Thanks to everyone who entered our giveaway for the accessory we launched earlier this week: the Photographers Rights Gray Card Set. We received 166 comment entries and 139 Twitter entries for 305 entries overall. Using random.org, the randomly selected winners are:
#156: Michelle
These would come in very handy- I’ve been harassed before.
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. Read more…
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.
Here is a little video on how I did the photography with Canon Speedlites while dropping items into a tank of water.
With a white background, I used a Canon Speedlite 580ex II on the left and right of the fish tank with water. They were set to manual 1/128sec.
I had a Canon Speedlite 430ex II on a chair behind the fish tank pointing towards the white background so it would come out pure white. This was set to manual 1/64th of a second (I would of done 1/128 but the 430ex II can only go down to 1/64). You want to go 1/128 so it freezes the splash mid air. Read more…
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. Read more…
In addition to the new 60D, Canon also made its lens lineup longer today with the announcement of four new L lenses and two new extenders. The lenses are the EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye, EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS, EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II, and EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II. The extenders are the Extender EF 1.4x III and Extender EF 2x III.
The 8-15mm is obviously incredibly wide, giving a ridiculous 180° field of view. Previously, the widest you could go on a Canon zoom lens was 16mm on the 16-35mm f/2.8 L lens. This new lens even beats the widest prime: the 14mm f/2.8 L. On the new 60D this lens is the equivalent of a 13-24mm lens. This lens will be available in January 2011 for $1,400.
The new 70-300mm is interesting not because Canon upgraded its 70-300mm lens, but because they decided to turn it into an L lens. Various reviews online have said that the old 70-300mm IS had L quality glass, and now Canon decided that it officially does. The older 70-300mm lenses offered 3 stops of image stabilization, while this new one supposedly offers 4. Too bad the lens still has a variable maximum aperture. It’ll be available in October for $1,500 (seems too high).
The 300mm and 400mm lenses and extenders are a bit less interesting to us. They’ve mostly received standard improvements such as less weight, better optics, superior image stabilization, faster focusing, etc… The 300mm and 400mm lenses will be out in December for a cool $7,000 and $11,000, respectively. The extenders offer better focusing and optics, and will be available in December as well for $500 each.
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. An in-camera video editing feature allows you to work on the 1080p H.264 footage you capture, while new “creative image filters” allow you to apply iPhone-esque effects to photographs as you capture them. For example, you can have your photos look like they were taken with a tilt-shift lens or toy camera. Expect the 60D to hit stores in September at a price of $1,100. Read more…
If you tried to visit the Nikon Rumors site this morning, you’ve probably gotten an error message. According to the Google information, 47 pages from the site were tested over the last three months, and one page resulted in malicious software downloaded and installed without user consent. It appears that the site was flagged for that content yesterday. Yikes.
Another camera-related site, Cinema5D was attacked last weekend. Sebastian Wöber of Cinema5D wrote that primarily users running older browsers, particularly PC users running IE6 or users who downloaded Java or PDF apps were at risk of malware.
It’s unclear why these photo-related sites were attacked, but it’s a good idea to run a virus check if you frequent either of the sites, especially if you are in the at-risk group. Sophos has more information about the attack, which is common to sites running OpenX ad servers, here.
If the DigitalRev video got you mad, then this one might infuriate you. For whatever reason, photographer Cyril Helnwein decided to fire-breathe onto his Canon 5D Mark II and burn it up, posting a video of it to YouTube’s “comedy” category. Video after the jump…
Here’s an interesting peek at how Annie Leibovitz goes about shooting a portrait. This was for a Louis Vuitton advertisement a while back featuring Sean Connery. Read more…
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. Read more…
If you tried to visit the 
