Here’s a behind-the-scenes video showing Chinese photographer ERIC getting up close and personal with strangers on the streets of Hong Kong and Mainland China. He uses a Mamiya 7II and a large Metz flash, chewing through medium format film as though he was shooting digital. It’s interesting to see how people in China seem less defensive about this kind of photography compared to people in New York, Derby, or Hollywood.
Japanese electronics giant Pioneer is dipping its toes in the digital camera industry. It has partnered with camera maker Asia Optical to make Pioneer branded cameras in Brazil to sell in the Chinese market. The company aims to have sales of half a million units by 2015. Up to this point, the company had focused on things like car audio systems, television, and DVD players. It’ll be interesting to see if Pioneer can find a foothold and steal some market share from the big players.
Earlier this week an Internet user in China visited their county government website and was greeted with a horribly Photoshopped photograph showing three government officials inspecting a road. The caption read,
County mayor Li Ningyi and vice-mayor Tang Xiaobing are inspecting the newly constructed country road at Lihong Town.
When governments or corporations do a bad job at image manipulation and get caught, the photos often go viral get remixed all over the Internet — see BP’s helicopter incident — and this case was no exception. The photo immediately spread across forums, and Photoshop users began creating image showing the three officials in all kinds of random situations. Read more…
Having old photographs restored is a service that many residents in China can’t afford, but a 76-year-old man named Baojun Yuan is doing his part to help his fellow citizens by offering his astonishing Photoshop talents free of charge. After learning how to use the program when he was 60 years old, Yuan purchased a computer and scanner, and has fixed more than 2,000 photographs. He says, “my teacher just taught me how to repair the photos, but he forgot to tell me how to charge.” Read more…
In China there’s a belief that burning paper representations of a deceased person’s belongings allows it to be transfered to the afterlife for the departed person to use. Au Yeung Ping Chi, an effigy maker in Hong Kong and the owner of Bo Wah Effigies, is often asked to create effigies of trendy consumer items such as iPhones and Nintendo Wiis for relatives of those who die young. The above is a camera he created for the purpose of afterlife photography. He’ll probably be asked to create Leica M9 Titanium editions soon.
Check out some more of Au Yeung’s paper creations here.
Totems is a series by photographer Alain Delorme that imagines an augmented reality of Chinese migrant workers in Shanghai transporting monstrous shipments from place to place using bicycles. Delorme captured 6,000 photographs over the course of 44 days while biking around Shanghai, and then created these photo-manipulations using Photoshop. Read more…
Canon debuted this concept camera at the Shanghai World Expo, revealing their plans for the future of photography. The concept camera, dubbed the Wonder Camera, has many functions that already exist in many cameras, but takes them a step further.
The Wonder Camera would have high-speed, multi-level focus. It would also have the ability to shoot both stills and video, but quality stills can also be taken out from individual frames of the video reel. Not only will it have face recognition, it will have smile recognition and the ability to single out those who smile out of a crowd.
It also would have super zoom capabilities, but improved built-in image stabilization to reduce the need for tripods — and perhaps eliminating the need for interchangeable lenses altogether. Canon also hopes to integrate faster wireless connectivity into the camera body.
And on top of all the features, the resolution might be measured in something much larger than megapixels — petapixels, perhaps?
Canon forecasts that a working, consumer-ready model of this camera might not exist for another 20 years, but it’s likely that we’ll see some of these features seeping into near-future consumer cameras.
Sony recently announced an interchangeable lens camcorder, but if you can’t stand the wait until it’s released, cheap gadget dealer Brando has these Vivikai camcorders that come equipped with an 8x telescope. The Chinese company, Vivikai (no relation to Vivitar) has more photos of this Frankenstein camcorder mod on their site.
In spite of decent specs, including 12 megapixel image resolution and ISO 100, the standard definition telescoped image looks like it was taken with a toy camera. But for $100, that sounds about right.
The “EOS 550D Jackie Chan Eye of Dragon” special edition kit comes with an EF-S 18-135mm lens, camera case, strap, and special photo album. Everything except the lens is branded with Jackie’s logo. Only 2010 of these kits will be made, and each costs a whopping ¥10,000, or roughly $1465.
Any guesses as to which random celebrity Nikon is planning to team up with?
Sony recently announced an 
