Eric Calouro

Eye-Fi has offered the ability to wirelessly transmits photos from a camera to another device for quite a while now, but there was a downside: you were required to connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot to do so (with the exception of the Eye-Fi X2). This presented a challenge to photographers shooting on location where a Wi-Fi hotspot may not have been readily available.

Eye-Fi has come forth with their new "Eye-Fi Mobi" product, which streamlines the process of sending images to a mobile device.

Fancy an always-in-focus lensless camera in your arsenal of image capturing tools? It could be a while, but we're one step closer thanks to "compressive sensing," a technology developed by Bell Labs in New Jersey.

Sometimes getting access to shoot concerts or major concert events can be tricky. Dealing with publicists, event planners, and even security. But one band is making it super simple to get into the pit with your camera in hopes of capturing great shots -- for a fee.

Well-known American rock band Hawthorne Heights has posted an advertisement of sorts on their website, selling anyone the chance to take photos of them at this year's Warped Tour.

Traditionally, a photographer's post-processing workflow does not include a web browser, but rather, tools like Lightroom and Aperture. Pics.io is hoping to change that, and is working to bring serious RAW picture editing and collaborating to the web browser.

The start-up, founded by three Ukranian entrepreneurs, uses WebGL technology (which, in short, allows web browsers to harness the power of a computer's graphics card) to make the online tools they offer a reality. The mission? Get more people to dabble into RAW photography by offering easy access to editing tools.

Europe's largest annual photo expo, Focus on Imaging, has been terminated, according to organizer Mary Walker Exhibitions. Focus on Imaging's last show was in March of this year, following years of exhibitions.

For some filmmakers, the arrival of the Magic Lantern RAW video recording ability has become a godsend. With increased sharpness and a remarkable improvement in dynamic range, it's quickly become a much talked about topic.

But how does the RAW footage fare when it comes to bumping up ISO in those low-light situations?

There's something to be said about lens manufacturing. You could even go so far as to say it, in itself, is an art form, with the hands of skilled and methodical workers ever-so-delicately assembling the glass we use to take photos.

Speaking of lens manufacturing, Carl Zeiss Lenses has just posted an short, yet interesting, video behind the manufacturing process of their Touit lens line (for what it's worth, the video is also available in 3D, if you need an added dimension to your viewing experience). These lenses come as 12mm f/2.8 or 32mm f/1.8, and are available for both E-mount and X-mount cameras starting in June.

Researchers at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed a graphene image sensor one thousand times more sensitive to anything available on the market today. The sensor is capable of detecting broad spectrum light, making it a great solution for all types of cameras. Its uses could include traffic cameras, infrared cameras, and so forth.

It's no secret that wild animals can be immensely difficult to photograph. Now imagine taking photographers of large wild animals in a studio-like setting. It's just what photographer Joel Sartore has managed to capture in his work for The Photo Ark project. The project aims to document endangered species (with over 2650 photographed to date), in order to raise awareness of the fact these creatures may soon be gone.

If you find that the flash on your mobile phone simply isn't cutting it anymore, take a look at The Kick Light? Described as "a super customizable light studio that fits in your pocket" the Kick Light is a panel of LED lights that can attach to your iPhone (or be used separately), and can apparently display any color in a brightness of a user's choice.

There has been no lack of controversy surrounding the announcement of Adobe's new Creative Cloud product line, and the California-based company is well aware. So much so, in fact, they've come out with an update to address some of the major concerns in moving from their traditional boxed-copy to subscription-based model.

The Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff, according to a report from the Chicago Tribune. Twenty full-time staffers received the grave news at a meeting on Thursday morning, leaving them jobless.

Moving forward, the newspaper will be strictly working with freelance photographers, a move that is expected to further cut down on costs in this already financially troubled industry.

Olympus is slated to begin developing and supplying Sony with lens parts and lens units in the near future as part of what has been called a "mutual parts supply". The news comes months following a formed alliance between the two companies in September 2012.

"The imaging sensor has already started to source from Sony to Olympus. And the lens [parts] and lens units will start to source from Olympus to Sony," said an Olympus Japan spokesperson in a recent statement.

Perhaps best described as mesmerizing, Turkish photographer and artist Erdal Inci has created an interesting set of animated loops in GIF form that has the web abuzz.

The effects, which are done by cloning sections of footage of a moving subject within a static setting, provide for hypnotic never-ending animations in rather banal locations.

With the availability of a whopping 1TB of storage space now available to users on Flickr, it wasn't long before someone out there found other ways to put 1TB of storage space to good use. That is to say, the uploading of files other than images.

That's just what Redditor rlaw68 has done, allowing the user to upload packaged files by essentially tricking the Flickr servers into thinking you're merely uploading an image. The process involves putting two files in one folder, a GIF image (though some users have been able to do this with other image file extensions) and an archive file (such as a .zip or .rar), followed by combining them to create what only appears to be an image file.

