December 2010

If you think making prints at home with your photo printer saves you money over having the prints made through a service, you might be wrong. How-To Geek has a neat tutorial and XLS spreadsheet you can use to calculate the cheapest method depending on your printer expenses. Simply download the file, fill out the boxes according to the instructions, and you'll learn how much you're actually paying per-print with your home printer.

"Modern Times" is a short film that offers a glimpse of the future in both the story that it tells and the way it was made -- it's a low/no budget film created entirely against a green screen with friends as actors. Maybe in the future shooting at real locations (or with real people) will be less and less necessary as CGI continues to become more and more mind-boggling.

When Apple designed the iPad, they opted for simplicity and omitted things like a USB port or memory card slots. This made it more tedious for photographers to transfer a large number of photographs onto their iPads, since the Camera Connection Kit needed for USB and SD Card support comes in two separate dongles. Luckily, there's a made-in-China knockoff that can ease a little of the pain -- the 3-in-1 iPad Camera Connection Kit combines the two dongles into one nicely designed apparatus.

Bruce Dale spent 30 years as a staff photographer for National Geographic, travelling the world and having thousands of his amazing photographs published in the magazine. In this 10 minute video, he talks about his experiences and shares stories behind some of his favorite photographs. Like the 1978 photo agency documentary we shared yesterday, this one also provides an interesting and inspiring behind-the-scenes look at a particular photography job.

I really love using old lenses on modern digital cameras, but many old lenses have cosmetic issues that make them a little less pleasant to use. Here are a few very cheap and easy things you can do to make these old lenses a little nicer to look at and to use. I don't advocate doing this to rare collectible lenses; this is for "user" lenses.

Why stick with a boring old Facebook picture when you can use the new photo strip as part of a larger, more creative portrait? That's exactly what Alexandre Oudin did with his.

"Moving Stills" is a short 10-minute documentary created back in 1978 to show how New York-based photo agency Contact Press Images operated. It's a fun blast from the photographic-past -- a world where images are captured on expensive rolls of film and where editors review photographs on a lightbox with a loupe.

The Urban Word of the Day a couple days ago on Urban Dictionary was PHOBAR: …

When a NASA Space Shuttle lifts off, there's always high definition cameras carefully placed around the launch site, documenting the launch in high-definition photographs and slow motion videos. Back in April we featured a slow motion video of the Apollo 11 launch in 1969, and now here's another neat super slow-mo documentary of more recent launches (i.e. 2005). If you have 45 minutes to spare, this video is sure to amaze and educate you.

Prince William and Kate Middleton recently released engagement photographs shot by fashion photographer Mario Testino, who previously also made portraits of Princess Diana. Testino is one of the world's most sought after fashion photographers, but public opinion regarding these portraits appears to be quite mixed (check out this dpreview forum thread).

While adding movement to time-lapse videos is cool, the special equipment (e.g. dollies, cranes, etc...) you need can be pricey. Derek Mellott couldn't afford to shell out hundreds of bucks for a dolly, so he decided to make his own using things found in his garage. His resulting setup included tripods, a cable management tray, a TI-calculator as an intervalometer, and a BBQ rotisserie motor to slowly pull the camera along.

Once your lenses get to a certain level of awesomeness, you have to start carrying them like bazookas. Can anyone identify the two lenses found in this photograph?

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For his "In Transit" series, Diego Kuffer takes multiple photographs of scenes, then creates neat-looking composite images afterwards. Kuffer tells us, …

Back in August 2010, Friskies selected 25 cats around the country and gave them the hardship privilege of wearing a camera around their necks, documenting their lives over the course of 5 days. The resulting footage was edited into "Cat Diaries", the first movie to be filmed entirely by cats. It's a unique look into what it's like to see and explore the world as a cat.

It's always fun thinking about what photography will be like in the future, and the direction camera technology will go. What's even cooler is seeing these ideas turned into concept drawings or videos. The Capture180 is a concept camera by Lucas Ainsworth that takes a 180° hemispheric photograph with each exposure in addition to the ordinary, framed photograph. When viewing the photographs with the camera, you can "knock" the camera into a viewing mode in which it acts as a small window into …

Pummelvision is a neat little website that aims to help you see your life flash before your eyes by taking your Flickr, Facebook, and Tumblr photos, combining them into a rapid-fire slideshow set to music. Once the video is done the service uploads it to Vimeo or YouTube for you. The above is an example Pummelvision video created with the photos of Justin Ouellette of chromogenic (we interviewed him a while back).

If you're planning to give any gifts to photography-enthusiasts this Christmas, you can try adding a little awesomeness to the presentation by creating your own ribbon bows out of film. All you need to do is cut the film strip into narrower pieces, and arrange the loops in the shape you'd like.

