October 2010

Michael Zhang

Photos of Things That Aren’t Supposed to be Photographed

If you're like a lot of people, you might have felt the urge to secretly shoot where there are signs posted prohibiting photography. Strictly No Photography is a website that aggregates these photographs, giving the public a glimpse into various things that are off limits to cameras. There's photographs from museums, theaters, and even a collection of "no photography allowed" signs.

Michael Zhang

Nikon D7000 Kits Being Sold by Best Buy Ahead of Launch

Itching to get your hands on the Nikon D7000? You might want to try Best Buy. Apparently some Best Buy stores are breaking the rules and selling Nikon D7000 kits before the camera is officially available on Sunday. Here are some unboxing videos created by the lucky few who were able to purchase the D7000 early.

Michael Zhang

Forced to Delete Photos? No Problem, Just Recover Them Later

Here's a useful idea related to the memory card recovery tutorial we shared yesterday: if you're ever confronted by someone who forces you to delete your photos (and our magical photographers' rights gray card doesn't work), go ahead and delete them! What most people don't know is that deleted photos can easily be recovered afterward. Even photos on a memory card that's formatted and completely wiped can usually be restored.

Michael Zhang

Happy Meal Photographed Weekly Shows No Change After Half Year

New York City photographer Sally Davies purchased a McDonalds Happy Meal on April 10th of this year and left it out uncovered on her coffee table to prove wrong a friend who said it would rot after only a few days. After about two weeks of photographing the food, Davies realized that absolutely nothing was happening, so she began taking pictures once a week. After 180 days Davies shot the 27th photograph, with the meal looking almost identical to when she first bought it. The 1st and 27th photograph taken half a year apart are shown above.

Michael Zhang

How to Recover Deleted Photos from a Memory Card with PhotoRec

Last night my pastor emailed me telling me that he had accidentally deleted an entire folder of photographs off his Sony compact camera, and that Sony's technical support informed him that it would cost $200-300 for them to recover the photos. After I got a hold of the memory card, I checked some of the recovery programs I've used in the past, but discovered that they now require paid licenses to actual do recovery (though analysis is free). I then stumbled across PhotoRec, a free and open source command-line application that's bundled with TestDisk, something I've successfully used to regain access to inaccessible external hard drives.

In this post I'm going to show you how you can use PhotoRec to recover your photos if you've accidentally deleted them or formatted your memory card.

Michael Zhang

Surreal Landscapes Created with Food

Foodscapes is a series by photographer Carl Warner in which he creates beautiful surreal landscapes using various foods. Warner starts by visualizing and sketching his ideas, which are then built on a large table in his studio with the help of his team. Large blocks of polystyrene are carved and covered with ingredients in order to make the hills seen in his photos, while shallow tanks are used to create lakes, rivers, and seas. Photographs for three different layers (foreground, middle ground, and background) are captured separately and then combined in post.

Michael Zhang

Canon Cross Media Station Delivers Wireless Transfer and Charging

If you shoot often, then you probably go through the hassles of sticking your memory card in a card reader and battery in a battery charger often as well. While these tasks don't take much time in themselves, doing them day after day can cause them to become quite tedious. Canon's Cross Media Station is designed to make these things a breeze, allowing you to do both by simply placing your camera (or two, or three) on the device, which looks like a slick scanner.

Jon Martin

10 Tips for Buying Camera Gear on eBay

If you’ve never been on a budget and blow money like a vuvuzela at a football game, don’t bother reading any further. If you like saving money and are on a budget, then please continue reading.

I buy used equipment constantly. It’s more a way of life than a just a financial decision. While I like being able to get things cheaper and refuse to pay full price for almost anything, I wouldn’t call myself cheap. Overly frugal maybe, but not cheap (but don’t ask my wife). All that said, getting a good deal on used equipment isn’t rocket science.

Michael Zhang

Beautiful Human Sculpture Experiment Blends Video with Stills

"Seaweed" is the sixth lo-fi video experiment by London-based filmmakers Luke White and Remi Weekes, who go by Tell No One. It's a beautiful video in which a "still" frame is captured and frozen every few seconds, resulting in a seaweed sculpture created with human arms.

Michael Zhang

Use Cardboard Cutouts to Spell Out Upside-Down Shadow Words

Here's a creative idea that we love - cut out giant letters, gather up some friends, and spell out words with shadows! Justin Swindle, a student at Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, created the above image by cutting the sides off the biggest cardboard moving box he could get his hands on. He then traded the letters freehand and cut them out using a razor.

Michael Zhang

Kite Photos Used to Replace Shoddy Satellite Imagery on Google Maps

Frank Taylor, the guy behind the unofficial Google Earth Blog, is currently on a 5 years sailing trip around the world called The Tahina Expedition. Google is actually a partner in the expedition, and is acquiring content generated by the trip for use in their products. One thing Taylor has been doing is taking aerial photographs of locations using a kite, resulting in imagery that's much clearer than the photos Google gets from their satellites up in space. Google has already begun incorporating some of these images into their products, as you can see from this Google Maps satellite view of Manihi in French Polynesia.

Check out this Picasa album to see behind-the-scenes photos of Frank setting up his kite and shooting photos.

Michael Zhang

Olympus Ditching DSLRs in Favor of EVIL Cameras

Olympus is ditching the entry-level DSLR in favor of its Micro Four Thirds mount PEN line of EVIL cameras. In an interview with Fotopolis, Toshiyuki Terada -- the Product Manager of Olympus' SLR Planning Department -- is quoted as saying,

We do not have concrete plans to replace the E-620 and other recent SLRs. The entry level SLR class can be completely replaced by the Pen system in terms of performance.

Later in the interview, Terada seems to say that leaving the DSLR market entirely is one of the company's goals.

Michael Zhang

Beautiful Tilt-Shift Video of Coachella

Sam O’Hare is developing quite a reputation for his tilt-shift, miniature faking videos. O'Hare is the same guy that created The Sandpit, a beautiful tilt-shift video of New York City that has been watched nearly 2 million times. He was recently commissioned by the Coachella Music Festival to create a similar video for Coachella 2010, and the resulting video (shown above) is just as stunning.