This looks like a screenshot of a satirical article by The Onion, but it’s actually an actual story over on the Salt Lake Tribune. Turns out Utah is the latest state to introduce Florida-esque legislation that would make it a crime to photograph or videotape agricultural operations without permission from owners. Like in Florida, the bill’s intent is to stop activist groups such as PETA from capturing covert imagery that allegedly show animal abuse.
I wonder what the world will look like when we get to the point where you can capture high-res imagery using your eyes (or even download them from your memory).
Sony’s NEX-7 mirrorless camera has been extremely difficult to find due to manufacturing being disrupted by the flooding in Thailand earlier this year. As a result of the shortage, the camera is selling for absurd prices on eBay — people are buying the camera for over $3,700 new. If you managed to snag one of the cameras while they were available, you might want to auction it off now before supply is restored. You’ll be able to buy three of them then for the current price of one!
“Men-ups!” is a humorous project by photographer Rion Sabean featuring men doing pin-up-style poses. It’s interesting how much more absurd some poses instantly look when they’re being done by men. Read more…
Leica offers a funky $200 lens holder accessory for its M system film rangefinders that screws into the tripod mount and lets you store an extra lens on the bottom of the camera. Here’s the description found on the site:
[...] the second lens also serves as a handle when it’s inserted into its bayonet mount, helping to provide additional stability when shooting handheld at long exposure times. The setup could even be used as a miniature tripod.
Makes sense. As we all know, the first thing a Leica shooter thinks when they drop big bucks on a new lens is, “Hmm. I’ll bet this lens would also work well as a mini-tripod!”.
You know the “anyone can cook” mantra spoken by Chef Gusteau in Pixar’s Ratatouille? It seems the same can be said about other forms of artistic expression as well, whether it’s photography or painting abstract pictures. Two unusual artists we featured here before were 3-year-old Ruby Ellenby and Cooper the photography-lovin’ cat. The above video shows Aelita Andre, a girl who became a professional abstract expressionist painter at the age of 3 and is called a “prodigy of color”.
Did you know that the world record for “youngest photographer” is currently held by Zoe Fung Leung of Hong Kong? She was only 2 years and 70 days old when she held an exhibition and print sale at Plaza Hollywood. If you have a child that’s younger than that, stick a camera in their hands and hire a good PR representative — the record may soon be yours theirs!
Now here’s a novel way to shoot the moon: stack five separate Canon 2x extenders to boost the focal length of your 800mm lens. Supposedly (and surprisingly) this rig actually captured a decent photograph of the moon.
This was done by the folks over at BorrowLenses, who also did the crazy filter stacking thing we featured recently. When you have as much gear as they do at your disposal, you have a wider range of ways to have fun with gear experiments. Read more…
Leica may have teamed up with the Audi design team for the limited edition Titanium M9 they announced yesterday at Photokina, but Hasselblad has just announced a car partnership of their own: the limited edition Ferrari H4D digital medium format camera. Now pro photographers who are determined to flaunt opulence can shoot with a flaming red camera that matches their car. The camera is even more “limited edition” than the Titanium M9, with 499 being produced instead of 500.
Welcome to the world of cameras being status symbols. Lets hope this kind of craziness doesn’t propagate to other camera companies, or we might see Toyota Canons and Honda Nikons. Oh wait… they have Jackie Chan limited editions already…
This Leica MP2 camera and matching Wetzlar electric motor are going up for auction at WestLicht Auction in December of this year. The starting price for this auction is €80,000 (~$105,000), and the camera is expected to fetch up to €180,000 (~$235,440).
The reason this camera is so darn valuable is because while Leica MP2s are already quite rare, only six of them were ever made in black. This is one of them — the first to ever be offered for sale, and in fully original condition. Welcome to the crazy wonderful world of Leica collecting.
Do you think photographers in the future (assuming they exist) will be collecting any cameras being made during our time?
Most of the time we come across an absurdly large and expensive lens on eBay, it’s some sort of lens with focal lengths in the thousands of millimeters (e.g. this 5200mm Canon lens or this 2000mm Nikon lens).
The lens shown above is the Kilfitt Zoomatar 250mm f/1.3 and is currently for sale on eBay. It doesn’t have an absurdly large focal length, but is pretty standard at 250mm. See the little box handing off the end of the lens? That’s the Hasselblad medium format camera this lens is designed for.
The price? A cool $33,751. Needless to say, walking around doing street photography with this lens would earn you some pretty strange looks.
