables are needed, just a quarterly charge (assuming you only change the displayed image once per day).

Eliminating the reliance on ugly trailing cables is a design win. With regular LCD digital frames, cables are a necessary evil, and tricky to hide when mounting the frame on a wall, though they are less of an issue if you’re resting the frame on a surface.

I’ve come across one or two frames which are supplied with a white cable instead of a black one, including the Walden, which goes some way in disguising the cable (assuming your walls are licked with a light shade of paint). But there’s no doubt that a no-cable-at-all setup is the dream option.

Like the Walden, the Ink's display is housed in an attractive frame with a sleek bezel and a 1.5-inch mount (the off-white border between the bezel and the image). It also features a variety of mounting options, being positionable to display images in landscape and portrait format whether the frame sits on a table, bookshelf or other surfaces, or is fixed to a wall.

Aura has made the Ink impressively slimline — it measures just 0.6 inches deep, compared to the around one-inch depth of most other frames I've tested.

It charges via USB-C, and the port is easily accessible, which is not something I can say for the Walden's fiddly power input. The USB-C port is for charging only, however — you can't connect devices to add images.

Nor does the Ink have a memory card slot — all image uploads are via the companion app. And it displays photos only; there's no sound. All told, the Ink is as stripped-back as digital frames come.

The Ink shares the same companion app as all Aura frames, which delivers one of the best user experiences in the market and works seamlessly for wireless uploads and display updates, from anywhere with an internet connection.

Updating the displayed image on the Ink is an odd experience if you happen to be looking at the frame at the time. The frame flashes rapidly for the best part of a minute while the pixels of the existing image clear and are refreshed with the new one.

The Ink is limited to a maximum of 12 image changes per day. This is not Google Photos in a frame, where you might gather around with family, enjoying a rolling image gallery of holiday snaps, but one where you choose your image and live with it for the day or longer.

The real sting in the tail is how much the Aura Ink costs: $499 (pricing and availability for other regions is yet to be confirmed). You really are paying a premium for the E Ink display; even Aura's larger 15-inch LCD digital photo frames cost much less.

I've had the Ink frame in my home for several months, and I'm still somewhat undecided. I think it's the better frame to place on a wall than an LCD type, especially in a bright interior, where it's unbeatable. It's undeniably a premium product, and probably worth paying extra for, especially if you're weary of excessive screen time. However, LCD frames are more versatile.

Aura Ink: price & release date

Aura unveiled the Ink frame in October 2025, and it's available in one display size — 13.3-inch — for $499 in the US. At the time of writing it's not directly available outside the US; previous Aura frames have typically gone on sale globally approximately six months after their US launch, and hopefully the same will be true for the Ink.

I've mentioned the Walden frame a few times, which is a larger 15-inch LCD frame but with a much lower price tag, costing around 40% less. Put simply, you're paying a big premium for the Ink's E Ink display.

Aura Ink: specs

Should I buy the Aura Ink?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Aura Ink: also consider

How I tested the Aura Ink

• I tested the Aura Ink over several months
• I uploaded a selection of photos from my Android phone
• I placed the frame on various surfaces around my home, in vertical and horizontal formats

Aura sent me its Ink frame and I set it up in my home months before writing this review. Unlike other reviews published soon after the Ink's release, I've actually tested its long battery life – and yes, the three-month battery life based on no more than a single image change per day is accurate.

I've placed the Ink on a sideboard close to a window, in a dim corner of my front room, and various other spaces around the house.

I've uploaded a variety of photos to the frame through Aura's companion app for Android — both minimalist and detail-rich images, in vertical and horizontal formats.

I already have the Aura Walden in my home, so I've been able to make direct comparisons between the two frames.

• First reviewed: March 2026
• Read more about how we test

Have you ever stopped to think about how radically our relationship with photography has changed? Photos are no longer occasional artefacts, carefully captured on film and deliberately stored. Today, they are a core part of how we communicate, remember and document our lives.

A quick snapshot can convey context faster than text ever could - where you are, who you’re with and what matters in that moment. Photography has become constant and effortless, woven into the fabric of everyday communication rather than treated as something special or scarce.

Trillions of images with nowhere to go

This shift has resulted in an unprecedented scale of everyday photography. Modern smartphones now rival dedicated cameras, with even entry-level devices routinely shipping with 50-megapixel sensors capable of producing images that exceed 10-15MB with a single tap.

When multiplied across billions of people, the numbers quickly become staggering. It’s estimated that roughly five billion photos are taken every day worldwide, equating to around 50 petabytes of new image data captured daily.

Storage constraints, once the natural brake on this behavior, have largely disappeared thanks to cloud backups and expanding device capacity, allowing people to capture first and defer decisions indefinitely.

