A day after photos of the upcoming Sony A33 and A55 DSLR cameras (rumored to have pellicle mirrors) were leaked, photos and specs of what appear to be the upcoming A560 and A580 cameras have also sprung up. Like the photos leaked yesterday, the front view of the two cameras show exactly the same body with only the model number Photoshopped. Not sure why this is.
Last week we featured a stunning time-lapse video that unfortunately failed to capture Perseid meteor shower well because of too much air traffic in the area. Landscape photographer Henry Jun Wah Lee attempted the same kind of video in Joshua Tree National Park. Even though there's still quite a bit of air traffic, you can clearly see quite a few shooting stars that light up the sky.
It looks like someone hit the "publish" button too early over at CNET Asia, accidentally spilling the beans on the upcoming Canon PowerShot G12. The 10-megapixel camera's main selling points seem to be features that are also included in the PowerShot cameras announced today by Canon: 1080p 720p HD video recording and a special High Dynamic Range (HDR) scene mode that snaps three bracketed photos for you and combines them into a single photo.
Canon isn't going to have Nikon have all the announcement fun today. They've unveiled three new PowerShot compact cameras: the S95, the SD4500 IS, and the SX130 IS. The cameras will cost $400, $250, and $350 (respectively), and all offer HD video recording.
After an eternity of rumors and leaks, Nikon has just officially announced the D3100, an entry-level DX format DSLR replacement to the D3000. The main selling point is 1080p video recording at 24fps in h.264 with continuous autofocus, a new feature for DSLR cameras. The 14.2 megapixel camera has 11 autofocus points, a 3-inch LCD screen, an ISO range of 100 to 3200 (can be expanded to 12,800), and 3 FPS shooting. The camera will be out in September at the price of $699, bundled with a 18-55mm VR …
A Venezuelan court ordered newspaper El Nacional not to print violent images after the paper published a controversial image of dead bodies piled up in a Caracas morgue.
This music video by YouTube celebrity Joe Penna (AKA MysteryGuitarMan) shows him dancing in various locations while the world around him moves in slow motion. What's even cooler is that he also published a behind-the-scenes video showing how you can do the same thing. Check it out!
Yesterday, Canon announced a rather strange and unexciting Canon 7D "upgrade." It's not exactly an upgrade either -- all of the camera specs for the new Canon 7D Studio Version are unchanged. For $1829 for the body only ($130 more than the current 7D), photographers can have several "locked levels" of the camera. Pay even more and you get a barcode scanning kit and a wireless transfer unit, the WFT-E5A.
Alleged photographs of the upcoming Sony Alpha A33 and A55 DSLR cameras have popped up in an overseas forum. The images look legitimate, though the A55 and A33 front views are identical images that had the model number Photoshopped. Not sure why that is.
The cute photo above of a surprise photo booth proposal is making its arounds around the Internets right now. Angela writes on her blog, …
Jolayne Attwood (jolayne on Flickr) was at the International Photography Fair in Bièvres earlier this year when she came across this gigantic Instamatic 133 camera. There's no covert street photography or shooting from the hip with this baby.
About a year after launching the first mainstream stereoscopic digital camera, the FinePix Real 3D W1, Fujifilm has just announced its successor: the FinePix Real 3D W3. This new camera boasts 720p video recording, allowing you to film your own low-budget version of Avatar at home. The camera has two 10-megapixel sensors spaced 2.9 inches apart, and a special 3D screen that allows you to view your photos and videos in 3D without special glasses. Of course, when you're sick of playing James …
Photoshop CS5's Content Aware Fill feature was quite a hit when it came out earlier this year, but what about free alternatives? Webinpaint is a web-based photo app that aims to do just that. You simply open up an image, paint over the area you'd like removed, and click the "Inpaint" button for the app to do its removal magic.
We often share cool slow motion or time-lapse videos here on PetaPixel, but this video is a bit different. YouTube user brusspup uses a turntable spinning at 45RPM to create amazing optical illusion animations. To a human eye look at the turntable, everything looks like a blur, but record it at 24 frames per second, and amazing animations appear!
