Portuguese photographer Antonio Simoes was in South Africa to shoot the World Cup when he was robbed at gunpoint in his hotel room yesterday morning.

Two men entered his room at the Nutbush Boma Lodge at about 4am, pointed a gun at his head, and stole roughly $35,000 worth of camera equipment. Two other journalists staying in the hotel were also robbed that same morning.

Simoes, who works for Portuguese sports newspaper O Jogo, tells the Associated Press:

One of the guys pointed a hand gun at my head, and then they took all my gear — cameras, lenses, laptop. Then they told me to lie on the bed and they covered me with a blanket, pressed the gun against my head and told me to sleep.

$35,000 worth of gear… Wow. Any guesses to what he was carrying that adds up to that figure? If you’re going to be photographing in South Africa this summer, be careful.

(via PDN Pulse)

Image credit: The Robbery by gcfairch

Apple recently announced that they’ve passed the 2 million mark for iPads sold, and it looks like a large number of the owners would like to import photographs onto the device from their cameras. The already overpriced Camera Connection Kit, which ordinarily sells for $29 on Apple’s website, is now selling for over $100 on eBay. The reason is that the item is backordered on Apple’s website, and iPad owners seem to prefer paying an extra $70+ dollars instead of waiting 3-4 weeks.

The prices should plummet once Apple catches up and when 3rd-party kits start showing up on eBay from Asia.

(via Engadget)

At just 3 years old, young photographer Ruby Ellenby captured the attention of her hometown last month with her first solo exhibition in San Francisco. Tonight, Ruby’s story was featured on NBC Nightly News. The piece offers a mini behind-the-scenes peek at how Ruby goes about shooting, and some of her fans share their thoughts. Cute!

(via NBC Nightly News)

Gosh, and we though having HD video on a cell phone was enough. Sharp has just announced the world’s first 3D HD camera designed for cell phones and point-and-shoot cameras. This thing is capable of filming 3D footage at 720p, and will see mass production starting in 2010.

Before long we’ll be picture and video messaging one another in 3D. Hopefully it won’t require special glasses.

Pentax has unveiled a new “Rainbow” version of the K-x DSLR camera. The limited edition camera will only be available in Japan through Tower Records starting on July 23, 2010.

Only 1,000 of these units will be made, and each one will set you back ¥74,800 (~$800). Aside from the funky colors, the technical specifications of this camera are exactly the same as other K-x DSLRs:

The camera is part of a 2010 campaign with a “Rainbow” theme by Tower Records that also includes footwear, t-shirts, and backpacks.

Selling strange looking cameras is nothing new to Pentax — they already allow you to customize your colors, and last year they released a limited edition “robotic” themed camera.

As Newsweek continues to cause its parent company to bleed money, a new magazine is trying to defy the demise of print by being agile and efficient. 48 Hour Magazine is a project that aims to “write, photograph, illustrate, design, edit, and ship a magazine in two days.”

The team of editors behind the mag include Heather Champ (former community director of Flickr) and her husband Derek Powazek. The duo were previous the founding editors of JPG Magazine so, needless to say, they know a thing or two about the business.

“Issue Zero” had the theme “hustle”, and went from an idea at noon on May 7th to a complete magazine at noon on May 9th. The team received 1,502 submissions from all around the world, including from artists and writers at well known publications such as Rolling Stone and Wired.

The 60-page magazine is now available through HP’s MagCloud (which Derek Powazek helped start) for the price of $10. The page also features a preview of the entire magazine at low resolution.

Canon isn’t letting Sony have all the fun today — they’ve announced their latest Digital ELPH camera, the SD4000 (also known as the IXUS 300HS outside the US). The 10-megapixel camera has two features that really popped out to us: 240 frame per second slow motion video at 320×240, and ISO 6400 for low-light shooting. It can also capture 720p HD video, just not in slow-motion. If you’ve always wanted to play around with slow motion, this camera can enable you to do so (just for lower-res videos). The camera is priced at £379 (~$560) in the UK, and US pricing has not been announced yet.

