March 2011

Made in the early 1960s, Fisher Price's Picture Story Camera was the first "camera" owned by many photo-enthusiasts. They're built out of paper-covered wood and plastic, and contained a tiny disc with eight different "photographs" that could be seen by looking through the viewfinder -- similar to the View-Master, except not in 3D. To change the photo, you simply hold down the shutter and turn the "flash", a yellow block with pictures representing the four seasons.

An old lady brings her newly purchased Canon T2i and kit lens back to a camera store in Toronto claiming they were defective.

The applications of this on the consumer photography market are likely nil, but researchers at Ohio State University have invented a method of shooting 3D photographs using a single lens. The trick is that the lens is cut like a gem, giving it eight different facets in addition to the main face that "see" the subject from different perspectives. Custom software then takes in the image and processes the 9 different views to create a single 3D image.

After Noah Kalina published his "Everyday" video back in 2006 featuring a self-portrait a taken every day for 2,356 days, the concept took off and soon the Internet was filled with copycat projects by people who wanted to document their own lives in the same way. If you've been wanting to try you hand at taking a photo of your face every day but have lacked the discipline to do so, there's a new app for the iPhone called "Everyday" that is designed to make things easier for you.

Using Lego pieces, Flickr user and Lego fan Larry Lars created an uber-accurate miniature version of his home photo studio. Maybe this could be a new method of creating lighting diagrams?

When Liana Garcia Joyce got married a while back (doubling her film stash), her mom came up with the idea of giving away these hand-crafted wooden photo holders as wedding favors because Liana met her husband through their common interest in photography.

Photographer Chris Marquardt claims to have used groundbreaking research to create a mind-boggling transparent camera that's capable of ISO 1/500, shutter speeds of 1/100000, and terapixel photos the equivalent of 3000 Canon 5D Mark IIs.

Flickr user Paul Little creates surreal images he calls "HDR Mixes" by combining different photographs with the help of HDR software. While you're normally supposed to feed the program multiple versions of the same photo (which are bracketed), with HDR Mixes you use two photos of the same scene and a third that's completely unrelated.

Here's some neat camera trickery: Ryan Hargrave captured some unique home video by shooting stills with his Canon 7D in burst mode rather than using the video recording mode. After some post-processing work, he ended up with this sweet video of his children that looks like it was filmed decades ago.

NASA has a long history of using Hasselblad cameras in space and, interestingly enough, you can download the Astronaut's Photography Manual used to train astronauts from Hasselblad's website. It covers everything from operating the Hasselblad 500EL/M to composition, using situations unique to astronauts in its examples and illustrations.

"Around the World in 2000 Pictures" is a neat project by Alex Profit -- the same guy that did "Around the World in 80 Seconds" -- in which he takes us on a tour of major world cities (Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, St. Petersbourg, Shanghai, Tokyo, New York and London) through 2000 photographs in stop-motion. He completed the entire project in just 24 days shooting a Canon 5D Mark II. We love the way he uses photographs to transition from one city to another seamlessly.

If you've been thinking of trying your hand at lunar photography, tomorrow night might present the perfect opportunity to do so. It's when the Moon will be the closest it has been to the Earth in 18 years, making it 14% larger and 30% brighter than when the full Moon is furthest away. Miss this opportunity, and you won't see a Moon like this until about 2029 -- who knows what we'll be shooting with by then! …

Make just published this short but informative tutorial on how to turn your DSLR into a pinhole camera by punching a hole in a body cap. If you have a spare body cap lying around (how often do you use those things anyway?) this can be a fun way to experiment with your camera.

If you somehow got your hands on a Fujifilm Finepix X100 already but don't mind waiting a little longer to use one, you can double or triple the money you paid by selling it to desperate buyers on eBay. Fujifilm was already experiencing extremely high demand and possible shortages, but then the tragic earthquake in Japan completely halted production of the camera after Fujifilm's factory 20 miles from Sendai was damaged.

"Space Program" is a project by artist Tom Sachs featuring 1:1 models of various space related objects, including an Apollo lunar module, a mission control unit, space suits, and handmade space suits. He also included the above NASA Hasselblad camera as part of the exhibition. Note the stylish wooden crank.

