January 2011

Polaroid and Lady Gaga Launch New Instant Camera, Glasses, and Printer

Looks like the blogosphere was right in December of last year when it guessed that a teaser put out by Polaroid was for a new instant camera launch at CES 2011. The company -- along with Creative Director Lady Gaga -- officially unveiled the camera today in Las Vegas, and also showed off a new printer and a bizarre pair of glasses as well.

Plexiglass Prints of Polaroid Photos

Polaroid instant photographs are fun to make and look at, but displaying them (or selling them) in a nice and formal way can be difficult. Grant Hamilton came up with a fantastic way of selling his Polaroid prints -- he makes high resolution scans of the photographs, prints them on Fuji Crystal Archive Polyester, and then encapsulates the print in Plexiglas. The resulting 1:1 scale shiny photo-clones are thick enough to stand on their own, and are a great way to show off your best Polaroid photos.

Faking 1000FPS with Final Cut Studio and a Canon 60D

We've featured a couple beautiful examples of fake slow-motion video created using Twixtor shot with the Canon 7D and 550D. If you don't want to shell out $300 just for Twixtor, you can do something somewhat similar using only Final Cut Studio. The above footage was shot at 60fps using a Canon 60D and created entirely with Final Cut Studio. Yes, yes, we know the wheels look strange, but it's still a neat effect and might produce interesting results with the right kind of footage.

How UPS Deliveries Actually Work

The stories are often the same -- you spend some time saving up money for the perfect piece of gear that you've spent hours reading reviews about and comparing. You finally order it, and spend some days checking the tracking information every few minutes to see if your package is still traveling according to schedule.

Casio TRYX Brings Swiveling Screens to a New Dimension

Yesterday we got a sneak peek at a strange multi-dimensionally swiveling Casio TRYX camera, and today it was officially unveiled at CES 2011. The TRYX is a 12.1 megapixel camera that shoots 1080p HD video at 30fps or 240fps slow-motion video at 432 x 320. The unique thing about the camera is that the 3-inch touchscreen LCD can both bust out of its "frame" and also swivel, allowing the frame to be used as a stand and for the screen to point in all kinds of random directions.

The Incredible Story of Vivian Maier

In 2007, 26-year-old real estate agent John Maloof purchased a box filled with 30,000 negatives from an estate sale for $400. After being stunned by the quality of the street photographs, Maloof began digging and discovered that they were created by a nanny and street photographer named Vivian Maier.

State of the Blog: A Look Back at 2010

Welcome to PetaPixel in 2011! The past year went by extremely quickly, and quite a bit has happened on this blog since our last "state of the blog" address post. In this post we're going to share some statistics about this blog for those of you who are curious or interested in this kinda thing.