October 2010

Jonathan Ray

How to Create a Repeating Flash Effect with Light Painting

Certain higher end flashes have a strobe (AKA repeating flash) mode that can flash repeatedly, freezing a moving subject in various positions in a single exposure. This tutorial will teach you how to create a similar effect using light painting techniques, resulting in the above photo.

Michael Zhang

Print a DIY Flash Reflector on Card Stock

Want to print your own flash reflector? Pieroway has free PDF templates that you can use. The templates print double sided, with black printed on one side and faint gray fold lines printed on the other. Print it, cut the shape out, fold along the lines, and attach it to your flash with a rubber band.

Michael Zhang

Make a Simple DIY Follow Focus for $6

Want more precision in your focus adjustments when shooting video with your DSLR, but don't want to shell out money for a pricey follow focus? Flickr user Adam Lisagor shot this photo showing how he created his own DIY follow focus for $6. All you need is a steel hose clamp, drawer handle, nut, and bolt. Drill a hole through the clamp, and put it together as shown above.

Michael Zhang

Broken Bat Smashes Camera Lens at MLB Playoff Game

During Game 4 of the series between the Yankees and the Rangers this past tuesday, a player broke a bat when making a hit and the broken end of the bat flew all the way into the camera well, shattering the front of a Canon DIGISUPER 86II TELE xs camera lens worth $90,000. Luckily there was a protective filter being used over the lens, though it will still cost $20,000 to replace it. What's neat is that cameraman Steve Angel kept on shooting with the smashed lens, framing the scenes through the small hole in the shattered glass until the camera was replaced an inning later.

Michael Zhang

Locking Lens Cap Protects Gear and Makes Thieves Look Ridiculous

The Lens Lock is the latest product in the GearGuard gear locking system by Gary Fong (maker of the well known LightSphere). It attaches to the back of a lens like an ordinary rear lens cap, but can be secured and locked using a cable/lock combo. This allows you to lock the gear down when not in use (like you would do with a bike) or lock it together with other gear in your bag, preventing individual items from being stolen from your bag.

Roald Frederickx

DIY Ring Flash with an Old Strobe and a Plastic Container

One of the things about macrophotography is that you either have to shoot wide open (and have a depth of field of about 1 micron or so) or stopped down to get some decent DOF (but have ridiculous shutter speeds making everything a blur). The solution: put a strobe on it! Given that you are so close to your subject, it's hard to properly light it. A ring flash is a good choice and at the tiny distance it is used from the subject, it has the effect of a large softbox creating even lighting.

Michael Zhang

Photographer Chris McCaw Burns Through Photo Paper — Literally

Photographer Chris McCaw was making long exposures of the night sky during a camping trip when he forgot to cap his camera lens before going to sleep. When he woke up, he discovered that the sun had burned a hole through his negative. After processing the film, he found that it had solarized, or reversed in tone. What started as an accident McCaw now does intentionally for his "Sunburn" series of photographs.

Using homemade large format cameras, McCaw exposes silver gelatin paper for extended periods of time, burning through the paper and inverting the image.

Michael Zhang

Public’s Right to Photograph Federal Buildings Upheld by Settlement

On November 9th, 2009, Software programmer Antonio Musumeci was filming the arrest of a protestor outside a federal courthouse in NYC when he himself was arrested. His main camera was confiscated, but he recorded the entire encounter on a second camera (the resulting video is above). In April 2010, the New York Civil Liberties Union sued the government on Musumeci's behalf, and yesterday it was was announced that a settlement had been reached, with the government recognizing the public's right to photograph and film in public spaces outside federal buildings.

Michael Zhang

Twitter Photo Rights Controversy is Much Ado About Nothing

Last week Scott Bourne published an article on Photofocus titled, "Photos On Twitter – What You Should Know". In it, he claimed that Twitter's terms of service (TOS) forced photographers to give Twitter a license to do whatever they wanted with photos shared through the service. The argument centered around a couple paragraphs found in the document:

By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

This was used to argue that Twitter owns a license to photos shared through the service.

Michael Zhang

Beautiful Light Painting Calligraphy Art by Julien Breton

Light painting and calligraphy are both hard enough skills to master on their own, but what about combining the two and doing it well? That's what French artist Julien Breton specializes in. These photographs show Breton's calligraphy created with light with no trickery involved at all.

Michael Zhang

Upscale Shopping Area Cracks Down on Photography to Deter Ram Raiders

Terrorists aren't the only people photographers are being mistaken for in the UK -- upscale shopping area Multrees Walk in Edinburgh has begun targeting photographers after a string of thefts by ram raiders, or burglars who drive large vehicles through the front of stores and then loot them. The above video shows a confrontation with security that occurred after a guy and his friend snapped a photo of a shop window.

Michael Zhang

Turn Your Panasonic Micro Four Thirds Camera into a Digital Holga

If you have a Panasonic Micro Four Thirds camera and a love for retro photos, the Skink Pinhole Pancake Pro Kit can instantly turn your camera into a digital Holga pinhole camera. It's a modular system that provides three kinds of "holes":

Depending on the desired effect, you can use your camera as a pinhole-, zone plate- or zones sieve camera. To a high degree the installed aperture determines how your vision is creatively interpreted in rendering an image. The traditional pinhole creates relatively sharp images with exposure times ranging from one second to several minutes. With a zone plate or zone sieve however, photos can be taken without a tripod, if the lighting conditions permit higher speeds.

Michael Zhang

Russian Leica Clone Converted to Digital

There was quite an outcry back in September when we shared the iCannon 4 project, where some guy gutted his Canon film SLR to use it as a shell for an iPhone 4. The frankencamera shown above is a bit cooler - it was created using a Russian Leica imitation and a Sony DSC-WX1 digital compact. Both cameras were disassembled, with the rangefinder contributing the outer shell and then Sony cam offering the inner workings. What's amazing is that the resulting camera looks like a nicely designed retro digital compact - similar to the new FujiPix X100.

Michael Zhang

Lens Guard Provides Extra Protection for People with Butterfingers

Lens caps, filters, and hoods are great from protecting lenses from scratches and bumps, but they aren't the best for reducing the impact in the case that you accidentally drop your gear. The Lens Guard by DeluxGear is designed to absorb this kind of shock, protecting your lens from the impact of bumps and drops, and slips over lenses snugly with or without the filters or lens cap attached.