Did you know that some of Kodak's early DSLR cameras had built-in games? Before Canon and Nikon started making homegrown DSLRs, they actually started by partnering with Kodak in combing their camera bodies with Kodak sensors and electronics. For some strange awesome reason, the firmware developers decided to add games to a number of the models. The Pong game shown in the video above is found on the Kodak DCS 560. Too bad neither Canon nor Nikon continued this awesome feature once they started …

If Doctor Octopus were to design a DIY flash accessory, it might look a little something like this. German microbiologist Marcell Nikolausz has been experimenting with using fiber optics to split a single flash unit's light into multiple light sources. Optical fibers are threaded through Gorillapod-style Loc-Line channels, allowing flexible and stable positioning of the light sources. Each individual light source can be controlled using various modifiers (e.g. diffusers, gels, etc..), changing …

After seeing 3D light painting done with an iPad, classmates Jinhwan Kim and Cameron Zotter decided to take the experiment a step further. Instead of simply "painting" in a single direction, they spelled out letters by waving an iPod Touch across six different rows for each long exposure photograph.

A huge story last year was when a painter named Rick Norsigian came across 65 glass negatives at a garage sale, purchasing them for $45. He then had them examined by experts, who told him that they were previously undiscovered Ansel Adams photographs worth at least $200 million. Just as the find was being heralded as one of the greatest in art history, Ansel Adams' relatives and Publishing Rights Trust expressed skepticism that they were in fact Adams'. It then came to light that the photos …

Here's an interesting snippet from an article published today by David Pogue of the New York Times that describes a trick one photographer uses to overcome the megapixel myth: …

We're not sure how we missed this when the camera was announced at the beginning of last month, but the Canon Rebel T3 (AKA 1100D) will be available in four different colors when it lands on shelves next month. In addition to the standard black body -- which some consumers might find intimidating -- the camera (and matching straps) will also be available in red, brown, and metallic gray. Supposedly non-black versions will cost a bit more.

Have an unloved camera strap lying around? You can repurpose it as a strap for a shoulder bag! This could be a good upgrade for a bag that doesn't fit very nicely over your shoulder, or could be a fun gift idea for your photography-lovin' girlfriend or wife. You can find a tutorial on how to do this over on Photojojo.

"Hipster traps" have been springing up across New York City, and one of the baits used is a Holga 120N camera. The traps are the latest project by artists Jeff Greenspan and Hunter Fine.

Here's an interesting glimpse into what a DSLR's aperture blades and shutter curtain look like in super slow motion. Specifically, it's a Nikon D3 shooting at 11 frames per second with 1/4000 shutter speed and f/16, all captured at 5,000 frames per second. What's amazing is that the shutter curtain moves so quickly that you can't see the sensor at all, even at 5000fps!

Lomography shop manager Liana Garcia Joyce recently discovered an awesome trick for increasing your film stash: all you have to do is get married to someone who loves analog photography just as much as you do!

Cinematographer James Miller spent two years developing a technique for converting 8mm footage to digital by beaming it directly onto the sensor of a Canon 5D Mark II. He replaced the bulb on an old projector with LED lights, and used elements from a disassembled lens to focus the light. You can read a step-by-step walkthrough of this project here.

Chicago-based designer Dan Riordan woke up one morning, saw his Polaroid Land Camera 95A, and thought to himself, "I can make a lamp of out that". So he did. Now, after several months of perfecting his build process, he's selling these hand-crafted lamps for $150 through his Etsy store. The lamps are LED powered, last 50,000 hours without needing a new bulb, and are dimmable so you can adjust the brightness to your liking.

Last year we featured a pretty neat slow motion video shot from a moving train. British band SixToes decided to use the same idea for a music video, placing people all along the platform doing various things, and slowing down 7 seconds of footage into an entire music video.

Cell phones are playing a bigger and bigger role in citizen journalism -- just look at the imagery coming out of the Middle East protests -- and universities are beginning to offer entire courses on using them for photography. A new class at Immaculata University is designed to teach both the ethical and technical aspects of cell phone photography. Communications professor Sean Flannery leads the students in issues including voyeurism, ethics, citizen journalism and the difference between …

This video by FotoTV features "microstock king" Yuri Arcurs leading a workshop and imparting all sorts of useful tips that you'll find useful even if you have no interest in doing microstock -- things like working with models and capturing emotion. Get out your pen and paper and start taking notes!

