It’s unlikely you’ll ever need to protect your digital photos from extreme elements (and if you have a 7D you know your camera will make it) but as the saying goes, it’s better to be safe than sorry — and apparently hard drives don’t get much safer than the Slilicon Power A80. In a video that’s equal parts fun and demonstration, photographer Benjamin Von Wong put the hard drive through a series of unrealistically harsh tests, making sure it still worked after each one. Read more…
The deadline to put up initial bids for Kodak’s 1,100 patent sale is Monday, and The Wall Street Journal reports that the two biggest contenders, Apple and Google, are forming “coalitions” with other companies in preparation for the all out patent brawl. The last time this happened, an Apple/Microsoft alliance ended up winning the battle against Google, that time over a patent sale by Nortel Networks. Read more…
The Guardian featured a gripping article yesterday that asked photographers to look back at some of their most powerful photos, and how they could have helped instead of standing by and taking pictures. On the one hand we’ve all felt that surge of indignation as we wonder “why didn’t they help!?” On the other, only a photographer that has been there could understand what it’s like to be under that kind of pressure: Read more…
A full month late — and right on the heels of Canon’s EOS M announcement — Samsung officially began shipping its entry-level NX1000 mirrorless camera yesterday. The camera, which was supposed to ship sometime in June, comes sporting a 20.3-megapixel APS-C sensor, 3-inch LCD, full 1080p video capability, 8fps continuous shooting, a $700 price tag, and the title of “first compact system camera (CSC) with built-in Wi-Fi” — a title it shares with its more expensive NX brethren.
You can find more details about the camera in the official press release, or get your own in black, pink or white today from B&H Photo and other online retailers. In fact, for a limited time (ending today according to B&H) the NX1000 is actually available for only $650.
Nothing like starting off the weekend with some gorgeous footage of the City of Lights. This video comes courtesy of motion time lapse and stop motion photographer Mayeul Akpovi and is an awesome example of exactly those two things. Combining three thousand night shots and day shots with different landmarks and locations and a slew of different time lapse techniques really brings out a new side of the beautiful French capital.
Here’s a quick update by Gary Fong on the wedding photographer who’s being threatened with a $300,000 lawsuit by a client who says that he didn’t like the images. The photographer’s name is Nelson Tang, and we learn that Tang has received a followup letter that appeared at first glance to be a lawsuit, but lacked a necessary court stamp at the bottom. This messy case has going viral online and has everyone shouting “extortion”.
At first, [Rafman] would spend eight to 12 hours at a time traversing the globe from his desktop. “It was destroying my body,” he says. But when the images he’d collected went viral online, he began to take submissions from other users, too. Some had collected images of prostitutes at work, others presented car accidents, even dead bodies left by the side of the road – and, presumably, ignored by Google’s drivers. Many of the images in the exhibition have now been wiped from the web: the perps lined up against a wall by the São Paolo police are gone from Google Maps. A man sitting with his legs splayed strangely around a lamppost in Toronto has been blurred into obscurity.
Rafman’s images, by contrast, are almost entirely untreated. He even leaves the Google Street View navigation tool in the top-left corner of each photograph. “The work is connected to the history of street photography,” he explains, “but also to the 20th-century ready-made movement. So leaving those artefacts in the image is extremely important. In the bottom-left corner of each picture is a link that says, ‘Report a problem’.
Swedish YouTube user AnteboyanRox received an interesting surprise after purchasing a brand new HP laptop recently. After finding the operating system already configured, he/she discovered the above video sitting inside the “My Documents” folder. Apparently an assembly line worker at a factory in China was testing the laptop’s camera and then forgot to wipe it afterward. Chinese manufacturing companies are generally quite secretive, so candid videos like this one aren’t easy to come by. Last year something similar happened to camera megastore B&H.
Are you looking for creative ways to decorate your walls and display numerous photos without making it look like your crazy great-aunt’s hallway? Now you can with this ingenious DIY project!
While I would love to take credit for this idea, it is really my wife’s brainchild. Apparently a desire to decorate the walls, the concept of saving money while using up junk in one’s basement to make the house look pretty, combined with time spent surfing the web will generate exceptionally creative ideas like this. (Yes, there are others who have done similar. However, that was only discovered after the original brainchild was birthed.) So, let’s get started, shall we? Read more…
Two weeks ago Nikon officially announced that it’s working on a new Nikkor 800mm f/5.6 VR lens. Earlier today N-Photo Magazine posted the first photo showing the lens in the real world (in a display behind bulletproof glass). The Nikon DSLR attached at the end gives you an idea of the lens’ size — it’s gigantic.