Nikon just announced two new Coolpix cameras today: the S1100pj and the S5100. The S1100pj (pictured in this post) is an update to the S1000pj projector camera, with an increased brightness of 14 lumens (up from 10), a thinner form factor, and the ability to become a tiny projector for your computer via USB. This allows you to project whatever is on your computer screen onto a nearby wall... with your digital camera. How crazy is that?
Typical sized white balance cards may be of (literally) little assistance in color calibrating global imaging satellites, but scientists have figured a clever workaround. Lake Tuz, Turkey's third largest lake, dries out annually and turns into a giant salt bed. Because of its vast size and unique salty white color, scientists worldwide can use the lake to standardize their satellite measurements.
It's not just photography enthusiasts that like to play with bokeh -- check out this short clip from the new movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Pay careful attention to the bokeh whizzing by in the background outside the bus. The look is so subtle that most people probably wouldn't even notice it.
Deal alert: There's a special offer on Popular Photography magazine over on Amazon. You can get a one-year subscription of the magazine (12 issues) for $5 flat with free shipping. The annual subscription normally costs $14 (or $54 if you believe Amazon), so if you've been thinking about doing your part in keeping print from going extinct, here's a chance to test the waters. The special price lasts until August 21st, 2010.
Here's a terrific "Doh! Why didn't I think of that?" idea shared by Flickr user Ralph Odenwälder in his photostream: create a set of matching Polaroid photographs for an awesome do-it-yourself memory card game that you can either give someone as a present or play yourself!
Here's a stop-motion music video created by Ian Robertson for a song titled Lyrical Spread by The Chameleon. Robertson uses stop-motion to display the lyrics of the song in a pretty unique way -- as jam being spread over bread.
Nice. The For Dummies series just added a Olympus PEN E-PL1 book to their extensive collection of digital photography instruction books, the first in the series for a Micro Four Thirds camera. Too bad they didn't name the book "EVIL Photography for Dummies", (though someone should write one with that title!).
Vimeo user ph dee went out to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park last night after hearing that it's a great place to watch meteor showers. After spending four hours shooting frames for a Perseid meteor shower timelapse video, he discovered that the heavy air traffic in the area dominated the scene.
Here's a method of scrawling gigantic messages that puts skywriting to shame: Nick Newcomen spent 30 days driving 12,238 miles across 30 states in a GPS-logger equipped car, tracing the message "Read Ayn Rand" across the face of the United States. Ayn Rand is a Russian-American novelist and philosopher who write two bestselling books (The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged) and introduced a philosophy called Objectivism.
Here's what the next couple weeks are going to look like in terms of press events possibly related to DSLR announcements: Nikon goes first on August 19th, Sony does theirs on August 24th, and Canon has one scheduled August 26th. Nikon will likely be announcing the D3100, while Canon drops the 60D during theirs.
German photography magazine Foto Digital let the cat out of the bag today when it sent its September issue out to subscribers, along with photographs and specs of the yet-unannounced Nikon D3100. Nikon Rumors broke the story, and published some scans of the magazine.
It looks like tap tap tap's Camera+ added one too many features for Apple's liking. When the app developers tweeted a secret workaround that enabled the volume button to double up to control the shutter, Apple pulled Camera+ from the App Store.
Craig is the blogger behind Canon Rumors …
Photographer Petra Hall's fiancé recently bought a used MG convertible right before going on a vacation. However, on the way back from work the weekend before the vacation was to begin, something in the car exploded and the car went up in flames.
There's a bit of bad blood going on between user-generated "street journalism" website Demotix and the UK Press Card Authority.
Flickr user Florian (AKA f/28) creates and photographs 1:87 scale miniature sets carefully created by hand. The photographs featured here are from a set titled "No Country for Small Men", with the title and scenes inspired by the movie "No Country for Old Men". Everything was shot with a Canon 400D.
Chuck Patterson was SUP surfing with friends one day when two sharks joined them and circled around for 15 minutes. Rather than have the encounter deter them from surfing there again like it would for mortals, he returned to the same place the next day at the same time with a Go Pro HD HERO camera at the end of 10 foot pole.
