We received a tip in our inbox earlier today for a 29-megapixel digital camera that uses Canon EF mount lenses. While those aren't exactly attention-grabbing specs, the type of camera is quite different: it's a security camera. Canadian surveillance company Avigilon has a line of JPEG2000 HD Pro security cameras. These cameras come in 8MP, 11MP, 16MP, and 29MP models, and use Canon EF mount SLR lenses.
Apple's iPhone and iOS get a lot of media attention, but Google's Android OS is the world's most popular smartphone operating system by a long shot. Given this fact, it makes sense to at least target both markets if you're releasing something that's intended to be widely used. Triggertrap understands this, and today released the Android version of its mobile camera triggering app.
The app is designed to be used with the company's Mobile Dongle, which has also been refreshed. In fact, the new Android app requires the new Dongle, while iPhone users can use either version.
Check out this beastly camera used by Signal Corps during the Cold War. It featured a 100-inch infrared lens that was capable of seeing through over twenty miles of hazy air -- perfect for capturing reconnaissance photographs of enemy strongholds. The camera was so massive that it required two people to operate: one to frame the shot, and one to snap the photo.
100-inches is 2540mm and the camera appears to use 4x5 large format film, so the equivalent 35mm focal length of this cannon-like lens is roughly 760mm.
Hawaii-based photographer Christy Lee Rogers specializes in creating dreamlike photos of people underwater. Her project Reckless Unbound shows people swirling around one another while wearing colorful outfits. The photos are reminiscent of the paintings of old Baroque masters, who would often paint people floating around in heavenly realms.
Earlier this month, Noah Kalina released an updated version of his everyday self-portrait time-lapse video, showing how …
You might want to think twice the next time you snap a photo containing Canadian currency: the Royal Canadian Mint says that it holds copyright over those images.
It recently informed Nova Scotia folk musician Dave Gunning that he would need to pay licensing fees for the artwork used in his upcoming album No More Pennies. Set to be released on September 18th, the album art features three photographs that contain Canadian pennies (depicted as a sun, as train wheels, and on a table), designed to pay tribute the fact that the pennies were discontinued this year.
Cell phones have already gone the way of the touchscreen, so why not light meters? Perhaps they will, starting today. Sekonic has just announced a two new light meters that are the world's first to offer a touchscreen interface. The L-478D and L-478DR both feature a 2.7-inch LCD touchscreen through which settings are changed by tapping or sliding your finger.
When the web first emerged, web design knowledge was a scarce commodity, and developers were able to charge ridiculous amounts of money to create simple websites. Now that everyone and their mother knows how to do simple HTML, you'll need to learn a lot more and offer something unique to stand a chance in the freelance market.
The exact same thing is happening in the photography industry. As the cost of shooting, printing, and distributing photos goes down, simply knowing how to take "good pictures" is no longer enough.
We first covered Stipple last year, when it was a B2B service that was attempting to turn microstock on its head by offering image licenses in exchange for in-image ads. Since then, the company has relaunched as a platform geared towards ordinary folk. In addition to being able to make money from your photos, Stipple now adds a useful layer on top of the images, allowing you to share, caption, and track your photos in ways that aren't possible with static image files.
Back in March, we wrote about photographer Bob Carey's Tutu Project, which consists of self-portraits Carey created while wearing only a pink tutu. The project started out as a fun image made for a non-profit ballet organization, but soon transformed into something much more after Carey's wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. The folks over at PocketWizard recently interviewed Carey, creating the touching short film above that offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the project came about (warning: you might want to have some Kleenex nearby).
Canon's rumored entry-level full-frame DSLR, the 6D, is becoming more and more real. Digicam-info published a bunch of leaked specs and a couple of photos today. If the information is accurate, then Canon will soon have a DSLR that matches up well against Nikon's new D600 in both price and specs.
The camera will reportedly feature a 20.2 megapixel CMOS sensor, the DIGIC5+ image processing engine, an ISO range of 100-25600 (expandable to 50-102400), a small body (the size of an APS-C sensor camera), a magnesium alloy built (some parts, at least), built-in Wi-Fi (wow), built-in GPS, 11 autofocus points, 4.5fps continuous shooting, a shutter rated for 100,000 actuations, 1/180 second sync, shutter speed that ranges from 30s to 1/4000s, weatherproofing, a 3-inch LCD screen, and 1080p HD video recording.
