April 2013

At Photokina 2012 last September, Zeiss announced that it was working on a new family of lenses for mirrorless cameras. This past March, we got a closer look at the lenses, which were outed as a 12mm f/2.8, 32mm f/1.8, and 50mm f/2.8 for Fuji's X mount and Sony's E mount.

Today, the company revealed even more details about the lenses, which are branded "Touit," publishing specs, product pages, and sample photographs.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada-based photographer Chris McVeigh is incredibly good at building camera replicas with LEGO pieces. Last month we featured his LEGO recreation of the Leico M9-P Hermes rangefinder camera.

Now McVeigh (who goes by the name "Powerpig" online), is back with a beautiful new camera creation. This time he has built a Polaroid OneStep SX-70 Rainbow instant camera.

Rooftopping photography is a dangerous new fad in which daredevils climb to extremely high (and often off-limits) urban locations in order to shoot vertigo-inducing photographs. Two of the most famous practitioners in the world right now are Vadim Mahorov and Vitaliy Yakhnenko, two young Russian daredevils who have attracted a great deal of attention for their images (they're the same guys who recently snuck to the top of Egypt's Great Pyramid).

If you want to see how the duo works, check out the short 6-minute documentary film above (warning: there's a bit of strong language). It's titled "Roofer's Point of View," and was created by HUB Footwear.

Less than a week after first photos of the upcoming Olympus E-5 leaked onto the web, new photos have emerged showing additional views of the flagship Micro Four Thirds camera.

Freelensing is a relatively inexpensive way of getting the similarly unique effect of an expensive tilt-shift lens, where the focus plane is thrown out of whack with the added bonus of natural light leaks. No, this isnt anything new, and the look that an expensive tilt-shift lens gives has been around for a while, but I wanted to share with you my experience with it and how I did it.

Photographs of storm systems as seen from airplanes or satellites aren't too uncommon these days, but have you ever seen one that looks like this? Probably not, because this photograph is out of this world -- literally. It's titled "The Rose," and shows the spinning vortex of a gigantic hurricane on the surface of Saturn.

Lytro is seeing more and more competition these days, as more and more companies are jumping into the "snap now, focus later" game. There are now apps that mimic the technology, and companies like Toshiba are working on building Lytro-style smartphone camera modules.

Lytro's latest challenger may be quite a formidable foe: it appears that Nokia has invested in Pelican Imaging, another startup that's working on building Lytro-style smartphone camera arrays.

The woman in this portrait doesn't actually exist. The face is actually the average of 57 different women -- 57 girlfriends that appeared in episodes of the popular TV sitcom Seinfeld.

Canon today officially launched a new firmware update (version 1.2.1) for the 5D Mark III that brings two notable improvements to the camera: uncompressed HDMI output and the ability to use cross-type autofocus at f/8.

Here's another example of a strange effect caused by the shutter of a DSLR. YouTube user drummaboy5189 captured the above video by playing a 61Hz sound through his speaker and then pointing his Canon 6D at it while filming at 60 frames per second and 1/4000s shutter speed. What resulted is a "rolling speaker" effect.

Back in August 2010, Sony shook up the camera industry by announcing the first pellicle mirror DSLRs, the A33 and the A55. Rather than being called SLRs, the new cameras were labeled SLT, or "single lens translucent", cameras.

Now, less than three years later, we may be seeing Sony's big SLT experiment coming to an end. Sony's A58 announced back in February may be the company's last APS-C camera to feature pellicle mirror technology.

One Lighthouse, 365 Clicks is a fascinating photo series by Brazilian photographer Tunisio Alves Filho. Like all 365 projects, he took one photo per day over the course of a year. Unlike most 365 projects, he never changed subjects, just vantage point, composition and style -- needless to say, he had to get pretty creative.

If you're interested in donating your images to the public at large, Wikimedia Commons just made it that much easier. For a while now, their online media archive has brought together a huge library of free-to-use content under one roof; and because images uploaded to Commons must be licensed as public domain, GFDL, CC attribution, or CC attribution/share alike, everything is free to use and/or share.

