Pentax has just released five full resolution photographs taken with their new medium format DSLR, the Pentax 645D. These 40 megapixel photos are 7264×5440, and weigh in at around 17 megabytes each. The sample shot website also has EXIF data, though most of the page is in Japanese. There’s still no word on when (if ever) the 645D will be released outside Japan.
Earlier this month we reported on 48 Hour Magazine, a new project that aims to put together each magazine in only 48 hours from start to finish. The team of editors include Heather Champ and Derek Powazek, the founding editors of JPG Magazine.
Shortly after completing “Issue Zero”, they’ve received a cease and desist letter from the lawyers at CBS for trademark violation. The company owns trademarks for their news magazine television series “48 Hours”, and the related “48 Hours Mystery”.
According to the New York Times, 48 Hour Magazine never looked into the legality of the name, nor did they form a corporation. The proceeds of the $10 magazine (which they’ve sold over 1,000 copies of) will be split according to a transparent (albeit semi-complicated) formula.
The magazine has hired a lawyer to represent them, but does not plan to put up a fight, opting to work with CBS to come to an agreement. Since their website 48hourmag.com might soon go offline, they’ve set up a page at has48hrmagbeenshutdown.com to keep readers informed.
Today at Google I/O, Sports Illustrated editor Terry McDonell showcased this demo of the HTML5 version of the magazine. Last December, SI released a mockup video of how their online version would look as an app, but this version is based on the web and can be viewed with laptop and tablet browsers. It looks like a print magazine layout, with fantastic spreads, photos, and fonts, but it also has a lot of unique multimedia features that are incorporated into the design.
In the presentation, McDonell said:
“The idea is really very simple: combine the best of the web with the best of the magazine, like the sports photography, which is deep, deep in Sports Illustrated’s DNA.”
SI’s really giving photography a great plug: the demo issue also has a behind-the-scenes portrait shoot with Shaq, and there’s an expanded photo gallery option for readers to see more shoots than the ones included in the main design. Even the interactive demo ad is photo-related, showing a faux camera brand with interchangeable lenses.
This web design really opens up the doors for visual and multimedia storytelling, and is an exciting way to make an interactive publication accessible (not to mention SEO-friendly) to the entire World Wide Web.
Let us know what you think about SI’s new magazine format in the comments.
Group Story is a new photo service that’s centered around building photo books collaboratively with other people who photographed the same event. For example, the parents of a soccer team could pool photographs together and create a photo book documenting the soccer season.
Everything is done through a simple web interface, and after photographs are uploaded, you can use any of the photographs in the group to create a page. Once pages are created, you can use any of the pages in the group to create a physical photo book.
The resulting 8×8 inch books cost $13 for 20 pages in a softcover format, and $25 for hardcover. Additional pages are 50 cents each. There isn’t currently any feature for sharing the resulting books through the web, but providing an embeddable photo book that users can post online and/or link to might be a good future feature.
Some of the larger players in the photo space are also thinking hard about making photos more collaborative and social. Just early last month Facebook acquired group photo sharing service Divvyshot.
(via Mashable)
We found and shared a pretty useful tip a while ago that involved organizing loose cables with binder clips. I switched to a new desk recently, and found myself with the messy cable problem:
The cables had to be pulled somewhat far into the desk to prevent them from slipping into the crack between the desk and the wall. I tried using binder clips, but my desk is too thick for them to be attached.
Look around for another solution, I decided to try using some old tennis balls. I have quite a few lying around the house from the glory days of high school tennis. Here’s what I used:
The small screwdriver set and scissors are simply used to cut holes into opposites sides of each tennis ball. There’s probably other (and easier) ways of doing this, but a box cutter didn’t work for me.
Puncture the tennis ball using progressively larger screwdrivers until the hole is large enough to shove the scissor blade into. Then cut or tear a hole using the scissors.
