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.

• 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.