California-based designer Joy Kelley of How Joyful upgraded her camera recently and needed …
Daré alla Lucé is a project by photographer Amy Friend that features old photos that resemble constellations in the night sky. Friend creates the images by finding vintage photographs (online or in shops) and then poking tiny holes into them. My Modern Met writes,
The series began through her desire to see the photograph as an object. Friend wanted to find out what it meant for them to change, "to become something different than what they were originally intended to be" yet still remain the same. To her, the images represented "a life, a face, a moment, but only through a momentary glance." By altering them she hopes to playfully bring to light stories beneath the surface or what she refers to as "the unknown."
"It is the unknown that shines through the photographs. It is the unknown that releases the photographs and allows them to become something new."
Did you know that there's US currency on Mars? It's true: when NASA's Curiosity rover was launched back on November 26, 2011, one of the things it carried with it was a penny from over a century ago. The 1909 Lincoln cent is part of the rover's onboard calibration target used to check that the cameras are working properly.
Earlier this week, we wrote about a unique fashion show put on in NYC by DVF that extensively featured Google's Project Glass camera glasses. Google released a video today that provides an interesting look at the show, as recorded by various people wearing the devices.
Experience the DVF Spring 2013 show at New York Fashion Week through the eyes of the people who made it happen—the stylists, the models and Diane von Furstenberg herself. All the footage you see here was filmed using only Glass, Google's latest technology that lets you capture moments from a unique, new perspective. See what happens when fashion and technology come together like you've never seen before.
It's interesting seeing what goes on behind the scenes at a fashion show, especially from the diverse perspectives see in this video (glasses were given to everyone from the designer herself to the cameramen at the back of the runway room).
After announcing its new iPhone 5 yesterday, Apple published a gallery of full-res sample photos showing the updated camera's quality. Although the specs haven't really changed, Apple says that the updated sensor and processor leads to better photographs. What better way to test these claims than to compare resulting photos side by side?
Luckily for us, DPReview has the droids comparison we're looking for. When Apple's official sample images were posted yesterday, DPReview product manager Scott Everett realized that he had taken an iPhone 4S photo that was nearly identical to one of the images -- the one of the coastline in Big Sur, California.
Did you know that Rolleiflex is still producing its high-end analog twin-lens reflex cameras? Apparently there's enough photographers out there buying them for there to be a small, niche market, because Rollei is planning to show off a new model at Photokina 2012 next week.
The FX-N is a 6x6 medium format TLR camera that is an updated version of the Rolleiflex FX, a camera that costs over $5,000. The only difference it has with its predecessor (or sibling) is that it features a new Heidosmat 80mm f/2.8 viewfinder lens and a Rollei S-Apogon 80mm f/2.8 main lens that offer a shorter minimum focusing distance of 55 centimeters.
In October of 2011, the tech world went into a frenzy after Adobe showed off some crazy image deblurring research it's working on. By calculating the camera movements that caused the blur in the first place, the algorithm is able to "reverse" the motion blur and sharpen the photo. If you've been impatiently waiting for the feature to show up in a new version of Photoshop, you might want to check out Blurity, a similar blur removal tool that's already available. The software has been available to Windows users for a while now, but just recently launched for Mac OS X as well.
Be careful not to leave your camera unattended when animals are nearby -- you never know what might happen. We've shared a number of videos in the past of animals such as monkeys, octopi, sharks, and seagulls "borrowing" cameras for their own purposes.
Back in 2011, it was discovered that iPhones, iPods, and iPads running iOS 5 had a hidden panorama feature that was built into the operating system but not ordinarily available through the devices. Methods were discovered for unlocking the feature, which we all assumed was simply a half-baked feature that wasn't ready for release at the time.
It seems that Apple engineers have been busy polishing the feature in the 10 months since then, as the panorama feature was announced yesterday at the iPhone 5's unveiling. For those of you who are content with your iOS 5 device, here's some good news for you: iPhone 4S users will get the new panorama mode as well when iOS 6 is rolled out on September 19th, 2012.
