April 2011

Earlier this week Adobe launched a new subscription-based model for their Creative Suite line of software products. The program ordinarily costs $699, but a yearly subscription costs $420 and gives you access to the latest version. You can also subscribe for a monthly fee of $49 if you need the program on a short term basis. While this won't be very enticing for heavy users of the programs who can just save money by buying and upgrading, renting is a good option for anyone who needs the latest …

Eye-Fi announced their new Mobile X2 memory card today, which allows you to instantly transfer photos taken with your camera to mobile devices running iOS or Android. With the card in your camera and their special app on your device, a direct Wi-Fi connection will be established allowing you to shoot straight to your device. The 8GB card will be available later this week for $80.

Goodbye Flip Video camera. Cisco announced today that they're killing off the camera line in an attempt to refocus their consumer electronics business. They purchased the company behind the camera, Pure Digital Technologies, back in 2009. Flip Video cameras have long held the bestselling spots for camcorders on websites like Amazon by offering both HD video recording and convenient transferring with a built-in USB connection, but competition from rival camcorders and the introduction of HD …

At weddings, guests are often given disposable cameras that they can use to capture memories from their vantage point, but collecting and processing them afterwards can be a hassle and it's definitely not something that has caught up with our digital photography age. Hitch is a concept camera idea by industrial design student Martin Spurway that makes a lot of sense -- guests at an event are given simplified digital cameras, and photographs from the cameras are automatically collected when the …

For their Multimedia Installation class project, Pratt graduate students Alex Crawford and Austin Nelson built a Rube Golberg photobooth that starts with a Instax instant photo and ends with a digital one about thirty seconds later. 30 hours went into building this creative -- albeit useless -- contraption.

Photographer Chuck Miller got his hands on a roll of Super-XX 120 government surplus film from eBay with an expiration date of May 1959 -- film that's 50+ years old and, as Miller notes, older than the Los Angeles Angels baseball team.

If you want to make a "bullet time" video like the kind made famous by The Matrix, you don't need a gigantic budget or 52 DSLRs lined up in a row. Just get a large group of friends, stand in a circle around your subjects, and snap pictures at the same time! Photoblog.hk recently held an event called "See You Around Hong Kong" where large groups of photography enthusiasts gathered to do just that.

Customer: Hi. I'm a professional photographer but I don't understand why are my pictures green, and then sometimes blue. Salesperson: Do you have a certain mode enabled? Maybe a colour swap feature has been accidentally turned on, try resetting the camera back to the original factory settings. Customer: No, no. I know about that -- I've been published before with some of the pictures I've taken... I know what I'm doing. Salesperson: So reseting the camera didn't work? Customer: No. Salesperson: …

Here's an interesting portrait of Steven Sasson by David Friedman, shot at Kodak's headquarters in Rochester, New York. Sasson invented the digital camera as a Kodak engineer back in 1975, and provides an interesting glimpse in this video into how that first camera worked.

This 4GB USB flash drive looks exactly like a miniature Canon Digital IXUS 200 IS compact camera. Not sure whether it's simply a concept design or something that's actually available for purchase... Anyone know? …

Adobe announced new tools today that lets developers create tablet apps -- called Photoshop Touch Apps -- that interact directly with Photoshop CS5. They also created a few apps to showcase some of the possibilities of using a tablet while working in Photoshop, including one called Adobe Nav.

Claire Chauvin over at Poopscape has a fun project for those of you who have useless 35mm negatives that are lying around and waiting to be tossed. All you need is a cheap and simple lamp (Chauvin used a $7 Ikea Grönö lamp) and some glue (e.g. Mod Podge). Carefully glue the strips onto the lamp and you'll have yourself a unique, personalized lamp that'll liven up any room in your house!

TechnoFotografia created a concept design for the yet-to-be-announced Nikon D800 DSLR. One of the novel features dreamed up for the design is a LCD screen that can be detached from the camera and used remotely (seen above). If this were to ever exist on a DSLR, losing the screens would be an issue, and replacing them would likely cost a fortune.

Judging from the strange novelty products coming out of Japan, there's apparently a huge population of people there who love both photography and cats. If a picture taking cat isn't enough to satisfy you, you can add this cat-shaped memory card reader to your collection. It reads SD cards and Memory Stick cards using slots that are exposed when you lower the cat's tail. They're available from Donya for ¥399, or about $5.

