March 2011

Hiding or censoring part of an image through obfuscation is as easy as selecting the area in Photoshop and applying the Pixelate->Mosaic filter, but what if you don't have an image editing program at your disposal? If you're seriously paranoid about your privacy on the Internet, there's a new service called PhotoHide that helps you quickly add these pixelated areas to any photo. Everything is done through the web browser, and you can download the final image once you're done.

Skins and cases that transform make the iPhone 4 look like a camera have become pretty popular in recent days, but this case by Etsy seller Signimade still manages to stand out. It's crafted out of Bamboo, Zebra wood, or Walnut wood, and is made by hand. Each one costs $35.

Adobe is working on a full version of Photoshop for the iPad for people who need more than the Photoshop Express app that's more designed for mobile phones. At Photoshop World, which kicked off earlier this week, Adobe gave a neat demo of the app in action, and Eric Reagan over at Photography Bay recorded the video above. It's a neat look at how they're trying to rethink the popular program for a different kind of computer.

We may soon see an unexpected player enter the mirrorless camera market: CNET Asia is reporting that GE will be introducing a mirrorless camera by the end of this year: …

Photographer Cary Norton built a working 4x5 large format camera using Lego bricks, a 127mm lens he purchased for $40 on eBay, and a film holder and ground glass in the back.

This Science Channel "How Its Made" segment shows the manufacturing process for CCD semiconductors, which are the sensors found in many digital cameras. For the difference between CCD and CMOS, check out this How Stuff Works article.

IT consultant and photo enthusiast Viktor Takacs didn't have much success when he tried capturing lightning on camera, so he decided to build this fancy do-it-yourself trigger (which he named "Zeus") that automatically snaps a photo whenever the photodiode detects a flash of lightning. He even built a knob into the device that can be used to adjust sensitivity. The demo above shows the trigger reacting to manually triggered flashes from a strobe.

You can now build you own version of the cardboard Hasselblad pinhole camera that we featured a couple days ago. Kelly Angood has released a PDF with the template and detailed instructions for putting the pieces together. The finished product is a working pinhole camera that takes 120 35mm film.

Ever wonder what actually happens between the time you press the shutter button on a DSLR and when the image shows up on the LCD screen? Canon made these two videos explaining how their DSLR cameras work and how they use CMOS sensors to turn photons into photos. You'll probably find this pretty interesting if you've never learned about CMOS sensors before. For a more in-depth lesson, check out the sensor tutorial over on Cambridge in Colour.

After a seven year journey that involved being slingshotted around the planets in our solar system, NASA's MESSENGER probe entered Mercury's orbit on March 17th, 2011. Yesterday the probe beamed back the first photograph ever taken of the planet from orbit (seen above).

Great photos come from happy cameras. Fabric artist Nicole Gastonguay crocheted this cute little Polaroid camera and picture duo. You can find a whole gallery of her wonderful creations here, though we think this photography-related one is the neatest of them all! …

Berlin-based photographer Stephan Tillmans shot a series of photographs titled "Luminant Point Arrays" that show old CRT televisions being switched off, capturing the strange and unique light patterns that appear for an instant but immediately vanish.

A movie about the Bang Bang Club isn't the only photography-related movie to grace theaters in recent days. Bill Cunningham New York, an acclaimed documentary film about the New York Times fashion photographer, is also arriving in theaters around the US. The film is 94% fresh on RottenTomatoes, and is said to be a beautiful and inspiring movie.

Photographer Jeffrey Martin, founder of 360cities, recently use a Canon 550D and 200mm lens to shoot the largest indoor photograph ever made: a ginormous 40 gigapixel photograph of a 18th-century baroque library in the Strahov Monastery in Prague, Czech Republic. Over 5 days of shooting with his robot control camera, Martin collected 2,947 separate photos that went into the resulting panorama. The RAW photos then took a day to batch process, 111 hours to stitch, and 20 hours to Photoshop, …

Have an older camera that doesn't have a built-in light meter? Instead of buying an expensive light meter, you can download the Pocket Light Meter app for free if you have an iPhone. What's more, you can even mount it to your camera's hot shoe if you don't mind looking uber-geeky while shooting. Nigel over at phototinker wrote a tutorial for creating the iPhone hot shoe holder shown above.

Rachel over at The Custom Cake Shop made this detailed birthday cake that looks like a limited edition Titanium Leica M7 with a Summilux lens attached. Looks like some photo-enthusiast had a memorable 56th birthday.