On Tuesday, the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya was attacked by militants, resulting in the deaths of ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three members of his staff. In an article reporting on the attack, The New York Times included a photograph that reportedly showed a bloody and unconscious Stevens, moments away from death. The image caused outrage with some readers, and soon attracted the attention of the United States government, which asked the Times to pull the photo. The Times said no.
Tom Anderson is a photography enthusiast and the former President of MySpace. You can find him online on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter. Check out his Burning Man photographs here.
PetaPixel: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
Tom Anderson: Well most of you probably know me as the first friend from MySpace. I was a founder and President. It sold in 2005 and I left the company completely in early 2009. The MySpace first friend tends to overshadow all the things I was or will be...
I've lived many lives, so to speak. At one time I was in a band (both as a singer and guitar player) and that was all I did every day. If you knew me in college, you would have assumed I was going to be an egghead professor. I was a very serious scholar. I've always been attracted to creative things. Just before my photography obsession began I was having a lot of fun learning about architectural design, but photography has taken over and kind of pulled me away from that.
Marketing and customer loyalty are two powerful things. They can make minor improvements in gadgets seem great, and major advancements to-die-for. In the world of photography, many camera owners feel strong allegiances to the brand they use, fiercely defending it as their own, and even going on the offensive to belittle other photographers who shoot under a different banner. This kind of customer loyalty does strange things to how the "fanboys" perceive the quality of their camera gear.
Announced this morning, Nikon’s new D600 is a powerful little full frame DSLR at an unprecedented price point, and …
After months of rumors and speculation, Nikon has finally announced its new full frame camera, the D600. In terms of specs, the rumors were right on. However, we missed the mark by quite a bit regarding the price. We'll come back to that later.
The D600 is in fact the company's "entry level" full frame DSLR, designed to bring the benefits of an FX-format sensor to enthusiasts who were previously unwilling to take the plunge. The camera features a 24.3 megapixel CMOS sensor, an ISO range of 100-6400 (expandable to 50-25600), a 39-point autofocus system (9 cross-type points), a 0.13 second startup time and a 0.052 shutter lag, 5.5fps continuous shooting, dual SD card slots, a viewfinder with 100% coverage, built-in HDR, 1080p HD video recording with full-time AF, and a 3.2-inch LCD.
The world's first color moving pictures have been discovered, dating back to 1902. The film sat forgotten in an old metal tin for 110 years before being found recently by Michael Harvey, the Curator of Cinematography at the National Media Museum in England. The pictures were part of a test reel of early color experiments by an Edwardian inventor named Edward Raymond Turner, and show Turners children, soldiers marching, domesticated birds, and even a girl on a swing set.
When doing certain types of welding, special helmets with dark lens shades should be used to protect the eyes from the extremely bright welding arc and sparks. The masks help filter out light, protecting your eyes, but at the same time make it hard to see the details in what you're doing. In other words, the dynamic range is too high, and wearers are unable to see both the arc and the objects they're welding.
A group of researchers in the EyeTap Personal Imaging Lab at the University of Toronto have a solution, and it involves cameras. They've created a "quantigraphic camera" that can give people enhanced vision. Instead of being tuned to one particular brightness, it attempts to make everything in front of the wearer visible by using ultra high dynamic range imaging.
Earlier today, Apple announced its new iPhone 5, which features a camera that's nearly identical to the one found in the 4S. Soon after the announcement, Apple put up the official product page for the phone, which includes a gallery of sample photographs shot using the iPhone 5. Unfortunately, none of the shots show low-light environments, which would have allowed us to gawk at the power of the camera's new and improved noise-killing processor. For now, we'll just have to settle for these generic shots showing what the 3264×2448 images look like when they pop out of the camera.
Philadelphia-based architect and photo enthusiast Andrew Evans has an interesting series of photographs titled Demolition Composites, which contains photographs of ghostly buildings spotted around the City of Brotherly Love. The technique used to create them is extremely basic. Evans took photographs of the buildings, and then rephotographed the same location after the building had been demolished (cleared away for new construction projects).