Olympus has a new "Spokesman Series" of commercials that try to convey the different strengths of their compact cameras in creative ways. They remind me a tiny bit of the Old Spice Guy commercials.

One of the biggest hits this past April Fool's Day was RE-35, a futuristic cartridge that transforms any 35mm film camera into a digital one. As the website went viral, many people actually thought it was a real product, prompting the design company behind the design to issue a notice on the website explaining that it was fake. As stated by numerous readers, digital film isn't exactly a new idea -- an actual company called Silicon Film attempted this product about a decade ago (and even gave a …

Here's a video comparing the mirror and shutter curtain mechanisms of the Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 7D, Nikon D700, and Nikon D7000 DSLRs. It's pretty surprising how much the Canon mirrors bounce compared to the Nikon ones...

If you need a break and an opportunity to flex your brain muscles, see if you can figure out these photo riddles. The answer to each clue is a particular camera equipment brand.

This time-lapse video was shot by Nate Bolt using a Canon 5D Mark II, a 16-35mm lens, a tripod, and an intervalometer on an Air France flight from San Francisco to Paris. The camera snapped a photo every 2-30 seconds throughout the 11 hour flight, roughly capturing one photo every two miles of the journey.

Photographer JP Cariño experienced the awesomeness of pro DSLR weather sealing when doing bird photography from a floating blind: …

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

We've seen camera shaped pendants before, but these new Camera Lingo Necklaces definitely take you into uncharted levels of geekiness. Each one has a "secret code word" that will be appreciated by other photo enthusiasts, but may befuddle ordinary, unenlightened (no pun intended) folk. They come in four colors and designs -- JPEG, CR2, NEF, and a no-flash symbol -- and cost $20 bucks each over at Photojojo.

Philip Bloom shot this beautiful time-lapse video using a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon Rebel T2i, Canon Rebel T3i and Panasonic GH2. All the cameras were pointed out of a hotel window on a pretty cloudy and gloomy day.

As the world of photography collides with the world of computing in smart phones, we will undoubtedly be seeing many mind-boggling applications (e.g. augmented reality translation) that utilize cell phone cameras in the near future. A new app called Meal Snap fits that description -- it's an app that analyzes photos you take of food, telling you both the ingredients and the number of calories you'll be consuming. It's only available for iOS 4+ and costs $3 from the App Store.

Pentax is super big on the customization and design aspect of cameras (much to the annoyance of photography purists), offering colorful DSLRs and all kinds of strange special edition ones as well. Now, with the introduction of customizable faceplates on the RS1500, they've discovered a new way to make money from their camera lines -- special faceplates made by other companies. They just announced today that they've partnered with DC Comics for a custom faceplate pack. Available for £120 …

Photo editor John G. Morris is a legendary photo editor who played a huge role in how we perceived major world events in the 20th century. Here's an interesting behind-the-scenes look at his role in shaping history.

While Nikon Corporation was established in 1917 (as Nippon Kōgaku Tōkyō K.K.), the company was a lens manufacturing company and didn't make the first Nikon branded camera until 1948. The first camera was named the Nikon I, and started with serial number 60922. On May 28th, Nikon I No. 60924 will be auctioned at the Westlicht Photographica auction. This is the third Nikon production camera ever made, and the oldest known surviving Nikon camera. Bidding starts at €70,000 (~$100,000), and the …

Lens attachments for the iPhone 4 already exist, but the GoPano micro is a bit different -- it's a 360° lens that records every direction at the same time. Once it's recorded, you can go back and use a special viewer to watch the video from any perspective, panning the scene as the video is playing. EyeSee360, the company behind the product, has launched a Kickstarter project to fund it and gauge interest. After setting a goal of $20,000, they've already managed to raise over $50,000 with more …

If you've been out of the loop when it comes to emergence of mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras (MILC, AKA EVIL), David Pogue over at the New York Times has an interesting article introducing them: …

Camera toss photography involves having your camera shoot photographs while it's being tossed wildly into the air. The problem is, you'll usually want to play around with this kind of photography at night, when long exposure times will create pretty abstract images. If catching your camera on its way down in the dark isn't something that sits well with you, you might want do try what Flickr user Robert Couse did -- protect your camera using an inflatable swim tube, a piece of cardboard, and …

Canon published this humorous advertisement for the 40D in Digital Photographer magazine back in 2008.

