March 2013

The Onion has published a humorous tongue-in-cheek piece that many non-professional photography enthusiasts …

The Online Lighting Diagram Creator is a web app for easily creating and sharing lighting diagrams. It was created back in 2009 by Sydney-based photographer and web developer Quoc Huy Nguyen Dinh. It's an extremely simple tool through which you can create detailed diagrams by simply clicking and dragging.

Fujifilm has announced two new consumer-level cameras that go extreme in different ways. The first is the new FinePix XP200, a new rugged cameras for outdoor environments. The second is the FinePix S8400W, a bridge camera that packs a massive zoom for photographers who are always shooting faraway subjects.

Swiss photography duo Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs were featured here in April of last year for their DIY large format camera created out of a stack of books. It turns out books aren't the only things the two are making cameras with: they also have cameras that mix the worlds of taxidermy and photography.

For their project titled Camera Collection, Onorato and Krebs created one-of-a-kind cameras out of extremely unusual things -- including an armadillo (shown above).

Facebook announced its photos-only news feed filter earlier this month (alongside a major News Feed revamp) at a major press event surrounded by much fanfare. Now, Google has followed suit with its Google+ social network -- albeit much, much more quietly.

The service unveiled a new photos-only feed today, but instead of holding a major press event about it, it was outed by Google engineer Dave Cohen through his Google+ page.

About a year ago, we shared an app called 645 Pro that saves photos shot with the iPhone (and other iOS devices) as TIFF files. Now there's a new app that's even more "raw". Digital Negative, a new app by a company called Cypress Innovations, claims to be the first app that captures uncompressed images that retain 100% of the information captured by the camera sensor.

Printic is a new service that mixes two popular cultural movements. The first is that nostalgic pull back towards the days when we actually got to hold our pictures in hand; the second, the square crop, retro, lo-fi movement.

So what do you get when you combine these two? You get a service that lets you select and crop photos directly from your phone, and send Polaroid-style high-quality prints to whomever for just $1 a piece.

School of Visual Arts photography student Michael Schmidt has been working on a series that documents the commuters who ride the Staten Island Ferry that shuttles people between Staten Island and Manhattan. It's an environment in which people are mostly stationary and often lost in their thoughts or absorbed in the things being displayed on their smartphones.

Dear (new-ish) Photographer,

My name is Model. I would love it if when you shoot me you take these things into consideration to achieve the greatest effect for us both.

One of the interesting ideas involving slow motion cameras (i.e. high speed cameras) is to move the camera very quickly during shots, resulting in footage that looks like the camera is moving in real time while everything in the shot moves in slow motion. Last year we shared an incredible demo reel by German studio The Marmalade, which uses this technique.

Caleb Kraft over at Hack A Day was inspired by this concept and by the bullet-time rigs that have gotten quite a bit of press lately, and decided to try his hand at moving slow-mo footage using a single GoPro.

Nikon has announced that it will soon be opening up a new DSLR-making factory in the Southeast Asian country of Laos (officially called Lao People's Democratic Republic).

Jeffrey Milstein has two huge passions: photography and aviation. For his project Aircraft: The Jet as Art, Milstein visited airport runways between 2005 and 2009 and created large-scale photos of various aircraft at the precise moment they passed directly overhead.

Photographer t-shirt company Dodge & Burn is taking its silk screening prowess and applying it to a new product: posters. In addition to apparel, it is now selling serigraphs (i.e. screen printed posters) with its "evolution of the twin-lens reflex camera" design, which is also available as a shirt.

One week ago, we reported that Canon had sent out spy-style projector pens that teased an upcoming PowerShot announcement. Well, that announcement came yesterday alongside the two new entry-level DSLRs that were unveiled (the SL1 and the T5i).

It's the new PowerShot SX280 HS, a camera that may not look too special on the outside, but packs something quite interesting on the inside: Canon's next generation DIGIC 6 processor.

In the past, we've shared how you can create a cheap and simple rain cover for your camera and lens using a Ziploc bag. While that solution is effective in protecting your gear, it might make it a bit difficult to adjust your lens and operate the rings.

