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 (equivalent to about $29 / £22 / AU$42), 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
• Amazon Haul: viral gadgets, tech & appliances from $1.99
• Apple: MacBooks, AirPods & AirTags from $29
• Beauty: 50% off toothbrushes & hair tools
• Cheap TVs: smart TVs from $69.99
• Garden: tools, mowers, planters from $24.99
• Headphones: 50% off Beats, Bose & Samsung
• Laptops: Apple, HP & Dell from $199
• Mattresses: Sealy, Serta & more from $186
• Patio: outdoor furniture, rugs & decor from $19.99
• Sports: 50% off fitness gear, treadmills & clothing
• Vacuums: Dyson, Shark & Bissell from $34

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
• Apple: AirPods Pro 3 for a record-low price
• Appliances: up to 45% off Ninja, Tefal & Sage
• Beauty: up to 60% off Philips & Oral-B
• 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
• Toys: up to 25% off Lego and Tonies
• 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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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

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.

I guess they could try to find their own iPhone 3GS, but they'll need new batteries and a whole lot of patience.

"It is never 'just a photo'," says Alexandra Surkova, an award-winning wildlife and conservation photographer, who has spent much of her recent years documenting rare Iberian Lynx.

These wild cats are thought to have lived in the Iberian Peninsula for a million years, and recent conservation work has recovered the species from just 94 known such lynx to over 2,000 today.

It's a true conservation success story, for which the power of photography is also playing its part, as highlighted by Alexandra's story.

Alexandra received a Sony FE 200-600mm F5,6-6.3 OSS lens during the COVID-19 lockdown, which prompted her to segue from street photography to wildlife. “My first encounter with a lynx changed everything," she said.

"My hands were shaking. Half of my photos were blurry, but right then, I knew that my future life was there. I couldn’t sleep that night because of the sensations. I had seen this super-elusive animal that was so rare to see in the wild.” 

For Alexandra, the impact was deeply personal, and five years later she now has a big social media presence – her photos, taken today with a Sony A1 II and a range of pro lenses, including the FE 300mm F2.8 GM OSS and the monster FE 600mm F4 GM OSS, are inspiring others in some surprising, positive ways.

'He decided to go out shooting with a camera, much more than a rifle'

Sharing the wonder of rare species such as the Iberian Lynx can be a double-edged sword. For Alexandra, there's power in her images, including for those who mean the animals harm.

“It is not just my friends and family who I am talking to. There are many people who are looking at what I am doing now. Sometimes you could disclose the location of an animal without thinking, and the next day that animal could be killed. It is a great responsibility.” 

And this sobering reality was drilled home when, a year after starting photographing Iberian Lynx, Alexandra received a message from a hunter.

"He wrote to me, saying he had been following me for some time. After looking at my photos, he brought a camera. He decided to go out shooting with a camera, much more than a rifle. That moment changed everything inside of me."

Photography can wield power for good. “It is much more than showing pictures of animals”,  Alexandra says, “it is about transformation. It is about evoking emotion.” 

 For stoic photographers like Alexandra, who brave extreme climates and terrain, who often wait for 14 hours in silence without a single sighting but then try and try again, this is the mission.

For the full story, head to Sony Alpha Universe and check out Alexandra's Instagram for more of her wildlife photography. Alexandra shoots with Sony A1 and A1 II cameras, paired with FE 300mm F2.8 GM OSS, FE 400mm F2.8 GM OSS and FE 600mm F4 GM OSS lenses.

• SkyPixel’s 11th Annual Photo and Video Awards has attracted more than 45,000 entries so far
• Both photos and video content can be entered, with judges including Emmy-winning directors and social media influencers.
• Closing date for the contest is March 10, 2026, 23:59 (CST)

DJI remains the global leader in consumer drones, dominating the best drones and even best action cameras. And DJI's involvement in aerial photography extends to competitions; it has once more teamed up SkyPixel, one the world's most popular online communities for aerial content enthusiasts and professionals, to create the annual photo and video contest for the industry.

The scale of the contest is impressive – midway through its 11th season it has attracted more than 45,000 entries. And, in an effort to tease out more entries, DJI and SkyPixel unveiled some of the best shots and early contenders for the $200,000 prize fund so far. Among them are seven standout stills and five celebrated video entries.

One of the themes for this year's competition is called “Frame Your World,” for which hopeful content creators are encouraged to submit still and moving images that observe the world and express their personality.

This year has drawn interest from aspiring enthusiast photographers and filmmakers, plus contributions from industry influencers and heavyweight professionals. The hosts of the competition are only too happy to point out that this fraternity includes Emmy winners and world-renowned directors. On this list of elite artists is judge Ryan Hosking, the Aerial Director of Photography for the hit series Yellowstone, starring Kevin Costner, and Emmy-winning Director Alen Tkalčec.

SkyPixel calls the 11th Annual Photo & Video Contest more than a simple aerial photography competition, referring to it as a "global creative hub", and "one of the world’s most influential imaging events". With the number of images and videos submitted so far, and with several weeks still left to enter (closing on March 10), a lot of other creatives obviously agree.

Take Education on the Ice of Lake Çıldır by İsmail Kaplan (above), which captures children studying on a frozen lake from above, during harsh winter conditions. One of the judges of the competition, Judge Jiang Ping, was Chief Photographer of Chinese National Geography and highlighted the color contrast as a successful element that made the image stand out. Meanwhile, the shot was praised for capturing a moment in "nature classroom" by Professor Zhu Jiong of the Beijing Film Academy’s School of Visual Media and Communications, who called the frame "incredible".

The other judges' top choices

The fact that the content hosts a category for video places it in a unique position for attracting the content creators of today. With so many artists working across multiple media, it's a perfect opportunity for amateurs and pros to show off their filmmaking skills.

Ryan Hosking highlighted that the composition of "Iceland's Highlands from a Puffin's View" by Dennis Schmelz made the most of the contrast between the blue-green water and dark lava, calling it "exquisite."

As the contest is yet to close, there's still a chance to enter. SkyPixel and DJI will, together, award three grand prizes and give away more than 53 prizes in total, adding up to an impressive $200,000 kitty. The grand prize includes packages made up of products like the DJI Inspire 3, DJI Mavic 4 Pro, Ronin 4D-8K, and Hasselblad X2D II 100C. Winners will also be offered a direct SkyPixel Creator Contract.

Meanwhile, the Top 10 video/photos and People’s Choice winners will win prizes such as the DJI Mavic 4 Pro, DJI Avata 2, DJI Air 3S, and Osmo Pocket 3. Finally, all entrants are eligible to win DJI Credits for purchases on store.dji.com. In other words, you are rewarded just for entering.

You can submit entries directly through the SkyPixel site or via social media by tagging DJI Official on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, or X and using the hashtags #skypixel and #djiosmo. Participants can compete in multiple categories and you can enter as many works as you'd like. But be quick if you want to be involved, the deadline for closure is March 10, 2026, 23:59 (CST).

• Your guide to the best drones
• Best wildlife photography camera: our top picks from Canon, Nikon, Sony and more
• I took this Nikon super-telephoto lens on a dream safari trip – and learned a big lesson about pro primes

The $4 trillion ecommerce market sounds like a dream, but those of us in the trenches know it is a different story entirely. With a big pie comes a long line of people wanting a slice.

I launched my first ecommerce store in 2019, selling Scandi-inspired homeware from my spare room. Back then, all I had was a laptop and an iPhone.

Although scrappy start-ups can still compete in 2026, being an unoptimized one is a recipe for failure. Your 'spare room' set up needs an upgrade.

I've spent 7 years learning what is - or isn't - worth the investment when building an ecommerce store.

From all-in-one ecommerce software that runs your shop while you sleep to essential content creation and shipping equipment, you'll find everything you need in my 2026 ecommerce 'Founders edit'.

Ecommerce platform

Ecommerce platforms reduce the time and costs associated with building, launching, and managing an online store.

These platforms offer ecommerce essentials like an AI website builder, product listings, and seamless integration with payment processors such as PayPal and Stripe.

Many also provide a host of other helpful tools, such as built-in CRMs for dealing with customer enquiries/complaints, integrations with print-on-demand and shipping providers, powerful AI image and text tools, and detailed store and website analytics.

My top ecommerce platform picks

Wix offers a highly flexible platform for ecommerce with a top-of-class AI website builder, access to a huge app market, and unbeatable ease-of-use. It tops our list of the best website builders in 2026.

Shopify is purpose-built for online stores and is a powerhouse of features and tools. It is a little more complex than Wix, so it is better suited to more advanced users.

Hostinger doesn't quite offer the same ecommerce power as Wix or Shopify, but with plans starting at $2.99/mo (intro rate), all the essential ecommerce tools, and integration with print-on-demand provider Printful, it is a great choice for those just getting started.

Unlike other providers, you can sell with Square Online on its free plan. With advanced inventory management and Point Of Sale (POS) options, it is also a great choice for hybrid online/brick-and-mortar stores.

Laptops

Store owners use their laptops to design stunning online experiences, manage inventory, collaborate with employees, edit product images/videos, undertake marketing activities, and much more.

So, picking the right 'portable HQ' is essential.

It will need plenty of RAM (memory) to handle your heavy workload. 16GB should be a minimum, but I've found 32GB and up is essential if you plan on doing a lot of video/image editing.

Display quality is also essential, especially when it comes to 'color accuracy' - you don't want to be describing something as 'lime green' when it is actually forest green. 100% sRGB or DCI-P3 coverage, and 400+ nits is what to look for here.

My top laptop picks for ecommerce stores

The Apple MacBook Pro has always been my go-to. It's perfect for photo editing, and the battery life is brilliant. Mine is 8-years old now and still serves me well.

The Apple MacBook Air packs slightly less punch than the Pro, but it is usually good enough for most online store building/management needs. Plus, it's lightweight, making it ideal for the travelling entrepreneur.

The Dell 14 Premium is TechRadar's top pick on our list of the best business laptops and a great pick for ecommerce stores. With an OLED 3.2K display, its color accuracy is fantastic.

At just $299.99, those looking to set up an online store on a shoestring budget should seriously consider the affordable, but functional Acer Aspire 5.

Product videos and images

Great photos and videos help give potential customers the information they need to make a purchase. Plus, with so much competition online, engaging visual content offers businesses a way to stand out from the crowd.

Below you will find everything you need to create great product videos and images.

My top picks for product photography and videos

The iPhone 17 Pro is the top pick for many content creators and entrepreneurs. The 48MP triple-rear system packs plenty of power to create professional product and social media images and videos. However, those who want to get even more serious about content, the Sony Alpha 6700 is well worth considering.

Investing in a light box and a sturdy tripod takes the hassle and time investment out of finding the ideal lighting and backgrounds for your product shots.

Whether you're creating informative product videos or live-streaming your TikTok shop, the tripod can also be paired with light panels and a mobile microphone for a professional-looking video finish.

Shipping and packaging

Packing orders is dull, but essential.

Finding ways to speed up the packing and shipping process not only makes your job more interesting but also frees up time to focus on growth activities such as social media and email marketing.

Note: If the idea of packing orders sends shivers down your spine, you could consider a print-on-demand service. This allows you to focus on brand building and marketing, whilst someone else deals with buying, storing, packing, and shipping your orders. Just bear in mind that with greater convenience usually comes smaller profit margins.

My top picks for shipping and packing orders

Take it from someone who has spent hundreds of hours cutting out and taping on postage labels, a thermal label printer is one of the best time-saving investments you can make for your ecommerce business. Print, peel, stick, send - life changing.

Shipping scales help limit over- or underpaying shipping costs. You can also save time and limit the mess with a packing tape dispenser. Both are simple, but essential to online store success.

Finally, sturdy shelving is key to keeping your products organized and easy to find.

• Greek photographer Athanasios Maloukos scooped the top prize
• They entered two series of low-light images: 'Whirling Devotion' and 'Night of Sorrows'
• Judges billed the winner's portfolio as among the best they'd seen in the contest's 23-year history

Forget picture postcard views and Instagram-worthy shots of popular landmarks, the winner of this year's Travel Photographer of the Year scooped the top prize with an altogether different portfolio.

Greek photographer Athanasios Maloukos submitted two haunting series of low-light images: Night of Sorrows: The Yacente' Procession of Zamora, and Whirling Devotion: Rituals of Sufism in Anatolia.

Each series documents spiritual ceremonies in Spain and Turkey, respectively – the latter in particular beautifully captures a sense of motion and stillness with a masterful use of shutter speed – there's no editing trickery here, all the effects we see are achieved in-camera.

Appropriate to the spiritual significance of the ceremony, these images go beyond what we see – we get a sense of quiet, and despite being on the outside looking in, the images are deeply intimate.

Maloukos said, "I am speechless seeing that one of my most intimate, spiritual personal projects have touched the judges of TPOTY."

For me, it's easy to see why, and you can judge for yourself from the selection of images below, and by following the link to Maloukos's Instagram page, where he unpacks what is happening in each spiritual ceremony he has documented.

