March 2010

Well, that was fast. Just a day after removing Version 2.0.3 of the 5D Mark II firmware due to a bug, Canon has released firmware Version 2.0.4, which simply fixes the bug in Version 2.0.3.

Fashion label LeSportsac will be joining with Canon in its release of a case designed exclusively for the PowerShot camera, the companies announced today.

Danish-Norwegian artist Nina Maria Kleivan has come under fire for a series of photographs in which she dresses up her year-old daughter Faustina as some of history's most evil figures. The series, titled "Potency", has been shown in exhibitions around Europe, and is meant to explore the nature of evil.

Just days after releasing a firmware update that brought 24 fps video to the 5D Mark II, Canon has pulled the update due to a malfunction that occurred.

Ever wonder what a vinyl record looks like under an electron microscope? Okay, probably not. Luckily, there's people who do, including Chris Supranowitz, who created a number of electron microscope images for a course at the University of Rochester.

This past week we ran a poll asking our readers what operating system they mainly use. Here are the results: …

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will soon be accepting applications for new generic top level domains (gTLD) to be created, potentially ushering in a new Internet land rush.

We reported last month that the New York auction house, Sotheby's will be facilitating the sale of more than 1,200 photos from the Polaroid company's collection this June. The photos include images captured by legendary photographers and artists such as Ansel Adams and Andy Warhol. Sotheby's estimates that the collection will raise some $7.5 million to $11.5 million, which will go towards paying for Polaroid's Minnesota bankruptcy court.

It might be hard to believe, but each of the following "paintings" is actually a photograph by artist Alexa Meade.

When Canon released the 5D Mark II, many who wanted to utilize the HD-video recording capabilities were disappointed that it only offered 30 frames per second (fps) and not 24.

contacts who've faved is a web application that allows you to quickly browse through photographs that your contacts recently marked as a favorite. Simply give the application read permissions by logging into it via Flickr, and it will display a grid of thumbnails for you to enjoy. The service was created by Aaron Straup Cope, a senior engineer on the Flickr team.

The Paparazzi Bots are a series of robots invented by Ken Rinaldo, a faculty member in the Department of Art at Ohio State University. Each bot is autonomous, and moves about on a wheeled platform, using infrared sensors to move towards humans. It's goal is to take single photographs of people, and it makes decisions on whether or not to capture the photograph based on facial expressions of the subject. If you happen to be smiling, the bot is more likely to photograph you.

Fifty years ago, Cuban photographer Alberto Díaz "Korda" Gutiérrez took a picture of Ernesto "Che" Guevara at a funeral with a 90mm lens on a Leica camera.

Photo Magician is a free and lightweight (less than 1MB) program for Windows that allows you to batch convert a directory of photographs. It's similar in functionality to Photoshop's "Image Processor" feature, with one difference being you can't select the output quality like you can using Photoshop.

Japanese company Green House recently released the Mini Digi, an "ultra-compact" digital camera that fits on your keychain. This eye-catching gadget is only 2.5 inches wide, and captures up to 160 photographs at .3 megapixels. If you get tired of carrying it around with your keys, you can also attach it to your computer and use it as a webcam. Oh, and did we mention it shoots AVI format videos as well? The Mini Digi is available through the online store for $20.

If you've ever tried photographing a dog or cat, you probably know how difficult it can be to take a sharp photo while it's looking at you. My friend's dog (a pomeranian) is actually scared of my camera, and shies away when the DSLR is pointed at him.

The Cloak Bag is a minimalistic camera bag with a pretty unique feature: it allows you to photograph without removing your camera.

The Washington Post just published an interesting article called "Pros and cons to Facebook's fast-growing role in digital photography", which contains quite a few interesting statistics. Among them, …

Sony has been quite mum with regards to their upcoming ultra-compact camera. However, they've begun releasing some teasers to give us a better idea of what's to come, including the above YouTube video and the following screenshots of the touchscreen interface:

Hallmark Cards recently held a photography competition in the UK called "The Picture of Motherhood", inviting people to enter photographs that capture the essence of being a mother. After a nationwide search, an expert panel of judges has selected the above photograph, shot by Jenny Downing, as the winner. She comments, …

There's a new video on YouTube showing a gigantic shipping container camera promoting a Samsung camera. In the video, bystanders can actually use the "camera" by inserting some money into a coin slot, and then having someone jump onto the massive shutter button on top of the shipping container. The resulting photograph is then displayed on a gigantic screen atop a nearby building.

The Open Camera Controller (OCC) is a project that aims to build a platform for controlling your digital camera via a Nintendo DS. Getting the system working requires a good deal of technical expertise in things like electronics and software, but once you have a working system running the open source platform, you can install all sorts of homebrew apps onto the OCC. Available apps include an intervalometer, bracketing controls, sound triggers, and more.

This fascinating video shows how Magnum photographer Bruce Gilden does his street photography in New York City. If you've ever wondered what kind of person it takes to capture closeup shots of people in a place like NYC, this video may be very interesting to you. He's the complete opposite of someone who stands on the other side of the street, using a telephoto to "get close".

Acclaimed photographer Harry Benson was recently flipping through the New York Times when he came across an article about the Whitney Biennial exhibition in NYC, one of the leading shows for up-and-coming artists. He was shocked to find that the installation featured in the main photograph was using one of his photographs without permission.