If you'd like a little more access to your lens, you can also create a rain guard using the plastic cylindrical cover that comes with writable optical discs.

If you enjoyed that backwards stroll through Jerusalem we shared a few days ago, you’ve got to …

Many photographers are uncomfortable sharing their work at higher resolutions online, preferring instead to share smaller (and perhaps watermarked) photographs. If that doesn't describe you, then you might be happy to know that you can now share full-resolution photographs with your followers, friends, and family on Google+.

Here's something that might give you a chuckle: it's the invisible friend prank. The video above shows magician Rahat Hussein and prankster Jack Vale teaming up to pull this prank on unsuspecting passersby in Hollywood.

This famous photograph of legendary football wide receiver Desmond Howard is currently in the midst of a nasty legal battle. The photographer behind the image, Brian Masck, is suing Howard and a host of companies, claiming that his photo has been used without his permission for years for all kinds of commercial products and purposes.

Here's a walkthrough of how I hooked up my Android phone to my DSLR. Why did I do this? Because of Dropbox, social media, quick editing for the web, an intervalometer, macro/low-angle photography, an external LCD screen for video, Wi-Fi, and more.

If you're set to get married soon and are in the process of planning for the big day, here's a tip that might save you from some sadness further down the road: don't go cheap on the photography if you can help it. It turns out that spending too little on photography is one of the biggest regrets brides have after their wedding, while spending too much rarely causes remorse.

For a wedding issue that will soon be hitting newsstands, New York Magazine created an infographic titled "What They Would Have Done Differently." The magazine asked one hundred recent brides about what they'd do differently if they could go back in time.

If flashlights can be solar and mechanically powered, why can't digital cameras? Turns out they can. Superheadz Japan has launched a new digital camera called the "Sun & Cloud." It's the world's first digital camera that's capable of generating its own power so that you don't need to constantly be worrying about battery drain and recharging.

Newer Leica lenses have a special lens code on the mount flange of each lens that informs the camera of what's mounted on it, and allows lens-related EXIF data to be embedded inside photographs. If you have an older Leica lens or a third-party lens on your hands, you might not have this special code, but did you know that you can apply the code manually to a code-less lens using black and white paint?

La Vida Leica! has published a tutorial showing how simple the process is: it only takes around $15 and 15 minutes to do.

I did a trip to Paris solely to take photographs for myself back in 1992. That sounds selfish, but I didn't have any children to take care of and my wife was enmeshed in a busy career as an art director for a prosperous advertising agency.

I was approached by Agfa that year to be a tester for their line of APX films and I requested a case of their 100 speed film and another of their 400 speed film. They asked me where I wanted to photograph and I said, "Paris." A month later, in late October, I was there with a camera bag full of new Canon EOS lenses and a couple of camera bodies. Oh, and a big shopping bag full of black and white film.

If you had to quickly flee both your home and country, what one possession would you make sure you take with you? It's a question that reveals a lot about your life and values, and, unfortunately, is one that many people around the world actually have to answer.

NYC-based photographer Brian Sokol has been working on a project supported by the UN Refugee Agency titled "The Most Important Thing." It consists of portraits of refugees in which the subjects pose with the one thing they couldn't let go of when running away from home.

If you often find yourself taking screenshots of your friends and family while in Google Hangouts video chats, the company will soon be releasing a new featured designed just for you. It's called the Hangouts Capture app, and it lets you easily snap and save funny moments with others as they happen on your screen.

Canon's special announcement today is the its tiny new Rebel SL1 DSLR, but it has a second new DSLR to show off. The Rebel T5i succeeds the Rebel T4i (AKA 650D AKA Kiss X6i) as the new flagship Rebel, and is geared toward entry-level photographers.

Canon did a pretty good job of keeping its new tiny DSLR a secret... until last week. One week after rumors of the camera first emerged, Canon has officially announced the Rebel SL1, the world's smallest and lightest DSLR.

This time-lapse video shows the building of the largest ship in the world. It's the first Maersk Line Triple-E vessel, which was constructed at the DSME shipyard in Okpo, Korea. The video shows three months of time, and consists of 50,000 photographs taken during that period.