Rhythm and reverance

One of the contest's judges, Jeremy Hoare, described Maloukos's work as "one of the best over the last 23 years of these awards", while TPOTY founder Chris Coe further elaborated on the panel of judges' decision:

"These images require immense skill to get right," said Coe. "Shooting on the edge like this requires very careful use of shutter speed to selectively freeze and blur the movements in these two ceremonies.

"There's a sense of rhythm and reverence in the images, which is incredibly difficult to achieve. This is all achieved in camera without over-processing and conveys the depth and intensity of each moment."

I've included a selection of the other series Night of Sorrows: The 'Yacente' Procession of Zamora, below. Marking Holy Thursday, the series is equally haunting, with a style consistent with Maloukos's other bodies of work.

Athanasios Maloukos shoots with a Canon EOS R5 and EOS R7, paired with any one of the RF 24-70mm, RF 15-35mm f/1.8L IS USM, and RF 70-200mm lenses.

The EOS R5 was released in 2020 and is still the camera that I see crop up the most among contest winners five years on – including the Landscape Photographer of the Year 2025.

It might well have been replaced by the EOS R5 Mark II, but these contests only reaffirm how incredibly capable the full-frame 45MP mirrorless camera is.

The entire collection of this year's winning images can be found at the TPOTY site. I also recommend checking out Athanasios Maloukos Instagram, link below, it's well worth a look.

I'll always remember seeing Sally Mann's photographs for the first time – it was when I studying photography at college some 25 years ago. My first taste was her polarizing Immediate family series – monochrome images mostly of her children, shot using 8 x 10-inch sheet film.

There was a timeless beauty to those photos, which were painstakingly made with a large-format Deardorf 8 x 10 bellows-view camera – if you're interested, she outlines her workflow in this CBS Mornings feature.

It's a film format that she's continued using over the following decades, shooting monochrome-only, until her recent switch to a digital camera, revealed in conversation during her appearance on the BBC Radio 4's long-running Desert Island Discs show in the UK.

"I've started taking pictures with a digital camera", said Mann. "It's so great, I'm just loving it! It's so easy, color is so easy, and so much fun! I'm shooting down in the Mississippi delta where you can't take a bad picture because of the gorgeous lyricism and dream-like quality of the light down there, and I'm doing it in color."

We don't know Mann's specific camera of choice, but when asked about what prompted her to make the switch to color and a digital camera, she was quick to pinpoint the practical implications of shooting with film.

'I'm in the modern world, finally!'

Mann explained, "It's so time-consuming and laborious to work with an 8 x 10 view camera, and the film now is so expensive. I hate spending that much money on each shot.

"And so you're always second-guessing yourself, saying, 'Is that good enough? Is that really worth $12?' But with digital, you just shoot, and if you don't like it, boom, gone, off your computer."

Sally Mann, who was born in Lexington, Virginia, where most of her best-known photos were made, is now 74 and embracing new camera gear with an infectious enthusiasm, even if she has kept a foot in both camps.

"I have this funky old lens and it doesn't handle light well, so there's this little glow to everything. I had the lens before the [digital] camera – it's a 1940's old Leica lens," she explained.

And she added that retirement is not on the cards: "I'm a workhorse. I'm a peasant, I just put on the harness every day."

Mann has an upcoming touring exhibition with the Gagosian gallery network, featuring intimate portraits spanning decades with her husband of 55 years, Larry, who has muscular dystrophy.

"I do hope that the work is viewed in its entirety as a whole," she said. "I don't want to be always known just for the family pictures. There's so much more and more to come."

The full conversation is available at the BBC's Desert Island Discs page for UK viewers.

Given its potential impact on the creative industry, it’s no surprise that there is a lot of talk around the subject of Artificial Intelligence. What has taken many people by surprise, myself included, is the speed with which AI has hit the mainstream; only three or four years ago, even the term ‘AI’ didn’t mean much to me beyond a sci-fi cliché, and the occasional passive reference in the specifications of photo-editing software.

And yes, so-called ‘intelligent’ features have been present in applications like Adobe Photoshop for a while, but at nowhere near the level of sophistication we’re seeing today. Compared to apps like Firefly and ChatGPT, they’re chalk and cheese.

Of course, that is changing, with the announcement that Adobe Photoshop is now built into ChatGPT for free. From what we've seen so far, it looks as though this is going to be another great practical tool for photographers.

Since the dawn of generative AI, most of the conversation has been focused on the potential negative consequences for photographers – if it will take our jobs or render cameras redundant – but there has been relatively limited discussion about how the use of AI can enhance how we take images.

The internet is buzzing with articles describing technical features like AI-integrated autofocus systems, subject recognition, and AI-driven upscaling etc., but what about the human element?

It’s important not to forget that all AI models are trained on content created by humans. In other words, using all of the web as its inspiration, AI is actually geared to offer an overview of how humanity interacts with the world and how this makes us feel: the Human Condition.

I was recently contemplating why I take photos in the first place, and how my images reflect my personality. And what better way to explore this than with some healthy critique by someone (or something) that potentially knows me better than I know myself?

I decided to see how ChatGPT might approach a review of my images. I suspected that some feedback would be generic in its focus, clearly drawn from pre-existing reviews of similar photographic works. Understandably, AI would be technical in its choice of elements to review, but I was especially interested to see if it could offer tailored suggestions for how I specifically could improve my photography, while remaining true to my interests, values, and artistic preferences.

As a framework for testing how ChatGPT responds to my prompts, I’m looking for each answer to hit one of three pillars: honesty, breadth of analysis and understanding. Honesty is fairly self-descriptive – how much does it tell me what I might not want to hear?

Breadth refers to the amount of detail responses go into and the demonstration of photographic expertise. Finally, understanding means the extent to which the AI can show it recognizes human traits and creative influences.

Question 1: basic query

Can you critique this cityscape image from my portfolio?

I thought I’d start by giving ChatGPT as little direction as possible. I uploaded an example image in isolation, introducing myself to the algorithm, as it were, and let the AI pick which elements it thought worthy of analysis. Its first response was typically upbeat.

“Thanks for sharing this—there’s a lot working very well here.”

Thanks! However, if I were talking to a human, I’d be expecting a ‘but’ to follow. I was pleasantly surprised.

“The lighting is the standout strength of this image. Golden-hour backlighting creates a warm, atmospheric mood and gives the scene a strong sense of time and place. The low sun adds depth through long shadows and rim light around the figures. The flare and haze feel intentional rather than distracting. They soften the scene and enhance the cinematic quality. Highlights are well controlled overall. The sunlit pavement is bright but not blown out, which suggests good exposure discipline.”

I can already make an interesting observation: ChatGPT can identify which characteristics of my shot other humans are likely to find attractive. I’d expected it to start with the technical aspects, such as my choice of shutter speed, metering mode, and f-stop (later, it did identify that the camera – a Sony A7 V – must have a good dynamic range), but instead it honed straight in on the aesthetics.

This is definitely a human-like reaction. When was the last time you showed someone an image and the first thing out of their mouth was “I love your choice of ISO”? It’s far more likely they’d reference the sunlight, the shadows, how autumnal the image looked, or what it made them feel. I then got my first bit of gentle criticism.

“One small consideration,” ChatGPT begins, like a friend who’s afraid to hurt my feelings. “the brightest area near the top center pulls the eye quite strongly. That’s not necessarily a flaw, but slightly reducing highlight intensity there (either by framing or post-processing) could help keep attention more firmly on the pedestrians”.

Hmm, okay, I take the point. I wanted to introduce a hazy wash of light, so it was intentional, but at least the AI seems to have guessed this was the case. Other suggestions included cropping in a little tighter using a telephoto lens, a trend we’ll discuss again soon, and lifting the shadows on the left of the frame. Overall, this response managed to hit two of our three pillars, Honesty and Breadth.

ChatGPT feedback: This is a strong, confident street photograph with a cinematic feel. The light is used deliberately, the composition feels thoughtful, and the technical execution supports the story

My impressions: ChatGPT is capable of seeing an image from the viewer’s perspective, but given a generic prompt, it’s likely to keep feedback generic.

Question two: chasing criticism

Give me a review of my cityscape photo. Tell me what you think about the quality of the lighting, the composition, and the technical considerations such as my choice of shutter speed, aperture, white balance etc. What can I do better?

Next, I provided a prompt with greater specifics of the parts of an image on which I wanted feedback. With this question, I was looking for harsher criticism on areas I might not have considered.

“The image succeeds as a dynamic, energetic urban scene. The long-exposure light trails immediately communicate movement and modern city life, while the historic architecture anchors the frame and gives it identity. It’s visually engaging and clearly well executed,” is ChatGPT’s initial observation.

Once again, it starts with a reinforcing positivity, which I suppose I would mirror when reviewing a stranger’s photography. I do suspect this is to ensure people keep coming back to the app. This is followed by a more direct criticism.

“Saturation is pushed fairly hard, especially in the reds and purples. It looks good at first glance, but on longer viewing it edges toward “HDR cityscape” territory.”

I was kind of hoping it would notice this, as it was the image parameter I would probably have highlighted first if I were performing a portfolio review. The saturation on this shot had been turned up in Affinity Photo for a specific paper stock; in print it would look fine, but the JPEG does look overcooked. The rest of the feedback on my choice of camera settings was complimentary, but the final word surprised me.

“The composition is very centered and very balanced. While this works, it also makes the image feel a bit safe.”

I don’t actually agree with it in this case, since the placement of the clock tower was largely dictated by editorial requirements, but of course, ChatGPT didn’t know that. What’s interesting is that without too much of a detailed prompt, it was encouraging me to take risks with my framing.

This is excellent as many beginners don’t really know what to ask or that central framing might be considered a bad thing. The AI was able to provide some professional insight, the type I’d hope to receive on a one-to-one workshop with a pro. This fulfilled the second of our three pillars, Breadth of analysis.

ChatGPT feedback: This is a polished, technically accomplished cityscape, and it would sit comfortably in a curated urban portfolio. Bringing a bit more of your personal voice or risk-taking into images like this would be the next exciting step.

My impressions: Describing your intent is necessary for targeted, practical feedback, but AI can recognize common beginner mistakes and competently offer advice for improvement.

Question three: advanced prompt

I'm curating a portfolio of seascape imagery. How would this more abstract image sit alongside other, more traditional, coastal photography? Can you give me some for improvement when capturing this style of image?

So far, ChatGPT has been able to point out minor areas of improvement, but I still suspect much of this is pulled from stock answers and generic photography reviews. Yes, it has pointed out some specifics in my images, but I’m not yet convinced it understands my intentions and creative outlook. Therefore, for my next prompt, I gave it a more conceptual image to analyse along with a two-component question, asking for ideas on the frame itself and its wider use in a portfolio.

“This image would actually strengthen a seascape portfolio—provided it’s curated thoughtfully”, it begins, with the ubiquitous em-dash included to remind me I’m talking to AI. “It plays a very different role from classic coastal vistas, and that contrast can be an advantage rather than a liability.”

The model then goes into some depth on how an abstract image differs from something more literal. I guess this could be considered an understanding of intention, although my direct reference to abstract photography in my prompt could have given it a head start. I felt it was more creative in its advice for how I could incorporate the image in a portfolio or book.

“Where it wouldn’t work is as an opener or a dominant style unless the entire portfolio leans abstract,” it points out. “Instead, this is best placed after a calm, minimal horizon image. Think of it as poetry between prose.”

ChatGPT feedback: This image doesn’t dilute a seascape portfolio—it deepens it. It shows sensitivity to time, movement, and human presence, which are all intrinsic to the coast. The key to improving this style isn’t more blur or more abstraction—it’s precision within softness. The more intentional your choices feel, the more powerful these images become.

My impressions: The more detailed your enquiry, the more targeted and specific ChatGPT’s response. It helps if you already know what you’re looking for and the types of feedback you require.

Question four: testing understanding

I'm having trouble defining my photographic style. Based on these images and the ones you've already seen earlier, how would you describe my artistic style? How do my images stand out from other photographers and what more can I do to further develop my signature 'look'?

For my final attempt, I thought I’d really test ChatGPT’s ability to demonstrate that it understood me as a photographer, and what I am often trying to achieve as a creative person. This is often what separates a good tutor from a great one. General overviews of someone’s portfolio are useful, but it won’t always help a student learn to express themselves creatively. After showing it a selection of images, the AI opened with predictable optimism.

“This is a really good—and very honest—place to be in your development. The fact that you’re questioning your style now usually means one is already emerging.”

Helpfully, it then goes on to give its impression of what my style actually is, something I’ve not been able to easily extract from other human photographers over quite a few years. And this is where things got really interesting.

“You photograph atmosphere more than subjects, and time more than place,” it highlights. Yes, I’d say that’s true. I rarely chase specific subjects and find myself trying to isolate details in whatever location I happen to be in. I don’t often go somewhere with a precise idea of what I’m going to shoot.

