We’ve all seen them thousands of times, the ubiquitous fast food advertisement flickering across the screen for 30 seconds while we catch up with our favourite series. But we rarely put much thought into how they are made. Or how much effort and money is put into shooting them. Or normal people don’t at least. If you’re like me, the ads often fascinate you as much as the programs do. Trying to reverse engineer the lighting or camera moves in our minds becomes irrestible....

On Via Paolo Lomazzo, in Milan, sits an unassuming shopfront. On the window are the words “Riparazioni Macchine Fotografiche” (“Camera Repair”) printed in simple bold letters. This is the workshop of 76 year old Gian Luigi Carminati, a man who has spent his entire working life repairing cameras. Armed with little more than a set of screwdrivers and a lot of patience, Carminati has repaired countless cameras in his time. A technician more than a photographer, he has made some interesting observations on photography over the years....

Most of us hold our cameras. Or mount them on a tripod. Either way, most of us are on the outsides of our cameras. For Canadian photographer Ross den Otter, though, stepping inside his camera is exactly how he makes his portraits. Needless to say, it’s a rather large one. Ross uses a camera obsurace. Essentially a large room with a hole in one wall. In this hole a large format lens is mounted, which projects the outside scene onto a wall on the inside....

Vazen is a relatively new Chinese lens manufacturer that only really seems to have come onto the scene last year. But they jumped straight in with the anamorphic lenses, initially launching a 40mm T2 1.8x for Micro Four Thirds and following it up in February of this year with the promised 28mm T2.2 1.8x for MFT. Today, though, Vazen has announced a new addition to their lineup. But this one’s not for Micro Four Thirds....

A few years ago, Kodachrome was “investigating the possibility” of bringing Kodachrome back. Sadly, the company gave it up and the legendary film never made a comeback. But hey, not all is lost: at least we now have a Kodachrome recreation from VSCO. The company went above and beyond to recreate the iconic film’s look, and they shared what it took to get there. It was a painstaking process, but photographers seem to be thrilled with the result....