Last week's memorial for Nelson Mandela had more than its share of media moments, from the fake sign language interpreter to the handshake heard 'round the world. But nothing caught on quite as tenaciously or curiously as what we'll dub "The Great Obama Selfie Beatdown."
Throwable camera balls and their ilk might be all shiny and cool, but what if you want to grab high-quality 360-degree images with the camera you already have in your bag?
Enter Eye Mirror, a startup launched by U.K. inventors Dan Burton and Thomas Seidl, whose namesake product attaches to just about any camera and allows it to shoot 360-degree panoramas and videos.
If you're shopping for a young person who'd benefit from learning a little more about the principles of photography, you may want to consider the LAST Camera: a build-it-yourself 35mm film camera that could well outfreak Lomography for quirky build and artfully distressed images.
Lenticular printing has been around for ages as a commercial gimmick, producing untold hordes of postcards, luggage tags and other novelties with images that seem to move when you jostle the shiny surface. (Also, the particularly hideous faux-3D cover for my 1978 high school yearbook.)
Here's something that both photographers and the typical millennial have to look forward to in old age: Your memory is going to suck because of all the photos you took when you should have been paying attention to what was happening around you.
That's the upshot of a new psychological study that finds you can have a good photographic record of an event or a good memory, but not both.
A late-breaking holiday shopping tip: If someone offers you a screamingly good deal on a Leica Summilux-C movie lens, be very suspicious. That's because there's currently $500,000 worth of stolen gear floating around the black market -- including a $200K set of Summilux-C lenses -- that was taken off the set of a Los Angeles film shoot..
GoPro cameras may be ready to migrate from helmets to film schools thanks to the Ribcage, an in-development assembly that allows the tiny action cams to be outfitted with interchangeable lenses.
Backlighting can be all moody and subtle, but you can seldom go wrong with full-on, straight-behind illumination. Especially if your subject is the planet on which your family, friends and all of humanity happens to reside.
That's what the trio of Apollo 17 astronauts -- and soon, the whole world -- discovered 41 years and two days ago today. Navigating towards the moon on Dec. 7, 1972, the spacecraft had the sun behind it, providing a rare, fully illuminated view of the Earth.
A lot of film people have deep connections to Super 8 cameras, once the medium of choice for everyone from film school students to porn directors. But it's getting harder and harder to actually use the things, as stocks of film cartridges dwindle.
To the rescue comes Nolab, a project to build a digital adapter that will allow any Super 8 camera to shoot 720p HD video.
Photojournalist Christopher Morris has documented some of the world's hottest war zones, reclusive North Korea and the 2012 Republican National Convention. But it took modern Detroit to totally punk him, with thieves there stealing $15,000 in camera equipment and another crook cheating him out of $200 in reward money later that same day.
Rest easy, future astronauts. If occasional filmmaker and full-time tinkerer Mark Rober and his pals are any indication, NASA engineers can MacGyver their way into or out of any situation.
Selfie, schmelfie! How self-absorbed do you really have to be to spend all of 20 seconds pointing a phone at yourself and tapping a few buttons? But a process that requires up to 15 minutes of statue-still posing, exposure to hazardous chemicals and construction of custom camera? Now that's something worth bragging about.
So all hail pioneering American photographer Robert Cornelius, whose rough but certainly recognizable image, taken mere months after Louis Daugerre revealed his daguerrotype process in 1839, is undoubtedly the world's first photographic self-portrait and may even be the first photographic portrait of any kind.
So emergency workers are all over the Brooklyn Bridge, trying to talk down a suicidal man poised to jump. Media people are everywhere, doing their usual sensitive storytelling. A big chunk of the city is holding its breath, waiting to see how the life-and-death drama plays out.
Perfect time for a selfie, right?
What do you do when you're not busy destroying rebel planets, choking out generals and dealing with traumatizing father issues? Why, you grab a quality selfie and upload it to Instagram of course.
Canon owners certainly boast the most advanced custom firmware with Magic Lantern, but Nikon Hacker is making some progress. Case in point: with the release of a new hack, Nikon D5100 owners can now use manual controls while shooting in LiveView.
Try all the tricky ski moves and skateboard jumps you want, but it'll be hard to beat the latest action video auteur -- a curious Australian sea eagle who snagged a wildlife camera to create a brief but exciting aerial tour of his neighborhood.
"Put down that phone and eat!" That's what a lot of frustrated cooks must have been yelling Thursday, as Instagram set a new one-day record for uploads thanks to the overlapping of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.
Media giant Clear Channel recently stirred up some controversy when it decided to flat out reject an advertising image of an American soldier embracing a veiled Muslim woman from its Times Square billboards due to its 'uncomfortable' nature.
Photographers around the country are banding together to figure out the best way to help out a once-prominent photojournalist who has ended up homeless and panhandling on the streets of Manhattan.
Here's a new way to be violated in the social media era: Post a photo of yourself on Instagram, then wait for somebody you don't know and didn't authorize to repost an edited version that looks vaguely like you, except shinier and with a lot more makeup.
A super-fast, affordable new camera currently under development at MIT could improve everything from video game experiences to driving safety, researchers reported at a recent tech convention.
On the off-chance you thought photo blogs had some kind of monopoly on rants about lazy and thoughtless photography practices, witness the majesty of Denver TV news anchor Kyle Clark in action.
After experiencing one too many embarrassing, high-profile Photoshop disasters, China is turning its research focus on image-editing software, although not in the way you might think.
If you love everything about your GoPro camera except the anemic battery life and minimalist portability, say hello to the CagePro: a new system that allows you to attach a Canon SLR battery to your GoPro.
Just in time for the Holidays, Yahoo! is introducing a new service for printing custom photo books through Flickr, touting automatic features and a "clean, stunning design" that the company hopes will encourage Flickr users to take advantage of the new feature instead of going elsewhere for their photo book needs.
The host of a Minnesota-based hunting show recently found herself in hot water with animal lovers everywhere after she posted a photo of herself posing with a lion she had just killed to her Facebook.
Google has agreed to replace a Google Maps satellite image of a Richmond, California railroad yard that may show the body of a murdered teenager.
Instagram may be home to a wealth of aesthetic and legal offenses, but it can also be a tool for promoting our better instincts, as a recent movement involving relief for victims of typhoon Haiyan attests to.
The Google Street View team went amphibious for its latest mission: a 360-degree capture of the canals, streets and piazzas of Venice -- the city many view as the most romantic on Earth Venice.
A photographer at French newspaper Libération is currently fighting for his life after being shot Monday as part of a gunman's extended rampage through the French capital of Paris.