With a select few companies currently dominating the digital camera scene, less popular brands are forced to come up with creative ways to capture market share. One possible way is to introduce esoteric features that most consumers would have absolutely no use for, and that's exactly what Casio seems to be doing with its new EX-FC160S compact camera targeted towards golfers.
This photograph, titled "Easy Rider", was shot by photographer Chris McVeigh (AKA powerpig on Flickr). The photograph seems so unbelievable that many people asked whether it was faked using Photoshop.
Check out this solid brass Nikon belt buckle, a fusion of masculinity and photo geekiness.
Google has a useful account on YouTube called GoogleWebmasterHelp that publishes short video answers to search engine optimization (SEO) questions submitted to them. If you have a website promoting your photography, then thinking about SEO can help you drive more visitors to your photography.
A good majority of news and documentary photographers tend to shy away from capturing video footage on DSLRs, owing to the cameras limited HD clip length. However, here's a really fantastic example of a documentary-style story shot with a 1D Mark IV, directed by photographer Austin Walsh in Kansas City.
Here are a couple photographs that made their way onto the Internets today via a Japanese website. They seem to be actual "spy" photographs of the camera with an L lens attached, and it looks like a tilt-screen does in fact exist on the back.
There's the old adage, it's not the camera that makes the photographer, but according to a by-the-numbers study by dating site OkCupid, the nicer camera might make you look more attractive.
With Photokina 2010 just around the corner, rumors regarding soon-to-be-announced DSLR cameras from Canon and Nikon are swirling around the blogosphere, and certain facts about the cameras seem to be getting clearer.
Kate received this awesome miniature Polaroid One-Step camera as a present from her friend Pia. What's neat is that the camera came with a collection of baby Polaroid pictures, with actual photographs printed on them!
"Misadventures" is a series of photographs by San Francisco-based photographer Matt Sartain that shows individuals on long and epic journeys through dreamlike landscapes to find a place to belong. We love the ethereal quality present in all of his photographs -- especially the one above taken in Memory Glade on the Berkeley campus (Go Bears!).
The mysterious white camera -- most likely the NX100 -- that was seen in a leaked photograph from a commercial shoot recently has apparently been spotted again, this time in a National Geographic/Samsung advertisement posted to YouTube.
This is an amazing 1.5 hour exposure taken at the Gippsland Lakes in Australia by Phil Hart, showing both star trails and the crazy blue light given off by a bioluminescent algae called Noctiluca scintillans, commonly known as the Sea Sparkle.
English soccer (football) club Southampton F.C. revealed a plan last week to deny press accreditation for photojournalists this season, and instead to force publications to purchase photographs from a single approved source, a photo agency called The Digital South.
Tilt-shift lenses are usually pretty pricey, so many people fake the effect during post-processing by selectively blurring sections of their photographs. There's even simple web-apps that can add such blur to give your photographs a miniature scale model effect.
In the spirit of the iPhone 4 vs. Canon 7D side-by-side camera comparison video, filmmaker Brandon Bloch has made a wonderfully clever juxtaposition of the Canon 7D and Mattel's Barbie Video Girl. The Barbie Video Girl alone is a thing of wonder -- it's a really bizarre bionic-looking glitz and glam doll with a camera built into her chest.
You've heard the term "photographic memory" before, but have you ever heard of someone who actually has it? Meet Stephen Wiltshire, a UK-born autistic savant with an extraordinary memory that has given him the nickname, "The Living Camera". The above is a short video showing his abilities that will make your jaws drop.
Here's a super random gift idea for photographers that have everything: a camera that's hidden behind what appears to be a normal shirt button. The Thanko Button Camera is attached to button-up shirts using special buttons that have a hole for the lens. If you don't have a shirt with black buttons, you'll be happy to know that the buttons come in three different colors: black, white, and pearl.
NewsARSE has a pretty funny satirical piece poking fun at the photographers' rights situation in the UK: …
Amateur Photographer is reporting that stock photo agency Getty Images added the Leica X1 to its "Approved Cameras List" last month. A quick Google search turned up this submission requirements document with a now apparently outdated list: …
