Although Presta valves are pretty much standard on higher-end bikes' wheels, the things definitely do have their drawbacks. Dutch company BBB Cycling has decided to do something about that, with a li'l Presta-improving device known as the CoreCap.
Because of industrial climate chaos, catastrophic economic inequality, war and displacement, there is, as the United Nations puts it succinctly, a global food crisis in 68 countries, with 318 million people facing acute hunger. Simultaneous famines in two countries (Palestine and Sudan) – which the UN calls “a devastating first this century” – threaten millions of lives.
Category: Science
Tags: UC San Diego, Plants, Crops, Agriculture, Antibacterial
The year is 2011, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was asked in a Bloomberg interview whether Chinese automaker BYD Auto posed a real competitive threat to Tesla. Musk cheekily laughed and said, "Have you seen their car? I don’t think they have a great product… I don’t think the technology is very strong."
Category: Automotive, Transport
Tags: BYD, Tesla Motors, Model Y, Tesla Model 3, Electric Vehicles, PHEV
Boston Dynamics has unveiled the new industry-ready Atlas, a humanoid designed as a practical industrial tool for warehouses and factories. Atlas can operate 24/7 in extreme temperatures, and uses AI to adapt to its environment. Production has already started.
Category: AI and Humanoids, Technology
Tags: Boston Dynamics, Humanoid, Production, Hyundai
The smaller you try to make a micro-camper or tiny trailer, the less space you have to install conventional camping essentials. The bathroom tends to be the first thing to go, but eventually the kitchen might have to follow. Then you're stuck with a backpacking stove, or maybe a box of Pop-Tarts. German startup Stuff Bubble has a different idea on how even the smallest camping vehicles can bring along a complete kitchen. Its collapsible kitchen weighs just 33 lb (15 kg) fully equipped, packs flat on the vehicle floor, and inflates into form at camp, offering a sink, worktop and even a refrigerator.
Tags: Camping, Cooking, Kitchen, Inflatable, Campervan, mini-campervan, RV, Outdoors and Camping
The Khongor Sand Dunes in Mongolia, partially covered by snow and ice.
DJI Mavic 2 Pro | ISO 100 | 1/200 sec | F8
Photo: Erez Marom
Today, I'd like to talk about my experience shooting landscapes and wildlife in Mongolia. Known for its remote location and as the world's least densely populated country, Mongolia encompasses some very interesting landscapes and wildlife. While hot in summer, in winter it goes into a deep freeze. Temperatures plummet, and as a result, both landscapes and wildlife change dramatically. It's definitely a whole different place in winter when it comes to photography.
My first visit to wintery Mongolia was in early 2020. A friend and I set out to spend a couple of weeks shooting both the Khongor dunes and the frozen Khuvsgul Lake, but after a week, we had to flee the country since Covid had just begun spreading uncontrollably. As our guides put it, it was either get on the next flight or settle in, set up a ger tent and find a nice Mongolian wife. The second visit, which took place in January 2025, was far better and more fruitful. I will share my images from both these trips in this article and the next.
The first location I visited in Mongolia was the Khongor Sand Dunes. Known as the "Singing Sands," It lies within the Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park, extending up to the foot of the high Altai Mountain range. The dunes "sing" (produce a humming sound upon the movement of the sand) mainly in summer. In winter, the dunes are saturated with moisture from falling snow and become something else entirely.
Other than a few snowy patches, I had to settle for ordinary-looking dune shots, without any winter characteristics.
Canon 5D IV | Canon 70-300mm
Focus stack from 2 shots taken at 182mm | ISO 100 | F16
Another aerial image of the dunes.
DJI Mavic 2 Pro | ISO 100 | 1/240 sec | F9
Photos: Erez Marom
Our goal was to shoot the dunes with snow and ice, which proved difficult. There isn't much precipitation in the area, so it's a big gamble, which we didn't really win. There were patches of snow, but it was mainly just dunes. The positive part was that the dunes had gigantic snowy mountains behind them, which is something that you rarely see. This combination really said "Mongolia," which is something I wanted to achieve.
Snowy dunes at the foot of snowy mountains – quite a unique sight.
