August 2012

Ever since NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars and started beaming back photographs earlier this week, people have been wondering, "why are the photos so bad?" The criticism seems merited: consumers these days are snapping great high-res photographs using phones that cost just hundreds of dollars, yet NASA can't choose a camera with more than 2-megapixels of resolution for their $2.5 billion mission?

In an interview with dpreview, project manager Mike Ravine of Malin Space Science Systems -- the company that provided three of the rover's main cameras -- explains that there were a couple main reasons behind the "lame" cameras: data transfer and fixed specifications.

A couple months ago we shared an app called Foap, which allows people who take pictures with their phone to put the images up for sale for $10 a pop. If Foap is the bane of microstock photographers, then Scoopshot is the bane of photojournalists.

It's an app that helps phone photographers easily sell their images to news organizations. After all, when a local story happens, it's often random passersby that are on the scene first with phones out and camera apps loaded.

Ever wonder what it's like to be the world's fastest man winning a gold medal at the Olympics? Usain Bolt wants you to know.

After sprinting to victory in the 200m race today, Bolt proceeded to run over to the photographers' pit, commandeer a Nikon DSLR from one of the photographers, and snap super wide angle views of what he was experiencing. The photographer, Jimmy Wixtröm of Aftonbladet (Scandinavia's largest paper), left the event with memories of a lifetime and a memory card containing epic images that are the envy of many a sports photographer.

A few days ago we shared the story of a memory card that stayed alive after three years at the bottom of a muddy creek. What's important to note is that the card had the luxury of being protected by the Canon XT it was inside -- a camera that was utterly destroyed during those three years.

What if memory cards could be as durable as the weatherproof cameras that are becoming popular amongst compact camera users? That's what Panasonic is trying to do with its new line of sturdy SD cards.

What happens if you take photos of synchronized swimming shot at the Olympics and flip them upside-down? Ethereal beauty, that's what.

The Huffington Post did this experiment yesterday using photographs shot by Getty and AFP photographers. The results are magical.

In Russian art museums, older ladies are hired as guards for the pieces in the collections. Photographer Andy Freeberg noticed that these women were a constant part of the visitors' viewing experience, silently hovering near the artworks as they're being enjoyed. Finding these women "as intriguing to observe as the pieces they watch over", he decided to photograph them alongside the works they're tasked with guarding. The project is titled "Guardians of Russian Art Museums".

It looks like the digital camera industry is moving quickly towards building mobile operating systems into its products.

Yesterday we reported that a soon-to-arrive Nikon camera will be powered by Android, and today rumors have emerged that Sony will be offering something similar in its NEX line of mirrorless cameras.

If you've been shying away from posting your photographs to Facebook because you don't want them stolen, security software company McAfee has come up with a solution for you. It's a new tool called McAfee Social Protection, and helps you protect your photos using invite lists, blurring, and lock-down.

One of the common reasons given for being wary of photographers is that terrorists commonly use cameras as part of their information gathering tactics prior to devastating attacks.

The disconcerting video above is a terrorist prevention video that was funded by the Department of Homeland security and uploaded to Houston's city website back in January 2011. Starting at 1:42, it attempts to convince people that photographers may be potential terrorists, and that the police should be called if one appears to "hang around for no apparent reason."

Remember the days when portable electronic devices were mostly all powered by AA and AAA batteries? Consumers had to regularly purchase new batteries to keep their gadgets juiced -- a big sink for your hard earned money. When rechargeable batteries started becoming ubiquitous, they were touted as a feature for saving both time and money. All you had to do was plug your camera into the wall (or your battery into a charger) and a few hours later you were recharged.

Now things are moving back in the other direction. It's more difficult to find a quality AA-powered camera on the market, and it can be difficult for travelers to find a suitable power outlet while overseas. That's why Nikon's new CoolPix L610, freshly announced today, boasts about the fact that it supports AA batteries.

Using a novel technique he developed himself, artist Christian Faur turns photographs into giant prints created by using crayons as pixels. When exhibited, the size and three-dimensional nature of the work make for an interesting viewing experience for visitors. The space appears to be full of photographs, but the images turn into abstract and colorful sculptures as the visitor gets closer. Each piece is composed of hundreds of crayons of different colors.