During the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, a number of images that became widely discussed were of 15-year-old Fabienne Cherisma, who was shot and killed by police after looting two plastic chairs and three framed pictures. One of these photographs (shown above), captured by photographer Paul Hansen, was recently chosen as the best International News Image at the Swedish Picture of the Year Awards. There was soon a good deal of discussion in the Swedish media over the ethics …

Photographer Thomas Hudson Reeve shoots pinhole photographs in a pretty interesting way -- rather than using photo-sensitive paper or film inside a separate camera, he creates the camera using photo paper itself. The resulting photograph is exposed onto the inside of the photo-sensitive camera (which he calls the "PaperCam"), and creates a pretty surreal look when opened up and developed.

The Roman philosopher Seneca once said, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." This clip from the BBC documentary "South Pacific" shows Rudi Diesel capturing a once in a lifetime shot of surfer Dylan Longbottom in a massive 12-foot wave using a Typhoon HD4 high speed camera. It's the first shot of its kind ever recorded, and one of the most amazing surfing shots you'll ever see.

Here's an idea: find a bunch of photography-lovin' friends, borrow their DSLR cameras, and shoot your own Matrix-style bullet time videos from home! The above video shows a workshop where they were able to bring together 24 cameras for this awesome purpose.

Lomography just announced this new Diana Deluxe Kit, which allows you to buy a complete collection of Diana toy camera goodies for a discounted price. Like many of the things we feature here on this blog, we think this looks a little too nice to use. You should just keep it framed and hang it up on your wall!

One of the big advantages of digital photography is that EXIF data is embedded into your images, allowing you to easily learn when and how (and more recently where) a particular photograph was captured. If you still enjoy shooting film, then a solution is to jot down notes about your photography while you're shooting.

Those epic photographs of stars and galaxies that you see on sites like NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day don't actually look like that straight out of the camera. Instead, a good deal of post-processing magic goes into each photograph. How much magic? Countless black and white photographs shot with different cameras are carefully weaved together, and color is added to enhance the final image. The video above gives a quick and interesting two minute tour of how they post-processed one …

Designer Kelly Angood created this cardboard pinhole camera that looks exactly like a Hasselblad medium format camera. The design is screen printed onto the cardboard, and the camera accepts 120 film. See sample photographs shot with this camera over on Angood's website.

So we know DSLR cameras can survive plunges down cliffs (but not being trapped in a burning car), but what about being dropped onto pavement while traveling at high speeds? Shahrizan Jeffri Aziz was covering the Tour de Langkawi on a motorcycle when the unthinkable happened: his Nikon D3S and 300mm f/2.8 lens flew out of his hands and "spread all over the road".

There are plenty of iPhone apps that mimic the look of vintage analog photography, but what about retro video game photography? "8-Bit Pocket Camera" is a new app that is designed to mimic the style of the Game Boy Camera, which became pretty popular on playgrounds in the late 90s. In addition to the 8-bit photos, the user interface will surely cause some serious nostalgia. You can pick up the app for $1 over in the iTunes App Store.

Devin Graham shot this beautiful surfing footage using a Canon 7D and a couple lenses (70-200mm and 100-400mm) with a 2x teleconverter, so much of the footage was shot at 800mm. The slow motion is actually "faked" (here's another faked 7D video) using software: …

Customer: Why are my 8x10 prints being cut off? Salesperson: Well, your camera shoots in 2:3 aspect ratio which is a different proportion of rectangle. The 8x10 print is 4:5. Customer: I want my prints in full size. Salesperson: You have three options. A) We stretch the image. B) We crop the image, or C) we can put white strips on the sides but that won't be very pleasing. Customer: Can't I just put what I have on my camera on the paper? Salesperson: You know how when you watch a HD video and …

YouTube user haakvi was taking pictures of a small lake near Oslo, Norway with his Nikon D90 when he noticed something interesting about the lake's reflections. This video shows an interesting way to shoot the reflections -- you could do the same thing with photographs, but then you wouldn't have the "twist".

With its photography-related businesses struggling and no end in sight to its stock's free fall, Kodak is turning to patent infringement lawsuits as a way to generate revenue. The company is currently in a patent dispute with Apple (iPhone) and RIM (Blackberry) over a patent it holds for previewing image on camera phones, and hopes to generate over $1 billion in royalty revenues if it comes out victorious. Previously Kodak had used this same patent to win nearly $1 billion from Samsung and LG.

Who says you need uber-expensive lighting equipment to shoot nice-looking studio portraits? In this video, photographer Bert Stephani shows us what you can do with cheap halogen work lights (you can find them for about $30-$50) and a couple shower curtains.

This cute little vintage twin-lens reflex camera by Chinese stationary company deli is actually a pencil sharpener in disguise. Instead of loading it with film, simply stick a pencil into the top "lens" and turn the handle on the back to sharpen it. It has an adjustable sharpness knob, and the top half pulls out when you need to dump the pencil shavings.

"The Bang Bang Club" is an upcoming movie about -- you guessed it -- the Bang-Bang Club: photographers Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich, Ken Oosterbroek, and Joao Silva.

You've all seen multi-photo picture frames before, but the "Comic Strip Picture Frame" goes a step further by providing 45 speech bubble stickers (and a pen) that allow you to turn the frame into a comic strip. You can buy one for $18 over on Perpetual Kid -- or you can just take this idea and create your own speech/thought bubbles.

Update on 12/18/21: This video has been removed by its creator.

The mobile photo sharing space is hot right now, with services like Instagram, Picplz, and Path growing like weeds. A new contender called Color is causing some buzz after successfully raising a whopping $41 million... before even launching. The company has seven notable founders who have either started successful companies in the past (e.g. Lala and BillShrink) or have held executive positions at them (LinkedIn). Among the investors is Sequoia Capital, one of the most influential and …

I imagine, almost everyone interested in photography has seen the stunning pictures created with a technique called light painting. You set your camera to long exposure, 20 to 30 seconds or even longer, and use a light source, a flashlight or LED light, to "paint" with it. Most pictures have some kind of magic touch to it because you see only the track of light afterwards and not the actual light source. Light stencils are somewhat related to light painting. It uses the long exposure as well …

Here's a neat gift idea (especially with Mother's Day coming up): take your favorite portrait and have it printed on a beautiful notepad! Joanna Goddard made the above notepad using a photograph of her son Toby. Pinhole Press is a company that can help you make your own, and a 50 page one will cost you $13.

Last month we reported that a Flickr photographer had found his photograph of a car being used as a Gap clothing design without his permission. It now appears that appropriating images from the web wasn't limited to that design, nor just the Gap brand -- Old Navy, another brand owned by Gap, is now being accused of stealing a car photograph as well. A photographer was strolling around in an Old Navy store in El Centro, California when he came across a shirt that he just couldn't stop staring …

"Instant Rainbow" is a beautiful poster for Polaroid fans by Yumalum. You can buy one for $55 through Etsy.

As newspapers struggle to survive in this new digital media world, an Arkansas-based collector named John Rogers has quietly built the world's largest privately owned collection of photographs by paying huge sums of money for their photo archives.

What's more beautiful: Hilda Grahnat's collection of film cameras, or the way she photographed and arranged them? Either way, we think this would make an awesome poster for any wall.

Yesterday we reported that artist Richard Prince had just lost a copyright infringement lawsuit against a photographer he appropriated images from.

Landscape photographer Terje Sorgjerd spent four years looking to create a timelapse of the aurora borealis (AKA northern lights), then finally flew two hours north from Norway and spent a week capturing one of the biggest displays in recent years. The final result is absolutely jaw-dropping.

Did you know that Canon's first logo back in 1934 depicted Kwanon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy? Kwanon was actually the brand name used until they began thinking about expansion: …

Update: The ruling has been overturned, and a judge has ruled that Prince's usage is fair use.

When PetaPixel reader David Anderson opened up the April 2011 edition of Shutterbug magazine, he was shocked to find a terrorist in one of the advertisements. Someone should alert the TSA to this, since they published a poster warning us of this type of terrorist back in 2010.

Jonathan over at PhotoWeeklyOnline created a couple photography-related word search puzzles that contain words like "aperture" and "shutter". There's two puzzles, one for analog photography terms and one for digital. Print out the PDFs for a fun handout at a photography-related event or a quick diversion from work if you need a break.

A couple weeks ago we reported that a lawmaker in Florida was trying to make photographing farms a felony. Turns out the Florida Senate Committee on Agriculture actually approved the bill this week, but only after passing a couple amendments that make the bill a little more reasonable. The new version of the bill only concerns photographs taken by people who trespass onto the private farmland, and instead of a felony the crime will now be a misdemeanor. Whew.

Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and announced below.