The concept of hyperfocal distance is used in landscape photography to achieve the greatest depth of field and acceptable sharpness for both near and far objects. In the two minute tutorial above, wildlife photographer Chris Weston walks through some hyperfocal distance focusing techniques. You can also find a couple informative tutorials at DOFMaster and Cambridge in Colour.

Wanna give a unique present this Christmas? If you have two portraits of a particular friend (head-on and profile), Sculpteo can turn them into a miniature figure that resemble the "big head mode" from GoldenEye on the N64. Only the head is created from photos -- you'll need to describe the clothing and accessories you want to see on the figure (might we suggest a DSLR as an accessory?). A 7cm figure will cost you $75, while a 10cm one sets you back $130.

This strange looking device is the Leica S1, the first digital camera created by the company back in 1996. At at time when film was still the medium of choice in the photo industry, the S1 packed a whopping 26-megapixels, shooting 5140x5140px medium format images. The strange looking handles on either side help the user frame the shot, but aren't designed for handheld stabilization -- each shot took three minutes to expose. Only about 160 of these cameras were built, and were mostly sold to …

Apparently airplanes travel a little too fast for the satellites that provide photos for Google Maps. It happened to capture this plane shooting across the sky over Hyde Park in Chicago, but separated the plane into a phantom plane and three RGB shadows. Anyone have an explanation for what caused this phenomenon?

The people behind camera comparison and recommendation website snapsort have just launched lenshero, a site designed to recommend the lens you need at the price you want. After telling the application your camera and what you're looking for in a lens (e.g. type, focal range, price), the site will spit out some recommendations of lenses that fit your criteria, ordering them by their pros and cons. It's a neat little app that you might want to bookmark if you're in the market for some new gear.

How far can you go in protecting your gear before people start thinking you have serious issues? We're not exactly sure, but the guy in the photo above probably crossed that line quite a few filters ago. Thankfully (or sadly, depending on how you see it) the guy isn't actually an uber-paranoid photographer, but just someone from the BorrowLenses team having a little fun.

onOneSoftware's DSLR Camera Remote is a convenient way to control your camera remotely with an iPhone or iPad, but a major downside is that the camera needs to be connected via wire to a computer running the software. BlueSLR is a dongle that connects to your DSLR and allows it to be controlled using an iPhone or iPad, allowing you to shoot remotely from up to 300 feet away. It also geotags your photos, writing its GPS location to the EXIF data of your images. Sadly, it's only compatible with …

Zebra Imaging is a company that creates amazing 3D holographic prints called ZScapes, allowing viewers to view a scene in 3D without any special eyewear. The above shows a print made of downtown Seattle, with the building in the print appearing to be about 10 inches high. Over 8,000 of these futuristic prints have already been created for the US military, but what excites us more is the possibility of this being a glimpse into the future of photography. Perhaps later generations of …

You know how you can never manage to frame people properly when taking self-portraits of you and your friends? What? You've been getting along just fine? Well, if you do suddenly find yourself with self-portrait ineptitude and randomly feel like spending some dough, you can buy a "Mirror, Mirror on the Camera", a "cool self-adhesive self-portrait mirror you stick on your camera or cell phone" meant for helping you frame self-portraits better.

Last week we shared the awesome fact that chickens have image stabilized heads. If you've been wondering about it, it's actually called the vestibulo-ocular reflex. Naturally (and... nerdily?) people started suggesting that someone should try making a steadicam using a chicken. Well, YouTube user Destin actually went ahead and did it... The results can be seen in the video above.

64-year-old photographer David Hoffman has been awarded £30,000 and given an apology by the Metropolitan police after having five of his teeth knocked out when a policeman in riot gear charged Hoffman and hit him with a riot shield. The MPS released a statement staying, …

You may have heard that the Canon 5D Mark II has been used to film an episode of "House" on FOX. Now NBC is using a 7D for an upcoming Christmas episode of "Community". On Thursday, Dec. 9th, 2010, they're going old school and doing a Rudolph-esque claymation episode.

There's a photography joke that goes, "If you saw a man drowning and you could either save him or photograph the event... what kind of film would you use?". While this might be a lighthearted jab at photo-lovers, it also reminds us of a very real dilemma photojournalists are often confronted with -- the struggle between doing their job by documenting reality and getting involved in the reality they need to document. The short film above, titled "Moment of Truth - Photographer", provides a …

The LoopIt is a new camera sling by Luma designed to be smaller, lighter, and more affordable than the Luma Loop. Both slings use a lanyard and connector that slide along the camera strap and connect to cameras via any available strap mount point. The push-to-release swivels are manufactured at the same factory that invented the swivel used by the US military, with tolerances that supposedly exceed the ones used in combat.

Here's an easy to follow video in which commercial and advertising photographer Jay P. Morgan walks us through how he went about shooting a portrait of a jazz player with a three light setup.