“You are not a “decisive moment” photographer. You are closer to a temporal photographer, someone interested in what happens between moments,” it tells me. I was quite taken aback by how insightful this comment is, and am somewhat relieved to hear confirmation of something that has long concerned me about my style.

“You’re Consistent in Intent (Even If Not in Genre). Although your subjects vary (city, coast, landscape, abstraction), your intent is consistent. Many photographers shoot multiple genres without coherence. You don’t. The emotional register of your images is remarkably steady. That’s already a style.”

I’d say that just about hits our third pillar, understanding.

Conclusion

The Instagram gods don’t especially like my wide variety of chosen subjects, but that hasn’t deterred me from exploring them. I do indeed like a cinematic lighting style, and I have always tried to apply this to a multitude of genres. AI successfully identified this and I was surprised by its interpretation of my creative intent. It was spot on. And it was good to hear some reaffirmation that I have been able to apply something resembling a uniform style across all of my subject matter.

I do have some general observations of ChatGPT’s ability to interpret a prompt in this context. Firstly, don’t think that just because it isn’t a person that it won’t try to people-please. Unless you ask it to be harsh, and even when you do, there is a trait of cautious positivity. Inevitably, AI companies want happy users, because these are more likely to continue using the product. While this might do wonders for your ego, it’s better to ask for specifics.

AI is very good at technical analyses. After all, it has literally billions of images from which to draw inspiration. It can tell you if something is sharp, if the composition adheres to established framing conventions, and if your f-stop is appropriate. However, ChatGPT has demonstrated that it can also identify the elements of an image that a human would find appealing.

I wouldn’t choose to speak to AI before going on a workshop with another photographer, or reading a succinct piece of editorial on an esteemed tech website just yet (cough*), but with careful prompts, it can work as a fantastic mirror to discover what you hope to get from photography.

• The winners of the Comedy Wildlife Awards 2025 have been announced
• 44 images were shortlisted from over 10,000 entries from 109 countries
• Mark Meth-Cohn from the UK wins the top prize with his image of a gorilla

The winners of the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards 2025 have been unveiled, with 44 shortlisted images selected from over 10,000 entries – a record high for the contest. And it's Mark Meth-Cohn from the UK who emerges as the winner with 'High Five' – an image of a playful young gorilla in Rwanda.

“We spent four unforgettable days trekking through the misty Virunga Mountains in search of the gorilla families that call them home", says Mark.

"On this particular day, we came across a large family group known as the Amahoro family, they were gathered in a forest clearing where the adults were calmly foraging while the youngsters were enthusiastically playing. One young male was especially keen to show off his acrobatic flair: pirouetting, tumbling, and high kicking. Watching his performance was pure joy, and I’m thrilled to have captured his playful spirit in this image.”

Mark took the winning photo, above, with a Sony A1 and FE 24-70mm F2.8 GM – a classic Sony lens – set to 1/800 sec, f/3.5, and ISO 200, and wins a dream one-week safari trip to the Maasai Mara. Winners of other categories, including the Nikon Junior Category (25 and under), take home various Nikon mirrorless camera gear, including a Z6 III, Z50 II, and Zr.

What I personally appreciate about the Comedy Wildlife Awards is how open a competition it is – there are winners at different stages of their photography journey, and from all walks of life – winner Mark describes himself as a keen amateur.

The contest rewards technical excellence like any other, but it majors on the fun. And with that in mind, let's take a look at some of the shortlisted entries.

Comedy Wildlife Awards 2025 finalists

There were 44 entries that made the shortlist, including videos. Below is a selection of my absolute faves, including 'Flamingone', a completely real image that fooled judges and won the 'AI' category in the 1839 photo contest last year.

The judges have already declared their favorites, but there's one more category yet to be decided – the People's Choice Award. Voting is open from December 10, when the public gets to choose their favorite finalists from 2025.

Votes can be cast at www.comedywildlifephoto.com until March 1, 2026, and the winner of this remaining award will be announced on March 14. I know which one I'm voting for!

Which is your favorite and why? Let me know in the comments below.

• Winners of the International Landscape Photographer of The Year 2025 have been announced
• The stunning winning image by Austrian photographer Lukas Trixl was taken in New Plymouth, North Island, New Zealand
• Lukas' camera of choice was the Canon EOS R5

The winners of the International Landscape Photographer of The Year 2025 contest were announced this week, and there's a familiarity about the cameras used by the winning entrants.

Take the winning photo overall, a prehistoric-looking scene of a snowcapped mountain, which can be found in New Plymouth, North Island, New Zealand, and which was taken by Austrian photographer Lukas Trixl.

Lukas shot the stunning image with the Canon EOS R5 mirrorless camera, which he pairs with either the Canon RF 14-35mm F4 IS USM, Laowa 12mm Zero-D f2.8, Canon EF 70-200mm F2.8 and Canon RF 200-800mm lenses, having upgraded from the Canon Rebel T7 DSLR (known as the EOS 2000D outside the US) years ago.

This news comes in the wake of the Wildlife Photographer of The Year 2025 awards, which were also dominated by the EOS R5 – although the overall winner of that contest used an 11-year-old DSLR, the Nikon D810.

The other major award at ILPOTY 2025 was the overall winning portfolio by J. Fritz Rumpf, who used the Nikon D850 DSLR, Nikon Z7 II mirrorless, and DJI Mavic 3 drone for his wide-ranging selection of landscape photos.

So there's a theme connecting these contest winners – don't write off older pro gear. The EOS R5 is still a great camera, despite being five years old and having been succeeded by the EOS R5 Mark II, and the aforementioned DSLRs are older still.

And there's good news if you have your sights set on such contests but need top-flight gear to help make your vision a reality – you don't need to spend big. For example, the Canon EOS R5 has fallen to record-low prices in the wake of the Black Friday sales, and given that it's now an older model.

Best Canon EOS R5 deals today

Released in July 2020, the Canon EOS R5 remains a popular camera among pros more than five years later – certainly if major 2025 photo contests are anything to go by. Its compact and rugged body, sharp 45MP stills, powerful in-body image stabilization and reliable autofocus are among the many attributes which make it a top camera for pro photographers. The EOS R5 has fallen in price by around 35% since it launched, making it an excellent buy today.

You can get a better look at Lukas Trixl's winning ILPOTY 2025 image, shot with the EOS R5, below,

Not in the US or UK? I've included the best Canon EOS R5 deals for other regions, below.

Back in June, we heard that the sun is at the peak of its 11-year magnetic activity cycle, meaning more chances of seeing the northern lights across mid-latitude regions in the US and Europe. Well, good news – tonight specifically is another opportunity to bask in those dancing magenta and green hues.

I can tell you, the northern lights are an awe-inspiring natural wonder, having witnessed a display for the first time where I live in the south of the UK in May 2024. And if you live in a region which where the northern lights could be on display tonight, you should follow my 5 tips below for planning your photos.

In the UK, the prediction is that only Scotland and northern England will see the northern lights tonight, according to the BBC, while USA today suggests two dozen states have a chance.

Not going to make it out tonight? Fear not – scientists delivered further good news for night sky lovers earlier this year, suggesting that the sun is entering a long-term phase of heightened activity that could span several decades.

I'll write again when the next intense geomagnetic storm gets underway and the northern lights could be particularly visible. But for now, here's how to take advantage of tonight's northern lights opportunities...

5 steps for planning Northern Lights photos

TL;DR: Check the conditions, find the right location, plan the shot, gather the right equipment, prepare the best camera settings.

If you'd like a deep dive for the best chance of taking stunning northern lights photos, check out our in-depth 5 ways to plan your shoot article.

Check the conditions
First things first, check out NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (@NWSSWPC), or AuroraWatch UK to see where the northern lights are likely to be visible. The prediction for tonight is two dozen states / Scotland & northern England. Next, check the weather forecast and pray for clear skies! There's a mix of social media accounts likely bringing regular updates and push alerts.

Find the right location and plan your shot
Wherever you are, head away from light pollution and to dark-sky areas for the clearest possible sightings.

With that, you'll want to plan your shot with local knowledge and an app like PhotoPills, remembering you need to face north for the aurora borealis!

I like to include a point of interest in the foreground of my northern lights photos, as you can see from the images I took back in May 2024. You could frame an isolated tree or building, or seek a body of water for reflections which is a particularly effective technique.

Check your gear
Just about any camera can take northern lights photos – the image above was shot with an old Google Pixel 6! Personally I prefer using a 'proper' camera, opting for my mirrorless camera with wide-angle zoom lens. For either option, a tripod support is needed for sharp, shake-free shots.

Choose the best camera settings
Most of today's phones include a night setting which boosts low light image quality, while select models like Google Pixel phones feature a dedicated Astrophotography mode. If the shutter speed is too long, those lovely northern lights details will blur into one solid mass of color and you'll lose the detail (like in the photo above) – so I suggest experimenting with various settings.

For camera gear with manual exposure control, select a shutter speed somewhere between 1-5 seconds and crank up ISO to get the right brightness, rather than too long an exposure and cleaner low ISO. Your priority is detail over noise-free images.

Good luck, and here's to clear skies!

DwarfLab Dwarf III: Two-minute review

The Dwarflabs Dwarf III smart telescope is a mini marvel. My first astrophotography set-up 10 years ago weighed more than 20kg / 44lbs – but this excellent little self-contained device comes in at a mere 1.3kg / 2.8lbs and is small enough to fit in airline carry-on luggage.

In fact, that's exactly what I did with it a few months ago, taking it with me on vacation to Greece. I've also used it extensively in my garden in the UK and compared it thoroughly to another smart telescope, the ZWO Seestar S50. And as you can see from my verdict and score above, I love it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's start with the basics.

The Dwarf III is one of the new breed of smart telescopes which simplify and automate the process of astrophotography to bring it to within easy reach of those without the time or money needed for a 'proper' set-up of mount, telescope and camera.

As with smart telescopes from rivals ZWO, Vaonis and Unistellar, the Dwarf III doesn't have an eyepiece you look through, and doesn't in any way resemble a classic telescope such as a reflector or refractor. Instead, it tracks objects in the night sky then takes photos of them and 'stacks' them.

This process increases the faint signal being captured in order to bring out details – because if you just looked at a single shot, you'd see very little beyond a few stars. The resulting image can be viewed in real-time as it develops on your phone's screen, which is essentially your eyepiece.

You can see it in action below, with the fuzzy object that's barely visible after five frames eventually becoming the recognizable Crescent Nebula after about 60 frames:

The Dwarf III has two lenses to capture its targets, one 35mm telephoto and one 3.4mm wide-angle – although the latter is mainly used for finding objects rather than shooting them.

The telephoto has a 2.9x1.7-degree field of view, which can fit the moon in it about six times and which has space for almost every galaxy and nebula you might want to capture. I go into this in more detail below, but this wide FOV is one of my favorite things about it.

Inside, there's a 4K IMX678 Starvis 2 sensor, which is on the budget end compared to that found within dedicated cooled astronomy cameras but which delivers excellent results, helped also by the fast f/4.3 f-ratio; this captures light more quickly than some rival smart scopes.

It's all controlled by the DwarfLab app, which gives you everything you need to take photos of the night skies without the need for you to do much more than choose your target and set it going. Even if you've never used a smart telescope – or any kind of telescope – before, you should be up and running within a few minutes.

In fact, roughly 20 minutes after taking it out of the box you could be viewing your first shot of wonderfully named objects such as the Elephant's Trunk nebula or Sombrero galaxy – the Dwarf III really is that easy to set up and use.

And when you do so, I'm pretty sure you'll be impressed, because the Dwarf III takes excellent photos given its small stature and low-ish price. It's truly one of the best ways into this fascinating hobby.

DwarfLab Dwarf III: price and availability

The DwarfLabs Dwarf III was released in May 2025 and is competitively priced, coming in at $549 / £459 / AU$849. Depending on where you are in the world, that's either slightly cheaper or the same price as one of its main rivals, the ZWO Seestar S50, which costs $549 / £539 / AU$949. Compared to the Seestar S30, which is a comparable size to the Dwarf III, it's more expensive though; that model comes in at $399 / £419 / AU$699.

It's also worth noting that unlike the two Seestar models, the Dwarf III doesn't come with a tripod. Many keen photographers and stargazers will already own one, but if not you can buy one with the telescope for an additional $89 / £73 / AU$149. Or, of course, you can add your own; we have plenty of good options in our list of the best travel tripods. Either way, that might bump up the price a little.

DwarfLab Dwarf III: Specs

DwarfLab Dwarf III: Design

Looks-wise, the Dwarf III is about as far from a traditional telescope as you could get. Powered off, it resembles a beefy external hard drive from about 2010, but turn it on to reveal the twin lenses and it's more like some kind of futuristic security-camera-robot hybrid.

It's actually pretty cute, with a certain Wall-E charm about it (or maybe that's just me). Either way, it's well built: solid, with a smooth plastic finish and an IP54 rating that keeps it safe from dust, moisture and dew.