Easy Release is a new iPhone app designed to make it easy for you to secure model and property releases.

Last year the Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition dealt with controversy when the winning photographer was stripped of his award for staging his photograph.

Kai at DigitalRev was recently given the challenge of painting a Nikon D90 pink magenta. He chooses to dismantle the camera in order to paint individual components, but works on it as carefully as one would work on a steak. At one point he even gets an electric shock from the components, though we're wondering why he didn't simply remove the battery. The camera miraculously looks somewhat normal in the end, but several parts are broken in the process (LCD won't turn on, and popup flash wont' go …

More good news for photographers in the UK. A week after UK's terror tsar called for the abolition of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, UK's Crime Minister David Hanson has new statements assuring photographers that anti-terrorism legislation should not be used to hinder photography. He is quoted as saying, …

Pentax has unveiled the 645D, a medium format DSLR with impressive specs and a (relatively) low price of ~$9,400. The 40 megapixel camera has a 33mm x 44mm sensor, 3 inch LCD screen, and is designed to be compatible with the existing 645 lens system. Features include 11 autofocus points, a dust removal mechanism, 77-segment multi-pattern metering, 1.1 fps, ISO 200-1000 (expandable to 100-1600), a built in HDR mode, and dynamic-range expansion.

Looks like the Canon 70-200mm might not be as "collectible" as we all previously thought. Perhaps after seeing how the mugs went viral online, for the next two weeks Canon will be including a collectors mug with any purchase in its Canada eStore over $200 CAD. In the promotion they state that the value of the Canon Lens Collectors Travel Mug is $39.99 CAD. If you're in Canada and were planning on buying gear anyway, now might be a good time.

Renowned portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz will keep her photographs after all. Private equity firm Colony Capital, the same company that purchased the loan for Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, has agreed to assume the debt Leibovitz owed the Art Capital Group, becoming her sole creditor.

The golden hour in photography is the first or last hour of sunlight in a day that photographers often aim to shoot in, since the sun's position produces a soft and warm light with longer shadows. The Golden Hour Calculator is a useful website that can help you calculate the golden hour(s) for your location, telling you exactly when the sun rises and sets.

Do you know what to do if one of your prints gets damaged by water? If you living in a flood prone area (or are clumsy), it'd be good to know.

theprintspace, a photo gallery in London, has announced a summer group exhibition comprised entirely of Flickr photographs, allowing up-and-coming photographers a chance on the big scene.

This amazing video clip shows the amazing collision of two vortex rings. Imagine the kind of smoke photographs you could make if you had this setup!

In the future, we might be able to roam around a 3D virtual representation of our world, where everything you see was automatically generated from photographs taken at the real locations.

Buttons is a concept camera by Sascha Pohflepp that lacks traditional camera functionality. Rather than taking photographs, it displays photographs that other people took at the moment you pressed the button. Pohflepp explains, …

The White Mountain is Charles Leung's first time-lapse video, showing the stars and our galaxy sweep beautifully across the Hawaiian sky. It was shot in Mauna Kea, Hawai'i using a Canon 5D Mark II (with an assortment of lenses) at ISO6400 using 30 sec exposures and 15 sec intervals.

Along with some news of the collectible 70-200mm Canon cup we posted yesterday, we mentioned that DSLR News Shooter was giving away a 24-105mm look-alike cup that we hadn't seen before.

The web has been abuzz the past couple days over the collectible L-lens look-alike coffee mugs Canon was passing out at the Olympics. Everyone is asking whether they'll be available to the general public.

If you are upgrading your camera gear, horray for you! That also means you're probably planning to convert your old camera to cash for new gear or at least to free up room in your camera bag.

fotojournal is a new photoblogging service by Canadian company Robot Republic geared towards professional photographers, allowing them to showcase their work in a blog format.

Facebook recently announced that it has increased the maximum size of photographs from 604 pixels to 720 pixels, a difference of 19.2%. They posted the above photograph showing the relative difference in size.

Adobe has just announced that the Photoshop.com Mobile application is now available to third-party developers to integrate into their own applications.

Luis Caldevilla creates beautiful time-lapse videos and publishes them to his website, timelapses.tv. He recently received his 1 millionth video view, and created this montage video to celebrate the occasion. It can give you quite a few ideas for things to make time-lapses of.

If you're looking for a way to "upgrade" your flash unit without spending money on real gear, the Los Angeles Digital Imaging Group (LADIG) has a nice bounce card cutout you can use to create your own free bounce card. Simply download the template (here's a link to the PDF), print it out on cardstock, follow the instructions for cutting, and attach it to your flash with a rubber band (or velcro if you're feeling fancy).

Lord Carlile, the official reviewer of terrorism legislation in the UK, has begun calling for the abolition of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial stop and search law that allows police to search individuals without having reasonable suspicion has become the bane of many street photographers, who are often ordered to stop shooting and are detained when uncooperative.

Flixtime is a website launched recently by Stock photography service Fotolia that helps you easily transform your photos, videos, and text into short 60-second flash video clips.

About a week ago at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Russ Beinder caught a Sports Illustrated photographer at the hockey rink with a pretty interesting gear setup: …

It's a tough job market in New York, and even Spider-Man has difficulty finding job security these days.