Create a coin sized hole in both sides of the tennis ball, with the slits lined up. This allows an opening to be created in the tennis ball when it’s squeezed:
Thread each cable through a tennis ball, and voila! They can be neatly stored at the edge of the table without falling into the crack:
When you need to use a cable, you can simply pull it through the tennis ball while leaving it pressed against the wall. This helps you avoid having tennis balls scattered all over your desk:
Yay for organization and efficiency! Do you have any personal tips for organizing your cables?
Here’s a concept design of the “Nikon D4x” by San Francisco-based industrial designer Marc Levinson. Levinson tells us,
This was a student project at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. During my research on DSLRs I ran across some interviews of Giorgetto Giugiaro, the designer of the current top of the line flagship model for Nikon. He claimed that his product “has value as a sculptural work” and his objective was “to create a product with a value that everyone can understand at a glance.” Although I greatly respect his objective and the way he executed it, I wanted to try my own rendition making it even clearer, even to the untrained eye, that this was an object of great value and significance.
I broke away from an overly common form that was derived from film cameras and was dictated by the way that the film fit inside. I went through several physical foam renditions to get to a shape that had more to do with ergonomics, comfort and style than tradition. Although this concept is very different from its predecessors, I made sure to still maintain the overall design language Nikon maintains across its brand using color, detailing and surfacing.
The design is unlike anything we’ve seen here before, especially the placement of the mode dial on the bottom of the camera.
Do you see anything in this design that you think is an improvement on existing DSLR designs? What do you like or not like about it?
Garrett Murray over at Maniacal Rage has a funny project called CS4 Crash Reports. He comes up with the strangest things to send to Adobe when his Photoshop CS4 crashes and asks him to describe the problem that occurred.
Here’s another gem:
I’ve never had a problem with CS4 crashing on me, but Firefox and Cyberduck do plenty of that.
CS4 Crash Reports (via Boing Boing)
Recent surveys found that many image users in the United States and UK are ignorant when it comes to knowing when it’s okay to use an image, and how images may be used. 22% of those surveyed admitted that they used photographs found on photo sharing websites for commercial purposes. In response to these findings, Getty has launched stockphotorights, a website that answers many of the common questions people have about image use and copyright. They also have a blog documenting cases of image misuse, and a section filled with case studies.
Olympus’ most recent E-PL1 commercial, PEN Giant, is stop-motion with a big picture — or big pictures, literally. A total of 355 prints were made on billboards and shot again, all produced with the Olympus PEN.
Olympus has a way with narrative in their commercials.
The first PEN Story came out last July, and was a little over three minutes long, but comprised of some 1,800 photos of 9,600 prints, out of a total of 60,000 photos originally taken for the project. Yeah, it gets kind of meta.
Both commercials give a creative nod to Takeuchi Taijin. Takeuchi’s stop-motion, “Wolf and Pig” might look a little familiar, if you’ve seen the original Olympus PEN Story.
Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was selected and announced below.
Howdy friends. It’s time for another PetaPixel giveaway. This week we’re giving away a printing set with the following items: a Canon PIXMA iP4700 inkjet printer, 50 sheets of Silver Metallic paper by Red River Paper, and a $100 gift certificate to Red River Paper! The combined value of these prizes is about $250.
To enter, all you need to do is:
Tell us your favorite joke or one-liner
There are two ways to enter, and doing both methods will give you 2 entries in the contest, and thus double the chance the win!
As long as the link appears in the post, you’ll be automatically entered in the contest.
This contest will end Friday May 21st, 2010. We’ll randomly pick a winner using random.org and update this post. Good luck!
Update: This giveaway has ended. We received 184 comments and 98 tweets. Though we’ll count all the comments as entries, we will verify that the winner followed the rules and did not have an unfair advantage.
The randomly selected winner of the printer, paper, and gift certificate is…
Two guys walk into a bar, the third guy ducks.
Congratulations! Please email editor@petapixel.com to claim your prize.
Thanks to everyone who entered and shared your hilarious jokes with us!
A big thanks to Red River Paper for providing the prizes for this giveaway!