Now Commons is releasing a new app (formerly only available in beta) that will allow users to upload photos to the Commons archive right from their phone and, it's their hope, encourage more people to contribute "high quality educational photos."

In the past, we've shared several online archives that give you access to a huge number of historical and historically significant photos online.

PhotosNormandie offered up 3,000+ CC photos from WWII, the NYC Department of Records compiled a database of over 870,000 photos of "the greatest city on earth," and now the Finnish Defense Forces have put up an online archive of their own, showcasing almost 160,000 wartime photos from Finland during WWII.

It's always interesting when a photographer manages to show the artistic or beautiful side of something that you otherwise might pay zero attention to. Beat up baseballs, diverse seed specimens, and even the view of Hong Kong looking straight up have all made for interesting photo series we've shared in the past.

Japanese photographer Miha Tamura's website serves that same function, only her subject is escalators.

Mark Vargo is a big time cinematographer who has worked on too many well-known movies to list. He's credited as a second unit director of photography on everything from Deep Impact and The Green Mile to Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Ted. In other words, knows what he's doing, and now he's chosen to share some of that knowledge with his fellow photographers and videographers.

The Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, literally "change good," is at the heart of many a successful company. It represents a dedication to constant change for the better, and is famously used by Toyota on their assembly lines, where employees are encouraged to point out issues and suggest improvements.

But car companies aren't the only ones that employ the idea of Kaizen; the philosophy may also be at the heart of Fujifilm’s habit of constantly improving its cameras with firmware updates.

Statistics show that 70% of people who are abused as children will grow up into adults who will in turn abuse children. A recent awareness ad campaign by Mexican organization Save the Children shared this fact in single photographs that are both creative and difficult to stomach.

On the same day that Kodak announced the sale of its camera film business, Hasselblad had big "ending" news of its own. The company today announced that it will no longer be producing the 503CW medium format camera. This teams the V System line is officially coming to an end.

This experimental video shows what you get when you combine dancers, light-painting, stop-motion, and a 360-degree camera rig. It's like eye-popping popping that's the product of cameras rather than extremely skilled dancing.

A "copyright land-grab" that will "permit the commercial exploitation of [orphan] images" and lead to a "firestorm" of litigation. Those are the terms being used by some to describe a UK bill that just received Royal Assent last week, despite drawing fire from writers and photographers the world over.

We reported last August that Kodak was looking to sell its camera film business along with a number of other core businesses. Well, the company has now succeeded.

Kodak announced today that it has reached an agreement to sell off its two remaining imaging divisions -- which includes its photographic film business -- in a major deal worth $2.8 billion.

Sun Sports Rays reporter Kelly Nash recently snapped some selfies atop the Green Monster, the tall left field wall in Fenway Park (home to the Boston Red Sox baseball team). Afterward, while reviewing the photos, Nash discovered the image above: it reveals that a speeding baseball whizzed by Nash, nearly slamming into her head.

Earlier this year, photographer James Quantz Jr. got the opportunity to shoot the official photos for the 2013 South Carolina Gamecocks football team. So, at 6 o'clock one morning, he and his assistant found themselves at Williams Brice Stadium preparing to take the photos that will grace the teams posters, programs and tickets for the next calendar year.

As an added bonus, Dust of the Ground production company from Columbia, SC tagged along and put together this behind the scenes video that shows Quantz at work with the players and staff.

Korean-American Kenneth Bae made headlines back in November when he was arrested while leading a tour group though the Rason Special Economic Zone in North Korea. The reasons behind the arrest have never been properly confirmed, but it seems that his detainment had something to do with photos he was taking while he was spending time in the country.

No headway has been made in the case since he was taken into custody, but a recent report by the Korean Central News Agency claims that Bae has "admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK," and that he will now be tried in North Korean supreme court for those crimes, the maximum punishment for which is the death penalty.