It's also impressively small – like, how-did-they-fit-all-that-in-there small, a feeling that only grows after you see what it's capable of. It's relatively light, too, at 1.3kg / 2.87lbs; that's almost half the 2.5kg of the Seestar S50 and a little less than the S30.

There's not a lot to look at, externally. Beyond those two lenses and the DwarfLab logo, there's the main power button – a big circular affair that's very easy to find in the dark and which has a glowing green ring around it – plus a battery status indicator of four green dots, and a single USB-C charging port. On the bottom, meanwhile, there's a 1/4-inch tripod thread.

It comes with an excellent carrying case, plus a couple of accessories: a USB-C charging cable, lens wipe cloth, plus a solar filter. The latter snaps on magnetically in a pleasing fashion, and comes with a pouch to keep it safe.

Design is all very well thought out and though it's a shame it doesn't come with a tripod, that's the only minus point in this regard. It's not a massive problem, either, because many of the telescope's intended customers will already have one, and it helps keep the price low.

I've been using either the Seestar S50's tripod or a K&F Concept 64in/163cm model which costs $49 in the US, £45 in the UK and AU$150 in Australia. This is light, sturdy and has a 360-degree ballhead which makes it very easy to angle the Dwarf III for EQ mode (of which more later).

DwarfLab Dwarf III: Features and performance

The Dwarf III is a feature-rich device, with a multitude of abilities and use cases.

Obviously the first of those is to take photos of the night skies, and it does that very well thanks to its 4K Sony IMX678 Starvis 2 sensor – the same type as used in some of the best dash cams, including the Thinkware U3000 Pro. Starvis 2 is particularly strong in low light, while the IMX678's 4K resolution gives you more pixels to work with when cropping in on small and distant objects.

The twin lenses are very helpful. The telephoto is what you'll take most of your images with, while the wide-angle one is mainly for locating objects in the first place; you can take photos with it too, but it has a much lower resolution.

I've got a full gallery of astro images taken with the telescope below, but for now here's just one, my favorite that I've shot with the device. It shows the Eagle Nebula, Messier 16, and if you zoom in on the middle you'll see the famous 'Pillars of Creation', the swirling clouds of dust and gas that wowed the world when the Hubble telescope shot them two decades ago.

The Dwarf III has three internal filters. The most important is the dual-band filter, which targets the OIII (sulphur) and H⍺ (hydrogen) wavelengths – in layman's terms, this means it can capture more of the faint details in nebulae and reduce the impact of light pollution. There's also an astro filter, which extends into the infra-red range and which works best on galaxies and star clusters, and a 'VIS' filter which is used for daytime photography. All are easily selected within the Dwarf III's app; you don't need to physically attach anything.

Speaking of daytime photography, DwarfLabs make a big pitch around the telescope's usefulness around bird watching, and theoretically you could use it instead of a mirrorless camera and telephoto lens for any subject – just don't expect it to rival an expensive chunk of glass from Canon, Nikon or Sony.

The daytime photography ('General') mode includes burst and timelapse options, plus object tracking which I found to be a little hit and miss. 4K video can be recorded at up to 30fps, or 60fps if you switch to 1080p.

There's also a solar system mode for snapping the sun, moon and (theoretically) planets, plus a panorama mode. In Astro mode, meanwhile, you can shoot in either alt-azimuth or equatorial mode.

Performance-wise, the Dwarf III is pretty snappy to turn on and off, and slews to targets quickly and reasonably quietly; it makes less noise than the Seestar S50, for instance, although neither would be likely to wake even the lightest of sleepers next door.

In use, it's unerringly accurate in finding targets, zipping about the sky when you tell it where to go via the built-in star atlas.

It's also incredibly reliable when shooting. If the tracking on a motorized telescope is even a tiny bit off, you'll get star trails and the individual frame will be rejected and not included in the 'stack', potentially reducing detail in the final stacked image. With the Dwarf III, this almost never happened – I generally got around an 80-90% success rate, so if I shot a target for an hour, I'd get around 50 minutes' worth of photos. This is way better than my experience than shooting with the Seestar S50, where it can be more like 50% at times.

Plus, that's when shooting with 15-second exposures in alt-az mode; put it in EQ mode and you can get 30s shots with a similar success rate. This all makes it very easy to capture a lot of data on a target in a short time.

One of the few downsides is that the battery is not the biggest – only 10,000mAh, which is good for about 5 hours in astro mode when tracking and shooting a target, according to DwarfLab, and which was about right in my experience. You almost certainly won't get through a full night's shooting with it.

That said, I didn't put it to the test often, preferring instead to leave a much bigger power bank connected to it to ensure I got a full night's shooting. I tend to use Iniu power banks, which I've found to be very reliable and extremely well priced; the model below is well worth checking out and will triple the Dwarf III's capacity.

DwarfLab Dwarf III: Software

The nature of a smart telescope means that all of your interactions with it will be via an app – it's not like you can look through as you can with an old-school reflector or refractor.

That puts a lot of pressure on the device's software to be slick and simple to use, and fortunately the Dwarf III's is just that – with a few caveats.

I began using the Dwarf III several months ago, and on my first few nights shooting with it found the interface to be a little confusing. It wasn't a horror show by any means, but it wasn't as intuitive as ZWO's Seestar app. For instance, I'd click on the big 'Photo' button front and center to start shooting a galaxy or nebula, then would realize that I'd have to go back in and select the 'Atlas' option to actually choose my target.

Settings for options such as exposure time, meanwhile, were hidden within a menu called 'Function' – which really didn't (to me) suggest 'Settings'. I got used to it all after a few nights, but it was a little more confusing than it could have been.

The good news is that DwarfLabs is continually updating the platform, and a recent update has massively improved the experience. Those settings are now within a menu named 'Parameter, which is far more sensible, and the Atlas is available from within the shooting screen. There's a simple toggle between the wide and telephoto cameras, whereas before you tapped the small one to change between them, but again without labelling. It's all much more slick and easy to use.

(Note that most of my images in this review are using the old version of the software, because there's not been a clear night in the UK for me to take further screenshots for what feels like about 15 years now. I'll update them soon.)

There's a scheduling feature within the app, which works as you'd want it to and which is better than the one in ZWO's app. This is a vital inclusion, because most people won't want to stay up all night – they'll want to set the Dwarf III running with a list of targets, then wake refreshed in the morning to a lovely collection of images.

Switching to EQ mode is also pretty trouble-free. For the uninitiated, this lets the Dwarf III rotate fully in sync with the skies, meaning you can take longer exposures than in standard alt-az mode. Anything longer than 30 seconds will need to be in EQ mode (the maximum exposure is two minutes) and in my experience it's best for 30 seconds too; alt-az mode is fine for 15s exposures.

The Dwarf III app guides you through the process of setting the telescope into EQ mode, telling you exactly which direction and what amount to adjust the tripod head by, and the whole thing only takes about five minutes, less if you haven't moved the tripod since the previous session.

The included Stellar Studio software is also great. This lets you carry out basic processing actions on photos via the cloud, rather than needing to download them to your computer.

It's not exactly stacked with options, but does a really good job of reducing noise, sharpening stars and bringing out details. You can also remove stars entirely if you want that lovely clean view of a galaxy or nebula.

Finally, in 'General' mode the app works pretty well to let you zoom in on a target. You can use the wide-angle view to get an overall view of your surroundings, then click on the screen to adjust where the telephoto lens is pointing. Another click switches to the telephoto view and you can start snapping away.

DwarfLab Dwarf III: Image quality

There's one very important thing that anyone using a smart telescope for the first time needs to understand: you won't be getting Hubble-challenging images straight out of the camera. Well, obviously, you won't be getting Hubble-challenging images at all; this is a $500 smart telescope, not a rig that costs 10 times that.

But even with that in mind, there's a big difference between the photos that the Dwarf III creates for you, and the results that you can achieve with some proper processing.

The easiest way to demonstrate that is with some before and after photos – so check out the gallery above. In every case, you'll see the unprocessed image produced by the Dwarf III first, followed by the version I processed in Pixinsight, the specialist astrophotography software I use.

Now, let's get one thing straight: I'm not an expert when it comes to astro image processing. It's an incredibly complex hobby, with sometimes arcane software to master and a surprisingly large amount of technical knowledge needed to really get the best results. In fact, I think I prefer some of the Dwarf III's images, at least when it comes to color – which is one of the toughest things to get right.

Regardless of what you think of my images (I won't be offended, promise), you can see that processing reduces noise and brings out more detail and color. To really get the best from the Dwarf III, you will still want to do some processing.

Fortunately, as mentioned above, it's pretty easy to considerably improve things within the Dwarf III's Stellar Studio on your phone, with no need to shell out for or learn anything more complicated.

For instance, try the above image of the glorious East Veil nebula – the original, unprocessed image is pretty good, but Stellar Studio turns it into something epic, and my Pixinsight version is only a slight improvement (if anything).

One of the things I really love about the Dwarf III is its wide 2.9x1.7-degree field of view, even when using the telephoto camera. The Seestar S50 has a much narrower 0.7x1.2-degree FOV, while the S30 is close to the Dwarf at 1.22x2.13-degree.

The net effect of this is that you get a real sense of drama with the Dwarf III. I love the Seestar S50, but with many targets you end up with a close-up of the object. You can get around this by using mosaic mode (the Dwarf also has one of these), but in my experience mosaics take longer to shoot and are harder to process.

The Dwarf, meanwhile, almost always captures the object and its surroundings. Its field of view is wide enough to cover the whole of Andromeda, for instance, whereas the S50 gets only the central section.

Of course you may prefer a closer view of targets, but the Dwarf's 4K resolution means you can crop in anyway and still have a decent-sized image. It's possible that the Seestar S30 will give me the FOV I love from the Dwarf with some of ZWO's advantages too, but I've not used that device yet, so that comparison will have to wait.

In general mode, image quality is fine. That's a pretty nice shot of a pigeon on my lawn above, but view the full-size image and you'll see the feathers lack definition. My Fujifilm X-T5 mirrorless camera would do a better job with a good zoom lens.

Solar photography, meanwhile, is easy to do – you simply snap on the filter then move to the target. Admittedly, for some reason the Dwarf finds it much harder to locate the sun than it does a tiny object many millions of light years away, but the Seestar S50 is no different in this regard.

I've only taken a few solar shots with the Dwarf III and was relatively impressed by them, but it's not an area of photography I'm particularly interested in.

Should I buy the DwarfLabs Dwarf III?

Buy it if…

Don't buy it if…

Also consider

How I tested the DwarfLabs Dwarf III

I took the Dwarf III with me on vacation to Crete, Greece, where I was lucky enough to be staying in an apartment with a roof terrace – and in a country with clear skies every night. I used the smart telescope extensively over the next week or so, taking photos of multiple targets including the Eagle nebula, Omega nebula and Andromeda galaxy.

When I returned to the UK, I used it whenever I could, which unfortunately was not that often due to the clouds which blanket the nation for about three-quarters of every month. Here, I set it up alongside my ZWO Seestar S50, taking photos of the same subjects for the same amount of time so I could directly compare results.

I also tried it in EQ mode, in Solar mode, in General mode for a bit of nature photography and spent many hours processing the photos it produced in all modes.

• Winners of the Wildlife Photographer of The Year 2025 announced
• Overall winner was captured using an 11-year-old Nikon D810 DSLR
• The Canon EOS R5 is the most popular camera amongst competition entrants

The winners of the Wildlife Photographer of The Year 2025 contest have been unveiled, and once again, it’s a set of incredible images. The overall winner was shot by South African photographer, Wim van den Heever, who takes home the Grand Prize.

His image depicts an otherworldly scene of a rare brown hyena exploring the dilapidated remains of the abandoned mining town of Kolmanskop in Namibia, a setting which creates an almost dystopian atmosphere. Van den Heever explains that he worked for almost ten years to capture his composition of a brown hyena in the perfect location, and his patience paid off, creating a haunting mood that reflects the ability of wildlife to recolonize areas once dominated by human activity.

The Wildlife Photographer of The Year Competition is one of the world’s most prestigious photo contests. This year was a record-breaker, drawing in more than 60,000 entries from across the globe. The contest caters to nature photographers of all specialisms and interests, featuring multiple rounds such as Animal Portraits, Birds, Invertebrates, Urban Wildlife, Underwater, Plants and Fungi, Wildlife Photojournalism, and more.

Eagle-eyed photographers will notice an even more astounding detail; that the overall winning shot, beating thousands of other entries, was taken on a DSLR camera from the last decade. Van den Heever shot his masterpiece on a Nikon D810, which having been launched back in the summer of 2014, is just about ancient in digital terms. In an age of rapidly developing mirrorless cameras, Van den Heever’s achievement is a testament to the longevity of enthusiast DSLRs. It proves that, just because a camera might lack the many bells and whistles of the most recent models, AI autofocus modes, subject recognition and tracking, and global electronic shutter modes to name but a few, this doesn’t make it redundant.

DSLRs are far from dead

The overall winner is not alone in being captured by an older DSLR model. In fact, they feature heavily across many of this year’s categories.

