May 2011

Michael Zhang

Giving Away Pogoplugs for Accessing Your Photos from Anywhere

Update: This giveaway is now over. The winners were randomly selected and announced below.

This week we're having a giveaway for a lesser known but pretty nifty product: the Pogoplug Video. It's a device that hooks up your external hard drives to the Internet to create a "personal cloud", allowing you to access your photographs and files from anywhere. We're giving away three (3) of them, with each one worth $199.

Michael Zhang

The Man with 1000+ Instant Cameras

Hong Kong-based camera enthusiast TM Wong has 1000+ instant cameras in his collection -- possibly the world's largest collection. That's enough cameras to use a different one each day for nearly three years!

Michael Zhang

HDR Guru Trey Ratcliff Sues Time After Spotting Photos in Video

In mid-2010, Time Magazine showed off a demonstration of a slick tablet app they were making in collaboration with The Wonderfactory. As it became widely shared across the web, HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in Customs started receiving messages from fans who spotted his work in the video demo. Problem was, he had never given the magazine or the agency permission to use his work.

Michael Zhang

Canon vs. Nikon: Comparing the Two Heavyweights Camera Makers

Dutch consumer product website Beste Product ("best product") decided to set up a royal rumble between the two heavyweights of the camera industry: Canon and Nikon. They created an infographic comparing the two companies in things such as expert and user opinions, popularity, and sales. Even if you're sick and tired of the endless comparisons and debates (as you should be), the infographic provides some interesting facts about how the two companies are doing.

Michael Zhang

How to Make Your Own Redscale Film

Redscale is a technique where film is exposed on the wrong side -- rather than having the light hit the emulsion directly, you expose the film through the non-sensitive side.

The name "redscale" comes because there is a strong color shift to red due to the red-sensitive layer of the film being exposed first, rather than last (the red layer is normally the bottom layer in C-41 (color print) film). All layers are sensitive to blue light, so normally the blue layer is on top, followed by a filter. In this technique, blue light exposes the layers containing red and green dyes, but the layer containing blue dye is left unexposed due to the filter. [#]

The two main ways for doing this are loading the film upside down (if your camera allows it), or by purchasing film that has been "converted" already. A third way is to make DIY redscale film by going into a darkroom, pulling out the film, cutting it, flipping it, taping it back together, and then winding it back into the canister. Messy, but it works!

Michael Zhang

Guy Accidentally Captures Central Park Proposal in Time-lapse Photographs

Videographer Michael Justin Porco walked around Central Park in NYC a few days ago snapping photographs, after starting to shoot photos for a time-lapse of Bethesda Fountain, it began drizzling and he only shot ten frames (one every 5 seconds using an intervalometer). When he reviewed the frames, he was amazed to discover that he had accidentally captured a sequence of photographs showing a man proposing to his girlfriend.

Michael Zhang

TwitPic Updates ToS to Reassure Users About Photo Copyright Ownership

Since launching in 2008, TwitPic has been at the center of quite a few copyright controversies and legal battles, especially when disasters strike and Twitter users are able to publish photos of things that are happening well before major news outlets. Back in early 2010 photographer Daniel Morel had an iconic photograph taken during the Haiti earthquake widely republished in newspapers across the world without his permission after he uploaded the photos to TwitPic, then later that year Twitter's decision to display TwitPic photos directly on their website caused a brouhaha. TwitPic has finally decided to update their Terms of Service to make it clear that users of the service retain the copyright of everything they upload.

Michael Zhang

Why Using Groupon May be a Stupid Idea for Photographers

Deal of the day website Groupon is the fastest growing companies in web history and a popular way for local businesses to generate some buzz in their areas, but some independent photographers are finding out the hard way that offering special deals through Groupon might be the worst marketing decision they ever made.

Michael Zhang

Nikon D7000 with Custom Paint Jobs

Cars can have pretty creative paint jobs, but it seems like the best anyone can do with a DSLR is do a messy DIY repainting or buy a Pentax with ridiculous or nasty-looking designs. Sherwin Sibala came up with these unique design concepts showing what a DSLR (specifically a Nikon D7000) might look like if people chose to personalize the body.

Michael Zhang

Hillary Clinton Gets ‘Shopped Out of Iconic War Room Photo by Newspaper

Pete Souza's iconic photo of Obama and his national security team in the Situation Room has become extremely well known in the span of a week, so it's unlikely that any reputable media outlet would dare alter the photo in any way -- but that's exactly what one newspaper did. Orthodox Hasidic newspaper Der Tzitung has a policy of never publishing photographs of women, and decided to publish Obama's situation room photograph with Hillary Clinton and counterterrorism director Audrey Tomason Photoshopped out of the frame.

Michael Zhang

AP Takes Legal Action for the Release of bin Laden Death Photos

President Obama announced last week that photographs of Osama bin Laden's body would not be released to the public due to concerns that it would incite violence and hatred, but a number of news agencies and advocacy groups are attempting to have them released using a Freedom of Information Act request. The Associated Press is one of the agencies that filed a FOIA request (they're also requesting that video of the raid be released), and the US government has 20 days to respond.