Movies and TV shows have a knack for making it seem as if you could take a horrible, low-resolution image and turn it into a high-res masterpiece -- the term "enhance" has become almost comical. And for every mention of magical television enhancement, there's mention of some special algorithm at work that makes it happen.

Well, the University of Texas at Austin's RCM Tools web app isn't quite up to cable drama standards, but it's their attempt to apply special algorithms to image enhancement and denoising, and it's free for photographers to experiment with.

The Color Vibe 5K is a run that takes place all over the United States between February and November, benefiting charities and non-profits in each city they stop in. During and after the event, participants get a little crazy and pelt each other with colored powder. By the end of the race, the organizers of the event are proud to call you an "exciting and vivid walking masterpiece."

Images Connect is an international photo project by photographer Henny Boogert that explores the similarities and differences between the places students call home around the world.

Boogert believes that all students worldwide share the same goals: to move forward and establish a career. Their housing -- be it a room, an apartment or a hut -- is as universal as those goals, and the Images Connect project aims to highlight that universality.

Scouring through a huge number of photos and editing all of the 'winners' can be a tiring task, especially when you consider that one day may consist of hundreds or even thousands of photos. A great workflow can help significantly expedite that process, and fortunately for us, pro photographer Nick Fancher has chosen to share his.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization founded in 2001 that, over the years, has released a set of licenses that enable creative types to share their work with others. The content creator allows others to use their work, just as long as the users follow the guidelines set forth in that particular license. It's a "some rights reserved" system rather than an "all rights reserved system."

In the photographic community, some aren't fond of CC licensing while others are downright prolific about it. But if you're looking to license some of your content in this way, this useful infographic put together by CC Australia will help you navigate the common licensing combinations.

The way film photographers feel about digital photographers may be the way daguerreotype photographers feel about the film guys. Working with dangerous chemicals, buffing out silver coated plates, spending an entire day preparing for, taking and developing one shot; that's what daguerreotype photographers love to do. It's the difference between "crafting a photograph" and "just snapping away."

In this short film -- put together by photographer and videographer Patrick Richardson Wright -- Seattle-based photog Dan Carrillo talks about that craftsmanship, as well as the beauty and permanence of daguerreotype photography that keeps him doing it when others say "why bother."

Here's a fun piece of photographic/cinematographic history: the first ever portable motion picture camera was invented by a French scientist named Étienne-Jules Marey, and it was in the shape of a gun. Sort of a great grandfather to the the Mark III Hythe Machine Gun Camera used by the British during WWI to train aerial gunners, the Fusil Photographique (or "photographic rifle") made its debut on the scene all the way back in 1882.

In addition to taking beautiful fashion photos, Serbian born photographer Elena Jasic also occasionally uploads a tutorial or two to her YouTube channel. One that has gotten some attention lately is this simple video that offers one way to dodge and burn non-destructively in Photoshop.

About a year and a half ago, photographer David Fliger of Fusion Photo Gear found himself in a field, rushing to mount his camera onto a tripod in order to get a shot of a tractor in the fading light. There was only one problem: he already had his sling-style shoulder strap attached via the accessory loop that was sitting where his quick release plate would normally be.

It was a problem he ran into all too often (both used the 1/4" accessory hole on the bottom of his camera) and one he made up his mind that day that he would solve. That's when the Fusion Plate was born.

Last month, we told you about a fun (and maybe a bit ridiculous) photography fad that had blown up overnight in Japan. The fad was to recreate Japanese anime-style fight scenes, and it has since been named 'Hadouken' photography after the special attack from the Street Fighter series of games and animated movies.

Just in case you've been wanting to jump (literally) into this fad, DigitalRev has put together this silly how-to video that shares a few tips and tricks for doing Hadouken photography right.

If you had to select one photograph to best represent the entire human race, which photograph would you choose? That's a question encyclopedia editors must answer, and one that the Wikipedia community had to as well. The photograph above is what they have settled on (as of May 2013) for their article on "Human".