Camera rolls as dormant datasets

While this abundance has removed friction, it has also introduced a new problem. In the early days of smartphones, camera rolls demanded regular attention because space was limited and deletion was unavoidable. That friction forced a form of curation.

Today, most digital photo libraries contain tens or even hundreds of thousands of images, the vast majority of which are never revisited, organized or meaningfully engaged with again. Important moments sit alongside near-duplicates, screenshots and accidental captures, all flattened into an endless scroll.

What should be deeply personal archives have instead become dormant datasets that are vast in size, rich in potential value but largely unexamined.

This dormancy comes at a cognitive cost as well as a technical one. Photos are data, and data only has value when it can be used. When everything is saved, nothing stands out. Important memories become harder to find rather than easier, and the emotional signal of meaningful moments is diluted by sheer volume.

For many people, the effort required to scroll through years of images outweighs the reward, creating low-level anxiety around lost memories rather than joy in revisiting them. We are capturing more points in time than any generation before us, yet engaging with fewer of them in meaningful ways.

Why this is an AI problem

At first glance, this may not look like an AI problem. After all, image quality and storage at scale were largely solved years ago. The real challenge now is interpretation.

The next frontier is not creating more content, but understanding what already exists: identifying what actually matters, recognizing patterns over time and turning millions of disconnected images into something that resembles a coherent personal narrative.

At a global scale, personal photo libraries now rival enterprise datasets in size, yet lack the tooling required to extract meaning from them. This points to AI systems that curate rather than generate, adding meaning by selection rather than synthesis.

Turning photo overload into meaning

In this context, curating existing memories may prove to be a more valuable application of AI than producing synthetic ones. Photo libraries are deeply personal and represent life histories through an individual’s own lens.

They capture emotion, imperfection and context in ways that no generated content can replicate. When it comes to technology and memory, AI should help surface, organize and materialize the moments that already exist, rather than dilute them with content that carries no lived experience.

In the time it’s taken you to read this article, millions more photos will have been taken and added to digital archives around the world. Many will never be seen again. While we can’t and shouldn’t slow the pace of capture, we can rethink what happens next.

By using technology to turn excess into intention and help people engage with the memories they already value, we can transform vast quantities of visual data into something more accessible and meaningful. There is value in data, and there is value in memories - we simply need better ways to connect the two.

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There it was, nestled among our office's pile of aging smartphones, a white iPhone 3GS. I felt like I'd just stumbled on a vintage Furby. Cradling the tiny, 4.5-in phone in my hand, I wondered if it still worked.

I had reason to doubt. After all, the iPhone 3GS shipped 16 years ago, and this one had been sitting in a drawer for I don't know how long. The only way to know was to charge it up. Fortunately, I'm a bit of a hoarder, and I still have quite a few 30-pin charging cables lying around.

After plugging the phone in, I waited. It wasn't long before I saw the classic Apple logo, circa 2009, appear on the 3.5-inch display. I pressed the physical home button, slid the virtual unlock button to the right, and the iPhone 3GS woke up, presenting me with a homescreen I haven't seen in years. It's so quaint, so skuemorphic. I love it.

Now that I had the iPhone 3GS fully charged, I wondered what to do with it. I couldn't put it on a cell network since 3G support ended around 2022. Wi-Fi worked, however, so I opened the settings and put the phone on my local office network.

I should say that every operation with the phone was a trial. Each keystroke took a beat to appear, but it worked well enough for my purposes.

What were those purposes? A camera comparison, of course, and not with just any shooter. I planned to pit one of the earliest iPhones against the apex handset, the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

Since the iPhone 3GS has just one camera, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max has four, I decided to only compare the 3GS lens with the 17 Pro Max's main camera.

From a specs point of view, here's how they compare:

Right. There is no comparison. This table doesn't even mention the significant differences in the silicon backing these photographic capabilities.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max has the A19 Pro and a powerful image pipeline that includes Apple's "Photonic Engine," computational photography that shoots multiple images and uses, among other things, machine learning, to create a final photo.

The iPhone 3GS had a little 600MHz Samsung chip that didn't really pitch in much on the image capture front.

In other words, I'm under no illusion that I can create a direct comparison of photographic capabilities. What I could do, though, is illustrate just how far we've come in a relatively short 16 years. Traditional photography hasn't made leaps like this in such a short time. Over a similar timeframe of film photography, you saw incremental upgrades in lenses and controls, but the art of image capture remained aside from color photography, relatively static for decades.

Let the games begin

I started by opening the camera app on the iPhone 3GS and...nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. I got to stare for a bit at the Camera app's aperture-like shutter screen that usually opens to reveal the viewfinder.

At first, I thought the phone was broken, and I was ready to scrap the experiment when the virtual aperture finally spun open, and I could see through the tiny camera.

