March 2011

Made in the early 1960s, Fisher Price's Picture Story Camera was the first "camera" owned by many photo-enthusiasts. They're built out of paper-covered wood and plastic, and contained a tiny disc with eight different "photographs" that could be seen by looking through the viewfinder -- similar to the View-Master, except not in 3D. To change the photo, you simply hold down the shutter and turn the "flash", a yellow block with pictures representing the four seasons.

An old lady brings her newly purchased Canon T2i and kit lens back to a camera store in Toronto …

The applications of this on the consumer photography market are likely nil, but researchers at Ohio State University have invented a method of shooting 3D photographs using a single lens. The trick is that the lens is cut like a gem, giving it eight different facets in addition to the main face that "see" the subject from different perspectives. Custom software then takes in the image and processes the 9 different views to create a single 3D image.

After Noah Kalina published his "Everyday" video back in 2006 featuring a self-portrait a taken every day for 2,356 days, the concept took off and soon the Internet was filled with copycat projects by people who wanted to document their own lives in the same way. If you've been wanting to try you hand at taking a photo of your face every day but have lacked the discipline to do so, there's a new app for the iPhone called "Everyday" that is designed to make things easier for you.

Using Lego pieces, Flickr user and Lego fan Larry Lars created an uber-accurate miniature version of his home photo studio. Maybe this could be a new method of creating lighting diagrams?

When Liana Garcia Joyce got married a while back (doubling her film stash), her mom came up with the idea of giving away these hand-crafted wooden photo holders as wedding favors because Liana met her husband through their common interest in photography.

Photographer Chris Marquardt claims to have used groundbreaking research to create a mind-boggling …

Flickr user Paul Little creates surreal images he calls "HDR Mixes" by combining different photographs with the help of HDR software. While you're normally supposed to feed the program multiple versions of the same photo (which are bracketed), with HDR Mixes you use two photos of the same scene and a third that's completely unrelated.

Here’s some neat camera trickery: Ryan Hargrave captured some unique home video by …

NASA has a long history of using Hasselblad cameras in space and, interestingly enough, you can download the Astronaut's Photography Manual used to train astronauts from Hasselblad's website. It covers everything from operating the Hasselblad 500EL/M to composition, using situations unique to astronauts in its examples and illustrations.

“Around the World in 2000 Pictures” is a neat project by Alex Profit — the same guy that did …

If you’ve been thinking of trying your hand at lunar photography, tomorrow night might present …

Make just published this short but informative tutorial on how to turn your …

If you somehow got your hands on a Fujifilm Finepix X100 already but don’t mind waiting a little longer …

"Space Program" is a project by artist Tom Sachs featuring 1:1 models of various space related objects, including an Apollo lunar module, a mission control unit, space suits, and handmade space suits. He also included the above NASA Hasselblad camera as part of the exhibition. Note the stylish wooden crank.

Did you know that some of Kodak’s early DSLR cameras had built-in games? Before Canon and Nikon started making …

If Doctor Octopus were to design a DIY flash accessory, it might look …

After seeing 3D light painting done with an iPad, classmates Jinhwan …

A huge story last year was when a painter named Rick Norsigian came across 65 glass negatives at a garage sale, purchasing them for $45. He then had them examined by experts, who told him that they were previously undiscovered Ansel Adams photographs worth at least $200 million. Just as the find was being heralded as one of the greatest in art history, Ansel Adams' relatives and Publishing Rights Trust expressed skepticism that they were in fact Adams'. It then came to light that the photos might actually belong to a man named Earl Brooks who once lived in the same city as Norsigian (Fresno, California).

Here’s an interesting snippet from an article published today by David Pogue of …

We’re not sure how we missed this when the camera was announced at the beginning of last …

Have an unloved camera strap lying around? You can repurpose it as a strap for a shoulder …

"Hipster traps" have been springing up across New York City, and one of the baits used is a Holga 120N camera. The traps are the latest project by artists Jeff Greenspan and Hunter Fine.

Urban Traps is a project where we lay traps for certain subcultures. Our goal is protect neighborhoods from infestation and collect different species for further study. [#]

Other items used for bait are sunglasses, a yellow bicycle chain, a can of PBR and a pack of American Spirits.

Here’s an interesting glimpse into what a DSLR’s aperture blades and shutter curtain look like in super slow motion.

