Coffee is a wonderful thing. Early in the morning, there are few things that can put you at ease like a steaming cup of hot coffee warming your hands and firing up your brain. But have you ever wondered how those coffee advertisements manage to get the perfect shot of a coffee cup, steam and all?
Well, in the tutorial above, commercial photographer Robert Grant of LearnMyShot shows you how to compose and capture the perfect picture of a steaming cup o’ joe that will have you craving your morning caffeine fix. Read more…
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but laziness is definitely its father. Case in point, here’s an interesting tidbit of imaging history: the first webcam ever was actually invented by lazy students at Cambridge University who didn’t want to waste a trip to the nearby coffee pot if it was going to be empty when they got there. Read more…
Lens-shaped coffee mugs and vacuum flasks (the proper name for the Thermos) have become a hot novelty item in the world of photography over the past couple of years, and Leica wants a piece of the action. Two weeks ago, a Leica-branded coffee mug was spotted on eBay, and now it appears that the strange product will be hitting store shelves at brick-and-mortar Leica retail locations. Read more…
Did you know that your morning cup of coffee can help you predict rain? It’s a trick used by backpackers that can come in handy you’re shooting outdoors without Internet: pour a cup of coffee and carefully watch the bubbles. Backpacker Magazine writes,
If the bubbles amass in the center, you’re in a high-pressure system, which is making the coffee’s surface convex (higher in the middle). Since bubbles are mostly air, they migrate to the highest point. It’s going to be a beautiful day. If the bubbles form a ring around the sides of the mug, you’re in a low-pressure system, making the surface concave. Rain is likely. Note: It has to be strong, brewed coffee to have enough oil to work, and the mug must have straight sides.
To make new bubbles, simply give your coffee a good stir.
Here’s another helpful step-by-step guide teaching how to develop B&W film (in this case it’s Agfa APX 100) using powered coffee and vitamin C (AKA “caffenol“). You can also download a text version of the process here.
Here’s a step-by-step video tutorial teaching how to develop your B&W film using instant coffee and powdered vitamin C instead of actual developer. You’ll still need some darkroom gear and some fixer, but it’s a neat way to experiment with film photography. Photo geeks call this solution Caffenol, and there’s even a special Flickr group dedicated to making homebrew developer.
If you’ve never learned how to process film, this is also a great introduction to how it’s done.
If you’re a coffee lover (or addict), adbeus is a photoblog that you’ll want to feast your eyes on. They visit the best independent coffee shops in Montreal and photograph each cup of coffee in exactly the same way: the coffee on the right side of the frame, the table serving as the background, and the camera viewing from above. The result is a project that shows how beautiful and unique cups of coffee can be!
We reported on the Nikon coffee cup that finally appeared on the web months ago, but didn’t get our hands on one until today. We did an unboxing of the Canon coffee mug and thermos back in June, so we’ll do a similar hands-on for this Nikon one. Like the Canon ones, there’s a whole bunch of places making these things (none of which are the camera companies themselves), so there might be some variation on how the thing looks depending on where you buy it from. Read more…
After the enormous success of the Canon 70-200mm Coffee Mug, it was only a matter of time before Nikon-branded cups joined the party. Nikoneans can now rejoice — a 24-70mm coffee cup has just appeared on eBay as a pre-order for $50. It doesn’t appear that Nikon has anything to do with this 1:1 replica cup, but those who have been eagerly waiting for such a thing to appear can now pounce on this awesome (but unofficial) accessory.
Those who want longer focal length coffee cups can also buy a 70-200mm coffee cup for roughly the same price:
Update: Nikon is not affiliated with these cups in any way.
Here’s an interesting advertisement created for McDonald’s free coffee promotion that’s running from November 16-29 in Canada. It was shot using three Canon 5D Mark II cameras and took 660 liters (~175 gallons) of coffee.
This reminded me of the Mona Lisa recreation done for the The Rocks Aroma Festival in Sydney, Australia. That display took 3,604 cups (~225 gallons) of coffee, and 564 pints of milk.
Here’s a stop-motion video of the Mona Lisa display’s “making-of”:
