April 2011

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.

Michael Zhang

Ghosts Captured Using Light Painting

These ghostly figures you see in these photographs weren't Photoshopped in, but are purely done through light painting. If you remember the creative 3D light painting technique using an iPad that we shared a while back, Croix Gagnon and Frank Schott took it a step further and put a slightly morbid twist on it. For their project "12:31", they "painted" using a laptop and an animation showing cross-sections of a human body!

Michael Zhang

A Tour of Ansel Adams’ Darkroom

Here's a rare behind-the-scenes look into Ansel Adams' home in Carmel, California and the custom built darkroom in which most of Adams' famous prints were created. It's pretty amazing how much editing Adams' did in transforming the plain negatives into the beautiful works of art hanging on walls around the world.

Michael Zhang

Simple Guide for Getting Started in Digital Photography

Reddit user geft created a useful primer to get newbies started in digital photography. It's a single image measuring 1045x5480 pixels that covers sensors, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and camera controls. This would be a great thing to print out, laminate, and give as a gift to someone who's looking to learn.

Michael Zhang

Nikon D5100 Officially Announced, Offers Night Vision and Special Effects

Nikon officially announced their new D5100 DSLR today, replacing the D5000 in the entry-level category. The 16.2 megapixel camera with a 1.5x crop factor has a 3-inch swiveling LCD screen, 4fps continuous shooting, an ISO range from 100 to 6400 (which you can boost to 25600), 1080p video recording at 30fps, and built in sensor cleaning.

Michael Zhang

iPhone 5 Rumored to Pack an 8MP Sensor Made by Sony

If you think the 5-megapixel sensor found on the iPhone 4 is good, wait till you see the camera found on the next iPhone -- it's reportedly going to be a 8-megapixel sensor made by Sony. The Street wrote back in 2010 that the next version of the iPhone to arrive in 2011 would pack an 8-megapixel Sony sensor rather than the 5-megapixel OmniVision one found in the current phone, and Sony's CEO Howard Stringer seems to have confirmed that today in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Michael Zhang

Post-Processing a Band Photograph

Some friends of mine asked me to shoot a quick band photograph of them recently without any preparation or planning. Luckily, the location was pretty nice (we were at a hostel) and the weather was a bit cloudy so there wasn't harsh sunlight.

Michael Zhang

Take Fun Portraits of Your Cat Using a Flatbed Scanner

Did you know that flatbed scanners make fun portrait cameras as well? Just place your cat on the glass, do a quick scan, and you'll have a strange looking portrait shot from below! Apparently this is pretty popular among cat lovers -- a Flickr search for "cat scanner" returns thousands of results! This gives "cat scan" a whole new meaning!

Michael Zhang

Giant Spheres Created with Light Painting

Photographer Denis Smith creates photos giant balls of light without any digital trickery, relying instead on light-painting. His technique is to spin a light around while slowly turning his body, creating spheres of light when seen in a long exposure photo.