Apple recently filed a patent having to do with baking infrared communication capabilities into the iPhone. Although there are certainly useful applications for the technology (e.g. a museum beaming information to the phone at different exhibitions), what's troubling is that the feature may also allow the camera to be remotely disabled by those who wish to prevent photography.
Photographer Matthew Nicholson created this paper Leica M3 that's a working pinhole camera. It's loaded with 35mm film, and even the strap is realistic and made with paper!
Here's a fun bit of photo history: did you know that back in 1982, Kodak attempted to introduce a cartridge film format that resembled a floppy disk? Each rectangular cartridge contained a circular film disc with 15 exposures, and the disc was rotated 24 degrees after each exposure to line up the next frame.
29-year-old student and avid photographer Christopher Fussell was taking photographs of trains at a Baltimore station back in March when he was confronted by Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) officers. He was able to record the conversation, which shows the officers having a complete lack of understanding of laws and photographers' rights. Fussell writes, …
Husband and wife photography duo Davide Luciano and Claudia Ficca have a project called "Potholes" in which they stage unusual scenes around giant potholes found in large cities (e.g. Montreal, NYC, LA, and Toronto). The project started after they collided with one such pothole and needed a way to channel their frustration into a positive project, transforming something useless into something humorous and creative.
Here's a story that was shared over on the Photo.net forums recently: …
Now here's something we haven't seen before: Flickr user Damon Hair made this cheap DIY color checker using mat board, foam core, and paint swatches matched with pantone colors from a local paint/hardware store.
After sticking too long to film technology, it looks like Leica is finally getting the digital game figured out. Yesterday it announced a record profit of €248.9 million for the latest fiscal year, a significant increase from the €158.2 million it earned the previous year.
Etsy seller Mariko Carandang sells handmade jewelry, and one of her products is this small treasure locket that's meant to look a little like the Polaroid SX-70.
Nikon is running a new "Man of Action" commercial starring Ashton Kutcher in the US that features the same "twist" as the Olympus PEN commercial we shared in the middle of 2010. Sorry for the out-of-sync audio (let's just pretend it's dubbed).
How do camera makers describe their cameras? To answer this question, we took the press releases of some popular cameras and made word clouds with them that are based on the number of occurrences of non-common words. The above word cloud is for the Canon 5D Mark I.
The White House announced last month that it would be ending the long-running practice of reenacting Presidential speeches for photographs, but stated that they were still working out how the new system would work. Last week it reached an agreement with the White House Correspondents’ Association -- rather than reenacting photos for a larger group of photographers, a single photojournalist will be given permission to shoot future speeches as they happen: …
Twitter has just announced that they will be launching their own photo-sharing service that will let you attach photographs directly to Tweets, competing with services like TwitPic. Rather than host the images themselves using their own servers or Amazon's S3 storage, they've decided to partner with photo-sharing giant Photobucket. It'll be interesting to see whether photographers feel more comfortable sharing their images on Twitter now that the functionality will be baked into the service …
Photographer Ben Canales created this great video tutorial teaching the basics of shooting the night sky. He goes over how to shoot quick test shots to set up your composition before discussing more in-depth tips and tricks for capturing the final shot, including the "Rule of 600".
If you need a cheap way to bounce some light, don't want to spend a wad of cash on a real reflector from a camera shop, and don't want to take the time to make a cardboard and aluminum foil reflector, you can buy a cheap car sun shade (less than $10 at Walmart) as a cheap reflector. They're lightweight, foldable, and reflect light well -- just make sure the reflective surface is white or silver.
