October 2010

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

TDK Unveils 1TB Optical Disc, Photogs in the Distant Future Rejoice

TDK has unveiled a monstrous 1 terabyte (1000 gigabyte) optical disc at CEATEC 2010 (the Japanese equivalent of CES), which wrapped up a couple days ago. The disc has 16 layers on both sides that each store 32GB of data, and is the equivalent to about 213 of the recordable DVD discs that you might be using to back up your image files.

Facebook Has a Zombie Photo Problem

Ars Technica published an interesting story today about how photos uploaded to Facebook remain on their servers months -- or even years -- after they're "deleted" from the service. We decided to test this out ourselves, uploading the above photo to Facebook, copying the direct URL to the image file, and then deleting both the photo and the album. As you can see from the hotlinked photo above, the image continues to live on as a zombie photo on Facebook's CDN servers.

James Nachtwey on the Importance of Photography in War

If James Nachtwey were a street photographer, he wouldn't be the type to stand on the opposite sidewalk and stealthily capture unsuspecting strangers using a telephoto lens. As you can see from the photograph above, Nachtwey has a fearless attitude when shooting in dangerous situations, getting up close and personal with the subjects.

35mm SLR Camera Created from Scratch

You've probably seen do-it-yourself pinhole cameras or even large format cameras created with foam core, but what about a solid metal do-it-yourself 35mm camera? That's exactly what Denis Mo decided to create, posting his step-by-step documentation to French camera forum collection-appareils.fr.

Denis had wanted to do such a project for 25 years, but it wasn't until he was almost 42 that he had the technical know-how to actually do it. Except for the shutter curtain fabric, ball bearings, and screws, all of the individual pieces that were used to create the camera were custom made.

Time-Lapse Video Spanning 3 Years and 45,000 Photographs

You've probably seen time-lapse videos spanning hours, days, weeks, or months, but how about years? Ramon, a videographer based in Paris, spent three years shooting the same location in Paris, documenting the teardown of an old skyscraper and the construction of a new one. The photographs were shot between January 2007 and September 2010 using a Pentax K110D DSLR, and a whopping 45,000 photographs were captured.

NASA Astronaut Sues Dido Over Album Cover Photograph

American NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless II is suing British singer Dido over the photo used for the album cover of "Safe Trip Home". The photo shows McCandless "free-flying" hundreds of feet from the Orbiter using a Manned Manuevering Unit (MMU). McCandless was the first person to do an untethered spacewalk.

Checklist for Buying Used Cameras and Lenses on Craigslist

Editor's note: The checklist presented in this post is also available as a text file for you to print out and carry along for reference. This post was first published here.

Almost all of the camera equipment I have ever owned was purchased used. While this isn’t something to be proud of, I do like to think I know a thing or two about cameras and lenses. I have run into the occasional problems with lenses, but I made sure I had the option to return them if they had issues. I have also purchased a few lenses and cameras from people on Craigslist as well and as long as you know what you’re getting and tried it out when you made the purchase, you should be covered. There are a few things that I always check and I’m putting them up here in the hope that you might find some of it useful.

Adobe Photoshop May Possibly Become Microsoft Photoshop

The Internet was abuzz yesterday due to a secret meeting at Adobe's offices between the head honchos of Microsoft (Steve Ballmer) and Adobe (Shantanu Narayen). The New York Times reports:

The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, covered a number of topics, but one of the main thrusts of the discussion was Apple and its control of the mobile phone market and how the two companies could team up in the battle against Apple. A possible acquisition of Adobe by Microsoft were among the options.

Whoa. Acquisition. That's a pretty deal. So big, in fact, that the rumor drove Adobe's stock price up 11.5% yesterday, adding about $1.5 billion to their market cap.

Nikon D700 with a Custom Tilt-Shift Rig

When Jon Martin found an old Kodak Ektar 101mm f4.5 lens from the 1940's at work, he decided to try it on his D700 by freelensing to testing and see if it was compatible. After finding that it was, he began on building a rig to use it as a tilt-shift lens. He ended up building a rig using old camera gear and some custom wood parts.

Toss Your Battery Charger Cable with a Apple Duck Head Adapter

Some battery chargers (e.g. those that come with Canon's pro and prosumer cameras) plug directly into the wall and have prongs that fold into the charger, while others (e.g. the Canon T2i charger) connect to the wall via a removable cable. Though this may be more space efficient when connecting to a socket or surge protector, the extra chord takes up space and can be a hassle. CheesyCam has a clever solution: use an Apple wall plug duck head adapter to transform the charger into a wall charger.

Copyright Embedding Tool for the Ultra Paranoid Photographer

If you're sick of having your precious photographs ripped off and digital watermarking isn't your thing, you can use this translucent copyright symbol to embed an obnoxious copyright symbol in all of your photographs! The mysterious Martin Nachtwey tells duckrabbit,

What I do is use a perspex © symbol that I dangle in front of the lens. It works a treat. No man, big or small, is stripping that mofo out of the image…I don’t see any problem in letting your readers in on the secret…all you need is a sheet of perspex, a jigsaw, a stick and some thread.

I have written all the small print onto the sign, so it is only readable under enlargement/reproduction. Another benefit of my method is that it works for film as well as digital!

Sony Introduces First 16.41 Megapixel Sensor for Cell Phones

It was only at the beginning of the year that the megapixel race for cell phone cameras hit 14.6 megapixels, but now Sony has unveiled a 16.41 back-illuminated CMOS sensor that can shoot 15 frames per second at full resolution, and is capable of HD video recording (30fps at 1080p and 60fps at 720p).

Creative Pixilation Student Project Shot with Old 16mm Film Camera

Pixilation is the stop motion technique in which humans are used as the subject, moving through slight changes in pose and position in each successive frame. Eric Hanus, a recent graduate from Indiana University, created the above video (titled "Day Drunk") using the technique, and doing it with a old, hacked film camera to boot. Hanus tells us,

Double Rainbow All the Way in HDR

The Internet viral sensation "Double Rainbow" video was captured on January 8th, 2010. About two weeks later on the 23rd (and long before that video went viral), I saw a double rainbow myself when looking out my window. I quickly grabbed my camera (a Canon 40D at the time) with my 16-35mm lens (I wanted the widest shot possible) and ran out to shoot the rainbow.

Instagram is a Free Fusion of Hipstamatic and Tumblr for the iPhone

Instagram is a new iPhone photo app developed by Stanford grads Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger that offers Hipstamatic-style filters for your photos, easy uploads to popular services, and a Tumblr-esque community built right in. While photo sharing apps in the App Store are a dime a dozen, there are a few things that set Instagram apart.

Sony A77 Rumored to Have Two Pellicle Mirrors for Crazy Hybrid Viewfinder

SonyAlphaRumors received a pretty interesting tip yesterday regarding the design of the upcoming Sony Alpha A77 (which is still a rumor at this point). The anonymous tipster wrote that the camera -- successor to the A700 -- will have an innovative design that boasts a hybrid viewfinder by blending optical and electronic images:

Yesterday Sony explained the new system that will be used for the incoming a77 (the a750 will use a regular SLR design). Practically the are using two semi-transparent mirrors and a high-resolution EVF to reinforced the live image. They are using a reflexive technology design called 70/30, between each semi-transparent mirrors.

The final image in the viewfinder will have 30% of original image and 70% of electronic reinforced image through the new EVF.

Beautiful Camera Created with Card Stock

UK-based designer Chrissie Macdonald was commissioned by Marque Creative to create art for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Among the things she made was a neat camera and flash created entirely using card stock. It almost looks like it's a digital creation done using Adobe Illustrator.