Subscriptions on Instagram will work similarly to Super Follows on Twitter. Creators will be able to charge their fans for exclusive content. This could be anything from subscriber-only live broadcasts to exclusive stories, which are indicated with a purple ring. Additionally, subscribers will get a special purple badge that will distinguish them from other followers in comments and messages. This will allow creators to identify their subscribers. As for pricing, Instagram is offering creators a choice between eight different price tiers, ranging from $0....

Yoti is already available as a standalone age and ID verification tool for free. You can use its mobile app or the web portal to quickly have your age guessed. The company claims it doesn’t store user data. Instagram is testing integration with the software for age verification of its users. This tool has already received approvals for use by the UK government and German digital regulators. It uses various facial signals to estimate a person’s age....

I write a series called the Glossary of Photographer’s Woo over on Medium, and am delighted to be here on DIY Photography to talk about microcontrast. Lens design has improved pretty steadily over the last hundred years. That is to say, modern lenses resolve finer detail, render colours and contrast more deeply, and are generally more free from the defects of spherical distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting. These defects are all easily measurable, and in art reproduction and scientific photography, they are probably very important....

In early 2017, Kodak introduced its on-demand photography service Kodakit. While it may have sounded like a good idea, it turns out that the service is not on photographers’ side at all. All participating photographers are asked to give up all copyrights to the photos they take. The photo assignment agency also requires them to give up the moral rights and assume all legal risks of their assignments. And as if that weren’t enough: there’s also the possibility that photographers might not get paid if clients don’t like the photos....

It looks like Venus Optics is set to release a new Laowa lens next week, according to product announcement images. And leaked photos and specs say that it’s going to be a 19mm f/2.8 ultra-wide lens for Fuji GFX medium format cameras. This isn’t the only lens Laowa makes for Fuji GFX or even the widest angle, but it does add a whole extra stop of brightness over the Laowa 17mm f/4 Zero-D GFX....