Instructables member willferrari599 recently posted a funny tutorial on how to turn a cheap $20 disposable camera into a ridiculously ghetto looking fake Leica. It'd be sad if you took this tutorial seriously, but a camera like this might make a hilarious present for a photography-loving friend! …
Here's a interesting little teaser video for "The President’s Photographer: Fifty Years Inside the Oval Office", a PBS documentary that premiered on November 24th, 2010. It takes you behind the scenes with Pete Souza, the official White House photographer who follows President Obama around everywhere he goes, capturing tens of thousands of photographs every month.
As photo-making devices become more and more location aware, many people unwittingly give up a lot of privacy by publishing location-tagged images online. If privacy is something you care about and you'd rather not broadcast location data along with your photography, a free Windows program called Geotag Security can help you scrub the geotag information from your pics. All you do is select a folder to scan, and the program will check the images within for location data and remove it.
Okay, so you have a memory card full of timelapse photos taken over a long-ish period of time using a DSLR camera and intervalometer. Now what? In the above video, filmmaker Philip Bloom shows how you can easily combine them into a timelapse video using Quicktime Pro.
Did you know that the first digital rangefinder camera to hit the market was the Epson R-D1 back in 2004? What's more, rumor has it that Epson may be considering a followup digital rangefinder to succeed the R-D1, which was made in a partnership with Cosina.
Ever wonder how we'll be interacting with our digital photos in the future? The BendDesk is a curved interactive surface being researched/developed by the Media Computing Group at RWTH Aachen University seamlessly blends vertical and horizontal multi-touch surfaces. The demo video above has a segment showing how photos can be sorted using the desk (it starts 46 seconds in). Say hello to the future.
I have always been enthralled ring flashes, but they are so expensive! I recently found a pizza box ring flash how to, but it didn’t go on my camera (it was meant as an off camera ring flash) so I made some changes. And here, for all to use, is my version of the pizza box ring flash.
If you're looking for creative portrait ideas, here's a fun one to try: focus on your subject through the glass of a second lens. It'll help throw everything else out of the focus (including the subject in the background) for a pretty cool look. You can also flip the photo upside down afterward for a right-side-up portrait.
Threadless' in-house graffiti artist Joe Suta creates 3 giant (48'' x 36'') paintings for their Chicago store window each week, which are then sold through the Threadless website for $250 a pop.
Turns out those crazy high speed photography shots you see of bullets shattering things aren't as difficult to achieve as you might have thought. All you need is about $20 and some brains (aka circuit skills). YouTube user destinws2 shows how its done in this 5 minute tutorial.
Last week one of the big stories in the world of photography was that Kuwait had banned the use of DSLR cameras in public places. The story originated with an article in the Kuwait Times, and was then widely reported by publications ranging from The Guardian to Amateur Photographer. People were in disbelief that a country would take such an unreasonable stance against a particular camera technology while leaving others legal (e.g. mobile phones, compact cameras, etc...). Turns out the whole …
Flickr member scenery_and_fish found a Kowa 65mm f/0.75 x-ray lens, and mounted it to a Nikon D90 by using macro extension tubes and epoxy. The lens is fixed focus, lacks an iris, and is one beastly piece of glass.
Twitter sees hundreds or thousands of Tweets published every second, and many of these are photos of things happening real-time. Hashalbum is a new website that aims to help you browse this constant stream of images in real time by allowing you to do a simple search by hashtag, returning images that are found in Tweets containing that hashtag.
What does a rainbow mean to you? An interesting atmospheric phenomena.... gay pride... the 42nd Infantry Division? To me a rainbow screams, "Polaroid Corporation!". Even when Polaroid was actually making cameras, the camera straps were disappointingly plain vanilla. Polaroid missed a critical branding opportunity! In this tutorial, I'll attempt to make a new camera strap for my Polaroid 100 camera by recycling rainbow colored luggage belts.
Japanese architect Hideyuki Nakayama teamed up with door knob manufacturer UNION to create this funky glass globe knob that gives you a fisheye view of the next room. Now all Nakayama needs to do is find some way to incorporate film and a shutter...
Graeme Taylor took his Casio High Speed EXILIM EX-FH20 camera and shot some 210fps footage out the window, resulting in some pretty beautiful slow-motion footage.
