Here’s a fun bit of trivia: did you know that at one time Apple (then named Apple Computer) made compact digital cameras? Launched in 1994, the Apple QuickTake was actually one of the first digital cameras available to consumers. Three models were built by Kodak and Fujifilm, and the cameras boasted a whopping 0.3 megapixels and the ability to store eight photos at this resolution. The camera had a flash, but lacked zoom, focusing, image review, and file deletion (the entire contents had to be wiped). Read more…
If you live in an urban area, you probably don’t see the night sky very clearly due to light pollution. Luckily, there’s videos like this one to remind us how beautiful the sky above is when there aren’t artificial lights drowning out the stars. This is a high-definition time-lapse of the Milky Way floating across the sky.
Warning: this might inspire you to learn more about time-lapse and astrophotography.
Lensbaby unveiled a new accessory at Photokina called the Tilt Transformer, which allows you to use Nikon mount lenses on EVIL camera bodies as an instant tilt-shift lens with twice the tilt of normal TS lenses. It’s currently available for Micro Four Thirds bodies, but will be available for Sony NEX cameras as well starting on October 28, 2010. The Tilt Transformer comes with the Lensbaby Composer in a $350 package, or separately for $250. Read more…
When American photographer Alex Soth arrived in the UK earlier this year to work on a commission for the city of Brighton‘s photo biennial, he was told by the customs officer at the airport that he couldn’t do his photography work without a work visa, and that getting caught might result in two years of jail time.
Instead of going ahead with the project anyway or calling it off, Soth decided to hand his camera over to his 7-year-old daughter Carmen. The duo strolled around Brighton for a few hours each day, with Alex directing many of Carmen’s photographs while Carmen looked to check off entries on the shooting list she made (shown above). Read more…
Photographer Achim Lippoth of London-based creative agency edsonwilliams recently created this series of photographs for Kid’s Wear Magazine involving children with dolls that look just like them. Beautiful portraits with a hint of cute and a dash of creepy! Read more…
It looks like the wait for plenoptic cameras to hit the market is shorter than we thought when we reported earlier today on Adobe’s interesting demonstration on the technology. In fact, there is no wait — you can already purchase a plenoptic camera. German company Raytrix is the first to offer plenoptic cameras that allow you to choose focus points in post processing and capture 3D images with a single sensor. Read more…
Here’s a fun idea: take famous landscape paintings and add a tilt-shift effect to them! This series of images was created by Artcyclopedia using famous Van Gogh paintings. We love how the selective focus gives the paintings a new dimension. Read more…
In the future, focusing on the wrong subject when taking a picture might be a thing of the past. At Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference this year Adobe gave a demonstration of how plenoptic lenses can be used to allow focus to be arbitrarily chosen after the image is captured during post-processing. These are microlens arrays containing hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands (Stanford researchers used a camera with 90,000 lenses) of tiny lenses that record much more information about a scene than traditional single lenses. Read more…
Here’s a suggestion for how to create some instant awesomeness if you ever find yourself with a Phantom camera at your disposal: record some footage of stuff being violently destroyed, and then play it back in reverse.
Finn O’Hara created the above video for Best Made, a company that makes axes. It was filmed with a Phantom HD Gold camera, and is a preview for a series of short films showing Best Made axes splitting wood (sadly, the actual videos are in forward motion).
Barcodes can be found everywhere, but using existing barcode systems with ordinary cameras require that the barodes be printed large or that the camera be placed close to the code. MIT’s Bokode project is a new system that magically stuffs barcodes into bokeh, allowing ordinary cameras to be used as barcode readers from a distance. The codes are contained in little points of light that only turn into codes when viewed through an out-of-focus camera lens. You’ve probably seen how little bright points of light grow into larger and fainter points of light when you defocus. Read more…
