If you’ve ever shot with a Leica M rangefinder, you probably know how effective the camera can be for stealthy shooting. After all, there’s no mirror that needs to swing out of the way like there is in a DSLR, so the main sound you’ll hear is the soft click of the shutter curtain flapping open to expose the film or sensor.
It’s not just Leica aficionados that appreciate the silent shutter: did you know that the Leica M is held as the standard for silent photography in courtrooms across the United States? Read more…
“How’s the image quality on the TriPod 5?” That’s a question you would perhaps be hearing these days if certain decisions had been made differently years ago over in Apple HQ. When the Cupertino-based company was brainstorming names for the smartphone that would eventually be called the “iPhone,” one of the names that was being considered was “TriPod.” Read more…
In in 1946, the United States conducted a series of nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in what’s known as Operation Crossroads. A total of two bombs were detonated to test the effects nuclear blasts had on naval warships. The second, named Baker, was the world’s first nuke to be detonated underwater. Due to the unique properties of underwater explosions, the Baker test produced a number of unique photographs that the world had never seen before. Read more…
When people test cameras and lenses for resolution, they commonly use special resolution test charts that are filled with black bars of varying lengths and thicknesses. They’re kind of like eye charts, except for cameras instead of eyeballs, and with lines instead of letters.
Well, did you know that in dozens of locations around the United States, there are gigantic resolution test charts on the ground? Read more…
Instantly recognizable by his eerily calm voice and red, all-seeing eye (not to mention his penchant for killing crew members when they became troublesome), HAL 9000 is listed as the 13th greatest film villain in AFI’s 100 Years…100 Heroes & Villains. But did you know that HAL 9000′s all-seeing eye was actually a Nikkor 8mm f/8 fisheye lens?Read more…
The term “bokeh” is often used in the world of photography to describe the quality of the out-of-focus blur in photographs. Do you know how it’s pronounced? Read more…
There are well over 100 million users on Instagram (assuming a quarter of them didn’t just up and leave), and even though the typical Instagram photo stream consists of food and the family pet, there are certain places that show up more often than others. Times Square, The Eiffel Tower, Disneyland, the Bangkok Airport… wait… that last one seems out of place doesn’t it?
As it turns out, no. Not only is Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport the number one most Instagrammed location of 2012, but Bangkok’s massive shopping mall, Siam Paragon, took second. Only then does the list become populated by the locations you might expect to see. Read more…
It would be nice if the pictures took themselves. But it takes a village, it seems, to get a picture taken on Mars [...] for a single snap shot you might have the Geology Science Theme Group conceive and design it en masse; the PUL-1 plan it; the entire (on staff) Science Operations Working Group discuss it and include it in the daily plan, the PUL-2 actually write it, and the engineering uplink team review and approve it before the Ace hits the button to radiate it, with the sol’s command, bundle to the rover. That’s a group the size of a small village.
Camera operator Mark Lemmon also talks about how the team often goes to great lengths to nail lighting and composition. With so many resources drained into each photo, casual snapshots aren’t exactly Curiosity’s thing.
Did you know that some of the most famous master painters from centuries past may have actually used camera “technology” to aid them in creating their masterpieces? According to the hotly debated Hockney-Falco thesis, some well-known artists likely used rudimentary camera obscura rooms as a tool — essentially “tracing” parts of their work. Read more…
Just in case this question ever comes up while you’re playing the world’s hardest game of photography trivia, what you see above is the first photograph ever snapped in Finland. Mats Söderlund of The Crop Factor writes,
This may look like something captured with Instagram on the newest smartphone, but it’s something a bit different indeed. It is the first photograph taken in Finland, ever. The photo dates back to the year 1842, and celebrated its 170th birthday last Saturday, November 3rd. The photograph is a daguerreotype [...] It was taken in Turku, which ironically also is Finland’s oldest city [...] The photographer was Henrik Cajander, a doctor by trade who lived on the very street the photo was taken [...]
As you can see the photo isn’t exactly perfect, technically or aesthetically speaking, but it is a big part of the history in Finnish photography. Some might call the crooked composition an amateur mistake, but the photographer was, in the realest sense, an amateur at what he was doing.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if there were a gallery of the first photographs shot in each country on Earth?
