You can pick up a mini tripod for your compact camera over at Meritline today for just $0.74 with shipping included. Just add the tripod to your shopping cart and enter the coupon code MLCKXFHUER0503NL1 at the checkout screen.
Update: The coupon code has now expired
If you’ve ever wanted to know what the guts of a Nikon D5100 look like, iFixit just published a meticulously documented teardown of the camera. Aside from pointing out the various parts found in the body, an interesting conclusion the iFixit team came to was that the D5100 has a horrible “Repairability Score” of 2/10, where 10 is easiest to repair. The reason? “Approximately 4 billion screws hold the device together” (They’re exaggerating, of course).
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The Frazier Ultimate lens is like the universe’s anti-matter to the Canon 50mm f/1.0 that we shared yesterday. Rather than have a tiny depth of field and tons of bokeh, the Frazier lens is one that has massive depth of field, allowing both the foreground and background of the image to be in focus at the same time. It’s widely used in Hollywood and in wildlife documentaries, and the video above shows some of the visual tricks you can do when having infinite DoF.
InfinityLens (via Reddit)
Flickr user Frannie 1 shot these beautiful photographs of the rare Canon 50mm f/1.0. The lens currently goes for over $4,000 used on eBay. That is one beautiful piece of glass!
(via Photojojo)
Image credits: Photographs by Frannie 1 and used with permission
Top of the line DSLR cameras are cheaper, more versatile, and superior in most specs when compared to the $7,000 Leica M9, so why would a photographer ever choose an M9? In this video, NYC hip hop photographer John Ricard argues that it boils down to two things: usability and focus.
(via CurrentPhotographer)
One of the biggest hits this past April Fool’s Day was RE-35, a futuristic cartridge that transforms any 35mm film camera into a digital one. As the website went viral, many people actually thought it was a real product, prompting the design company behind the design to issue a notice on the website explaining that it was fake. As stated by numerous readers, digital film isn’t exactly a new idea — an actual company called Silicon Film attempted this product about a decade ago (and even gave a demo at PMA 2001) but ran into “storage, battery, environment and sensor size limitations“.
Judging from the response to this April Fool’s Prank, however, it’s pretty clear that this is an idea that would be enormously popular with photographers if it were to actually exist and perform reasonably well. The above illustration is another concept design for “digital film”, created by students of Hongik University for the iF Design Awards this year.
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If Doctor Octopus were to design a DIY flash accessory, it might look a little something like this. German microbiologist Marcell Nikolausz has been experimenting with using fiber optics to split a single flash unit’s light into multiple light sources. Optical fibers are threaded through Gorillapod-style Loc-Line channels, allowing flexible and stable positioning of the light sources. Each individual light source can be controlled using various modifiers (e.g. diffusers, gels, etc..), changing their quality and intensity.
For some sample photographs taken with this contraption, check out this set of photos. You can also learn more about Nikolausz’s experimentation on his blog.
(via Strobist)
Image credits: Photographs by Marcell Nikolausz and used with permission
Most modern tripods are made of materials that are designed to be light-weight yet stable. If having the lightest of tripods isn’t a requirement for you, then check out these hand-made wooden tripods from the German company Berlebach. Though they can weigh in at 6+ pounds, the solid ash wood legs are supposedly better at dampening vibration than steel, carbon, or aluminum. Plus, they look pretty snazzy.
You can purchase them directly from Berlebach, or find one marketed as the “Expedition Wooden Tripod” over on Photojojo for $290.
(via Wired)
No, this isn’t some advanced beam weapon from a sci-fi flick. It’s actually a do-it-yourself ring flash created using 150 optical fibers, with one end wrapped over the pop-up flash of the DSLR and the other end spitting out the photons in a ring-shape. If you want to learn how to make your own, here’s an in-depth writeup on how this was constructed.
I needed a foot switch for my DSLR camera so that I could take hands-free pictures. On a long-shot, I went down to the local Radioshack to see if they had one. As expected, they didn’t have any camera foot switches, but I did luck out that they had all the parts necessary to build my own. Here is how to throw together a 5-minute camera foot switch with easily obtainable parts from Radioshack.
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