Here's an interesting video created by Make Magazine showing how UC Berkeley architecture professor Charles Benton uses kites to capture amazing aerial photographs. Benton creates his own gear for mounting his DSLR on a kite and controlling it from afar -- you might be surprised at how creative some of his contraptions are (for one rig he uses a disposable camera, rubber bands, and a ping-pong ball).
We reported on the Nikon coffee cup that finally appeared on the web months ago, but didn't get our hands on one until today. We did an unboxing of the Canon coffee mug and thermos back in June, so we'll do a similar hands-on for this Nikon one. Like the Canon ones, there's a whole bunch of places making these things (none of which are the camera companies themselves), so there might be some variation on how the thing looks depending on where you buy it from.
Photography rights advocate Carlos Miller came across the above poster recently put out by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Apparently the administration doesn't know that there's a huge number of non-terrorist photographers who enjoy doing something called aviation photography.
Leave it to Leica to come up with funky ideas for limited edition cameras. After recently releasing a special edition "Le Mans" X1 with what appeared to be a simple sticker added to an otherwise standard camera, Leica is turning to exotic leathers. They're releasing a limited edition X1 in Japan with black embossed ostrich skin. Only 80 of these cameras will be produced, and the skin bumps the price of the X1 from $1,995 up to $2,400. That is some expensive bird skin.
The music video for Sara Bareilles' song "King of Anything" has everything contained in Polaroids and contact sheets. The concept is pretty neat. Can you imagine how mind-boggling this video would have been if they had done it in stop-motion with individual Polaroid photos and carefully exposed film strips? That'd be epic.
Nikon announced three new compact digital cameras this morning. The first is the COOLPIX P7000, a competitor to the Canon G11 (and possibly G12 soon). This is a prosumer level 10.1 megapixel (CCD) camera that allows you to shoot in RAW with all sorts of manual controls. It can also record HD video (720p) at 24 fps, and has an ISO range up to 6400. Additional plusses are a 3-inch LCD screen and an optical viewfinder. The camera will arrive later this month at a price of $500.