Want something fancy to prop up your growing collection of photography books? These snazzy vintage camera bookends sell for $50 on Amazon, and could also make a fun gift for your favorite photography-enthusiast bookworm.

Google just launched a new eBookstore containing over 3 million titles (the web's largest collection of ebooks). What's neat is that there's a large number of free -- albeit old -- photography-related books that enthusiasts might find interesting or educational. Just do a "free only" search with keywords such as "photography" or "camera".

Cinematographer Tom Guilmette has a simple way you can shoot your own aerial shots if flying kites or RC planes/helicopters isn't for you: fill up a large number of helium balloons, attach a camera to them, and send it high into the air attached to a fishing pole. Guilmette attached a GoPro HD camera to 30 balloons, and was able to get some remarkably smooth footage from 400+ feet in the air. Be warned though... doing this in high winds or near trees can be risky business.

The folks over at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have created a camera modeled after a fly's eye that provides a 360° view of the world. Packed with the 100 small cameras, what the camera captures is combined on a computer to provide a single 3D view of the world.

CNN recently did a story on NYU professor Wafaa Bilal and the camera he had implanted on the back of his head. The video above gives you a glimpse into what it looks like and how the system works. Turns out it wasn't a working camera that was permanently embedded into Bilal's skull, but rather a baseplate to which the wired camera can be mounted magnetically.

PhotoWeeklyOnline came up with this awesomely geeky periodic table of photography elements. You can also view a larger JPG version, or download a high-res PDF to print the thing out for your wall.

Tor Even Mathisen created this stunning timelapse video of the aurora borealis over Tromsø, Norway, shooting the still frames with a Canon 5D Mark II and 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens. The individual frames captured are beautiful in themselves, but the result of combining them into a timelapse video is breathtaking.

How do you take a picture of something above the surface of the water and below at the same time? Well if you had the "underabove" camera, it would be a snap. The concept design features two lenses; one on the top half filled with air and one on the bottom half filled with water. It sports a flash and even a "time wheel" so you can take an underwater self portrait. The camera then stitches the images together and displays them on the LCD screen.

Perpignan, France is known in the photography world for the international photojournalism festival (Visa pour l'Image) it hosts every year, but recently it made photo-related news for quite a different reason -- earlier this week a mentally-ill 47-year-old woman murdered her sister... with a tripod. Yikes...

"Nowhere Near Here" is a creative video by Pahnl that uses light painted stencils for stop-motion animation, following a glowing dog on its journeys around a city. Production took over 300 hours, and involved getting down on the knees to light paint over 200 stencils. Ironically, a dog almost peed on the camera during shooting.

If you think the Japanese come up with the strangest product ideas, it's because they do. The Fuvi Chocolate camera is designed for people who want to look like they're shooting with a chocolate bar, with dark, vanilla, and strawberry as the possible flavors. Sadly, what's gained in looks is lost in specs -- the camera only boasts a 0.3 megapixel sensor and is limited to onboard memory (i.e. it doesn't use a memory card). If you're a chocolate lover and need this camera on your keychain now …

Polaroid is sending out the above teaser, informing people of a special event the company will be holding at CES 2011 next month. While the teaser as-is isn't very revealing, enhancing the image brings out some interesting details.

Apparently this is what Pentax considers "legendary collaboration": a Korejanai robot edition (Korejanairobomoderu) of the K-r DSLR. It doesn't boast any spec upgrades from the stock version, but instead sports a wacky primary color paint job and a robot head attached to the hotshoe. You'll also get a matching special edition 35mm ƒ/2.4 prime lens to complete the horrifying awesome look. If only these were working DSLR cameras that also transformed into robot action figures.

Noah Kalina's famous "everyday" project spanned six years of his life, but began when he was 19 years old. "Natalie Time Lapse" is similar, but begins when the subject is born and ends when she is ten years old. Even though the pose and expression are far from being as precise as in Kalina's video, it's quite interesting watching someone go from newborn to ten-year-old.

If the first level of photo-geekiness is wearing USB cufflinks, and the second level is wearing camera cufflinks, then these mode dial cufflinks must be level three. Boy are these geeky. You can pick them for $50 on Amazon.

What do 225,000 watts of light get you when shooting with the high-speed Phantom camera? Not much. Just ask Vincent Laforet who shot this commercial using the uber-expensive camera. Even with that much light, he still needed a 2.0 aperture. That only created more problems of staying in focus while using dolly moves in slow motion.

Have numerous SD cards you need to access at once? The Elecom MR-C27 SD card reader is a four-slot card reader that allows you to do just that. It allows you to access up to 64GB of data, and looks like a cute little toaster connected to your computer via USB. It'll be available for ¥3,980 (~$48) starting mid-December in Japan.