Well, that was fast. Just a couple days after photos of the duo leaked onto the web, the Nikon 1 J2 mirrorless camera and Nikkor 11-27.5mm lens are now official.

Want to see what you would look like as an outlaw from the 1800s? With Mugshot Yourself, you can!

It's a simple web app that takes your portrait and combines it with the face of an actual New York City criminal from 1864. You can provide a photo using your webcam, by uploading one, or by selecting a Facebook profile picture.

Usman Rashid of Irvine, California was photographing during a trip to Florida last year when started looking for a way to view his DSLR's photos in real-time using his iPad. What he found was that existing solutions on the market were either too pricey or a pain in the butt.

Like any good entrepreneur, he set out to create a product that would meet his need. The result is a product called the CameraMator.

Would you shoot a wedding professionally with your iPhone and Hipstamatic? If you want to stay in business, probably not. But what if you were asked to do so, and paid for your work?

If you live near West Hartford, Connecticut, this might be an actual gig you can do. There's a couple there looking for one or two Hipstamatic photographers to document their wedding in mid-September (don't worry, they also have a primary non-iPhone photographer).

For people looking to protect their belongings from theft in public places, there are bag alarms out there that can alert them (and everyone around them) if someone tries to pick up their stuff. DIY hacker Kip Kedersha (kipkay on YouTube) recently came up with a clever way to make one of these alarms for just $2.

There are new rumblings in the rumor mill about a 35mm f/1.4 refresh from Canon. For years now photographers have been wondering when the lens -- popular among photojournalists and street photographers -- might see an update. According to Canon Rumors, the time is "sooner rather than later".

Photographer Hannah Stonehouse Hudson of Stonehouse Photography made a splash on the Internet this past week after sharing a heartwarming dog photograph through Facebook.

The photograph shows Wisconsin resident John Unger in a tender moment with his dog Schoep in Lake Superior.

Gigapixel images are usually used to capture tiny details in expansive scenes, but scientists in the Netherlands recently created one that shows microscopic details in a tiny subject. Using a technique called virtual nanoscopy (a new relative of microscopy?), the researchers created a massive 281-gigapixel image of a 1.5-millimeter-long zebrafish embryo.

How do you feel about Android OS? How about Android OS in your camera? If you're a Nikon compact camera user, that might soon be possible. Nikon is reportedly planning to announce its first Android-based point-and-shoot in the very near future.

Ready for another giveaway? This week we're giving away an awesome Creative Effects System Kit by Lensbaby. The kit for Canon and Nikon DSLRs includes the popular Composer Pro lens, a bag, interchangeable optics for different effects, and tons of accessories (including a kit for creative bokeh shapes!). The package is worth $540.

While visiting beautiful New York City earlier this year, an Australian photographer named Kiernan traveled to the top of the Empire State Building and snapped a photograph of the cityscape. After returning home, he decided to do a reverse image search on Google just to see what he might find. He was surprised to discover that the top result was a nearly identical photograph that was captured 36 years ago.

When you think about photographs from the early 1900s, you probably think about boring monochrome photos of locations or portraits of people with humorless expressions and rigid poses. Photographs costed more in terms of time, effort, and money back then, so photographers didn't waste them on silly photos, right? Wrong.

This series of photographs was created around 1905 by an unknown artist. Titled Bulldogs in Fancy Dress, it's being preserved for eternal chuckles in the Library of Congress' photo archives.

Reuters photographer Luke MacGregor doesn't know much about astronomy, but he had the idea recently of photographing the full moon rising up into the Olympic Rings found on London's Tower Bridge. Armed with a phone app that informed him of moonrise times, he spent two evenings trying and failing to create the photo. Finally, on the third evening, he succeeded:

I readied myself at the predicted angle to the rings. The moon would be rising at 8:50pm and would hit the rings by about 9pm. As the moon had been rising later each evening it had become darker than the previous evenings. I wished I had my tripod. Nonetheless, using the Canon 5D MkIII meant I could push the ISO a little further than I would normally have chosen for a late evening shot. Exactly on time the moon began to show itself over the horizon, a lovely peachy color. I had to keep an eye on a changing exposure, balancing the brightness of the moon with a rapidly darkening sky. As it rose I had to keep moving along, mercilessly pushing tourists out of the way who had stopped to look, in order to keep the moon in line with the rings. Finally, after three days, I had the picture I had been trying to achieve.

