March 2010

Michael Zhang

Would You Like a Portrait with Your Burger?

Burger King recently partnered up with marketing agency Ogilvy for a unique "Have It Your Way" campaign. In order to convey how personalized the orders are, they used a hidden camera and printer to slap a candid photograph of the customer's face right on the burger wrapper. A separate hidden camera was used to document the reactions of the customers after seeing themselves on their food.

Michael Zhang

Camera Sensor Tech Makes Quantum Leap

InVisage, a California-based start up company, has announced a new image sensor technology that it claims is up to four times more sensitive than traditional sensor technologies.

Their product, QuantumFilm, is a layer of semiconductor material added on top of the traditional silicon that uses quantum dots to gather light.

Jessica Lum

Lady Gaga Hard at Work for Polaroid

Lady Gaga's most recent music video for "Telephone", featuring Beyonce, is like most modern music videos: rife with product placement. But among the most prominent products was Gaga's own employer, Polaroid, which gets a 10-second spot.

Jessica Lum

Canon Supply of 70-200mm f/2.8 Lens Low

According to the Canon Japan website, the company is experiencing a shortage of the EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS II USM lens. The company says  demand for the lens, which was announced in January and released recently in the US, was much higher than expected.

Michael Zhang

A Ragdoll for Your Camera Lens Cap

Here's the latest innovation from Pentax: a puppet body for your lens cap! The "Cameraman" is a handmade puppet body that comes with a 52mm lens cap showing a smiley face. It costs ¥2,914, or about $32, and is only available for a limited amount of time.

Michael Zhang

Canon 5D Mark II Firmware Fixed and Live

Well, that was fast. Just a day after removing Version 2.0.3 of the 5D Mark II firmware due to a bug, Canon has released firmware Version 2.0.4, which simply fixes the bug in Version 2.0.3.

Michael Zhang

Evil Dictator Baby Photographs

Danish-Norwegian artist Nina Maria Kleivan has come under fire for a series of photographs in which she dresses up her year-old daughter Faustina as some of history's most evil figures. The series, titled "Potency", has been shown in exhibitions around Europe, and is meant to explore the nature of evil.

Michael Zhang

Vinyl Records at 1000x Magnification

Ever wonder what a vinyl record looks like under an electron microscope? Okay, probably not. Luckily, there's people who do, including Chris Supranowitz, who created a number of electron microscope images for a course at the University of Rochester.

Here's a photograph of the record grooves captured by Supranowitz at 500x magnification. Those dark chunks you see are dust particles.

Michael Zhang

Paparazzi Bot Prowls for Smiling Faces

The Paparazzi Bots are a series of robots invented by Ken Rinaldo, a faculty member in the Department of Art at Ohio State University. Each bot is autonomous, and moves about on a wheeled platform, using infrared sensors to move towards humans. It's goal is to take single photographs of people, and it makes decisions on whether or not to capture the photograph based on facial expressions of the subject. If you happen to be smiling, the bot is more likely to photograph you.

Michael Zhang

Batch Conversion with Photo Magician

Photo Magician is a free and lightweight (less than 1MB) program for Windows that allows you to batch convert a directory of photographs. It's similar in functionality to Photoshop's "Image Processor" feature, with one difference being you can't select the output quality like you can using Photoshop.

Michael Zhang

A Look at Sony’s Upcoming Ultra Compact

Sony has been quite mum with regards to their upcoming ultra-compact camera. However, they've begun releasing some teasers to give us a better idea of what's to come, including the above YouTube video and the following screenshots of the touchscreen interface:

Michael Zhang

Samsung Shipping Container Camera

There's a new video on YouTube showing a gigantic shipping container camera promoting a Samsung camera. In the video, bystanders can actually use the "camera" by inserting some money into a coin slot, and then having someone jump onto the massive shutter button on top of the shipping container. The resulting photograph is then displayed on a gigantic screen atop a nearby building.

Michael Zhang

How Not to Paint Your Nikon D90 Pink

Kai at DigitalRev was recently given the challenge of painting a Nikon D90 pink magenta. He chooses to dismantle the camera in order to paint individual components, but works on it as carefully as one would work on a steak. At one point he even gets an electric shock from the components, though we're wondering why he didn't simply remove the battery. The camera miraculously looks somewhat normal in the end, but several parts are broken in the process (LCD won't turn on, and popup flash wont' go down).