It's a portrait of a couple from northern Thailand's Akha people group, indigenous hill tribe. The husband is carrying the stem of a banana-plant that will be fed to their family's pigs.

We've seen some pretty crazy, vertigo-inducing rooftopping and skyscraper photography in the past, but French photographer and graphic artist Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze's "Vertical Horizon" photo series takes the opposite approach to yield a similar awe-inspiring effect.

We know that the Instagram community is alive, well, and more than 100 million strong, but until today, we had never heard of an Instagram meetup. Called Instameets, it seems that these meetups have been happening all over the country for a while now; and for a recent Instameet in Santa Monica, Instagrammer Ravi Vora decided to put together a mini-documentary to chronicle the experience.

In what may very well be the most exciting Magic Lantern development ever, the team has discovered a RAW DNG output in live view on the 5D Mark II and 5D Mark III. What this means is that, in the near future, 5D Mark II and III owners may be able to record crystal clear 2K RAW video that blows H.264 output out of the water and then some.

Earlier this week, photographer Philipp Schmidli of Lucerne, Switzerland captured this incredible photograph of a biker's silhouette in front of a giant moon rising in the horizon.

Photographer Richard Gottardo tells us that he spent a few months in the Rocky Mountains, trying to see and photograph the Northern Lights. A brilliant aurora display finally happened a week ago, and Gottardo's mission was accomplished.

Over the years, Billy Mork has been a photographer, an art director and even a practicing architect, but he ultimately ended up back where his passion lies: in black and white film photography. This inspirational short film -- put together by broadcast media student Duong Thai Anh for a class at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore -- tries to capture a bit of that passion and pass it along to you.

While browsing the internet recently, SportsShooter user Greg Bartram stumbled on an eBay store that was selling prints of several of his images. Upon taking a closer look, he realized that it wasn't just him, ukgobigblueuk is selling 8x10s of just about any sports, celebrity or political photo he can get his hands on -- and according to his description, he can "more than likely" get his hands on any photo you want.

For his latest time-lapse project, South African fine-art landscape photographer Joe Louw and his wife Jonelle took a week-long trip into the Karoo region of South Africa. Armed with two cameras, a Shukuma DOLLY and a Shukuma MINI, Louw emerged with some truly beautiful footage.

There's a fine line between fair use, copyright infringement, and downright theft. And while some might argue where exactly that line stands, "rephotographer" and appropriation artist Richard Prince just got a Federal Appeals Court to take his side in what may turn out to be a landmark ruling regarding fair use.

"A new generation is using photography to celebrate, to question and represent a continent on the rise." That is the final sentence of the intro to Episode 1 of the six episode Al Jazeera miniseries 'The New African Photography.' It's a miniseries that, over the next several weeks, will look to the continent's photographers to paint a new, more accurate picture of Africa for the world.

Mike Rugnetta over on PBS's Idea Channel asked an interesting question in last Wednesday's episode: Is a tagged Instagram photo more than just a photo? Or, if you will, do hashtags add something (context, meaning, the ability to connect to a community) to photographs, thereby transforming the photo as we know it into a "different entity?"

Want to see a tree grow up before your very eyes? Sonoma County, California resident YouTube user Lapeere created this neat video that squeezes five years in the life of his backyard tree into a one-minute-long time-lapse video.

If you've ever shot with a Leica M rangefinder camera, you probably know how effective the camera can be for stealthy shooting. After all, there's no mirror that needs to swing out of the way like there is in a DSLR, so the main sound you'll hear is the soft click of the shutter curtain flapping open to expose the film or sensor.

It's not just Leica aficionados that appreciate the silent shutter: did you know that the Leica M is held as the standard for silent photography in courtrooms across the United States?

I bought a used Mamiya RZ67 Pro II a month ago, a huge medium format studio SLR with a negative area a full five times larger than the sensor on a Nikon D800 or 5DMKIII "full frame" camera.

A decade ago, the kit I bought would have sold for 5 figures, but thanks to film's loss in popularity, I was able to get it for less than a tenth of what it cost new.