Aviary just launched a new HTML5 photo editor that lets you quickly and easily edit images without Flash. Third-party websites can also embed the editor, allowing images to be edited in place without having to visit Aviary's website. The widget provides some basic features expected from image editors (e.g. cropping, brightness, contrast, saturation), but also some Hipstamatic-style image filters (instant, toy camera, old photo, retro) that style your photos with a single click.
Want to have the geekiest photo-storage device amongst all your photo-loving friends? Check out this 1:18 scale replica of the DeLorean Time Machine from Back to the Future. In addition to be a super faithful clone of the "real thing", it also doubles as a 500GB Seagate external hard drive, allowing you to grab images from the past if you ever accidentally delete them. Well... maybe not, but for $250 you get a lot more than the average, boring old hard drive.
Photographers do a lot to get the perfect shot, and sometimes even put gear safety above personal well-being in dangerous situations. Here's a fun video photographer Joe McNally posted showing him getting knocked over by a longboarder while trying to capture a shot. Notice how he holds his position long enough to snap the pic, deftly moves his camera to his other hand when falling over, and immediately checks the photo when he gets back up. True pro.
Thinking of buying a love one a digital photo frame this Christmas? You might want to reconsider. A recent survey of 2,000 people by the British Video Association found that digital photo frames were the most unwelcome gifts, followed by foot spas, blenders and digital organizers.
You don't need fancy camera gear to capture beautiful images and video of the night sky. The above video shows a timelapse created using 1262 photos captured with a Canon 20D at 30 second exposures and ISO 800. At the end there's a star trails photo created by combining all the stills into a single image. It's a great 1.25 minute dose of relaxation and inspiration.
Olympus recently filed for a patent for this strange monocle-esque viewfinder system where the camera user dons a pair(?) of half-glasses. When the shutter is closed, the user is shown what's on the LCD.
Another entry for our list of "random things made awesome by slow motion": here's a video of a steel ball being dropped into fine sand heated to about 500° C, at which point it takes on strange liquid properties. Be sure to also check out the water drop at 2000 fps video we posted in the beginning of the year if you haven't seen it.
Last week we wrote that NYU arts professor Wafaa Bilal was planning to have a camera surgically implanted on the back of his head as part of an art project. Today the Washington Post is reporting that the surgery was completed and camera successfully embedded into Bilal's skull. Turns out it wasn't just an elaborate hoax after all.
If you're subscribed to the New York Times, you might have noticed some unique-looking war photographs featured as the top story when opening up the paper yesterday. The four photographs were actually iPhone photos taken by NYT photographer Damon Winter in Afghanistan, and processed with the popular app Hipstamatic. Earlier this year AP photographer David Guttenfelder did the same thing in Afghanistan with an iPhone and a Polaroid filter app.
"Red Eye Flashes Twice" is a humorous photography-related song by YouTube personality Julian Smith in which he delivers an important public service announcement: don't be stupid, red eye flashes twice.
Update: Turns out this story wasn't true.
If cameras can have external flashes, why can't mobile phones? The iFlash is a flash module that allows owners of older iPhones to illuminate dark scenes with a blast of LED light. iPhone 4 owners can also use it to gain some additional light.
Photojojo is selling this nifty Juice Box Camera, a 35mm camera that looks like a box of apple juice. The shutter is triggered by -- you guessed it -- the straw!
DCHome forum member voigtlander just posted this photograph of a Nikon concept camera from Nikon Sapporo Showroom, where photography is prohibited. There's a lot of discussion over whether or not this design suggests what a future Nikon EVIL camera might look like, since it seems to have the same form factor as existing EVIL cams (e.g. Samsung NX10).
During her "Ultimate Favorite Things 2010" this past Friday, Oprah revealed the Nikon D3100 as one of her favorite things, and gave one to each member of the audience. As one of the most influential people in the world, the Oprah Effect should definitely give Nikon a huge boost in sales of the camera, just like Michelle Obama does for fashion companies with her outfits.
Did you know that reading glasses can be used as a cheap macro lens for your camera phone? Make reader Sean Lee discovered this neat hack and wrote a short tutorial on the technique.
There was a pretty enthusiastic response to the lens gel bracelets we featured here yesterday, but what if you want to go a little further than simple $10 geekiness? re:vision by Oye Modern is a line of cuffs created from old camera lenses. Everything from focus rings to depth of field sliders are recycled as fashion accessories. Haute photo fashion comes at a steep price -- the cheapest cuff will set you back $201.