Canon 5D Mark IV | Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II USM | ISO 100 | 1/250 sec | F9
The next location was one I was supposed to visit back in 2020 but couldn't: Khuvsgul Lake. Khuvsgul is an ancient lake (more than 2 million years old) in northern Mongolia, located near the Russian border and adjacent to the similarly ancient Baikal Lake. As it is with Baikal, Khuvsgul's surface freezes in winter, forming an ice layer thick enough to drive a car on most of its surface. The wind's drag (and to a lesser degree the currents underneath) push parts of the frozen surface against each other, creating a myriad of cracks and shapes which are beautifully visible and shootable using a drone.
These cracks were so nice and symmetrical that they basically dictated the composition, leaving me with very little thinking work.
DJI Mavic 3 Classic | ISO 100 | 1/240 sec | F6.3
The lake has several rocky islands, and the movement of the surface pushes ice toward the banks, where it shatters and creates piles of icy debris, perfect for both near-far landscape compositions and abstract photography.
Ice slabs, pushed into a vertical position, created a natural foreground for this shot.
Canon R5 Mark II | Canon RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM | ISO 200 | 1/320 sec | F14
An abstract of shapes and light.
Canon EOS R5 Mark II | Canon RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM | ISO 100 | 1/100 sec | F11
Large pieces of ice get pushed up onto the lake's banks, adding color and interest to the foreground.
Canon R5 Mark II | Canon RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM | ISO 100 | 1/125 sec | F14
I particularly enjoyed shooting aerial abstracts of the lake's surface. The options are endless, plus the ice changes every winter, turning Khuvsgul into a truly infinite source of compositions.
These cracks shot top-down looked like a neural network!
DJI Mavic 3 Classic | ISO 100 | 1/100 sec | F6.3
This composition is nice because it shows the huge ice slabs with large cracks between them, the snowy patches dotting the surface, and the smaller cracks filling the ice. Can you spot our car?
DJI Mavic 3 Classic | ISO 100 | 1/200 sec | F6.3
I know it doesn't seem like it, but this is 100% natural. As is often the case with abstract photography, it's a bit challenging to perceive the scale of things. Is this a frozen lake or a petri dish? I like the combination of rough surface ice with large cracks, opposed by clear ice with smaller, finer cracks.
DJI Mavic 3 Classic | ISO 100 | 1/80 sec | F6.3
These cracks looked just like man-made roads. I was fascinated by the shapes and textures in the ice.
DJI Mavic 3 Classic | ISO 100 | 1/100 sec | F6.3
Photos: Erez Marom
Different parts of the lake have different depths and thus different colors. When shooting close to the banks, where the water is shallow, the ice has a more turquoise color. When shooting at the center, where it's deeper, the color is a deep shade of blue.
The larger and smaller cracks combined to create both the foreground and texture of this image. The contour of the bank and the mountains in the background completed the composition.
DJI Mavic 3 Classic | ISO 100 | 1/160 sec | F7.1
In the second part of this article, I will talk about shooting landscape in the Jargant River and wildlife in the vast Mongolian Steppe.
Erez Marom is a professional nature photographer, guide and traveller. You can follow Erez's work on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to his mailing list for updates.
If you'd like to experience and shoot some of the world's most fascinating landscapes and wildlife with Erez as your guide, take a look at his unique photography workshops in Zambia, Colombia, Vietnam, Madagascar, Ethiopia and more.
Erez has recently published his first e-book, Solving the Puzzle, thoroughly explaining his views about composition in landscape photography and beyond.
Selected Articles by Erez Marom:Cannabis produces a complex suite of bioactive compounds, including tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), but how these molecules evolved has long been a mystery. Now, new research has shed light on their origin story – and opened the door to innovative ways of harnessing these compounds for human medicine.
Category: Society & Community, Wellness and Healthy Living, Body and Mind
Tags: Wageningen University, Cannabis, Cannabinoids, CBD, Drugs, Biotechnology, Drug development
You know you have a proper enduro motorcycle on your hands when it has Graham Jarvis’ credentials behind it. That’s the Jarv-E project, born from a collaboration between Jarvis and Austrian motorcycle engineer David Freidinger.
