UC Berkeley’s library system is the fourth largest library in the United States, so it’s no wonder that treasures are often forgotten and buried inside the rare collections. Case in point: a massive collection of signed prints by Ansel Adams have been discovered in one of the 32 libraries, just sitting around in a box.
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The world’s first color moving pictures have been discovered, dating back to 1902. The film sat forgotten in an old metal tin for 110 years before being found recently by Michael Harvey, the Curator of Cinematography at the National Media Museum in England. The pictures were part of a test reel of early color experiments by an Edwardian inventor named Edward Raymond Turner, and show Turners children, soldiers marching, domesticated birds, and even a girl on a swing set.
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Jack Robinson was a quiet man who mostly kept to himself, which explains why it was his boss, Dan Oppenheimer, who was left to take care of his estate when he passed. Little did Oppenheimer realize, however, that when he opened the closet in Jack Robinson’s incredibly tidy apartment, he would find a collection of pristine portraits of celebrities that Robinson shot in his early days as a commercial photographer for Vogue.
As it turns out, Robinson had acquired over 150,000 prints of famous ’50s, ’60s and ’70s icons ranging from Joni Mitchell to The Who before falling victim to alcoholism and moving to Memphis, leaving that life behind. And now interested parties will be able to get their hands on more of Robinson’s work than ever before in a book titled: Jack Robinson On Show: Portraits 1958-72. If you’re interested in seeing more of Robinson’s portraits, pay a visit to his online archives.
The Jack Robinson Archive (via NPR via Coudal Partners)
The private photographs on your phone might not be as private as you think. Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that iOS has a loophole that allows third-party apps who have access to location information to also access (and copy) your entire photo library without any further notification or warning. A couple days later, Android was also found to have a loophole that’s even worse — any app that can access the Internet can copy photos to a remote server! Both companies have acknowledged the privacy flaws and are currently working on fixes for them. Welcome to the scary world of Internet-connected cameras!
Image credit: iPhone Camera by Nico Kaiser
Here’s some interesting color footage showing the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1939. Tom Pappalardo stumbled upon it after buying some 8mm film from a junk shop. He writes,
I bought this reel at a junk shop in Northampton, Massachusetts (I think?) about a decade ago. It sat unwatched in a box of other random Super 8/8mm reels for quite awhile, until I decided I wanted to capture some of my family’s own home movies. Since I had the projector set up, I ended up sifting through all my other ‘mystery’ reels, and this was one of them.
Hopefully memory cards also last 72 years for people of the future to discover in the same way… Hope you guys are having a good Thanksgiving!
(via Laughing Squid)
Developer Conrad Kramer was poking around in iOS 5 when he stumbled upon a hidden panorama feature built into the operating system. It allows you to create panoramic photos by simply sweeping your camera across a scene. If you’re familiar with iOS, unlocking the feature involves changing a single line in a preference file (set EnableFirebreak to “YES” in com.apple.mobileslideshow.plist). People with jailbroken iPhones and iPods can also download the new Firebreak app in Cydia.
On a rainy day recently, light painting photographer Jeremy Jackson was playing around with a green laser pointer when he discovered something interesting: all the out of focus raindrops in the photograph had a lined pattern in them — and each one was unique! These “water drop snowflakes” were found in all of the photos he took that day.
Anyone know what causes this phenomenon?
(via DIYPhotography)
Image credit: Photograph by Jeremy Jackson and used with permission
We may be close to seeing a Canon DSLR with an articulating touchscreen — and possibly even built-in Wi-Fi. A patent filing discovered by Photography Bay has more details on the touchscreen, which we reported on two years ago. A sensor above the screen prevents your nose from changing settings by detecting when your face is pressed against the camera. There are also what appear to be network and Wi-Fi icons on the screen, suggesting that Canon may soon bring Eye-Fi style data transfers to DSLRs.
View the Patent (via Photography Bay)
P.S. Canon will reportedly be announcing a new camera tomorrow. Stay tuned.
The 4th version of Android, named Ice Cream Sandwich, is set to be released sometime in the next month or so. If you’ve been craving for a built-in photo editor, you may soon get your wish. Android Police has uncovered a boatload of icons and images that strongly suggest that future Android phones and tablets will ship with photo editing tools built into Android Gallery. In addition to basic tools such as crop, sharpen, and rotate, there will apparently be 19 different photo effects you can apply as well. Sadly, they’re of the cheesier variety (e.g. posterize), so don’t expect them to compete with the likes of Instagram anytime soon.
(via Android Police via Engadget)
Back in August, it came to light that some of Leica’s $7,000 M9 cameras had a problem in which they would corrupt the SD card being used — a problem that caused one photographer to permanently lose work after a day of shooting. The company quickly acknowledged the problem, and today announced that they had finally discovered the cause:
Thanks to the close collaboration with SD card manufacturers, Leica has now managed to rectify the fault by making adjustments to the firmware. To ensure compatibility with as many cards as possible and to ensure that all the related processes remain fault-free and are not compromised, comprehensive testing must be carried out in the development phase.
In the coming weeks we will test a beta version of the firmware in practice in cooperation with affected and selected customers.
The firmware fix will be released to the general public after they’ve thoroughly tested it.