Michael Zhang

Noktor and Its Hyperprime f/0.95 Lens Are No More

A little over a year ago, US-based startup company Noktor announced a manual focus HyperPrime 50mm f/0.95 lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras that generated some buzz, and there was even murmurings of the lens being released for Canon and Nikon DSLRs. The company never really took advantage of the excitement they caused and not much was heard about the project since then. At the end of last week, the company took down the Noktor website and announced that the effort had come to an end.

Michael Zhang

Chromogenic Prints Modified with Bleach

These bizarre looking images are what you get when you "modify" chromogenic prints with chlorine bleach. Flickr user Sarah Palmer has done a number of experiments with these technique, and the results are pretty abstract.

Michael Zhang

Shooting Kids without Parental Consent May Become 3rd Degree Crime in NJ

New Jersey is considering a new law that would make it a third-degree crime to photograph children without parental consent. More specifically, bill A3297 would prevent people from shooting photos or videos of children when "a reasonable parent or guardian would not expect his child to be the subject of such reproduction".

Michael Zhang

Google to Send Hordes of Photographers into Businesses for Street View Photos

Google Street View photos won't be limited to the exterior of buildings for much longer -- the company has just announced Google Business Photos, a service that will allow Google websites to show the interiors of local businesses. If you thought having vehicles equipped with Street View cameras driven up and down every street in every city was a tedious project, for Business Photos Google is planning to have photographers sent to businesses that apply for the service. Crowd-sourcing the imagery would definitely be less labor intensive, but shooting inside private property requires permission.

Michael Zhang

Obama Reenactment of bin Laden Speech for Press Photos Stirs Controversy

You might not know this, but virtually all of the still photographs you've seen in the press showing President Obama announcing the death of Osama bin Laden are staged photographs. Reuters photographer Jason Reed wrote an interesting behind-the-scenes blog post on Monday, explaining:

As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room by staff and asked to remain completely silent. Once Obama was off the air, we were escorted in front of that teleprompter and the President then re-enacted the walk-out and first 30 seconds of the statement for us.

Apparently this has been standard practice during Presidential speeches at the White House for quite some time, and is meant to prevent the noise of camera shutters from interrupting the televised address. Despite the fact that news organizations try to disclose the nature of the photos in the captions, the fact that these photos are staged doesn't sit well with some folks.

Michael Zhang

Exploding Christmas Ornaments Filled with Various Things

Photographer Alan Sailer works out of his garage shooting things with a high-speed pellet rifle and photographing the results using a homemade flash unit. An interesting series of photographs he has, titled "The War Against Christmas", involves filling Christmas tree ornaments with various things and shooting them for unique explosions of texture and color. The photograph above shows an exploding ornament that was filled with washable kids tempera paint.

Preston Scott

Biology for Photographers: Why is the Aperture Scale Logarithmic?

One of the main stumbling points for new photographers is the seemingly random series of numbers that we have come to know as the f-stop scale or aperture scale. Things start out innocently enough f/1, f/1.4 (just add 0.4 every time, right?), but things get ugly quickly -- f/2, f/2.8, f/4. Why would anyone invent such an arbitrary scale?

Michael Zhang

Behind the Scenes with Samsung NX Lens Engineers

Here's a neat behind-the-scenes video by Samsung featuring short interviews with the developers and engineers behind its NX lenses. One of the things I found interesting was how the engineers are constantly working to overcome the prejudice that Korean-made lenses are inferior to those crafted in Japan or Germany. The video also briefly shows a Samsung 300mm f2.8 XF ED lens -- a lens that doesn't officially exist.

Michael Zhang

Nikon D5R Concept Camera Features Rotating Sensor and Viewfinder

Illinois industrial design student Ned Mulka created this Nikon D5R concept camera for his senior thesis design project. While the design itself may be pretty iffy for a camera, the main idea behind it is pretty interesting -- instead of having to rotate the camera itself for portrait orientation photos, why not only rotate the sensor, mirror, and viewfinder? An even crazier design would involve only rotating the sensor, allowing the camera to shoot any orientation without having to change how you hold the camera -- though this would probably be an engineering nightmare for the camera makers.

Michael Zhang

Capture Camera Clip Attaches DSLRs to Belts, Backpacks, Bikes, and Cars

Engineer Peter Dering wanted a better solution for carrying his DSLR around so, after tinkering around with ideas and prototypes for a couple years, he quit his job and designed the Capture Camera Clip System, a small device that lets you securely attach your DSLR to belts and backpack straps. There's also plans for an attachment that will allow you to attach cameras to the frame of your bike or the roof of your car. The camera attachment uses the standard tripod mount, and the base piece has a quick release system that provides easy access whenever the camera is needed. It'll cost around $70 when it begins shipping in July, but you can support the project and pre-order a unit for $50 through its Kickstarter campaign.