Here’s a neat idea for displaying your photos: pick up a set of blank Russian nesting dolls, saw little slits into the top, paint them, and use them as a cute set of photo holders! Check out the full tutorial here.

Photo holding nesting dolls are my fav (via KEH Camera Blog)

After being accidentally leaked on Nikon’s website a couple weeks ago, Nikon’s new AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G lens was officially announced today. The lens — compatible with both DX and FX DSLRs — features an unusual aspherical element that typically isn’t found in lenses like this. It will be available starting June 16th for $220, which includes a lens hood.
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For his project Lakes and Reservoirs, photographer Matthew Brandt exposed using both light and water — after shooting photos of each lake or reservoir (i.e. exposing with light), he made a chromogenic print and then soaked the photo in the water that was photographed, thus exposing it to water.
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The Stolen Camera Finder is a new search engine developed over the past two years by programmer Matt Burns. His idea is to search the web for photographs that have a stolen camera’s serial number embedded in the EXIF information. It uses two web crawlers — the first is a standard one that accesses Flickr’s API, while the second is a Google Chrome browser plugin that silently runs in the background and peeks at the serial numbers of images on any webpage viewed. These serial numbers and URLs are stored in a database, and if you’d like to volunteer your browsing for this you can download the Chrome plugin here.

Flickr user Steve Kushnir came up with this neat idea of building a cheap DIY diffuser using a Pringles can, two layers of paper towels, and some rubber bands. He attached it to his Nikon D5000′s popup flash and uses it for macro photographs of creepy crawlies.
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Here’s an interesting video that walks through how the highly regarded — and fully manual — Voigtlander Nokton 25mm f/0.95 lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras is made at the Cosina plant in Nagano, Japan (jump to 2:30 to skip the intro). It’s interesting how each of the 10 aperture blades must be carefully set in the lens using tweezers.

(via Foto Actualidad)

If you’ve ever wanted to know what the guts of a Nikon D5100 look like, iFixit just published a meticulously documented teardown of the camera. Aside from pointing out the various parts found in the body, an interesting conclusion the iFixit team came to was that the D5100 has a horrible “Repairability Score” of 2/10, where 10 is easiest to repair. The reason? “Approximately 4 billion screws hold the device together” (They’re exaggerating, of course).
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Photographer Jamie Beck has a beautiful series of images that she calls “cinemagraphs“. They’re animated GIFs in which only a small piece each photograph is animated, making them a neat fusion of still and moving images. It’s amazing how much a tiny bit of movement in a still photo can do. They’re almost like the moving pictures you see in Harry Potter!
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Yuri Arcurs — AKA the “King of Microstock” — is the best selling microstock photographer in the world, selling over 2,000 images a day and 2 million a year. Visit his website here.

PetaPixel: Could you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Yuri Arcurs: I was born in 1976 in Aarhus, Denmark, where I still live with my fiance, Cecilie, and our dog, Maff. As a child I spent some years in the U.S. but I returned to Denmark and joined the army, and later on I continued with my studies in Psychology at Aarhus Univerity. These days I feel like I’m not doing much else besides stock photography, but when I do have time for other things I really enjoy a good work-out. I have always been a very active person, which was probably one of the reasons I joined the army when I was younger, but right now I try to focus all of my energy on stock. So, unfortunately, marathons and the likes will have to wait!
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If you’ve never used a rangefinder camera before, this video provides a visual look at how focusing works (a Leica M2 is used). Basically you’re given a second (smaller) image of the scene, and your goal is turn the focus ring until the two images match up for the subject you’d like to have in focus.
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