Have a bunch of film canisters lying around and not sure what to do with them? You could use them to geekify your Christmas lights by punching a hole in the caps and sticking the lights in.
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CNN made this creative video highlighting the fact that there’s still a remnant vibrant community of film shooters in New York City. It’s seen from the perspective of someone typing in “analog photography” into a futuristic Qwiki-esque search engine.
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You’ve probably photographed your own reflection in sunglasses before, but have you ever captured a reflection of yourself shooting the photograph in the same shot? Reddit user Jon Little shot this trippy Inception-esque photo at the Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago.

(via Reddit via Neatorama)

Image credit: Photograph by Jon Little and used with permission

A neat way to reuse film canisters is to poke holes in the lids and turn them into salt shakers, but some people argue that this may expose you to the harmful chemicals that leak out of film and into the plastic of the canister. It’s actually a question that Kodak has received a lot over the years, and they say it shouldn’t be a problem as long as you wash it out first:

To protect the film from contamination, Kodak quality standards require that the insides of the containers must be exceptionally clean. No “toxic” materials leach out or offgas from the containers themselves.

[...] Newspaper and magazine articles have mentioned “toxic residues” in the containers which might come from the film. There are none. The chemicals in a roll of film are embedded in the gelatin emulsion layers (about as thick as a human hair) and do not rub off the plastic film base.

[...] In summary: There are no “toxic residues” in Kodak film containers [...] if a customer chooses to use a Kodak film container for other than film storage, the container first should be thoroughly washed with soap and water.

They also state that if you (or your pet) accidentally eat some film itself, the main concern would be the film cutting your innards rather than chemical poisoning.

35mm Film Containers [Kodak]

Photographer Mike Rosinski created this amazing image showing light trails from both fireflies and stars by stacking over 370 photos shot over 2 hours from his backyard in Hartland, Michigan. He used a Canon T1i and 15-85mm lens at 15mm with 20 second exposures. The stacking was done with StarStaX, a free program geared towards star trail photography. You can find more about Mike Rosinski’s work (prints, licensing fees, etc) by contacting him here.

(via APOD)

Image credit: Photograph by Mike Rosinski and used with permission

Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and announced below.

It’s been way too long since we’ve done a giveaway — three months, in fact — so today we have an awesome one: one lucky (and randomly selected) reader will receive a large 30×40-inch SmugMug MetalPrint of their favorite photo worth $301.50 and a year of SmugMug Pro worth $150 — a combined value of $451.5. This giveaway is open to international readers as well, and it’ll be shipped right to your door for free.

To enter this giveaway, all you need to do is:

Tell us the best photo advice you’ve ever received

There are two ways to enter, and doing both methods will give you 2 entries in the contest, and thus double the chance the win!

1. Leave your response as a comment on this PetaPixel.com post
2. Tweet your response, and include the following link to this post anywhere in the tweet: http://j.mp/ppsgmg

   As long as the link appears in the tweet, you’ll be automatically entered in the contest.

This contest will end Friday, August 26th, 2011. We’ll randomly pick a winner using random.org and update this post. Good luck!

Update: This giveaway is now over. We received 444 comment entries and 253 Tweet entries for 697 entries overall. The randomly selected winner is…

#538: Claudia Cooper (@claud26point2)

I learned this advice – BSE (background, separation, edges) in a photography workshop [#]

Congratulations! Please email editor@petapixel.com to claim your prize (we’re contacting you as well).

Thanks to everyone who entered! Please stay tuned for more awesome giveaways!

A big thanks to SmugMug for providing the prizes for this giveaway!

Here’s a creative self-portrait by Dutch photographer Joeri Bosma. It’s neat how the waterline on his shirt makes him look like he’s transparent.

(via Colossal)

Image credit: Photograph by Joeri Bosma and used with permission

Rather than being built from scratch with new designs, new camera lenses are designed by taking existing lens designs that work well and then improving on them. As a result, virtually every lens design can be traced back to one of six basic lens designs developed in the early 1900s (shown above). Roger Cicala of LensRentals writes,

Those original lenses in their pure form each had strengths and weaknesses. Modern lenses derived from them have ‘inherited’ those same underlying tendencies. Many of the complex technologies used in a modern lens are put there to correct the underlying problems of the original design.

Head on over to his post to learn about lenses derived from the first three of these designs.

Lens Genealogy Part 1 [Lens Rentals]

Dimitri Medvedev, the president of Russia, is a big photography enthusiast and a fan of Leica cameras, though from the video above — in which Medvedev uses a $20,000+ Leica S2 medium format DSLR — it seems someone needs to give him a few pointers on holding and using the camera.

Earlier this year we shared a video in which Medvedev talks in-depth about his involvement in photography. You can find some of Medvedev’s work here.

(via Foto Actualidad)

The record for world’s largest camera is currently held by an aircraft hangar camera, but back in 1900, a photographer by the name of George R. Lawrence built the massive camera seen above. He was commissioned by the Chicago & Alton Railway to shoot the world’s largest photo of one of its trains — a photo measuring 8 feet by 4.5 feet. The camera weighed 900 pounds, required 15 men to move and operate, and cost a whopping $5,000 — enough money back then to buy a large house.

The Mammoth Camera of George R. Lawrence [Simon Baker]