Created by photographer Camden Thrasher for Audi, the "Le Mans in stop motion" video embedded below expertly captures the pulse pounding excitement, drama and raw power of this 24-hour car race in France. 

The Sigma Corporation of America has unveiled pricing and availability for the Sigma 24-35mm F2 DG HSM Art lens: it will go on sale in late July 2015 for a street price of $999.

A new start-up company called Z Camera has just unveiled the E1, a GoPro-style camera that uses a Micro Four Thirds sensor, takes interchangeable lenses, and is capable of shooting 4K video. We got some hands-on time with the E1 last week during a meeting with Z Camera’s founder, Jason Zhang. Images of the camera in this story are from that meeting.

I’m a walking battery holder. My iPhone, MacBook Air and Fujifilm X-T1 all contain lithium-based batteries. And I have spares. My Maglite and Casio travel alarm have alkaline cells inside. And my Tag watch has a—well, I know. It has a battery, but I have no idea what kind. Oh—and there’s a lithium DL 2025 in my car key. Add my tonnage to the other 415 similarly equipped passengers on a typical 747 and that adds up to big a pile of volatile chemicals. Little wonder that the FAA and other government agencies are rightfully concerned. 

Portrait photographers get to practice their craft with an amazing selection of different light sources, including everything from hot and cold continuous lighting to power pack-and-head and monolight flash systems to speedlights. Each has its own unique advantages and disadvantages depending on the kind of work you do but when it comes to flash, I’ve always been partial to monolights because of their built-in power supply. I’ve had a monolight fail on a job before but because the other monolights on hand had their own power supply, I was able to complete the assignment.

Nope, editorial and advertising photographer Jody Dole doesn’t go down to the dump to look for subject matter. He’s more a flea market and tag sale type, and it was at the former that he met a picker who had, in Dole’s words, “really interesting junk—and an eye for interesting things.” Which is why Dole stops by at the guy’s place now and then, or vice versa, and an interesting thing or two changes hands.

Our Shutterbug Photo of the Day is a dramatic image by by Frank Brannon of a rider falling from his motorcycle during a race.

Polaris Karat Flash Meter: This new flash meter is from Polaris and OmegaBrandess. The slim and lightweight Polaris Karat was redesigned and features an easy to read LCD display and a flash duration function on a light meter. Measure the flash duration of your strobes with this unique function. The Karat also has an Auto ISO function. By setting your Aperture and Shutter Speed it will give you the appropriate ISO setting. With Flash Duration mode, Flash Ratio, Auto ISO and Contrast Function, Memory Function as well as Ambient light reading in both incident and reflective the Polaris Karat offers a wide variety of features and performance at a fraction of the cost of other similar models. 

Anthropics Technology has revamped its popular PortraitPro photo retouching software with version 12.5. The 12.5 update of the award-winning software is designed to provide fast and easy portrait retouching with camera Raw support and Arabic and Swedish language options. PortraitPro version 12 customers may upgrade for free to 12.5.

This is a test to see how close you’ve been paying attention. Have you noticed some changes to Shutterbug.com in the last few months? If you have, you get an A+ because while we have redesigned many aspects of the site, we wanted many of the changes to be smooth and intuitive rather than overdone and confusing.