For those of you that were disappointed when you saw the price of Olympus’ newly-announced E-P5 earlier, the company has another camera up its sleeve to help ease the pain. Although it’s only been given a release date in Japan — lending credence to rumors that it may never sell anywhere else — the much rumored and leaked Olympus PEN Lite E-PL6 has also arrived. Read more…
Ever since the launch of iOS 5 in mid-2011, iPhones, iPads, and iPods have accepted the “volume up” signal as a “take a picture” command, allowing Apple’s headphones to double as handy remote shutter releases. If triggering your camera’s shutter with a pair of earbuds in your hand isn’t “hip” enough for you, check out this new iCA Remote Shutter by Japanese novelty photo company Gizmon. It’s a dedicated shutter release for your iOS device that’s designed to look like a roll of film.
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After the massive leak of pictures showing these exact cameras on April 30th, their official release isn’t as exciting as it probably should be. But nevertheless, the new NEX-F3 and A37 are now an official part of the Sony lineup, complete with a new 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 lens.
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The big news spreading across the internet is that Adobe CS6 officially released today. The announcement, which confirms previous rumors of a May 7th ship date, came late last night and means that we can all finally get our hands on Content-Aware Move and all of the other features we’ve been dying to try.
Those who want to opt for Creative Cloud will have to wait a few more days, however, as Adobe has announced that it won’t be going live with the subscription version of its service until May 11th.
After the death of Osama bin Laden and the subsequent dumping of his body into the sea, a number of groups have called for the release of photographs captured during and after the raid — particularly the images showing his corpse. A year ago we reported that the Associated Press had taken legal action to obtain the images. Yesterday federal judge James Boasberg put an end to all the requests by ruling that there were legitimate national security interests at stake and that the photos would not be released. He writes,
A picture may be worth a thousand words. And perhaps moving pictures bear an even higher value. Yet, in this case, verbal descriptions of the death and burial of Osama bin Laden will have to suffice, for this court will not order the release of anything more.
Needless to say, this latest ruling will help the many conspiracy theories about bin Laden’s death live on.
Trigger Happy is a new product that lets you use your iOS or Android smartphone as a fancy camera remote. It consists of an app and a one-meter-long cable that goes from your phone’s audio jack to your camera. Besides acting as a simple remote shutter release for shake-free shots, the app offers bulb functionality for timing long exposures, an intervalometer for timelapse photography, HDR mode, and bramping. They’re also working on lightning detection, audio waveform detection, face detection, and accelerometer-based triggering.
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Nikonian DSLR shooters will soon be able to use their existing F-mount lenses with Nikon’s 1 System line of mirrorless cameras. The FT1 adapter launches next week in Japan on December 22nd for ¥23,310, or roughly $300. Most lenses in the mount system will be compatible, and AF-S lenses will have the added advantage of being able to utilize the cameras’ autofocus systems. Be prepared for massive crop though — the tiny sensor on the cameras mean that your lenses will have a crazy 2.7x crop factor. A 50mm normal lens will turn into a 135mm telephoto lens.
FT1-mount adapter (via The Verge)
Photography business analyst Dan Heller has written a helpful post in which he busts common misconceptions photographers in the US have about model releases. A big one is that you need to first obtain a model release before selling photos of people. Heller writes,
[...] newspapers buy photos, and their use of the photo is unlikely to need a release. So, selling a photo (and making a profit doing so) to a newspaper also does not require a release. And because the law does not require you to have any knowledge of the buyer or their intended use of a photo, you are always allowed to sell photos without a release.
His point is that model releases have to do with photographs being published, not sold. A photographer cannot publish the photos however they’d like, but they can sell them however they’d like since liability rests solely with the eventual publisher. That said, it’s still a good idea to always use one, since they’re often required by the buyers.
Busting Myths about Model Releases [Dan Heller]
If you’re a Flickr loyalist that hasn’t jumped ship for competing services, Flickr is rewarding you with a couple new tools for sharing your photos. Today the company announced an official app for Android and a new photo-sharing feature called Photo Sessions.
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Sigma announced today that its flagship SD1 DSLR will be available starting in June 2011 with a hefty price tag of $9,700. The unique thing about the camera compared to its competitors is the 15MP Foveon sensor that uses 3 stacked sensors, giving each photo 46 million pixels of color data — this supposedly helps provide sharper pictures, truer colors, and fewer artifacts compared to traditional sensors (but also means 45MB Raw files). The camera will shoot at 5fps, use 11 autofocus points, and have a 3-inch LCD screen.
Sigma is reportedly targeting existing medium format shooters with this camera, but the sensor had better be out of this world to justify shelling out nearly 10K on a 1.5x crop factor 15MP DSLR, since photographers can pick up the 40-megapixel medium-format Pentax 645D for the same price.
Update: Sigma has released a number of sample photos here. Be patient with the site though — it seems to be under a heavy load.