Not sure what to do with your vintage camera collection that's sitting around gathering dust? Try displaying them on your wall in frames! …

You probably won't believe this, but this fly-by video of Saturn wasn't created with 3D computer graphics. Instead, it was created using thousands of high-resolution still photographs captured by the Cassini orbiter.

Remember the 100 pixelated camera illustrations by Billy Brown we featured a little while back? Well, you can now decorate your wall with them by ordering them as vinyl decals. For $36 you can choose either 30 small decals or 10 large ones over on Scribble on Everything.

Here's yet another awesome Photoshop tutorial by Sean Armenta showing how to use the uber-useful Clone Stamp Tool in Photoshop. He covers not just the basics of the tool, but also various tips and tricks you can use to maximize its usefulness.

After last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Canon and Nikon have been forced to shut down major camera and lens manufacturing plants due to damage and injuries to employees. At Canon's Utsunomiya plant -- which contributes to much of the company's lens output and appears as the letter "U" on the date code -- 15 workers were injured and operations have been suspended indefinitely. Nikon's Sendai plant -- which has produced all of Nikon's pro-level DSLRs including the D3S, D3X, …

When's the last time you saw some amateur video shot from inside North Korea? There's a good chance the answer is never, given how secretive the country is and how tight the policies are for what outsiders are allowed to do. Photojournalist Steve Gong, however, captured some really high quality video from inside the country using a Canon 5D Mark II.

If you're looking to buy used camera gear on sites like eBay or Craigslist, a trick you can use to find a good deals is to search for listings that contain spelling mistakes that keep most people from finding them (e.g. "Canom" instead of "Canon", or "Mikon" instead of "Nikon"). With less exposure -- and therefore less competition -- you may be able to win the auctions at far below the item's value.

Matthew Rothenberg, the man who has led Flickr the past two years has Head of Product, announced today that he is leaving the service. In a message posted to his Twitter account, Rothenberg states, …

"Double Exposure" is a series of surreal photos by Dan Mountford creating by exposing single frames of film twice. While they look like photo-manipulations done with fancy image editing programs, Mountford relies on fancy camerawork for the images, leaving only the color additions/modifications to post-processing.

You've probably heard people say that you shouldn't try to get a cheap photographer for wedding photography. Here's a good example of why.

Here's a Picasa gallery showing Google satellite imagery of various locations in Japan before and after the 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami. It's a pretty startling birds-eye-view of how devastating the tsunami actually was.

Customer: I'm wondering how much a certain lens costs.
Clerk: OK, which one?
Customer: I can't remember, but I know it's around $2,000.
Clerk: ...

So this is what the new Fujifilm Finepix X100 camera looks like when it's completely disassembled...

Check out these Canon Rebel XT cookies made by CookieJan's Creations. They're 3D, with 67mm "zoom" lenses attached, and are tasty for both the mouth and the eyes.

A Polish collector claims he's found an extremely rare daguerrotype of composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin, taken in his final repose in 1849.

After several Egyptian secret police buildings were raided recently by protestors, Egyptian blogger Hossam (AKA 3arabawy) stayed awake for two days organizing and uploading photographs of members of Egypt's secret police who have been accused of brutality and torture. The problem was, Hossam was uploading the images to Flickr, and Flickr wasn't happy about the fact that he didn't shoot them. Flickr soon vaporized the photographs and emailed him a warning for copyright violation.

You know all those not-so-awesome portraits found all over social networking services like Facebook and Myspace? If you've felt like there's something strangely uniform about them, perhaps the reason is because they were all taken by Sheffield Quigley, the world's first and only professional Myspace photographer.

The massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake that devastated Japan today was located just east of the city of Sendai, which subsequently suffered major damage due to the resulting tsunami. What you might not know is that the city is home to Nikon's flagship manufacturing facility -- the plant that produces Nikon's professional DSLRs (e.g. D3s, D3x and D700). Fortunately, Nikon reports that there have been no reports of injuries among its employees in that city, and the plant seems to have escaped …

"Alphabet Truck" is a project that took photographer Eric Tabuchi four years and thousands of miles of driving to complete. He photographed the giant logo letters found on the back of 18-wheelers, capturing one for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. The end result is beautiful, creative, and difficult to replicate.

Like the US Government, the CIA has its own Flickr account, and one of the sets they have features photos of various gadgets used by the agency's spies over the years. Among the gadgets are a number of spy cameras designed for various purposes and scenarios.