"The Genius of Photography" is a six part BBC series that explores some of the most famous photographs ever taken, and looks into what makes them special. The official YouTube channel has all six episodes in their entirety.
XShot, the company known for its handheld camera extender, has released a new iPhone 4 case designed to provide a tripod mount through a detachable adapter. A lot of iPhone owners seem to be interested in adding a tripod mount to their phone -- a recent Kickstarter effort to create such a mount raised over $130K after asking for only $10K. The XShot iPhone case is different from other tripod mounts in that the mount is part of a detachable adapter that can be attached to either the side or the …
These pastel baby box cameras are perfect for any party where photography enthusiasts are present. Etsy seller girliepains is selling a PDF with templates and instructions on making them in 7 different colors for $4 through her store.
After photographer Ross Ching came across Dentsu London's creative 3D light painting technique with an iPad, he decided to give it a try, combining it with timelapse photography to make a music video for "I'll Try Anything Once" by The Strokes (seen above). The app he used was Holographium, which you can pick up for $5 from the app store.
Photographer Adam Elmakias created these geeky lens gel bracelets to help photo-enthusiasts show off their love of photography. They come in a range of focal lengths, and cost $10 apiece over in his online store.
Here's one of those "I could do that! Yeah, but you didn't" things: a cat named Cooper recently published a book filled with his photographs, titled "Cat Cam". Basically, a couple named Michael and Deirdre Cross decided to attach a micro camera to their cat's collar, automatically snapping photographs every two minutes. The book has received pretty positive reviews from both critics (Good Morning America, People Magazine, etc...) and customers.
If you need some quick white balancing for whatever reason, and don't have a white balance card or Expodisc handy, you can try using a standard coffee cup lid. Photographer Steve Bennet always has some lids lying around in his car, and found that they work as rough white balancing tools.
Carry around your business cards, cash and/or plastic in style with this nifty retro camera business card case by Etsy seller Coolbeans717. Each handmade case takes 5 days to make and costs $13.50.
Alex Roman, the genius behind the breathtaking "The Third & The Seventh", recently created this short commercial spot for Grupo Cosentino. It's certainly stunning, but here's the kicker: it's completely computer generated, created by two people over the course of two and a half months.
A pretty succinct definition of modern art by Craig Damrauer, available as a print over at 20x200.
With the ongoing craze in photo sharing services on mobile devices, it's not surprising to see new photo apps launching left and right. Stealthy startup Path is a bit different though, with their high powered team launching an unusual sharing service service a couple days ago.
Jeffrey Martin spent three days shooting a massive 80 gigapixel panorama of London, which is now the largest 360-degree panorama in the world. He writes, …
The "femtosecond transient imaging system" is a camera being developed by researchers at MIT that uses high intensity light from a femtosecond laser to capture images from around corners. Once the laser beam bounces around the scene and returns to the sensor, algorithms are used to turn the time and distance information into a representation of the scene.
Now here's a clever idea: Olympus has filed a patent in Japan that allows you to use your camera strap as a makeshift LCD glare shield, shielding your screen from direct sunlight.
Olympus recently suggested that they would be going "all in" with EVIL cameras and pulling out of the DSLR game, and today they announced a new camera that has slightly better features and one extra letter than the E-PL1. The E-PL1s is virtually identical to its 12.3 megapixel "s"-less counterpart, except it has ISO upgraded from 3200 to 6400, a new battery, and a lighter body. The body itself weighs only 342g, compared to 700+g DSLR bodies. It'll be available exclusively in Japan come April in …
If we were still living in the age of floppy disks, what would installing something like Adobe Photoshop CS4 be like? antrepo did the math, and figured out that it would take a whopping 358 disks. They're also making a poster set that includes other programs as well (e.g. 1760 disks for The Sims 3).
Apparently always having a camera by your side isn't enough for some people. Wafaa Bilal, an assistant professor at NYU, is planning to have surgery in coming weeks to have a camera implanted in the back of his head. The project -- titled "The 3rd I" -- is being commissioned by a museum in Qatar, which will receive and broadcast a live stream of photographs taken by the camera once per minute for an entire year.
