Kodak uploaded a video to YouTube recently thats been causing quite a bit of controversy. It’s a talk by Rob Hummel at Cine Gear Expo 2011 in which he states that bringing your digital camera onto an airplane will damage its sensor and cause dead pixels (it’s about 8min into the video). The reasoning is that at altitudes of 20,000ft and higher, you would need 125ft of concrete to shield yourself from the gamma rays, which induce voltages in the sensors and fry the photo sites. He also claims that manufacturers only transport cameras by sea, and that they all keep quiet about this because they fear a class action lawsuit.
The comments on the YouTube video and the dpreview forums are filled with people who believe that this is simply an attempt by Kodak to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) over digital cameras in an effort to lure more people to using film. So, which is it? Fact or FUD?
Australian PhD student Hamish Innes-Brown lurked around Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne and shot these beautiful photographs of airplanes landing using a Mamiya C330 twin lens reflex camera and Kodak Portra 160NC medium format film. Read more…
Reuters photographer Beawiharta was on a short flight from Singapore to Jakarta with his wife and three kids, when one of the engines suddenly exploded into flames. As a sharp burning odor permeated the cabin, the plane began to vibrate harder and harder, and finally the electricity turned off. Accepting the fact that if they died their family would die together, Beawiharta grabbed his DSLR and started photographing:
After that, I became calm because I was not afraid to die because we would all die together. I started to adjust my camera, which was hanging around my neck. I set the ISO higher, set the white balance, checked the battery was full and saw I had around 300 clicks for the rest of the memory card. I started to take pictures, though it was dark. I forgot my Canon EOS5dmk2 has a full HD video, so I forgot to record the situation. After 20 years living as a photographer, I was thinking as a photographer. [#]
There’s a lot of paranoia when it comes to doing photography in and around airports these days — much to the dismay of plane spotters — but wedding photographer and airplane enthusiast Lynn-Kai Chao came up with a neat way to do airplane photography without worrying the TSA: by using airplane models. Believe it or not, the above photograph is actually a Photoshopped photograph of Chao holding a model airplane. Read more…
Last week a United Airlines flight out of Denver International Airport was returned to the gate after being ready for takeoff when a passenger noticed “suspicious behavior” and notified a flight attendant. The plane was evacuated and swept for suspicious devices, the suspicious passengers were taken and questioned, and the flight was delayed by 2.5 hours. Now it’s believed that the passengers were simply taking pictures during taxiing, though the fact that two of the picture takers were of Middle Eastern descent likely had something to do with the “suspiciousness”.
We’re lucky that cameras and camcorders can be used during flights, or we wouldn’t have this amazing view of the Space Shuttle Discovery‘s final launch from inside an airplane. There was also a student project that captured the launch from the edges of space using camera-laden a balloon.
Viral marketing agency The Viral Factory is helping Samsung with an experiment in which they’re planning to drop 100 SD cards attached to paper airplanes from 21 miles above the Earth in the stratosphere. Instructions will be printed on the paper airplane informing anyone who finds one of the experiment and what they can do to participate. Finders are encouraged to shoot with the cards and then upload anything taken to the Project Space Planes website.
The claim that the planes will “carry the messages across the world” is a bit farfetched, but supposedly the planes could potentially travel hundreds of miles depending on the wind conditions. The experiment is planned for mid-October. Read more…
Photography rights advocate Carlos Miller came across the above poster recently put out by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Apparently the administration doesn’t know that there’s a huge number of non-terrorist photographers who enjoy doing something called aviation photography.
