April 2011

Michael Zhang

Famous Photos Recreated with Star Wars Clone Troopers

David Eger has a fun 365 day photo project called "365 Days of Clones" in which he posts a daily photo involving Star Wars clone trooper action figures. He also has a neat mini-series in which he recreates famous photographs, called "Cloned Photos". See if you recognize any of these.

Michael Zhang

Hitch Concept Camera for Capturing Memories at Group Events

At weddings, guests are often given disposable cameras that they can use to capture memories from their vantage point, but collecting and processing them afterwards can be a hassle and it's definitely not something that has caught up with our digital photography age. Hitch is a concept camera idea by industrial design student Martin Spurway that makes a lot of sense -- guests at an event are given simplified digital cameras, and photographs from the cameras are automatically collected when the camera is placed on a special dock.

Michael Zhang

Shooting with 50+ Year Old Expired Film

Photographer Chuck Miller got his hands on a roll of Super-XX 120 government surplus film from eBay with an expiration date of May 1959 -- film that's 50+ years old and, as Miller notes, older than the Los Angeles Angels baseball team.

Michael Zhang

Adobe Nav Lets You Control Photoshop from Your iPad

Adobe announced new tools today that lets developers create tablet apps -- called Photoshop Touch Apps -- that interact directly with Photoshop CS5. They also created a few apps to showcase some of the possibilities of using a tablet while working in Photoshop, including one called Adobe Nav.

Michael Zhang

Nikon D800 Concept Features Detachable LCD Screen and Swiveling Grip

TechnoFotografia created a concept design for the yet-to-be-announced Nikon D800 DSLR. One of the novel features dreamed up for the design is a LCD screen that can be detached from the camera and used remotely (seen above). If this were to ever exist on a DSLR, losing the screens would be an issue, and replacing them would likely cost a fortune.

Michael Zhang

Another Concept Design for Digital Film

One of the biggest hits this past April Fool's Day was RE-35, a futuristic cartridge that transforms any 35mm film camera into a digital one. As the website went viral, many people actually thought it was a real product, prompting the design company behind the design to issue a notice on the website explaining that it was fake. As stated by numerous readers, digital film isn't exactly a new idea -- an actual company called Silicon Film attempted this product about a decade ago (and even gave a demo at PMA 2001) but ran into "storage, battery, environment and sensor size limitations".

Judging from the response to this April Fool's Prank, however, it's pretty clear that this is an idea that would be enormously popular with photographers if it were to actually exist and perform reasonably well. The above illustration is another concept design for "digital film", created by students of Hongik University for the iF Design Awards this year.

Michael Zhang

Passenger Shoots Time Lapse of Flight Between SF and Paris

This time-lapse video was shot by Nate Bolt using a Canon 5D Mark II, a 16-35mm lens, a tripod, and an intervalometer on an Air France flight from San Francisco to Paris. The camera snapped a photo every 2-30 seconds throughout the 11 hour flight, roughly capturing one photo every two miles of the journey.

Michael Zhang

This Muddy Nikon D3 Shows the Benefits of Weather Sealing

Photographer JP Cariño experienced the awesomeness of pro DSLR weather sealing when doing bird photography from a floating blind:

I spent an hour at the least in the water. This "accident" happened in the first 10 minutes because of my poor floating blind design. Seeing the birds were so cooperative I decided to go on shooting. From time to time, I had to pour water from the swamp on the LCD so I could view my photos. When I surfaced, I took out the battery and started cleaning the body. I placed the camera in my dry cabinet when I got home and started it up the next day. No issues whatsoever. Works perfectly fine. All the seals worked and the compartments (cf, terminals and batt) had no dirt in it. I guess you really get what you pay for with pro camera bodies. [#]

You know you're a hardcore outdoor shooter when you're pouring swamp water onto your camera to clean it.