Actress Jennifer Lawrence may be fine with excessive Photoshopping, but advertising regulatory authorities in the United States aren't of the same opinion. We reported back in 2011 that the UK had banned certain advertisements for excessive Photoshop work, and that the US was moving in the same direction.

Photographer Noah Kalina's Everyday project features one photo of his face every day, and has been running since January 11, 2000. Kalina uploaded time-lapse videos created using the photos in 2006 and 2012, and both videos quickly went viral online. Not only did they amass millions of views, but they sparked a new phenomenon as well, as people around the world started snapping daily photos of their own faces and uploading similar videos to the web.

The video above is one that uses the same idea popularized by Kalina, except it's very different from the rest (warning: it's a bit disturbing).

This strange looking vintage camera was created by Guangzhou Art Academy student Hu Shaoming, who spent four months disassembling two cameras from the 1930s and 1940s and rebuilding them with a zipper that reveals the inner mechanical components.

Urban exploration photography has gotten quite a bit of publicity in recent years, with more and more photographers taking their cameras to off-limits and/or abandoned parts of their city in order to see and capture what most people never get a chance to. While it may be a fun pastime of practitioners and one that leads to beautiful images, not everyone is a fan.

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCC) warns that photographs shot by urban explorers could pose a national security risk by aiding terrorists in their surveillance and planning.

In the early 2000s, NYC-based photographer Christopher Dawson noticed that even though major events were going on around the world, major news organizations in the US often remained fixed on stories involving the rich and famous. Due to the fact that stories involving celebrities often result in more eyeballs and advertising dollars, things like Britney Spears' custody hearing or Michael Jackson's molestation trial would attract a disproportionate amount of attention.

Starting 2004, Dawson began to create a series of photos with the camera pointed at the newsmakers rather than the stories. The ongoing project is titled "Coverage."

Apparently GoPro isn't very fond of its cameras being compared to rival action cameras. The action camera pioneer has sent DigitalRev a DMCA takedown notice after the latter published an article last month comparing GoPro Hero 3 with the Sony HDR-AS15.

As I sat trapped in a coach seat on an aged and tattered American Airlines airplane I had time to think about the whole spectrum of art photography. I wanted to have a clearer window into the different ways in which people who aren't using their cameras to make a living in a traditional, commercial application of photography approach their subjects and their understanding of style. How much is generated internally and how much is a reflexive reaction to a world inundated in images?

I spoke with a person in the film industry on Friday. We were talking about HMI lighting and he made a remark concerning still photographers. I give him credence since his background originally included a successful career in photography. His remark, in regards to the real lack of lighting acumen among most shooters was this: "There's no such thing as a good photographer under 40."

Have a cute baby photograph from shortly after you first entered this world? New York City resident Molly Thomas wants to rephotograph it. Thomas has been running a humorous photo blog titled "My Precious Roommate." Each entry features a photo of a baby submitted by readers and a photo by Thomas that recreates the submitted image with the baby replaced by Thomas' roommate -- a fully grown man.

As the recipient of a great education (thanks in no small part to my parents), I’m always fascinated by discussions of how college influence what we do and achieve later in life. As a music major, I could have never fathomed that I would one day become an entrepreneur, and when I think back to college, it had very little to do with the acquisition of technical knowledge, and more about being exposed to a wide range of subjects, people, and social situations.

Canon's new pint-sized DSLR, the EOS-b/EOS100, leaked onto the web over the past week, but there's a second DSLR that's likely going to be announced around the same time -- and that one has now leaked as well. It'll be called the Rebel T5i, which succeeds the Rebel T4i/650D.

Many of us don't get out as much as we should, but that doesn't mean we don't want to, and Google understands that. That's why the company continues to add amazing destinations to its Street View repertoire; because not everybody has the time or money to visit the Grand Canyon, or go see historical sites in the arctic.

Their most recent addition to street view, however, goes further than that. Because, while some people may not be able to afford a trip to Arizona, only a handful could survive a hike up the world's tallest mountains -- and that's where Google is taking us next.