The winner of the youth category of the competition, Young Wildlife Photographer of The Year, also saw the top image captured on an aging Nikon DSLR camera. Andrea Dominizi from Italy used his Nikon D7100 to shoot a close-up frame of a longhorn beetle in the Lepini Mountains region. He paired this with a Tokina 10–17mm fisheye lens for a super-wide perspective, and an off-camera flash to provide some extra fill light.

Meanwhile, Dennis Stogsdill of the USA used an old pro favorite to capture his winning image in the Mammals category. The Canon EOS 1DX Mark II was his tool of choice, a top-level body capable of burst rates of 14 frames per second, or as high as 16fps in Live View mode. This gives many recent mirrorless bodies a run for their money.

Elsewhere, Ralph Pace won in the Underwater category using a Nikon D850 in a Nauticam housing. This DSLR is often considered one of the finest models of the type, blending high resolution with excellent low-light performance – ideal for shooting in an underwater setting.

While DSLRs are showing they have plenty of life left in them yet, Canon still has a good reason to celebrate its mirrorless RF mount system. Of all the high-performing images entered into the competition, it is the Canon EOS R5 that features most often, making it the most popular camera. This isn’t much of a surprise since the original R5 scored highly when we first reviewed it, while its successor currently ranks as the best Canon camera.

This offers a fascinating insight into the type of gear nature photographers are choosing to work with in 2025, and demonstrates that experienced shooters are holding on to tried and tested gear, whether this was released within the past five years, or as far back as the previous decade.

What do you currently shoot with? Would you still use an eleven-year-old DSLR? Don’t forget to leave your thoughts in the comments below!

You might also like

• The best DSLR camera for 2025: top choices for photography and video
• Best wildlife photography camera 2025: our top picks from Canon, Nikon, Sony and more
• I took this Nikon super-telephoto lens on a dream safari trip – and learned a big lesson about pro primes

Once Upon photo book review

Once Upon is a photo book service designed around making photo book creation as accessible as possible. The idea is that having the Once Upon app on your phone will make it easier to build a photo book as things happen, rather than as an afterthought.

This “quicker and easier” approach means the photo book options on offer are fairly limited compared to other photo book services I’ve tested, as Once Upon only offers square books in two sizes: medium, which measures 20 x 20cm, or large, which is 27 x 27cm.

Both options are available in hardcover, with an additional softcover option for the medium size.

Prices start from $19 / £16 / AU$35 for a 20-page medium photo book with a softcover, rising to $25 / £21 / AU$45 for a hardcover.

Additional silk matte or semi-gloss pages can be added at a cost of $0.85 / 42p / AU$1.40. The larger photo book starts at $35 / £26 / AU$55, with extra pages costing $1.05 / 62p / AU$1.70 each, which is cheaper than many of the services in our best photo books guide.

In total, the cost for my large 28-page hardcover photo book with silk matte paper came to £30.96 (about $42 / AU$65), but I got it for £28.22 thanks to a 25% discount that was available at the time.

The shipping cost was perfectly reasonable, and it should be in the US and Australia too, as Once Upon also has manufacturing sites in those regions. There’s an estimated production and delivery timeline of five to seven days in the UK, potentially rising to 10 business days in the US and Australia.

There’s no option to expedite, but this is an acceptable turnaround and quicker than some photo book providers, which can take a couple of weeks depending on where the book’s manufactured.

In this photo book’s case, I placed the order on a Tuesday afternoon and received the finished article the following Monday, which is an impressive turnaround of four working days.

As the brand's ethos is centered around it, it made sense to use the Once Upon app on my iPhone to create this photo book, but I experimented with the browser-based app, too.

Both offer the same features; however, the app provided helpful tips in the form of pop-ups as I started building my photo book.

These included general hints about how to drag, drop, and swap photos, along with important tips like warning me to check that nothing important was positioned over the crease when I applied a photo across a spread.

I could tell from the outset that this photo book service is tailored toward those who want to keep things simple. There was a grand total of two layouts on offer for the front cover, which consisted of having the title at the top or the bottom.

It was fortunate I wanted the outer cover to be black, as Once Upon only offers black or white.

There was the option to crop and rotate the cover image, with portrait, landscape, and square presets with fixed ratios, but that was the closest I got to fine-tuning anything.

Needless to say, this isn’t the photo book service for you if you want to have any creative input.

When I tried to add our TechRadar twist to the front cover, I found there were only three editable elements: the cover image, title, and subtitle.

The features are so stripped back that I wasn’t even able to change up the font of the subtitle. I wasn’t exactly spoiled for choice when it came to the title font either, as there was a choice of just four styles to choose from.

While I can appreciate the allure of a simple design process, some flexibility is needed to ensure you can adjust the composition of your images.

The fixed ratios of the cropping tool and inability to tweak a photo’s position within its frame meant that our two-page spread of a rocky seascape was cut short, spoiling the shot.

One function I haven’t often seen from other photo book services is the ability to copy a page spread to other books I’m working on.

Rearranging the spreads was pretty easy, too, as I just needed to hold down the tab on the top right of the spread before dragging and dropping.

When adding photos, they’re automatically arranged by the date they were taken, rather than the date they were uploaded. This may not be a problem if you’re creating a memory book of all your holiday snaps, but if you’re collating photos taken on different dates, it could prove irritating.

Unlike other photo book builders, like the one from Mixbook, for example, images cannot be uploaded to an album first, and I couldn’t even select a layout before adding photos to the spread.

I could upload my photos to the spread one at a time or in batches, and they’d be arranged into a layout for me.

They also appeared in an image list at the bottom of the page, but it proved to be redundant, as I wasn’t able to drag and drop them onto the page; I could only select each photo to see the same options I’d get by clicking on the photo itself a smidge further up the page.

When I did want to swap photos, I could do so simply by dragging and dropping them within the two-page spread, though I could see this leapfrog approach getting a little tedious if I needed to swap more than a couple. As was the case with the cover photo, only basic image adjustments were available.

I had to repeatedly click on the layout button for the photos to cycle through different preset arrangements, of which there were only around ten, though there were technically a few more if I hit the mirror button to change what appears on the left or right page.

While some may appreciate this simplicity, I really didn’t enjoy not being able to compare the different layouts easily.

The basic features and restrictive layouts definitely weren’t my cup of tea, but they do at least keep the process of creating a photo book simple and make the Once Upon app easy to master.

I was pleased with how simple and efficient it was to share my Once Upon photo book, as it’s always nice to have the option to build a photo book with others, especially after a big event or holiday.

After I’d shared the link or QR code, I could see a list of active co-creators once they’d created an account. I also had the option to remove co-creators if required, and there was a simple but useful security feature that deactivated the shared link and generated a new one, offering more control over who has access to the project.

The book builder easily handled two people working on the photo book simultaneously. It took around a second to show the changes made by my co-creator, and it didn’t falter when new pages or photos were being added simultaneously.

My first impression of the finished Once Upon photo book was positive. The book arrived in good condition, and the colors of the aurora on the cover photo really popped.

Directly comparing the outer cover of the Once Upon photo book against the others we’ve reviewed revealed that the black of the book's outer cover lacks depth, has a slight yellow hue to it, and is a tiny bit streaky upon closer inspection.

All this being said, the front cover looks nice enough overall, and is satisfactory considering it cost less than £30 and was printed in the UK.

I was fairly happy with the paper quality overall. The paper didn't feel overly thin, but in lighter areas, I could see some show-through from black text and darker images from the opposite side of the page.

On the plus side, the satin finish performed as advertised – I didn’t need to wear museum-grade gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints on the dark cover or the book's pages, which is a bigger advantage than you may think.

The printed photos look satisfyingly crisp and bright, and are of a much higher standard than the printed results from the SnapFish photo book.

I was very pleased to see that there was minimal posterization, which was notable in quite a few of the photobooks we’ve received, particularly in shots showing subtle color gradients in the sky.

In fact, the print quality in this Once Upon book has been the most comparable to our photo book from top-of-the-class Blurb I’ve seen so far, which is high praise indeed.

But as eye-catching as the print quality was, other elements of the photo looked unnatural due to the automatic image improvements that had been applied.

In places, these caused our images to look overly enhanced, especially those featuring black clothing or dark backgrounds, which were overexposed to compensate.

The color accuracy of our shots was also affected by the auto enhancement, as the colors became a little too vivid, and may have been more so if I’d opted for semi-gloss, as the silk matte paper is advertised as delivering toned-down colors in comparison.

This isn’t glaringly obvious, but it was noticeable when I compared them directly against our other photo books and the original photographs.

These enhancements probably won’t cause any issues when applied to sunny holiday snaps or everyday photos, but it’s worth bearing this in mind if your photos feature a lot of dark elements.

Fortunately, this automatic image improvement is voluntary, and it’s easy to request that the shots in the photo book aren’t enhanced in pre-production by unticking a box at the editing stage.

In essence, Once Upon isn’t going to be the photo book service for you if you want to have any creative input.

It is, however, a great choice if you’re looking for a service that’ll make the decisions for you, as all you really need to do is pop your photos and captions in, and enjoy your low-cost photo book with fantastic print quality once it arrives.

Should I buy the Once Upon photo book?

Buy it if…

Don't buy it if…

Once Upon photo book review: also consider

How I tested the Once Upon photo book

• I created a photo book from scratch to recreate our TechRadar photo book
• I explored the Once Upon app, testing the different features and tools
• I ordered a photo book and assessed the quality of the finished product

I explored the Once Upon app on my iPhone and the web browser on my MacBook. I assessed how easy the creation process was, starting with a blank canvas and using the tools available to recreate our TechRadar photo book. Recreating an existing design is important so that we can assess how capable the different services are when faced with different requirements.

I ordered my completed photo book and evaluated the finished product against the collection of photo books we’ve already tested, paying close attention to quality, print finish, alignment, and making notes of any imperfections.

• First reviewed: October 2025
• Read more about how we test

Some superheroes don't wear capes. Instead, they make the most extraordinary photography possible with just a smartphone. In this case, that's the iPhone 17 Pro Max and its Portrait Mode at New York Comic Con, which is going on right now at the Jacob Javitz Center.

Now I have proof.

The kernel of this quest started almost a decade ago, in 2016, when I trekked across town with the then-new iPhone 7 Plus in my pocket. I planned to test the brand new, dual-camera Portrait Mode at that year's culture, comic book, entertainment, and convention, using the new mode to capture what I hoped would be stunning images.

While the results were generally good for that time, it was a learning experience. As I wrote back then:

"First, I got better results in the brightly lit area outside the actual convention halls (the ceiling is all glass). Second, a convention is a difficult place to capture iPhone 7 Plus Portrait shots. There were thousands of people crossing in front of and, especially, behind my shots. The camera often got fooled and would try to focus on the tons of nearby people.

Looking back at my collection of photos (you can see a few below), I can see how 2016's portrait mode was sort of a rough instrument. The bokeh effect stopped and started with the subject, making some cosplayers look almost cut out. The image processing could lose details like the cosplay props (if they were not in front of their bodies), and fly-away hair was cropped away. There just wasn't that much detail.

A few iPhone 7 Plus Portrait Mode shots from 2016

Looking at my new collection of photos, virtually every complaint is answered. I never thought about lighting, and I now have almost infinite control over the amount of bokeh. The level of subtlety is incredible, and generally, Portrait Mode in the iPhone 17 Pro Max is rarely fooled. It knows the subject and her props, and the background has many levels of focus. This has the effect of maintaining depth and realism. Instead of clipping individual strands of hair, the iPhone 17 Pro Max Portrait Mode keeps them in perfect focus with the subject.

Just take a look at the lead image above. The iPhone knew to keep the bat top out of focus, while he's in perfect focus, and then the background is in soft focus again.

Lighting conditions also didn't seem to matter to the iPhone 17 Pro Max. It adjusted and always left me ample information. Other than a few crops and f-stop adjustments, I did not touch the exposure or contrast on any of these images.

Honestly, it's basically impossible to compare today's iPhone portrait mode photography with what was possible in 2016. But I was happy to try.

How often do you use your Best iPhone's Portrait Mode? Let me know in the comments.

iPhone 17 Pro Max Portrait Mode shots (2025)

When Apple launched its new iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, it couldn't stop talking about the new 8x-zoom powered by the 4x optical zoom 48MP sensor. Such an 8x zoom is, they claimed, equivalent to a 200mm focal length. As soon as I heard that, my ears pricked up.

"200mm? Really?"

You see, I've been shooting photos with a Sony Alpha a6000 fitted with a Sony 18-200mm lens for well over a decade. It's my favorite lens, letting you smoothly go from a full-throated close-up of a subject just inches from the glass to an 11x optical zoom that can capture the moon. It's the most compact and, for a time, powerful lens I've ever owned. When fitted with the lens, the Sony Alpha a6000 is relatively small compared to similarly configured cameras, albeit not small compared to an iPhone.