There's no shortage of interesting work coming from Shin Seung Back and Kim Yong Hun of Seoul, South Korea. Yesterday we posted an interesting body of work that employed the use of computer algorithms to detect facial structures in the clouds above. The duo has another project that caught our eye: one that shares a representation of the four seasons -- with a twist.

What's cooler than a multi-cell pinhole camera? How about a multi-cell pinhole camera upgraded to a lensed version? That's exactly what James Guerin has put together as a follow-up to a previous lens-less camera experiment.

As humans, it's only natural to take a look at the sky and perceive to see an object, a face, an animal. Computers, too, are capable of this perception. However, they may be capable of finding things that the human eye can't, or just might not notice.

In a project called "Cloud Face", Seoul, South Korea-based Shin Seung Back and Kim Yong Hun of aptly-named 'Shinseungback Kimyonghun' have pointed cameras up at the sky and let complex algorithms detect faces in the passing clouds.

Using discarded tin cans found on the hot Arizona desert ground, David Emitt Adams has created timeless pieces he calls Conversations with History. The cans are branded with tintype pictures, reflecting ties to the very locations the cans -- some of which have been sitting out in the sun for over forty years -- were found.

In the words of Adams, "The deserts of the West also have special significance in the history of photography. I have explored this landscape with an awareness of the photographers who have come before me, and this awareness has led me to pay close attention to the traces left behind by others."

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer found herself in the spotlight earlier this week following a controversial statement made at Flickr's NYC press event regarding pro photographers:

There’s no such thing as Flickr Pro today because [with so many people taking photographs] there’s really no such thing as professional photographers anymore.

Photographer Zack Arias took offense to the comment, and before long, a number of publications picked up the story, sparking discussion and debate on the matter. Some users even took to Mayer's Flickr page to voice their opinions.

We are at about that point in the year when Apple holds its ever-popular WWDC (Worldwide Developer's Conference) in California. The company's keynote is expected to include the unveiling of iOS 7, and the word on the grapevine indicates the next iteration of the mobile operating system could include deep integration with social networks outside of Twitter and Facebook.

Citing unnamed sources, 9to5Mac reports both Flickr and Vimeo will be "integrated deeply" into the operating system.

Here's an interesting concept! Jiho Jang, a student, has come up with Polaroid-like instant camera, dubbed GIFTY, that captures short clips and prints them out. According to Jang, it was put together as part of his college thesis.

Wait -- printing out a video? What's next? A GIF with sound? The concept involves first capturing a small clip (the camera prototype includes a timer). Thereafter, the camera will print each frame, at which point in time you can tear each frame apart to create the flip-book. By the looks of it, the concept includes a page holder of some sort, so you don't easily lose frames. So there you have it, a GIF on-the-go. Sound not included.

For many user who use Adobe's Photoshop software, the "Content Aware Fill" tool has been a welcome addition in their arsenals of retouching tools. And while the vast majority of Photoshop users are editing 2D imagery, a partnership between Adobe and Brigham Young University has produced algorithms that'll do with 3D images what Content Aware Fill does with 2D images.

BYU grad student Joel Howard and professor Bryan Morse worked with Adobe's Scott Cohen and Brian Price to make the algorithm a reality. Adobe also provided funding for the project.

3D pictures are a pair of images of the same subject taken from slightly different angles. It is extremely difficult to edit them in a manner that won't be distracting in the final version. "If you try to show it stereoscopically and it’s not quite right, it’s very bothersome to the eyes," says Bryan Morse. "You have to fill the space in a way that preserves the left-right consistency."

NASA has today released a series of images along with a video following Monday's devastating thunderstorms that produced an F-4 tornado (winds between 166 and 200 miles per hour) that touched down in Moore, Oklahoma. Several satellites were used to provide forecasters with the latest imagery.

NASA's Aqua satellite was responsible for a visible-light image which provided a high-resolution look at the storm. The NOAA GOES-13 satellite provided images of the storm every 15 minutes, and the NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite observed lightning from the system.

Planning lighting is a critical step in the planning of a photo shoot. But what happens if you don't exactly have control of your lighting. What if your planned source of light is the sun or the moon?

Rafael Pons believes he has the solution to planning photo shoots that involve the sun and the move with a new application for iOS called PhotoPills. "You just have to decide where you want the sun or moon to be and tap the search button to get all possible dates it happens," he says.

Following the Google+ updates last week at Google I/O that overall improved the photo experience for its users, Mountain View-based Google is now making that very updated experience for users of its Google+ Android application.

The update, which boasts 41 new features total, includes Auto Backup (stores photos as you take them), Auto Highlight (allows for the ability to browse top shots from added sets), Auto Enhance (automatically enhances images), and even something called Auto Awesome (which creates fun new versions of pictures, such as panoramas and animations, based on images already in your library).

