This faux camera can’t take pictures, but it sure can take shots.

The inconspicuous flask-maker Binocktails is selling these novelty “Bev-Cams” for $12.99. Like their binocular-shaped flask and their “Bev-Burry,” the “Bev-Cam” is  designed to look like a typical point-and-shoot, but can actually be used to carry your beverage of choice.

But we do wonder how the folks at Casio feel about Binocktails’ surprisingly decent approximation of their Exlim EX-Z150 model point-and-shoot…

(via Imaging Insider)

You’ve probably seen in-video advertising, but how about ads placed in images? A company called Image Space Media wants to make sure you do.

Established in 2008, they’re the first and leading provider of in-image advertising on the web. This means relevant advertisements are placed in an overlay that appears over a portion of an image or photograph, just like the advertisements YouTube places at the bottom of most videos.

While you might hate this idea as an internet user or photographer, this may be a glimpse of what’s to come in terms of online advertising.

Now here’s a question: If Flickr started running these in-image ads for non-pro accounts, would you still use the service?

(via TechCrunch)

Social recommendation engine Hunch has a new Twitter Followers Tool that can analyze a Twitter account’s followers and make predictions to what they would answer for certain questions.

For an account to be analyzed, it needs to be “famous”, which Hunch defines as having more than 1,000 followers. We had PetaPixel analyzed and received a gigantic list of predicted answers. Here’s a selection:

• Word Association: I say photo, you say: Flickr
• When the traffic light turns yellow, are you more naturally inclined to: Brake quickly
• Do you fold your underwear? Yes
• Do you have a blog or keep a personal website? Yes
• If you suddenly became independently wealthy, in one year do you think you’d:
  Still be doing the same type of work I do now
• Do you think John Travolta is a good actor? No
• When waiting in the slowest of three lines, will you dart to another line to save a minute? Nah, what’s the rush?
• Can art change the world? Yes
• Are you a Mac person or a PC person? Mac
• Do you think Microsoft has made the world a better place? No
• Do you think name brand products are usually of higher quality than generic versions? Yes, the brands invest in products and have a reputation to maintain
• If the opportunity presented itself in a safe environment, would you volunteer to be Tasered, to see what it feels like? Get real, no
• Do you consider yourself an environmentalist? Yes
• Do you have an iPhone? Yes
• Do you enjoy shopping for clothes? No
• Are you male or female? Male

It’s interesting that many of these questions are actually things we’ve asked in our polls. Maybe in the future we’ll run a “Do you fold your underwear?” poll.

Do these predicted answers describe you well?

This video, created by California photographer Jesse Rosten, offers an interesting glimpse at what digital magazine covers might look like for the iPad. Rather than offer a static photograph of the beach as the print version of Sunset Magazine would, this cover is brought to life with both video and animation.

Audio and video are late to the magazine party, but it looks like they might steal some of photography’s thunder.

(via TechCrunch)

Hot on the heels of the latest Canon coffee mug craze, here’s another fun item for you to drool over: a Canon mode dial vinyl decal for your laptop. What better way to show your love for photography and/or nerdiness by displaying a cryptic circle of symbols for the world to see? It’s available for $15 + shipping from suzieautomatic’s Etsy store.

(via PDNPulse)

Update: For more photos of the decal check out this Flickr set.

In 1927, a young photographer bought a print at San Francisco’s East West Galleries for $10 — roughly $125 today. Bernice Lovett could not pay the full price of the image at once, so she paid for it in monthly 50 cent installments. Lovett’s family held on to the photograph for over 80 years.

As it happens, the print was a signed, early print of Edward Weston’s Nautilus Shell, which became widely recognized as one of the greatest modernist photographs of all time.

The photograph will be sold in April at Sotheby’s auction house and is estimated to fetch somewhere between $300,000 to $500,000.

Here’s a set of photographs by Daniela Edburg, who creates surreal scenes and landscapes around the theme of knitting:

She tells us,

I started knitting for a photograph where a girl is standing on a small knit garden, her own little safe spot in the midst of a desolate landscape, I was knitting for weeks, and the activity started taking on a strong significance. The work I am doing now has become all about knitting. Knitting as a compulsive action, as a form of occupational therapy and as a way of creating a safe place or a cushioned version of almost anything.

To see more of Daniela’s work, check out her website.

Image credits: Photographs by Daniela Edburg and used with permission.

My dad is an avid stamp collector. While he does have some US stamps in his collection, he mainly focuses on older stamps from China.