Category: Motorcycles, Transport
Tags: Electric Vehicles, Electric Motorcycles, Enduro, Endurance Racing, Dirt Bikes, Off-road
Depending on how you look at it, the all-new Camp Tonneau Tent could be called an integrated, fast-pitch truck tent, an ultralight, affordable pop-up pickup camper, or a tonneau cover that doubles as a truck-back shelter. Or, you could rightfully consider it all three. Weighing less than most rooftop tents and taking up far less space than a camper, the simple, no-frills solution is always at the ready for a camping trip but stows completely out of the way for unencumbered everyday commuting and cargo hauling. It sets up into a hybrid hard/soft-walled shelter in about a minute and a half.
Category: Pickup Campers, Adventure Vehicles, Outdoors
Tags: Tent, Pickup, Truck, RV, Camping, Outdoors and Camping, Off-road
There could be new hope in the fight against gum disease. Scientists have developed a toothpaste that targets only the bacteria that cause periodontitis, leaving the rest of the oral microbiome healthy and intact.
Category: Medical Innovations, Body and Mind
Tags: Fraunhofer, Dental, Teeth, Oral bacteria, Antibacterial
Everyday carry tools have evolved far beyond simple pocketknives. They are smaller and lighter than ever and come in diverse designs, turning them pretty much into practical accessories and a reflection of personal taste.
Category: Knives and Multitools, Gear, Outdoors
Tags: EDC, Multitools, Knife, Kickstarter
More practically, the camera is also $200 off at most retailers, too.
Photo: Richard Butler
Sometimes, sales don't make a ton of sense, but are all the more intriguing for it. That's certainly the case with one Adorama is running right now: if you buy a Fujifilm X-T5 with a 16-80mm F4 lens, you'll not only get $100 off the normal price of the kit, but you'll also receive... a free X half?
Seriously. If you go to the US retailer's page for the X-T5, select that kit lens and set the kit style to "base," you'll see a pop-up saying it comes with a "free gift" valued at $649; a black X half camera. Add it to your cart, and they both show up.
While I haven't fully gone through the checkout process, as far as I can tell this deal is real.Currently, this deal seems relegated to Adorama. While the X-T5 is on sale at other retailers for the same price, no other stores that we found were throwing in an X half with it.
If we're being honest, it seems like a bit of an odd pairing to us. When we reviewed the X half, we found that it was a fun camera as long as you didn't try to treat it like a serious photography tool. While that might make it seem like a good complement to the X-T5, which is a serious piece of equipment, it's also easy to imagine that the type of person looking to buy an X-T camera might quickly get annoyed by the X half.*
Still, there's probably enough overlap between the two markets that at least a few of our readers will be excited by this news. Adorama doesn't say how long the offer will last, or whether supplies or limited, so if you're in the market for a X-T5 and were curious about the X half, it may be better to act sooner, rather than later.
Also worth noting: the X half has been selling for less than its original MSRP of $850, with several retailers offering it for $649.
* - Though, to overanalyze it further, would that kind of buyer really go for the 16-80mm F4?
Thanks to Jonikon for posting about the deal in our forums.
Buy now:
$644 at Amazon.comBuy at AdoramaBuy at B&H PhotoWintertime offers plenty of ways to enjoy the outdoors: downhill and cross-country skiing, snowshoeing on untouched terrain, or hiking through quiet forest. The only problem is that each of these activities requires its own specialized set of gear, and it’s often heavy, not very cheap, and impossible to carry all at once. But what if a single piece of equipment could do it all?
Category: Ski and Snowboard, Toys, Outdoors
Tags: Skiing, Snowshoes, Winter, Transformable
There are a bunch of dedicated devices that literally lift the veil of darkness to reveal a secret nocturnal world. Some rugged phones can do this too, but Fossibot reckons that none have the reach and clarity of its recently launched F113.
Category: Mobile Technology, Consumer Tech, Technology
Tags: smartphones, Rugged, Night Vision, Battery
Designed as a permanent home for a couple of enthusiastic travelers, the Bespoke Base doesn't compromise on comfort. Its spacious interior is arranged on one floor and looks more like a compact apartment than a typical tiny house.
Category: Tiny Houses, Outdoors
Tags: Building and Construction, Tiny Footprint, Micro-House, House, Home