A bit of clever thinking from San Francisco Instructables member Amanda Ghassei has produced some really creative 3D-printed images from nothing but old photographs.

Printed using an Objet Connex 500, Ghassei's creations are still meant to be viewed in 2D, but are textured to create an interesting silhouette effect.

In order to properly view them, they must be backlit with a diffuse light. Images used for printing were first converted to black and white, and according to Ghassei, "each individual greyscale pixel value of an image to thickness," which effectively allows for the printing of any greyscale image.

Sometimes it's the simplest ideas that end up leaving an impression on people and inspiring them. Case in point: Astana, Kazakhstan-based photographer Timur Zhansultanov has created a project he's called "In My Own Eyes", which features pictures of himself from — well — his own eyes in the past two-or-so years.

Colorful and unusual patterns pictures are what photographer Erno-Erik Raitanen calls self-portraits. The pictures, which Raitanen says are more like photograms, involve no camera, some photographic film, and bacteria.

The series, called Bacteriograms, is a display of Raitanen's own body bacteria cultivated on the gelatin surface of film negatives, much like bacteria is grown in Petri dishes in a laboratory setting.

This video recently uploaded to the web is making its rounds showing a mall security officer fiercely shouting at a group of curious citizens for taking pictures and videos. (Warning: It contains some violence and strong language)

The fiasco erupted after a semi truck plummeted into a ravine nearby the Ohio Valley Mall when a mall cop identifying herself as "Officer Adams" began demanding the onlookers discontinue taking pictures and erase the images.

Moscow-based photographer Nikolay Tikhomirov describes the photographs he's taken as "art inside me" -- and that's just what they are, art.

One of his collections, dubbed 'Zero Gravity' is series of images featuring women in Earthly environments floating as if they've escaped the confines of our planet's gravity. Some appear to be well aware of their surroundings, whilst others are seemingly in the midst of a slumber, oblivious to their dream-like condition.

Here's a tool you may not have heard about but may useful at some time in the future. It's called Clipping Magic, and it's designed to remove backgrounds from user-uploaded pictures.

The concept is rather simple, you upload an image, mark the areas in the background you don't want in red, and mark the areas in the foreground you do want in green. The website's algorithm takes over and (hopefully) produces a background-free picture. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But how does it fare when used for an image with a background you actually want to remove?

There's a slew of super-large panorama pictures available on the web, but when was the last time you heard about a picture that spans well over half the diameter of Earth?

It goes without saying; a time-lapse can be difficult to shoot. A transitional time-lapse from day to night can be even more of a challenge and hassle. That is, unless you're prepared with the right tools for the job.

That's why photographer and timelapse connoisseur Joel Schat has come around with an extremely informative video walkthrough of creating a remarkable time-lapse with the assistance of a Promote Control.

The idea of being a sports photographer to many enthusiasts seems glamorous and exciting. Free and seemingly unfettered access to major league games with a view just meters away from live action. Akin to a soldier on a battleground armed with the latest gear, carefully and methodically (yet rapidly) shooting his subjects with the aim to make a publish-worthy photograph in the midst of chaos.

But what is it really like out there in the trenches? Is it all it's cracked up to be? More importantly: in a society where the almighty dollar is king, is it a viable source of income for a professional photographer?

When Brad Josephs took his GoPro camera out in beautiful Alaska, he was probably trying to get majestic footage of Grizzly bears for the BBC's Great Bear Stakeout. Instead, what he got was a hungry mother Grizzly and her cub trying to eat his camera. We get some, shall we say, interesting views of what a Grizzly bear's mouth looks like (not that that's something we're all interested in seeing, is it?).

Shoppers will soon have a tough time trying to pick up a cheap Olympus point-and-shoot compact camera. The company has said it is planning to do away with its V lineup of low-cost compact cameras, priced just under $200 at various retailers.

The move comes as the company anticipates a steep decline in its camera business, with forecasted digital camera sales this fiscal year expected to be about 2.7 million units, down from 5.1 million units last year. Olympus president Hiroyuki Sasa has put the financial loss from its camera business at about $225 million.

Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, the majority shareholder and chairman of Leica, has apparently purchased a 25.1% stake in photo sharing and contest website I-SHOT-IT, reports Leica Rumors.

Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences postdoctoral fellow Wim L. Noorduin, along with his colleagues, have discovered an interesting way to make pictures of flowers from microscopic crystals, as seen under an electron microscope.

An interesting new imaging technique in use by fertility experts at the CARE fertility clinic in the United Kingdom may be the key to increasing the likelihood of a successful a IVF therapy. The process involves snapping thousands of images of embryos in development in order to help doctors better select which embryos to implant successfully.