By compositing the before and after photographs together, Evans ended up with images that offer a final, fading look at the beautiful buildings that once occupied the new construction sites.
Gamification -- the application of game design elements to non-game contexts -- is a pretty hot idea right now in the online startup world. More and more startups are introducing things like badgets, achievements, leaderboards, points, and progress bars to encourage users to do things such as visit new businesses, answer questions, and, of course, play games. One particularly interesting application of gameification is in the area of education, using fun to motivate learning.
Lunchbox is a stealthy startup that's planning to introduce this kind of learning to the world of photography.
Apple is on stage right now announcing its new iPhone 5, and has just revealed the details of the smartphone's camera. It's pretty much the same camera as the one found inside the iPhone 4S, except they made the whole thing "thinner" (the iPhone 5 is 18% thinner than its predecessor). You'll find a slightly improved backside-illuminated sensor that shoots the same 8-megapixel photos at 3264x2448 resolution, and the same 5-element lens with a f/2.4 aperture.
After being announced back in 2002 as a replacement to the 28-70mm, Canon’s 24-70mm f/2.8 (above right) quickly became …
Last year, we shared an interesting video showing a blank white room that could be completely transformed in an …
I'm going to be in Cologne, Germany next week, covering the latest and greatest photo announcements at Photokina 2012. In addition to posts -- and possibly live blogs -- on this website, I'll also be sharing photographs of the products, parties, and press events through our relatively new Instagram account: @petapixel. The photo steam may also be added to the sidebar of this blog. Follow along for the inside scoop!
BERG Cloud got the tech world talking earlier this year when it announced the Little Printer, a tiny little ink-less, cloud-connected printer that prints your social media feeds onto strips of thermal printer. While the device is designed to print out tiny, text-based newspapers with updates from services such as Twitter and Facebook, they company is also hacked together a simple photo printing feature that lets you send the printer any photo from your phone and have it quickly printed out in black-and-white.
Sony shook up the digital camera world today by announcing the RX1, a game-changing camera that was somehow kept under wraps until news about it leaked a few days ago. Regardless of whether or not ordinary consumers will readily adopt it, it's a bold camera that sets the bar for what the world can expect in a point-and-shoot. Why is it so revolutionary? It's the first time a full frame sensor has been put inside a compact camera body.
Sony has announced the new NEX-6, a mirrorless camera that follows up -- and one-ups -- the NEX-5R that was announced a couple of weeks ago. In the NEX pecking order, the 6 falls somewhere in between the 5R and the 7 (announced back in December 2011). It differs from the NEX-7 in that it features a new secondary mode dial and has less resolution (16.1MP, down from 24.3MP), and differs from the NEX-5 in that it has a 2.36-million-dot electronic viewfinder.
Other specs include an APS-C-sized CMOS sensor, ISO that goes up to 25600, a 3-inch tilting LCD screen, a built-in flash, a speedy hybrid AF system, 10fps continuous shooting, and 1080/60p video recording.
Sony has launched a beastly new full frame camera to wage war against the flagship DSLRs of rival camera manufacturers. The A99, which saw its share of leaks over the past couple of weeks, is the company's new flagship professional camera, replacing the full-frame A900 and A850. It's also the world's first pellicle mirror full-frame digital camera, combining the image quality benefits of having a large sensor with the speed benefits of having a semi-transparent mirror.
The camera features a 24.3MP sensor, an ISO range of 50-25600, 6fps continuous shooting, 14-bit RAW files, a viewfinder with 100% coverage, a 3-inch LCD that tilts in three directions, and a high-res OLED EVF (the same one found in the A77, NEX-6 and NEX-7).
An apparent meteor struck Jupiter yesterday, creating an explosion so massive that amateur astronomers looking through their telescopes her on Earth were able to see it. Amateur astrophotographer George Hall of Dallas, Texas happened to have a camera and telescope pointed at the planet at the time, and managed to snag some video footage of the fireball, which he soon uploaded to his Flickr account.
A user over on the Chinese forum Xitek has leaked the first sample photographs captured using the Sony A99, the company's upcoming flagship SLT (i.e. pellicle mirror) camera. The images are 100% crops of straight-out-of-camera JPEGs, with noise reduction completely turned off.