March 2012

Michael Zhang

Trigger Happy Turns Your Smartphone Into a Fancy Camera Remote

Trigger Happy is a new product that lets you use your iOS or Android smartphone as a fancy camera remote. It consists of an app and a one-meter-long cable that goes from your phone's audio jack to your camera. Besides acting as a simple remote shutter release for shake-free shots, the app offers bulb functionality for timing long exposures, an intervalometer for timelapse photography, HDR mode, and bramping. They're also working on lightning detection, audio waveform detection, face detection, and accelerometer-based triggering.

Michael Zhang

Photographer Steps On and Kills German Celebrity Earless Bunny

Photographers are supposed to document news rather than make it, but a clumsy German photographer had the ill fortune of doing the latter in the most horrible way this past Wednesday. The photographer was shooting at a media event at the Limbach-Oderfrohna zoo in Eastern Germany when he stepped backward and onto a three-week-old earless bunny named Til, instantly killing the little guy.

Michael Zhang

First Full Photos of the Samsung NX20

Dutch website Focus Media has published several photographs of the upcoming Samsung NX20 mirrorless camera, along with a list of specs. The camera will be slightly larger than the NX11 (there a thicker grip), and will offer a 20.3MP sensor, built in Wi-Fi for uploading images to the web, 8fps continuous shooting, ISO 100-12800, i-Function 2.0, built-in flash, an electronic viewfinder, 1080p HD video recording (with a separate button), and a 3-inch tilting screen on the back.camera/#ixzz1pJPIu4K9

Michael Zhang

Photographs Captured Over Years with an Open Camera Shutter

German photographer Michael Wesely has spent decades working on techniques for extremely long camera exposures -- usually between two to three years. In the mid-1990s, he began using the technique to document urban development over time, capturing years of building projects in single frames. In 1997, he focused his cameras on the rebuilding of Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, and in 2001 he began photographing the Museum of Modern Art's ambitious renovation project. He uses filters and extremely small apertures to reduce the amount of light striking the film, creating unique images that capture both space and time.

Michael Zhang

Protobooth: A Photobooth That Shoots 3D Animated GIFs

Protobooth is a creative photobooth by design firm Digital Kitchen that captures 3D photos rather than static images. Comprising 3 Canon 5D Mark II DSLRs, 4 Macbook Pros, and some fancy software mojo, the Protobooth simultaneously captures three photos at the push of a button, saves them to a networked hard drive, stitches them using Automator, applies a Photoshop filter action to the image, and then saves it as a GIF.

Michael Zhang

Distress Your Film by Putting It Through a Dishwasher Cycle

There's a subgroup of film photographers who are dedicated to coming up with inventive new ways to distress film in order to achieve unexpected -- and occasionally beautiful -- results. Last year we shared that soaking film in rubbing alcohol does strange things to your images. Here's another crazy idea: put a roll of film through the dishwasher. Photographer Tom Welland did just that and ended up with some vintage-looking photos.

Michael Zhang

Speeding Up Climate Change Through Time-Lapse Photography

The Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) is a multi-year project by National Geographic photographer James Balog that aims to make show climate change in action through time-lapse imagery of glaciers. Balog has 27 Nikon D200 DSLRs pointed at 18 glaciers around the world snapping 8,000 photographs each year while powered by solar panels. His custom-designed rigs -- created through months of trial and error -- also include heavy duty tripods, waterproof cases, and wind-proof anchors. He has also created a documentary film about his project titled Chasing Ice.

Michael Zhang

Albert Kahn’s Documentation of Humanity Through Early Color Photography

Albert Kahn was a wealthy French banker who launched a project in the early 1909 that aimed to create a photographic record of the world. The first commercially successful color photography process, Autochrome Lumière, had just arrived two years earlier, and Kahn decided to use the medium to both document human life and to promote peace. He sent out an army of photographers to 50 different countries, amassing 72,000 photos and 100 hours (183,000 meters) of film that became one of the most important collections of images in human history.

Michael Zhang

Shoot, Share, and Explore Satellite Photos of Earth with Stratocam

If you've always wanted to be an astronaut photographer shooting images of Earth from a window of the International Space Station, Stratocam is an app for you. Created by Paul Rademacher, it allows you to snap your own photographs inside Google Maps' satellite view of our planet. You can also view and rate other people's photos, and browse the highest rated images from around the world.

Michael Zhang

William Eggleston Digital Pigment Prints Fetch $5.9 Million at Auction

36 of American photographer William Eggleston's digital pigment prints were auctioned off at Christie's on Monday, fetching a whopping $5.9 million -- far more than the $2.7M they were expected to sell for. Eggleston is credited with helping making color photography a legitimate artistic medium for galleries, which had previously favored B&W prints. A print of Eggleston's "Memphis (Tricycle)" (shown above) was the top seller after being snatched up for $578,500.

Michael Zhang

Portraits of Little Girls and Boys with Their Pink and Blue Things

The Pink & Blue Project by South Korean photographer JeongMee Yoon started seven years ago after she photographed a portrait of her 5-year-old daughter sitting next to her beloved pink possessions. She then began creating portraits of other girls who loved pink things, and then other boys who loved blue.

Michael Zhang

Digital Bolex D16: Raw 2K Video for the Price of a DSLR

In the old days, affordable consumer cinema cameras used the same film as high-end ones, allowing everyday folk to capture high-quality videos. All that changed when digital video rolled around. However, there's a new camera in development called the Digital Bolex that aims to bring us back to that:

The Digital Bolex is a “digital cinema camera” or a camera that shoots RAW images (sometimes known as Digital Negatives) instead of compressed video. Unlike the digital cinema cameras used on big budget films, the Bolex is designed with consumers as well as pros in mind, and will be inexpensive, compact, and easy for anyone to use, just like the film cameras many of us remember using as kids.

The camera captures 2K RAW video using a 16MM equivalent sensor. It records in DNG, TIFF, or JPEG sequences and has XLR inputs for audio.

Ian Curcio

The Photographer’s Pen Pal Promo Piece

One of the most important things I’ve learned during my ongoing adventure as a small-town, self-employed photographer is that nothing is more important than the relationships I’m building. So when I decided sometime last year that I was going to do a 2012 promo I wanted to create something that looked elegant, something that the recipients could be a part of and most importantly, something that could start building long-lasting relationships.

Michael Zhang

Sony Unveils the A57 SLT: Improved Shooting Speed and Autofocus

Sony has announced the Alpha A57 pellicle mirror camera, the successor to its A55 released a year and a half ago. While the sensor resolution is still 16-megapixels -- no megapixel war here -- the new camera has an increased ISO limit of 16,000 (up from 12,800), a faster continuous shooting rate of 12fps (up from 10), and an improved 15-point AF system with enhanced object-tracking and snappy AF during HD video recording. It can also capture full HD video at 60p, 60i, and 24p. It'll be priced at $700 for the body only (or $800 with a 18-55mm kit lens) when it hits store shelves next month.

Michael Zhang

DIY Gyroscopic Camera Stabilizer Made On the Cheap

Physics guru David Prutchi recently came across a line of professional grade gyroscopic camera stabilizers by Kenyon Laboratories. They cost thousands of dollars each, but Prutchi noticed that the designs hadn't changed much since they were first patented in the 1950s. He then set out to create his own DIY version using low-cost gyroscopes from Gyroscope.com. His finished device (shown above) actually helps stabilize his DSLR when shooting video or when photographing with non-image-stabilized lenses.