A couple years ago we reported on the amazing fact that chickens have image stabilized heads, and shared some interesting "research" into using chickens as camera stabilizers. It turns out birds aren't the only creatures with IS systems built into their hardware: cats have it too!

Photographer Patrick Lu always carries around his Olympus OM-D EM-5 camera around. "Every day. Everywhere," he says. That came in handy last week, when Lu and a friend were at the capital in Austin, Texas. His eagle-eyed friend somehow noticed that a man nearby was about to propose, and Lu was able to snap some stealthy photos of the event, including the beautifully framed one above.

Cameras these days are smart enough to recognize the faces found inside photographs and label them with names. What if the same kind of recognition could be done for the locations of photographs? What if, instead of using satellite geodata, the camera could simply recognize where it is by the contents of the photographs?

That's what research being done at Carnegie Mellon University and INRIA/Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris may one day lead to. A group of researchers have created a computer program that can identify the distinctive architectural elements of major cities by processing street-level photos.

Leather goods maker Hayden-Harnett has a new product geared towards fashionable photographers: the Bespoke Scarf. Using a friendly web-based interface, fashion-aware photogs can upload their favorite images to have them transformed into a silk scarf.

This image of a Canon 135mm f/1.8L IS lens was posted to Chinese forum Xitek. Most people seem to agree that it's a Photoshop job, since the details on the rim of the lens don't follow the curve of the lens very well. The question is therefore whether the image is some kind of early-stage mockup of a real lens, or simply a big fat hoax.

360 Panorama has come a long way since we first shared it two years ago, going from an unpolished app with some highly negative reviews to one of the most popular camera appears boasting thousands of reviews and a 4.5 star rating.

It has come so far that this week Apple selected it as the iTunes Free App of the Week.

After shooting black-and-white landscape photos for a day, everyone's favorite Martian robot photographer is now dabbling in color photography. NASA's Curiosity rover beamed back its first color photo today, showing the rim of its new crater home.

Nikon might be releasing an entirely new camera to upgrade its Nikon 1 lineup in small ways, but Canon is going a different route with its 7D DSLR. The company has rolled out a major firmware upgrade that makes major improvements to the features of existing cameras.

Remember that "klepto" tiger shark that was filmed swimming away with an underwater photographer's DSLR? Turns out it has a name: Emma.

CNN picked up on the story and did a little digging, resulting in the short report seen above.

Instagram is a photo sharing service based around instant photo sharing and viewing, so why not take advantage of its real-time nature for gauging the "pulse" of a city?

This is Now is an awesome new website that shows you a live view of the world through the eyes of Instagram users.

It's not every day that a camera company goes public, but that's what GoPro is reportedly trying to do.

Reuters, which broke the story, reports that the company is planning to raise $300 million to $500 million in an initial public offering sometime in 2013.

What did famous movie characters look like when they were kids? That's the question answered by a series of cute advertisements by Brazilian ad agency Globalcomm.

Promoting a brand new movie theater that opened up in the shopping mall Praia de Belas, the photographs show youthful versions of characters such as Jack Sparrow and Forrest Gump.

Scott Schuman, or The Sartorialist, made it big in the blogging, photography, and fashion worlds by having his fashion street photography blog become an Internet sensation. If you think he's unique in his subject matter, however, boy are you mistaken: he's simply one of the most famous.

New York Magazine created this fascinating look at how the world of street fashion photography is now teeming with photographers.

If you were given the task of shooting gymnastics at the Olympics, what camera would you use? The Canon EOS-1D X for its 14fps capabilities?

At least one Olympic sports photographer chose something much slower, much larger, and much older.

Hey Android users: if you're looking for an easy way to make your photographs "pop", check out Perfectly Clear. Previously available only for desktop machines and iOS, Athentech Imaging has now released the Android version of the popular auto image correction app.

It's like "déjà vu all over again": New York Times freelance photographer Robert Stolarik was arrested this past Saturday while on assignment in the Bronx. As he was taking photographs of a developing street fight, Stolarik was confronted by officers, ordered to stop, and then allegedly assaulted.