It was time to start taking photos, but...

I discovered another frustrating and also understandable limitation. Even though the iPhone 3GS worked and let me take photos, the fully charged battery would get exhausted after just a few shots – no warning, just a dead screen. What I was experiencing was a battery whose fully charged capacity had dropped to a few minutes. Getting a replacement battery was out of the question, so I had to make do.

Over the next few days, I did my best to, whenever I took a photo with the iPhone 3GS, take a matching shot with the iPhone 17 Pro Max's main camera. In an effort to give the iPhone 3GS a fighting chance, I never tapped on either screen to adjust the exposure or focus, just point and shoot.

It's hard to compare the image capture resolutions of these two phones; the iPhone 17 Pro Max is taking up to 48MP but defaulting to 24MP images with a resolution of 5712x4248. Compare this to the iPhone 3GS's 2048x1536.

All images on the 17Pro Max were shot in a 16:9 aspect ratio. The iPhone 3GS only offers 4:3. No editing of any kind was done before posting the images below.

Side note: Carrying around the white iPhone 3GS was a joy. It not only slipped right into my pocket, but it also slid effortlessly into the tiny coin pocket nestled inside the larger pants pocket. I often forgot I was carrying it.

iPhone 17 Pro Max main camera vs. iPhone 3GS camera

This banana photo is a perfect example of the many image quality differences between the two phones. The colors on the iPhone 3GS image are, on the whole, flat. It's a relatively low-light situation that proves challenging for the 3GS (note the significant grain). Meanwhile, the banana in the iPhone 17 Pro Max essentially jumps out of the frame.

As you might imagine, there's virtually no comparison on the portrait front. The iPhone 17 Pro Max main camera offers a wider-angle lens, automatically pulling in more of the scene without taking anything away from our subject, Tom's Guide's Kate Kozuch.

Again, the low-light situation gives the entire 3GS image a gray overcast and throws too much of her face into shadow. There's a wealth of colors and warmth in the iPhone 17 Pro Max image. The skin tone is virtually perfect. While you can count individual hairs in the 17 Pro Max image, those details are largely lost in the low-resolution iPhone 3GS portrait.

It's hard to believe these two train platform images were shot at the same time of day, but they were, and just seconds apart. The iPhone 17 Pro Max is inarguably the better image, but there's a certain noirish romanticism in the iPhone 3GS shot. I know it's almost all shades of gray-blue, but I kind of like it.

The iPhone 3GS' focus on the headlights gives this image an ethereal feel, but it's also, overall, a very dark photo even though it was captured during an overcast afternoon. The iPhone 17 Pro Max gives us a wider field of view and a far more cohesive photo.

This is the only true nighttime photo of the series. The iPhone 3GS turned the sky green, and the cars are a blurry mess. The iPhone 17 Pro Max's camera is almost fast enough to freeze the cars. The sky is unnaturally bright, but, of course, the 17 Pro Max gets major points for clarity and detail.

Look, the iPhone 3GS wins points for the moodiness, but the iPhone 17 Pro Max is simply better at handling challenging exposure situations. A foggy day like this means a way-too-bright wash of gray sky that, for the 3GS, throws the foreground into darkness. Apple's modern computational photography is expertly assessing the entire scene and applying multi-point exposure for a more visually accurate image.

One other thing worth noting: the iPhone 17 Pro Max camera app includes a levelling tool that helped me make sure my images were always level. Obviously, the 3GS has no such tool, which is why the Empire State Building leans slightly to the right.

It's hard to believe we ever shared photos from the iPhone 3GS (yes, Twitter was installed in the phone). The iPhone 3GS produced a particularly unappetizing food photo with flat, muddy colors and a distinct lack of depth for each pastry. The iPhone 17 Pro Max makes it all look so real and yummy.

Final thoughts

By the way, after I took these photos on the 3GS, I had to figure out how to get them from the phone to my laptop, and this story. I tried plugging the phone into my MacBook Air, but even though the system recognized the phone, it could not mount it as a drive.

I found, though, that the Safari browser worked well enough to let me log into Gmail. So, yes, I mailed the images to myself.

Not only do these photos illustrate the vast differences between camera, image sensor, and photo-processing capabilities, but also all that we now take for granted on our flagship smartphones. These cameras now do so much to stabilize images, fix exposure, ensure color accuracy, and maintain focus. They also give us previously unimaginable image clarity. I chose to shoot at just 24MP on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, but could have selected 48MP and even shot in raw for exquisite detail and complete control.

Sure, the iPhone 3GS loses this round, but nothing can compare to its size, portablilty or the nostalgia of these images. They really do speak to a simpler time. One that some generations are now striving for as they pick up older point and shoots, revive film cameras, and seek a pre-filter, and grittier look and feel for their photos.