What Is Fstoppers?

Updated

Fstoppers is a photography and filmmaking publication and community site. It publishes photography news, in-depth camera gear reviews, and professional tutorials, and it hosts a community where photographers and filmmakers share work and trade techniques. It is aimed at working and aspiring photographers and filmmakers who want gear coverage alongside craft instruction, rather than at casual snapshooters looking for a general-interest photo feed.

What you'll find on the site

The homepage organizes content into a few recurring streams:

  • News — short reporting on industry and photography history. A representative example from the site is "How the First Photograph of a Snowflake Took a Vermont Farmer 46 Years," which recounts Wilson Alwyn Bentley making the first photograph of a single snow crystal on January 15, 1885, in an unheated shed behind his family's farmhouse in Jericho, Vermont, at age nineteen, using a bellows camera bolted to a microscope on a frame he built himself.
  • Originals and exclusives — longer features and columns, including historical pieces such as "Eight Legendary Darkroom Tools Most Photographers Under 40 Have Never Seen" and field-report style articles like "The Night I Hiked Three Miles in the Dark to Find Joshua Tree's Hidden Treasure."
  • Reviews — hands-on gear testing. Examples listed on the site include a review of the VALOI easy35 v2, a system for digitizing slides and negatives at home with an existing digital camera; a Mac mini M5 Pro review framed around photo and video work; an Insta360 Mic Pro review; a test of every aperture on the iPhone 18 Pro; an iVanky FusionDock Ultra review; a first look at the Canon EOS R8 Mark II; and a field test of REEL Paper 8 described as the most portable darkroom the author has used.
  • Tutorials and technique — instructional content, including format-comparison pieces such as "What Happens When You Jump From 4x5 to 8x10 Film," which covers the practical consequences of the jump: bigger negatives, longer focal lengths, slower shutters, and a bill that climbs fast with every accessory.
  • Community and contests — reader-submitted work with critique. The "Critique the Community" series runs on monthly themes; the September installment was "Passion Project," asking for photographs from a personal project, with entries due by Sep 30, 2026, 11:21pm EDT.

Who it's for

The content assumes you already shoot and want to go deeper — choosing gear, digitizing film, working in large format, or building a personal project. If you are deciding whether a piece of equipment fits your workflow, the review section is the most directly useful part. If you want feedback on your own images rather than more reading, the community critique threads and contests are the entry point.

How to use it

  1. For a purchase decision: read the review for the specific item, then check whether the reviewer's use case matches yours. A dock review framed around photo and video work, for example, tells you more if you also edit video than if you only shoot stills.
  2. For a technique question: start with the tutorial or format-comparison article, since those lay out trade-offs (cost, focal length, shutter speed) rather than just conclusions.
  3. For feedback: enter the current critique theme with work that fits it. The theme matters — "Passion Project" calls for personal-project photographs, not a general portfolio sample.
  4. For staying current: the news stream is short-form and skimmable, so it works as a periodic check rather than a daily obligation.

One caveat: the site mixes editorial, reviews, and community submissions in the same feed. Check whether a piece is staff-written, a sponsored-style review, or a reader entry before treating it as an independent recommendation.