Sony officially announced their new EVIL cameras, the NEX-3 and NEX-5. There wasn’t really anything in the announcement that we didn’t know before today. After all, the actual camera was spotted in an Asian bar at the end of last month, and official photos and specs started appearing online yesterday.

Both cameras are intended to compete with the Micro Four Thirds format, and use Sony’s new E-mount interchangeable lens system. They boast 14 megapixel APS-C CMOS sensors, and have tilting 3 inch LCD screens. The NEX-5 offers 1080i AVCHD video on top of the 720p found on the NEX-3. For more specs, check out our post about the camera yesterday.

Now onto the surprising news… Sony is developing an interchangeable lens camcorder!

The camcorder will use the same sensors found in the NEX cameras and the same E-mount lenses. Additionally, it will accept any of the lenses designed for the Alpha range of Sony cameras with an adapter.

Imagine if Canon or Nikon released a camcorder that accepted their DSLR lenses! I’m guessing they’re already working on such things, and that Sony simply wanted a slight head start by announcing their efforts earlier.

What are your thoughts on these new cameras? Do you think Canon and Nikon should jump into these markets?

Kristofer Minkstein from Embed Article recently contacted us asking whether we’d like to be a launch partner for a new service they’re planning to launch in a month called Embed Image. Unauthorized image use isn’t a big problem for us, so I don’t think we’ll be using the service, but the idea was interesting enough that I thought I’d share it with all of you.

Both Embed Article and Embed Image have the goal of preventing unauthorized use of content, whether it’s text or images. Embed Article prevents people from copying text with Ctrl-C (or Command-C), displaying a overlay with some embed code for the text instead. In the same way, when visitors of a site using Embed Image hover over a photo, an “embed image” button appears that displays some javascript embed code when clicked. The embed code will display your photo on other websites, just like how YouTube videos can be embedded. To see a live demo, check out the example they’ve put up.

So why would you want to do this? The idea is that giving people an authorized way of embedded an image may prevent unauthorized use. The embedded image automatically links back to the original, and even contains ad space you can use to monetize your photos with. Furthermore, the service will have reporting that shows you where and how your images are being used.

What do you think of this idea? Do you think embeddable images will become popular with photographers and photobloggers?

Polaroid stopped making instant cameras back in 2007, and ceased production of instant film two years later. Before Polaroid pulled out completely, the Dutch-based Impossible Project purchased Polaroid’s old equipment and factory in the Netherlands in an attempt to save Polaroid film from going extinct.

The company successfully re-engineered the film, and launched the new line of instant films a couple months ago. Recently they even opened up a storefront in New York City.

In the meantime, Polaroid found a new owner, and recruited Lady Gaga as the Creative Director and face of the company. Last week Polaroid announced a new instant film camera, the Polaroid 300, which looks remarkably similar to the Fujifilm Instax Mini 7.

According to Amateur Photographer, The Impossible Project isn’t very happy with the new camera, since they were expecting Polaroid to announce a new camera that would accept their 600-type film. Polaroid had showcased such a camera back at CES 2010 earlier this year.

A spokesperson for the company was quoted as saying,

The management of the Impossible Project finds this confusing and clearly wants to state that the Polaroid 300 is not the camera that has been announced in Polaroid’s press release from January 7 2010.

My guess is that we’ll be seeing Polaroid’s real announcement coming soon. If you’re a fan of Polaroid photography, hold your horses — good things come to those who wait.

On a semi-related note, Wikipedia has a pretty interesting summary of how The Impossible Project came to be:

Austrian photographer Florian Kaps, the owner of the largest online vendor for SX-70 films and organizer of the web-based instant photo gallery Polanoid.net, had bought the approximately 500,000 film packages that were on stock. He teamed with André Bosman, a former head of film production in the large Polaroid film factory at Enschede, designed a plan to redesign the SX-70/600 film system in collaboration with Ilford Photo, and convinced the Polaroid owners to participate. Plans for a relaunch under the Impossible label were announced in January 2009. Buildings in the Enschede plant, which had produced 30 million film packs in 2007 and 24 million in the first half of 2008, were leased to the company created by Kaps, who by May 2009 had raised $2.6 million from friends and family for what he had named The Impossible Project.

500,000 film packages? Wow…