Could Apple have possibly equalled that photographic power in a 6.9-inch, 233-gram aluminum and glass frame? There was only one way to find out.

A camera vs camera test

The other day, I took the new phone and my trusty camera to Bryant Park in New York and started taking photos. For each capture, I made sure to take as close as I could the exact same shot with the Sony Alpha a6000 and the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

For its 8x mode, the iPhone 17 Pro Max shoots at a 200mm equivalent by performing a sensor crop on the full 48MP frame, essentially taking the center 12MP. So it's not a digital zoom, it's just a piece of the whole sensor image. The Sony Alpha a6000 shoots at 24MP with its not-quite-full-frame APS-C sensor.

Throughout the shoot, I didn't touch any of the settings, meaning I never tried to lock or fix exposure or the focus. The 4x optical zoom shoots a f/2.8 aperture, which is what the 8X sensor crop inherits as well.

For the Sony Alpha, I set the camera on auto and, similarly, let it choose all the exposure and focus settings. The aperture for all the Sony images was f/6.3.

Even though these are both effectively 200mm, the Sony does have a stronger optical zoom, pulling 11x, compared to the iPhone 17 Pro's 8x equivalent.

Before we get into the images, a bit of a spoiler: The iPhone 17 Pro Max 8x equivalent lens is, in general, no match for resolution and the optical focal length of the Sony Alpha a600.

Time and again, the Sony camera beat the iPhone in terms of color, clarity, depth, and artistic appeal. On the other hand, the iPhone 17 Pro Max's 200mm focal length equivalent did really well for a smartphone.

Fifth Avenue flower

Apple's computational photography is some of the best in the business, but it's also making decisions about what an image should look like. Typically, it wants to ensure the image is bright enough and that it gathers and presents all available visual information.

Sony's Alpha a6000, like most DSLRs (even mirrorless ones like this) presents what the lens and sensor capture. In some ways, it takes a cookie-cutter approach to the photography because it's not trying to decide if that background should be brighter or more in focus. The lens does what it does, and the exposure and shutter speed define the brightness and clarity. Auto will select the best options (like ISO) for you. If you want more control, you can shoot in manual mode, something I chose not to do for this test.

In this instance, the iPhone 17 Pro Max 8x option made everything brighter. That looks good, but also somewhat unrealistic and slightly washed out. After all, the flower I captured was in the shade. Why not show that? The iPhone's shot is also somewhat busy, and it really lost its way with that neon light in the background.

Sony's shot is, by contrast, full of subtlety, with a deep bokeh and considerable detail in the flower petals, much of which the iPhone didn't capture.

Bryant Park performers

This is an interesting shot because I intended to capture the performers, but both cameras ended up focusing on the officer in blue, who is, in fact, a great subject.

As is the case with most of these images, the Sony Alpha a6000 doesn't try to brighten figures in the shade, which ends up giving the image some real depth and nuance.

The officer is in sharp focus, and there's exquisite detail in his uniform and pleasing nuance to his skin tone.

I think the iPhone 17 Pro Max image suffers here because it's struggling to balance out the uneven light. The 8x camera option is over-brightening the shaded areas and making the entire image look flat and washed out. The shaded performers should not be as bright as the officer.

Because of the overexposure and likely higher ISO, the iPhone ends up introducing unnecessary grain.

Classic NYC skyscraper twin spires

In my mind's eye, I saw the classic twin spires of New York City's Bryant Park Hotel in the distance, silhouetted by soft foliage in the foreground. Only one of the cameras could achieve that effect.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max 8x camera did a good job of bringing the building closer and offers some nice clarity and detail, but the overall shot is flat because both the leaves and building are in focus. There's also the issue of colors, which all look a bit drained.

As you can see, the Sony matched the photo I imagined. The spires are sharp, with noticeable blue highlights, all silhouetted by the out-of-focus leaves.

Direct sunlight and leaves

This would be a challenging photo for any camera, smartphone, or otherwise, but I think the sunlight may have overwhelmed the iPhone 17 Pro Max. I mean, I like the photo, but the backlit leaves look slightly surreal. It's a strange effect. Some might like the lens flare with a touch of green. I'm not a fan.

The Sony Alpha a6000 photo is a lot closer to what I saw. The colors are washed out, but that's the effect I'd expect from so much direct sunlight. Even with all the hard light, Sony's image has a lot of interesting detail.

Woman with mask

The two cameras took very different approaches here. Sony focused on an attractive portrait that stayed true to the lighting realities.

The iPhone appears to have a faster lens in this instance. Not only is the image far brighter, but the water is frozen mid-splash; that's a cool effect.

Unfortunately, the colors are again a bit washed out on the iPhone, but the overall detail is good.

Sony's image is more of a pure-play portrait. The details on the face and hair are strong.

Arrow head guy

This is another instance where Sony favors a portrait-style shot over too much information. The colors here are good, and the only criticism I would offer is that the arrow is too bright yellow.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max does a decent job with the arrow color, even capturing the fabric texture. There's also really nice detail on the subject's hair, but I noticed that the iPhone failed to capture the guy’s ruddy skin tone, which is clearly evident in the Sony photo.

Bryant Park Carousel

This was a challenging shot with the carousel in motion and the horses bobbing up and down.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max failed to sedate the horses well enough to sharpen the action and has such a long depth of field that the image is a busy mess.

The Sony Alpha a6000, on the other hand, gets the lock and plucks the horse out of all the activity, giving me a surprisingly clear picture. At 100% I can just make out a tiny bit of the motion blur on the Sony image.

I am impressed, though, with the vibrancy of some of the colors in the iPhone photo.

Modern building top

This is one photo where the iPhone 17 Pro Max really shines. The image of this skyscraper is clear and bright but with a rich amount of shadow, giving the building the right amount of dimension. Also, the sky pops while maintaining all the cloudy details

At 100%, though, some of the building lines look rougher than they should be.

On the Sony image, every architectural line and element is sharp and crystal clear, and the partially cloudy blue sky matches what I saw in the iPhone image.

Another view of the city performers

In general, I think I did a better job framing the iPhone 17 Pro Max photo here. The amount of bright detail in the background works in the image's favor and brings together the whole performance.

Colors are vibrant even in the evident shadow. It's for that reason that some might find the iPhone 17 Pro Max image more pleasing, but I think it does veer a bit from what I could see with my naked eyes.

Colors on the Sony image are much more muted, and I think that and the much stronger bokeh effect really bring the performance into focus.

At 100% the Sony has far more clarity. There are details, like a stray hair on the woman's face, the stitching on her hat, and discoloration off her dress that are really not visible in the iPhone image.

City street

For virtually all of my shots, I was a good distance from the subject, but this shot was different because, while the distance to the New York Port Authority was long, there was a lot of detail down 41st Street between me and that building. I was curious how both the iPhone 17 Pro Max and Sony Alpha a6000 would handle the challenge.

Sony did a better job of differentiating between the brightly sunlit Port Authority in the background and the shaded buildings and people in the foreground.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max tries to balance out the brightness across the board, which makes the image a little flat. There's also a fair amount of grain.

At 100% it's clear that the higher resolution Sony has more detail.

Bonus round: Shoot the moon

One of my favorite photography subjects is the moon. Unlike the other images, it's impossible to capture the moon with auto settings. The Earth's satellite is incredibly bright at night, so you have to close the aperture and find the right shutter speed. Then there's focus. When I shoot with the Sony Alpha a6000, I switch to manual focus mode, and when I spin the focus wheel, the camera digitally zooms in so I can adjust until things are crystal clear.

You can photograph the moon with any of the best smartphones; you just zoom in as much as possible, tap the screen to lower the exposure, and then snap. The results usually are not great.

To be clear, I'm not talking about the digital zoom capabilities possible with the iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, and Pixel phones. Once you zoom past the optical limit, you are getting a mix of digital and sometimes AI magic that makes guesses about how the moon should look.

Still, when Apple said the iPhone 17 Pro Max has an 8x, 200mm-equivalent lens option, I could not wait to compare it to my 200mm Sony Alpha a6000 lens.

Unlike the rest of the test, the images you're looking at are substantial crops of the full frame, so you can clearly see how each camera handled the moon image.

The good news is that this iPhone is much better at a decent moon shot. The bad news is that there is still no comparison to what I can accomplish with the Sony lens.

Ultimately, this test ended up proving what might be obvious: a smartphone camera, even the wonderful array on the $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,149 iPhone 17 Pro Max is, at least for high-end zoom, still no match for a nearly $1,000 (used price) prosumer-level camera kit. On the other hand, my camera can't make calls, handle email, do AI, or give me access to social media. Also, it doesn't fit in my pocket.

The art of smartphone photography has now advanced to the point that it's flirting with traditional camera quality. It's not there yet, but the iPhone 17 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra produced the strongest cases yet for leaving the bulky big camera and lens behind.

Naturally, though, there's a question of which phone to take (or buy). If you're a photography buff or even just someone who appreciates a good still image, these two flagship phones and their arrays of cameras and lenses do not make things easy.

I decided to do a somewhat limited test just to see how the two phones handle the basics. No adjustments or tapping on the screen to enforce focus or exposure; just find the subjects, point and shoot with both phones. I did sometimes choose specific lenses for certain scenes, but otherwise I left well enough alone.

So who wins? It's complicated because both smartphones are capable of excellent photography. There are more megapixels than ever and tons of controls. This test, though, is for all the people who don't fiddle with settings; they just pull the phone out of their pocket, point, and shoot. In that scenario, one phone rises ever so lightly above the other.

First, a reminder about the cameras on the two phones:

iPhone 17 Pro Max:

• Main: 48MP f/1.78
• Ultra-wide: 48MP f/2.2
• Telephoto: 48MP (4x optical) f/2.8
• Selfie camera: 18MP

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra

• Main camera: 200MP f/1.7
• 5x telephoto: 50MP (also provides the 10x zoom through a sensor crop) f/3.4
• 3x optical: 10MP f/2.4
• Ultra-wide: 50MP f/1.9
• Selfie camera: 12MP

This was an opportunistic challenge, meaning I shot what I saw when I saw it. I generally did not go hunting for moments; I just looked at what was around me, aimed the cameras, and took the shots.

That's why this first image is a macro shot of a pollen-covered bee on a flower. For each photo, I got as close as I could to the bee with the ultrawide lenses, while remaining in focus and not getting stung. I captured these two remarkable images.

A few things jump out immediately. The S25 Ultra's contrast is quite strong, but there's also a lack of dynamic range. While there is an exquisite level of detail in the bee and pollen, the bug is also lost a bit in the dark business of its surroundings.

Apple's macro here is warmer, and the steps from deep black on the bee's back to the white flowers are far more subtle. The green leaves look more sunlit in the iPhone 17 Pro Max image. While in the S25 ultra, we get a vibrant green but lose the sunlit color information.

Winner: iPhone 17 Pro Max

While not a perfect match, I often compared the iPhone 17 Pro Max's 48MP 4x optical zoom to the Galaxy S25 Ultra's 50MP 5x optical zoom.

In this flowerpot shot, the S25 Ultra again pushed the contrast, but in this instance, it works in its favor. Samsung's flowerpot looks far more striking than the iPhone 17 Pro Max's somewhat over-exposed version.

At 100% both images have a bit more graininess than I prefer, but the detail is strong across each one. Still, I prefer Samsung's approach here. It maintained the color truth while adding enough contrast to make the entire scene pop.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra

I took the same shot with each phone's main camera and got similar results. Although I had better luck finding the focus point on each. For the iPhone 17 Pro Max, it picked the nearest flower in the vase. The Galaxy S25 Ultra chose a flower on the top left. That focus point gave each photo a bit more depth and clarity.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max shot still looks a little overexposed, at least compared to the S25 Ultra, which offers a better range from deep black to vibrant yellow. While the iPhone 17 Pro Max's depth of field is a bit deeper, the use of contrast in the Samsung image also helps everything look more well-defined.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra

I looked up and spotted these buds and three-petaled dogwood flowers against an almost cloudless, azure sky. They were too far away for the main camera, so I used the 4x zoom on the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the 5x zoom on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

No doubt, most people would be very pleased with either image, but I did spot some differences.

On the Samsung S25 ultra image, the colors are a bit unnatural. The sky is too blue, and the pink petals are too bright. In fact, the entire bunch of buds and flowers has an odd glow and looks a little like a cutout against the sky. Speaking of which, I can spot some stair-stepping pixelation in the sky with some tiny darker blue spots mixed in with the lighter blue.

By contrast, the iPhone 17 Pro Max image looks real and true. The flowers are against the sky background, but seem fully a part of the scene. The colors are clear, bright, and accurate, and the sky is a lovely combination of light and deep blue, with no visible stair-stepping between the color variations.

Winner: iPhone 17 Pro Max

Not all selfie cameras are made equal

Samsung's front-facing camera is a 10MP sensor. Behind Apple's new Center Stage front-facing camera is a new square, 18MP sensor. Apple isn't always using all those megapixels to capture an image. In fact, the new landscape mode, which does not require rotating the phone, is clearly a sensor crop (that's the mode I used for this test shot). Even so, the megabyte difference between my iPhone and Galaxy selfies is notable. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra selfie defaulted to a roughly 4K 2.3MB image, while the iPhone 17 Pro Max captured a nearly 5K 4.1MB image.