He used to purchase stamps exclusively from reputable stamp companies, but recently he’s been looking for good deals on rare stamps through eBay.

In the world of stamps, errors often cause the stamp to be worth much more than its face value since they’re highly sought after by collectors.

One such stamp is a 1962 stamp showing Tsai Lun, the inventor of paper. Right before the stamps were to begin the printing process, they discovered that the birth date had an extra character that erroneously listed the birth date as BC rather than AD. They had to correct the printing plates manually, but omitted one of them, causing a single error stamp to be printed with each batch.

Here’s a photograph of an actual error stamp compared to a “photoshopped” version showing the difference:

That single erroneous character causes this stamp to be listed among the rarest of Chinese stamps, and causes its value to be upwards of $5,000 rather than tens of dollars for the normal stamp.

Earlier this week my dad bid in an auction for one of these stamps. While he knows eBay is filled with counterfeit goods, everything seemed to point towards this stamp being legitimate. The user who had it up for auction was a top-rated eBay seller with over 1,000+ feedback ratings and a 100% positive feedback history. He also had a number of other listings for much more expensive stamps. After bidding $1,000 for this $5,000 stamp, my dad ended up winning for $400.

While he was happy about his “steal”, we both felt unease regarding whether or not the stamp was genuine. Luckily for us, the listing had a photograph of the stamp. Here’s the photo of the stamp side-by-side with a photo of a genuine error stamp:

At this point, my background in Photoshop came into play. I realized I could examine the stamps extremely closely and compare them using Photoshop. In fact, Photoshop has a feature that is perfect for this type of comparison. It’s called Auto-Align Layers. What it does is magically align multiple layers based on similar features. Here’s what I did:

1. Have each stamp as a separate layer
2. Select the two layers
3. Click Edit and then Auto-Align Layers
4. Set Projection to “Auto” and click Ok

Voila! The two stamps became magically aligned, allowing me to turn the top layer on and off for easy comparison. Here’s the exact same comparison after Photoshop’s auto alignment (hover your mouse over it to compare):

Minor variations in the appearance of a stamp are acceptable, since there are slight variations in the printing plates. Also, though we were initially suspicious of the difference in color, we discovered that it was probably introduced in the imaging process after finding the exact same color variation in an official stamp book.

However, what caught my eye was the single error character in the upper left hand corner. If you examine it during the comparison, you’ll see that it looks different and is shifted upwards in the eBay auction version. We suddenly realized that the same was in fact a legitimate stamp… A legitimate non-error stamp with the error character added in.

With this evidence my dad gave the seller a phone call (yeah, they responded with a number when we asked for it), and confronted them about the forgery. They feigned ignorance and stated that they didn’t know much about stamps, which was hardly believable considering they had other listings for $80,000 stamps. However, they were willing to cancel the transaction and did so immediately.

What I realized through this whole experience was how useful Photoshop can be for fields seemingly unrelated to photography or graphics. I’m sure there are still many stamp experts out there who use magnifying glasses to try and detect counterfeit or altered stamps, while Photoshop can do the same thing much more accurately and efficiently.

Viva Photoshop!

Francesco Capponi (Dippold on Flickr) has a fun printable template for creating your own nifty-looking 35mm pinhole camera.

All you need to do is print out the template on adhesive paper (size A4) and stick it onto some cardboard. Once you’ve cut out all the required pieces, follow the visual instructions provided to put it together:

Unlike many other paper pinhole camera projects we’ve seen, the final result for this one actually looks pretty nice, and will definitely make a conversation piece. If you do take the time to make this thing, be sure to report back to us with the resulting photographs!

(via Make)

Image credits: Photographs by Francesco Capponi and used with permission.

Adobe is working on a new feature for Photoshop called “Content Aware Fill”, and posted a mind-boggling demonstration of it on YouTube. The description states:

One of the biggest requests we get of Photoshop is to make adding, removing, moving or repairing items faster and more seamless. From retouching to completely reimagining an image, heres an early glimpse of what could happen in the future when you press the delete key.

Basically it allows you to alter or create reality in photographs as easily as selecting an area and running the feature. Gone will be the days when photojournalists are caught with embarrassing patterns created by improperly using the stamp tool. The demonstration is so amazing that many commenters are saying it’s fake, going as far as to say it looks… “photoshopped”?

What do you think of this feature and the sneak peek? Is it too good to be true, or will it change the way we think about photography forever?

(via PopPhoto)