August 2010

ShutterBuddy is like a Tractor Beam for Baby Eyes

Apparently babies can't resist a good checkboard pattern. ShutterBuddy is a camera attachment that surrounds your camera or lens with a checkerboard pattern, causing babies to stare uncontrollably at your camera (whether in fear or fascination, we have no idea). You can order your own for $15 through the ShutterBuddy website, or you can spend some time creating a do-it-yourself version by printing out or drawing your own checkboard pattern.

Rolling Shutter Causes Plane to Drop Boomerang Bombs

The rolling shutter used by the majority of consumer CMOS sensors can do crazy things to photos and videos. The video above shows what an airplane propeller looks like when shot with a Nokia N95. The rolling shutter makes the plane looks as if it's dropping boomerang bombs that quickly disappear into thin air.

Faux Food Photos by David Sykes

At first glance (or from far away), these might look like ordinary food photographs. Look a little closer, and you'll see the creativity of photographer David Sykes at work.

How to Use Ultra-Fast Lenses on Modern DSLR Cameras

The ratio between the focal length and the aperture (diameter) of a lens is called the f/number. The smaller the f/number, the more light is let in. Fast lenses start around f/2.0, and the light let in goes as the inverse square. Compared to f/2.0, f /1.4 lets in twice as much light, f/1.0 four times, and f/0.71 eight times. The fastest camera lenses designed for DSLRs and widely available are between f/1.4 and f/1.2, but lenses as fast as f/0.75 have been made in quantity for special applications, and some of those are available quite cheaply via scrap yards, surplus stores, or eBay.

These ultra-fast lenses usually are branded either Kowa or Rodenstock and were designed for use in medical or semiconductor industry equipment, etc. They are not well-suited for use on DSLR cameras, and are no substitute for an f/1.4 or f/1.2 lens that was designed for your camera. However, they easily can produce very distinctive images. Here's how to use one on a DSLR.

DigitalRev Durability Test Cameras Tested

DigitalRev has posted a followup to the destruction tests video they published last week. After abusing two entry-level DSLR cameras in all sorts of random ways (e.g. dropping down an escalator, using them as stilts and hammers, pouring hot liquids on them, etc...), many of us were left wondering to what degree the cameras were still functional. This video answers those questions.

Attempts to Fly by Conan Thai

"Attempts to Fly" is a series of photographs by Conan Thai in which he freezes people as they leap into the air, resulting in photographs that could be mistaken for alien abduction photos. It's a pretty fun idea that you can try with your friends. Bonus points for shots where you can capture jumpers at impossible heights, as Thai does in some of his photos.

Thai is a recently graduated graphic designer that's venturing more into photography.

Make ‘Face Movies’ with Google’s Picasa

Google added a neat feature called "Face Movies" to its Picasa photo software last week. This feature uses facial recognition technology to help you create a movie slideshow where a person's face is aligned in each photograph. An example of something you can do with this feature is to create a slideshow of your child growing up (like in the example Face Movie above).

How to Build a Cheap and Simple Variable Neutral Density Filter

What is a variable neutral density filter?

The neutral density bit means it is a filter simply designed to block some of the light getting into a camera. The variable bit means it is variable - you can control the darkness of the filter just by twisting one part of it. A proper variable neutral density filter can cost £100 or more!

A Super Detailed and Completely Edible Nikon D200 Birthday Cake

Check out this Nikon D200 birthday cake that Josh Weisberg (the guy who sparked the Canon lens mug craze) received from his friend Mia. Apparently everything you see on the cake is edible, including the printed labels, which are made of edible ink. Everything else solid-looking is made of sugar.

How to Shoot Things Falling into Water

Editor's note: This walkthrough was originally published on Clint Decker's Flickr account. We found it pretty informative and asked him to share it here.

Rain Photographs by Navid Baraty

New York-based photographer Navid Baraty has a series of incredibly beautiful rain photographs made in San Francisco and Japan. We first came across the photograph above, titled "Rain Dance", in Pictory's "San Francisco" showcase. It was taken in San Francisco's Union Square with a Nikon D700. There's just something about the composition and lighting that blew us away.

Canon Unveils the 60D: HD Video Recording and a Swivel Screen

Turns out the leaked photos of the Canon 60D we posted a couple weeks ago were of the real thing. Canon just announced this camera this morning, and the rumored specs were spot on as well: an 18-megapixel camera with an articulating LCD screen and heavy emphasis on video recording.

Man Blows a Fireball and Burns Up His Canon 5D Mark II

Expensive camera equipment getting destroyed seems to be a reoccurring theme this month here on PetaPixel. Early in the month there was the story of the 7D getting burned up in an exploding car, and earlier this week we shared a DigitalRev video of DSLRs getting abused tested for durability.

1922 Kodachrome Film Test by Kodak

Here's an interesting clip of a color film test done by Kodak in 1922, years before color movies started appearing. This is 13 years before the first full-length color film appeared, and 7 years before the first Oscar was awarded. You can read more about this clip on the Kodak blog.

How to Shoot a Hover Fly in Flight

The main thing with in flight hover fly photos is not to try, by that I mean if you go out to take one you will end up normally chasing a hoverfly all over the place with little chance of success. I only take them when an opportunity arises.

In this case the males of this species of hoverfly patrol the flowering bush looking for females . When they spot one they go into a stationary hover for about 10seconds whilst they decide if the female is what they think it is and if it's a suitable mate.

iPhone 4 Skinned to Look Like a Leica M9

Flickr user joey_joey_joey wanted to customize his iPhone 4 in a unique way, so he decided to make it look like a Leica M9. This is one of the neatest looking cell phones I've seen.

To make the stickers for the front and back, Joey took a stock photograph of an M9, and modified it in Photoshop to fit the dimensions of the iPhone 4.

Amazing Time Lapse of California and Arizona by Dan Eckert

Here's a stunning time-lapse video by Dan Eckert shot in the California and Arizona deserts. Aside from the fact that seeing the night sky spin in time-lapse is usually pretty darn cool, Eckert employs some interesting techniques that we haven't come across before.

Sony Alpha A33 and A55 Official: First Translucent Mirror DSLRs

The rumors that have been circulating in recent weeks were spot on: Sony has just announced four new DSLR cameras: the A33, A55, A560, and A580. As expected, the A33 and A55 are the world's first pellicle mirror DSLRs, and have the features and specs we posted just yesterday: phase-detect autofocus while recording HD video or shooting 7fps or 10fps respectively.