As with other images, the Galaxy S25 Ultra leans into contrast, which makes all the colors a bit less warm. My skin tone and the detail are excellent, and there's a nice contrast between my face and the shadows. Where the S25 Ultra stumbled a bit is in colors. In shadow, my gray sweatshirt turns a dark blue. Plus, the texture of my hat is almost distracting.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max makes it clear that the light source is sunlight; one half of my face is bathed in a warm, yellow glow. The side that's in shadow is, I think, the perfect skintone color and level of detail. The iPhone 17 Pro Max also did a much better job of maintaining the sweatshirt color. It's light gray in the sunlight, and a dark, truthful gray in the shadow.

I didn't adjust the image or try to turn it into a portrait mode shot, but I noticed that the iPhone 17 Pro Max automatically did a better and more visually pleasing bokeh than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which left the background a little too sharp and oversaturated, distracting from the selfie.

Winner: iPhone 17 Pro Max

Samsung and Apple both offer sensor crop options that essentially double their telephoto efforts without introducing a ton of digital garbage.

For the Galaxy S25 Ultra, a sensor crop on the 50MP 5X zoom results in a 10x-like zoom. Similarly, Apple's iPhone 17 Pro Max sensor crops the 48MP 4X zoom to achieve an 8x approximation. Neither is pure optical, but by taking the center pixels and doing some image pipeline work, both phones produce surprisingly good 200mm lens approximations.

I like testing these capabilities on skies and clouds because I think they're some of the most challenging photography subjects.

Both of these images look good, but where the iPhone 17 Pro Max produces a clear blue and quite smooth sky, the Galaxy S25 Ultra struggles with the blue expanse. I can see pixelation and stair-stepping between lighter and darker blues.

Where Apple's clouds are smooth, detailed, and wispy, the S25 Ultra's cloud formations devolve into some jarring pixellation. Again, these are not issues you'll notice unless you look at the images, as I did, at 100%. Honestly, the level of clear detail in the 17 Pro Max image is remarkable.

Winner: iPhone 17 Pro Max

For this last image set, I focused the primary zoom lenses (4x on the iPhone and 5x on the Galaxy) on some pigeons on my roof.

The quality differences here are minimal. Both phones capture the full range of pigeon colors, including the splash of pink on the bird's neck. The blue sky looks perfect in each image.

Where the iPhone 17 Pro Max nudges ahead is on some of the feather details and, more noticeably, on my eaves. While I wish they were as white and clean as depicted in the S25 Ultra image, I know they're as dirty and mottled as they appear in the iPhone 17 Pro Max frame.

Shadows and other details are more or less a wash.

Winner: iPhone 17 Pro Max

There you have it. Apple's iPhone 17 Pro Max edged out the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra in five of my seven image tests, but it's by no means a slam dunk. I'm sure the majority of people would be pleased with any of the S25 Ultra images. It's only in direct contrast with the 17 Pro Max photos that we see the relatively minor shortcomings.

In the end, though, if you want the best smartphone photography, it's clear the iPhone 17 Pro Max should be at the top of your list.

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Let's get this out of the way: the $1,199 iPhone 16 Pro Max takes better photos than the $799 Google Pixel 10. The differences, though, are not nearly as great as you might think, at least that's what I learned when I took the two phones on my staycation and started shooting the same image with each phone.

Google Pixel phones have long been lauded for their photographic capabilities, with some claiming that they outstrip those of the garden-variety iPhone. I've never quite found that, but I will acknowledge that I have long been impressed with Pixel's image-capture skills. After Google unveiled its Pixel 10 line at its Made by Google event and sent me the base model, I decided that, for the duration of my go-nowhere vacation, it would sit in the pocket opposite the one carrying my everyday handset: the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Despite the massive price difference (Pixel 10 : $799 / £799 / AU$1,349 vs iPhone 16 Pro Max: $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,149), the camera arrays are more similar than you might think.

From a specs perspective, the main cameras are essentially a wash. Apple's 5x optical zoom has somewhat more megapixels than the Google Pixel 10's, and while the Pixel beats the iPhone in field of view, the iPhone's lower aperture rating will provide better exposure overall. The biggest difference can be found in ultra-wide lenses, where Apple brings a whopping 48MP to the lens, and the more affordable Pixel 10 has just 13MP of capturing power. They match on FoV (120 degrees) and f/2.2 aperture.

Those are the numbers, but in use, the difference could be, depending on the lens I used, somewhat harder to discern.

Virtually every single photo I took with the Google Pixel 10 looks good. They're clear, colorful, and full of details. It's only when I compare them directly with the photos taken with the iPhone 16 Pro Max that I can see the core differences. Mostly, as you'll see in the samples below, it comes down to color and exposure range. (Note: I did ZERO editing on these images and essentially left controls on default settings.)

The Pixel 10 might lose some of the steps between the lightest and darkest parts of the image, and it can lack just a bit of that colorful oomph found in the iPhone photos. I want to be clear, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is capturing reality and not oversaturating the image. For some reason, the Pixel 10 lacks just a bit of that saturation, which might be due to a slight lack of contrast.

Since the lenses are not that different, this might be a result of image processing, which, I believe, is just a tick better on the iPhone.

Speed is, as far as I can tell, a match. There's one image of a memorial fountain where both phones do an excellent job of stopping the fountain's splashing water so we can spot individual droplets.

On the portrait mode images I took of my wife in low light, I think I prefer the Pixel 10 capture. There's far less low-light grain, and the bokeh effect is more pronounced and ultimately pleasing. Sure, the iPhone wins for better sunset color, but the overall clarity and composition on the Pixel 10 is A+.

Where the iPhone 16 Pro Max really shines is on this telephoto image of a turtle. Notice the rich colors in both the water and the aquatic animal. There's a remarkable range of greens, yellows, and white highlights. Even the water is its own shade of green. Here, the Pixel 10 struggles to punch up the turtle colors sufficiently for it to stand out from the surrounding water.

There are other telephoto images where the Pixel 10 stood nearly toe-to-toe with the iPhone 16 Pro Max. This shot of the water tower at sunset is a good example. Timing was a factor here because a man walked in front of the sun just as I was snapping the image with the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Otherwise, the photos are quite similar. Where the iPhone 16 Pro Max excels is in capturing the range of colors in the sky. But I almost prefer the Pixel 10's warmer approach. Both images get high marks for their sharpness and detail.

I was especially impressed with the Pixel 10's Night Sight photography, which helped me capture some excellent fireworks images. Generally, the Pixel 10 fireworks photos are as sharp, if not sharper, than those from the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

One area where the Pixel 10 was the unexpected but clear winner was in panoramic photography. This, though, is less a product of the lens and sensor than Pixel's much smarter capture and processing technique.

To capture a panoramic image on the iPhone 16 Pro Max (or any iPhone for that matter), you hit the capture button and then slowly sweep roughly 180 degrees, but while keeping your image framed so that it doesn't diverge from an on-screen center guideline. This can be tricky, and I tend to veer north or south of that line, which results in less-than-perfect panoramas.

Google Pixel 10's method is completely different and arguably better. Instead of struggling to follow a guideline, you turn slowly in a 180 arc but pause at pre-determined intervals (there are dots), where the camera appears to capture part of the image. Initially, after I did this, I had what appeared to be a jumble of unusable panoramic images, but a second or two later, the system processed the full image into a perfect panorama. We have a winner.

I think the Pixel 10 takes some lovely macro images with its ultrawide lens, but there's little comparison to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which has a much higher pixel count and lets you get even closer to your subject. If macro photography is a priority for you, and you're an Android fan, you'll probably opt for the $999 / £999 / AU $1,699 Google Pixel 10 Pro, which has a 48MP ultrawide camera.

I'm not arguing that the Pixel 10 is the best camera phone on the market, but for $799, it's a far more affordable smartphone option that, remarkably, includes a 5x optical zoom lens and will deliver generally excellent photography across a range of image styles.

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The Perseid meteor shower is one of the most impressive displays of shooting stars you'll see throughout the year – and it's peaking this week on the night of August 12 and early hours of August 13 in the US and UK.

The display of shooting stars, caused by Earth moving into the path of debris left by the Comet Swift-Tuttle, has been going since mid-July, but traditionally peaks on these dates every year – and that looks likely to be the case again.

That's because the Earth is moving into the most intense part of the comet's stream and ice and rock, which should produce an impressive light show for stargazers and photographers (weather permitting, of course).

Unfortunately, this year's Perseids peak coincides with a Sturgeon Moon, which reached its full phase on August 9. While it's now waning, it's still bright enough that it will impact visibility and make it impossible to see the maximum 100 meteors per hour, even in dark sky areas. The moon's brightness will be less of an obstacle on later dates, but by then the peak of the shower will have passed.

Observant and patient sky watchers, however, should still be able to spot a couple of blazing shooting stars each hour.

Whether you're looking to watch, photograph or livestream the celestial event, here's everything you need to know about this year's Perseid meteor shower.

When is the Perseid meteor shower?

The Perseid meteor shower is peaking this week, with the number of meteors hitting its main peak on the evenings of August 12 and August 13.

The best place to see the meteors is anywhere in the northern hemisphere in a dark location away from light pollution. Wherever you are, aim to head out on the evening of August 12 anywhere between 10.30pm – 4.30am.

According to the American Meteor Society, the absolute peak will be 4am UTC on August 13 (or 12am EDT / 9pm PDT, on the evening of August 12). But a high amount of meteor activity is expected for around eight hours either side of that peak, which is why you simply need to aim for the darkest part of the night.

According to NASA, you should be able to catch around 10 to 20 meteors per hour in most regions of the US, assuming you're away from urban light pollution. That's not quite the 100 meteors per hour rate we've seen previously in some regions – blame the Sturgeon Moon for that – but higher rates are possible, and that still works out at one meteor every few minutes, so well worth staying up for.

In the UK, the Royal Observatory's Finn Burridge told the BBC that observers may only be able to see "1 or 2 fireballs per hour". He also recommends giving things another go this coming weekend. "After the full Moon is more likely the better time to view, since the Moon will rise later in the night, so I would recommend the peak nights as well as weekend of 16 and 17 August."

Naturally, the weather could still also affect visibility, so you'll need to check for cloud cover in your location.

Another influencing factor can be wildfires. In 2021, the Pacific Northwest wildfires produced higher than average amounts of cloud and smoke that affected Perseid visibility, with only California, Texas and the East Coast escaping. So it's certainly possible that this year's wildfires in Colorado, California and Canada could have a similar effect in some regions.

Where are the Perseid shooting stars?

To see the Perseids' fireworks you need three things: complete darkness (so find somewhere remote, or turn off all the lights in the back of your house), clear skies, and the patience to look at the sky for about 20 minutes unrewarded.

If you can manage that last one, congratulate yourself for being among the minority of Perseid watchers: you could then be rewarded with up to 40 shooting stars in the next hour.

You could see shooting stars anywhere in the night sky, though as the name suggests they will appear to radiate from the constellation of Perseus – which means you just need to point yourself vaguely to the north or, if you're in southern latitudes, towards the north-eastern sky.

What do I need and what am I looking for?

The Perseids' meteors can show up in any part of the sky, so you'll improve your chances by finding somewhere with a wide view of the horizon – naturally, the fewer buildings and trees that are in the way, the better.

Most of its shooting stars will be visible for just a fraction of a second from the corner of your eyes. But every now and then, you'll also see big, bright, sparkling 'earth-grazer' fireballs that often appear to leave a trail behind them, and should last a full second or so.

A little patience (and a rucksack full of snacks) is advisable though – it can take your eyes at least half an hour to adjust to the night's darkness.

Resist the temptation to look at your smartphone or go back inside your house – every time your eyes see white light, your night vision goes back to zero, and you will have to wait another 20 minutes for it to return.

If you're venturing out, a torch with a red light can help preserve your night vision. The USB-rechargeable Petzl Actik or the cheaper AlpKit Gamma III remain good choices.

Aside from this and a comfortable blanket or sun lounger, though, that's all you really need – avoid a telescope or pair of binoculars, as these will limit your view of the night sky so much that you won't see any shooting stars.

Settle in for a good two to three hours, though, and you should be treated to an impressive show – even if the weather and moon do intervene.

How do I find Perseus?

If you're unfamiliar with the night sky at this time of year, there are a plethora of planetarium apps for phones and tablets. Use them sparingly, but apps like Star Walk 2 will help you find you the constellation of Perseus, which is just below the W-shaped constellation of Cassiopeia.

Fix your gaze on this patch of sky, and above, but don't get dogmatic about it: a meteor might just as easily start above your head and whizz south. However, to look low to the southern horizon would be a mistake.