Lomography shop manager Liana Garcia Joyce recently discovered an awesome trick for increasing your film stash: all you have to do is get married to someone who loves analog photography just as much as you do!

Cinematographer James Miller spent two years developing a technique for converting 8mm footage to digital by beaming it directly onto the sensor of a Canon 5D Mark II. He replaced the bulb on an old projector with LED lights, and used elements from a disassembled lens to focus the light. You can read a step-by-step walkthrough of this project here.

Chicago-based designer Dan Riordan woke up one morning, saw his Polaroid Land Camera 95A, and thought to himself, “I …

Last year we featured a pretty neat slow motion video shot from a moving train. British band …

Cell phones are playing a bigger and bigger role in citizen journalism — just look at the imagery coming …

This video by FotoTV features “microstock king” Yuri Arcurs leading a workshop and …

Not sure what to do with your vintage camera collection that’s sitting around gathering dust? Try displaying them on …

You probably won’t believe this, but this fly-by video of Saturn wasn’t created with 3D computer graphics. Instead, it …

Remember the 100 pixelated camera illustrations by Billy Brown we featured a little while back? Well, you …

Here’s yet another awesome Photoshop tutorial by Sean Armenta showing how to use …

After last week’s devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Canon and Nikon have …

When's the last time you saw some amateur video shot from inside North Korea? There's a good chance the answer is never, given how secretive the country is and how tight the policies are for what outsiders are allowed to do. Photojournalist Steve Gong, however, captured some really high quality video from inside the country using a Canon 5D Mark II.

If you’re looking to buy used camera gear on sites like eBay or Craigslist, a trick you can use …

Matthew Rothenberg, the man who has led Flickr the past two years has Head of Product, announced today that he is leaving the service. In a message posted to his Twitter account, Rothenberg states,

Here goes: after 5 years, I will be stepping away from Flickr. Will miss working with such a talented, hard-working, and hard-drinking team.

Despite reassurances from Yahoo that Flickr is doing well, many will undoubtably look at this development and wonder whether the future for the service is as bright as the company would like us to think. TechCrunch also reported today that the situation inside the service isn't too great.

"Double Exposure" is a series of surreal photos by Dan Mountford creating by exposing single frames of film twice. While they look like photo-manipulations done with fancy image editing programs, Mountford relies on fancy camerawork for the images, leaving only the color additions/modifications to post-processing.

You've probably heard people say that you shouldn't try to get a cheap photographer for wedding photography. Here's a good example of why.

Can you point out all the things this wedding photographer is doing wrong? Leave a comment and we'll get a running list going here.

Here’s a Picasa gallery showing Google satellite imagery of various locations in Japan …

Customer: I’m wondering how much a certain lens costs. Clerk: OK, which one? Customer: I can’t remember, …

So this is what the new Fujifilm Finepix X100 camera looks like when it's completely disassembled...

Check out these Canon Rebel XT cookies made by CookieJan's Creations. They're 3D, with 67mm "zoom" lenses attached, and are tasty for both the mouth and the eyes.

A Polish collector claims he's found an extremely rare daguerrotype of composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin, taken in his final repose in 1849.

If the image is authentic, it would be one of only three photographs of the composer, including the image of him alive in 1846, above. And it would be the only known original daguerrotype in existence -- all other images are duplicates.

After several Egyptian secret police buildings were raided recently by protestors, Egyptian blogger Hossam (AKA 3arabawy) stayed awake for two days organizing and uploading photographs of members of Egypt's secret police who have been accused of brutality and torture. The problem was, Hossam was uploading the images to Flickr, and Flickr wasn't happy about the fact that he didn't shoot them. Flickr soon vaporized the photographs and emailed him a warning for copyright violation.

You know all those not-so-awesome portraits found all over social networking services like Facebook and Myspace? If you’ve felt …

The massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake that devastated Japan today was located just east of the city of Sendai, which subsequently suffered major damage due to the resulting tsunami. What you might not know is that the city is home to Nikon's flagship manufacturing facility -- the plant that produces Nikon's professional DSLRs (e.g. D3s, D3x and D700). Fortunately, Nikon reports that there have been no reports of injuries among its employees in that city, and the plant seems to have escaped serious damage as well.

“Alphabet Truck” is a project that took photographer …

Like the US Government, the CIA has its own Flickr account, and one of the sets they have features photos of various gadgets used by the agency's spies over the years. Among the gadgets are a number of spy cameras designed for various purposes and scenarios.