You'll probably notice the massive Summer Triangle nearby in the eastern sky – three very bright stars that sits across the Milky Way. Stay outside long enough looking for meteors and your eyes may get sensitive enough to glimpse this wonderful sight.

Are there any Perseid meteor shower live streams?

While there aren't quite as many Perseid livestream opportunities on YouTube as there were during the pandemic (when large observatories like the Lowell Observatory in Arizona hosted online viewing sessions), the The Virtual Telescope Project does have an online observation planned for August 12, starting at 21:00 UTC.

How do I photograph the Perseids meteor shower?

When it comes to photographing the Perseids, there is also a large element of hit-and-hope involved. Despite huge improvements in smartphone astrophotography modes, their sensors still generally lack sensitivity for shooting meteors. What you need is a DSLR or mirrorless camera (ideally a full-frame model) with manual controls, mounted on a tripod.

The setup

Choosing the right lens and focal length is a bit of a balancing act. Generally speaking, the best astrophotography lenses tend to be pretty wide, in the 14-20mm focal range on a full-frame camera (or around 10-14mm on an APS-C model). On the other hand, Perseid meteor trails can look pretty small and sometimes barely visible when shooting that wide.

As you're unlikely to be buying a new lens just to photograph this meteor shower, we'd recommend grabbing whichever lens you have that's closest to the 28-50mm range (or 17-32mm on APS-C cameras).

The Perseid meteors can appear pretty much anywhere in the sky, so it's best to find some foreground interest for your shot – like a tree or, even better, a decommissioned antenna like the ones at The Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in the UK (above).

The settings

Switch your lens to manual focus and set the focus to infinity – or point it at a bright star and manually focus on it. Set your ISO to 800 and your aperture to f/2.8 (or whatever its widest aperture setting is, if it's above f/2.8), and take some long-exposure shots over 20-30 seconds. You'll need to either use your camera's self-timer or a remote shutter to avoid camera-shake and blur.

Check your test shots to make sure they're sharp and correctly exposed, making any tweaks if needed. Another option is to use your camera's built-in interval timer to shoot a timelapse, taking about 100 or more 3o-second exposures one after the other.

You can then use the likes of Photoshop or StarStaX (on Mac) to create a star-trail, which will (hopefully) have shooting stars all over the image.

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Papier photo book review: specs

Papier photo book: review

Papier's photo books are an affordable way to bring together your favorite snaps, whether you’re looking for an affordable gift or want to log your latest holiday.

They’re available in a wide array of sizes, from a nifty 6.5 x 6.5 inches (16.5 x 16.5cm) to a whopping 12 x 9.4 inches (30.6 x 23.9cm). Papier also offers a good array of cover options, including those with gold foil or die-cut windows showing a photo inside. So what’s it like to use the service to design a photo book?

Well, when using Papier to try to recreate TechRadar’s predefined photo book template, I quickly ran into the platform’s limitations. First of all, Papier doesn’t let you make any alterations to its layouts: there’s no way to add new image or text frames, so I wasn't able to add all the images I wanted to a page.

You get just the basics here. For example, if you're looking for the customizable shapes that some platforms offer, you'll be disappointed – and, unlike many of the best photo book services, Papier doesn’t even offer drag-and-drop clip art to add flourishes such as script or illustrations to your photo book.

Customizability in any form is pretty limited, with all the elements on the page pretty much nailed down. There were times I wanted to shift an image frame from the right of a page to the left, or alter the alignment of text, only to discover this wasn't possible.

You can at least change the size of type, but this is limited to larger text fields only; conversely, captions are restricted to just font or style changes. All in all, as someone who likes to insert some originality into the things I create, I found this limiting.

Surely, for those who have neither the time, nor the desire, to make an endless series of tweaks to layouts, Papier's à la carte selection of templates is just the ticket? Well, I’m not sure it’s getting any Michelin stars there, either.

Yes, Papier offers a range of drag-and-drop templates; but there are only 22 options to choose from, compared to Printerpix's 163 layouts and Mixbook's super generous 891 templates. Want a photo covering half the page with text beneath? Tough. Looking for three images laid out horizontally? Hard luck. There are some creative options available – for example, the one that makes your snap look like it was taken with a Polaroid – but they’re few and far between.

The inclusion of different backgrounds is a nice touch – but, again, there are so few options available that you’re unlikely to get much mileage out of them. Your choices are white, a creamy linen color, almond and a dusty powder blue, or two thicknesses of vertical stripe. I rarely found they complemented individual photos or each other enough to make them worth using.

By contrast, the cover options Papier offers have recently been extended. There are now 90 different cover templates, which is actually pretty impressive, and there are some really eye-catching designs – including fancy cover treatments such as golden foils and cut-out shapes. With fully editable text, they’re also easy to adapt to your theme, providing plenty of really good cover options.

Once you’ve selected your preferred layouts, you may still encounter some detours and dead-ends along your design journey, with Papier offering some odd and irritating quirks.

The most baffling is its insistence on changing layouts to match your image – even when I’d selected my preferred layout, adding an image would revert it back to the default, meaning you need to always select images first. Further aggravation was caused as a result of Papier's drag-and-drop function for adding photos, while layouts have to be clicked on instead. As a result, the design process proved one of frustration, and time-consuming, too: every time I mixed up which gesture I was supposed to use, I’d lose the rhythm entirely.

And that isn't the only wrinkle I found when trying to replicate our sample photo book. For example, Papier doesn’t offer any way to run an image across a double-page spread. While you can usually tackle such a limitation by splitting a photo between two separate frames, Papier has turned this into a frustrating process of trial and error.

Bafflingly, its interface enlarges the off-hand page, making it a larger size to the one you’re currently working on. This makes it almost impossible to ensure the contents of two separate photo frames align. I can't see that there's any benefit to this, so you have to wonder why it was designed that way.

However, while some of Papier’s design choices might have left me baffled, it may not be a concern if the quality of the printed book is high. And here the news is broadly positive. All of our photos came out looking crisp and detailed, with relatively accurate color. There was the occasional suggestion of noise or posterization, with slight color banding perceptible. But this has been apparent with even our highest-rated photo books, so I’m not going to criticize Papier too harshly on this front.

Comparing our Papier photo book side by side with some of our previous samples, it mostly holds its own. Even sat next to the 4.5-star Blurb photo book, Papier's example doesn’t look worlds apart – personally, the slightly better contrast and deeper blacks of the Blurb win out in my eyes, but I don’t feel anyone would be disappointed by the image quality delivered by Papier.

This also extends to the tactile feel of Papier’s photo books. Comparing the quality of its paper stock and covers to its nearest rivals, there didn't seem to be much between them – pages in Papier's photo book feel smooth and substantial. While Papier doesn’t exceed what other services offer, neither does it fall short – which is especially important if you’re considering this for a gift.

Ultimately, if you’re happy to design a photo book within Papier's super-limited format, then you can at least rest assured that you'll get a super-polished product in return. However, if you're someone who likes a bit more creative flexibility, you'll find Papier's service limiting. And, fundamentally, there are other options out there among the best photo book services that offer similarly straightforward, stellar design while providing radically more off-the-rack solutions.

Should I buy the Papier photo book?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Papier photo book review: also consider

How I tested the Papier photo book service

• Tried to accurately reproduce the TechRadar photo book template
• Explored all of its layout and cover options
• Utilized over 10 years working in print and design

TechRadar’s process for testing photo book services requires us to try to reproduce a standardized template, so my first step was trying to recreate it as accurately as possible. This involved reproducing photo frames and text as closely as the photo book service’s templates allowed. I also spent several hours playing with Papier’s templates to explore the various options available.

Once I received our Papier photo book, I first checked it for damage and marks from the printing process. I then compared it side-by-side with some of the other photo books we’ve reviewed, to assess how Papier’s printed products fare in terms of resolution and color accuracy, as well as the quality of its paper stock and construction.

Not only did I establish the testing process for photo books on TechRadar, but I spent many years working as a print editor. As a result, I have gained a lot of direct experience working with images for print and carrying out quality control on printed products to ensure they accurately reflected the source imagery and designs on screen.

• First tested: August 2025
• Read more about how we test

Cewe photo book review

Looking for a thoughtful, personalised gift to give a loved one? A Cewe photo book is designed to be just that. Cewe is a UK and Europe-focused photo printing company that enables you to curate a collection of your favourite snaps into one well-finished, competitively priced photo book. I built a photo book of my own to see how Cewe measured up against its competitors, and I have to say, I was impressed.

First, let me take you through the photo book creation process. Cewe gives you two options: you can download its bespoke editing software; or you can simply use the web app. For ease and consistency with my other photo book reviews, I opted for the web app version. Note that I was unable to view my finished book in the software after building it on my browser, so it’s best to build your book using one method only.

For my 30 x 30cm book, I was locked into using a hardcover design, but there are more options for different-sized products. Something that was highly customizable, though, was the page type. I could select from a wide range, including: classic; matte; true matte; gloss; high gloss; photographic; or recycled. That level of customisability is something we always look for here at TechRadar in our hunt for the best photo book services.

There are more add-ons, too, like cover page highlights, an integrated memento pocket, and a presentation box. However, I didn’t use any of these, selected the classic page type, and got straight into things.

At this stage, you’re able to select a template from a generous list of options. You can go with a theme like Travel Memories, City Break, Modern Art, and so many more. Most of these look great – but instead I went down the custom route to get this book as close to our standardised TechRadar template as possible.

So, there I finally was, ready to build my photo book – and I was instantly struck by the simplicity and ease-of-use offered by the Cewe web app. There are five sections that are easy to navigate through: photos; layout; text; clipart (yes, that’s still a thing); and background. The only other things to check out are an auto-save toggle, the option to lock when moving or adjusting photos, and a smart cropping on/off selection.

Personally, I really appreciated the straightforward nature of Cewe’s editing tool. Sure, I would’ve appreciated stuff like measurements for photos, and potentially guidelines when moving them around on the page, but this is accessible on the free downloadable software. Uploading your photos is hassle-free too – there’s Google Photos integration, you can add snaps via a QR code, and the time it takes for images to load up is nice and short.

After this, finalising my photo book was (mostly) a breeze. There were plenty of masks, frames, fonts, and colours to make use of. In fact, you can even use a hex code to find the precise hue that you want, something that I’ve not seen from many rivals. You can also alter aspects like brightness, contrast, and more after inserting photos, so I could get the perfect balance across each page.

Having said all of this, the creation process wasn’t completely seamless – there were a few frustrations I had from time to time. For example, rather than drawing shapes, I had to select one that resembled what I wanted from clip art, which just feels so outdated now. The layout options are also a little restrictive, you can’t embolden certain letters – only full words, and I already mentioned the lack of measurements (or guidelines) when adjusting images on the web app, which was a tad disappointing.

Oh, and one more small complaint – if you want to add extra pages to your photo book, you have to do so in increments of four. So, in the case you only need a couple more pages, you’re going to be coughing up extra cash for space you don’t even need. Still, these are decently priced – it’s just £3.99 for extra pages.

Speaking of, the Cewe photo book is priced very competitively. My finished photo book cost £47.98 (including those extra pages), with delivery coming in at £5.25, leaving my total at just over £50. That’s a lot less than the circa £90 my Printerpix photo book would usually have cost, and a huge amount cheaper than our Printique photo book, which was around £112.

But now I’m sure you’re wondering… how did the finished product turn out? Well, great news – it looked fantastic! I couldn’t make out any banding (which is essentially unwanted lines appearing on a finished print), colours were accurate and pleasingly saturated, and I couldn’t see any damage after shipping. Pages were also to a high quality, giving the photo book a more luxurious feel than its price would suggest.

I compared the finished article to our Blurb photo book, which wasn’t quite as bright, yet arguably had more true-to-life colours. The more vibrant presentation of the Cewe does make it a little easier to make out the finer details, though, so I’d put each on equal footing – it just depends how vivid you like your photos.

In the end, then, I can recommend Cewe to anyone that wants to forge a quality photo book at a more-than-reasonable price-point. Sure, the online editing tool isn’t without fault, and it’s a shame you have to add four extra pages at a time. But all in all, Cewe presents a simple creation tool and commendable results at an easy-to-swallow cost.

Should I buy the Cewe photo book?

Buy it if…

Don't buy it if…

Cewe photo book review: also consider

How I tested the Cewe photo book

• Built a photo book to recreate the TechRadar template
• Compared against other websites’ photo books and software

I used the web version of Cewe’s photo editor in order to create a custom photo book, but I also messed around with a handful of templates. Here at TechRadar, we have created a standardised template to recreate across all photo book services, in order to fairly compare each platform. Sometimes, certain elements cannot be recreated – but we always endeavour to get as close to the template as possible.

After ordering the Cewe photo book, I observed aspects such as print quality, colour fidelity, and signs of damage. As always, I compared the finished article to photo books from rivals, such as Blurb and Mixbook. For reference, the photo book I created was 30 x 30 centimetres, had a hard photo cover and used the classic page type.

• First reviewed: July 2025
• Read more about how we test