Nikon announced yesterday that the 60 milionth Nikkor lens came into existence sometime in March 2011, a month after Canon announced the 60 millionth Canon EF lens. Canon has had a faster growth rate though -- while the first Nikkor lens was made in 1959, Canon's EF mount didn't show up until 1987.

Here's an awesome post-processing tutorial by photographer Sean Armenta teaching how to clean up skin in a portrait using three Photoshop tools: the Healing Brush, Patch Tool, and Clone Stamp.

These ghostly figures you see in these photographs weren't Photoshopped in, but are purely done through light painting. If you remember the creative 3D light painting technique using an iPad that we shared a while back, Croix Gagnon and Frank Schott took it a step further and put a slightly morbid twist on it. For their project "12:31", they "painted" using a laptop and an animation showing cross-sections of a human body!

Here's a rare behind-the-scenes look into Ansel Adams' home in Carmel, California and the custom built darkroom in which most of Adams' famous prints were created. It's pretty amazing how much editing Adams' did in transforming the plain negatives into the beautiful works of art hanging on walls around the world.

Kodachrome may be gone, but it's far from forgotten -- DreamWorks is planning to make a movie centered around the closing of the final Kodachrome lab in Kansas. Author Jonathan Tropper got the idea for the movie after reading an article about the film's demise in the New York Times, and pitched the idea to the studio. His script involves a father-son road trip in which they attempt to reach the lab and process their Kodachrome rolls before their memories are lost forever. Shawn Levy is being …

Reddit user geft created a useful primer to get newbies started in digital photography. It's a single image measuring 1045x5480 pixels that covers sensors, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and camera controls. This would be a great thing to print out, laminate, and give as a gift to someone who's looking to learn.

"Pavement Trees" is a series of photographs by wedding photographer Ingrid Nelson that captures a surreal glimpse of the world through puddles in a parking lot.

Last November NYC firefighter Robert Keiley posed for a stock photograph that showed him covered with soot and holding a helmet. Despite signing a release when the image was made, he was shocked when he found an edited version of the photo in an advertisement show him holding a picture of the Twin Towers on 9/11. The ad read "I Was There", and was for a law firm specializing in 9/11 lawsuits. Keiley, previously a model, didn't join the fire department until 2004. Now, the agency behind the ad …

Nikon officially announced their new D5100 DSLR today, replacing the D5000 in the entry-level category. The 16.2 megapixel camera with a 1.5x crop factor has a 3-inch swiveling LCD screen, 4fps continuous shooting, an ISO range from 100 to 6400 (which you can boost to 25600), 1080p video recording at 30fps, and built in sensor cleaning.

If you think the 5-megapixel sensor found on the iPhone 4 is good, wait till you see the camera found on the next iPhone -- it's reportedly going to be a 8-megapixel sensor made by Sony. The Street wrote back in 2010 that the next version of the iPhone to arrive in 2011 would pack an 8-megapixel Sony sensor rather than the 5-megapixel OmniVision one found in the current phone, and Sony's CEO Howard Stringer seems to have confirmed that today in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Nikon will reportedly announce the new D5100 DSLR tomorrow (late tonight for those in the US), and photographs of the camera were leaked onto the Interwebs today. We'll be reporting on the specs tomorrow, but an interesting rumor is that the camera will have a "Night Vision" option that boosts ISO up to a mind-blowing 102400, allowing you to shoot in near-darkness. Stay tuned for the official announcement!

Computer vision PhD student Zdenek Kalal developed a camera called "Predator" that learns from its mistakes while given difficult recognition and tracking tasks. It's a pretty interesting glimpse at how powerful the autofocus feature on consumer cameras might be in the future. Imagine being able to teach your camera to recognize a particular moving subject, then having all the photographs taken show that subject in perfect focus! Cameras already have simple facial recognition features built in …

Flash drives are a dime a dozen, but the Fuuvi Pick is a bit different -- it functions as a flash drive but doubles as a camera for both still photo and video! There a USB connector on one end, and microSD slot on the other. It shoots 1280 × 1024 (1.3 megapixel) photographs and 720 x 480 video at 30fps. To transfer photographs, simply plug the camera into your computer -- like you would with a flash drive or with a Flip camcorder -- and it will be recognized as a drive. You can pick one up …

Some friends of mine asked me to shoot a quick band photograph of them recently without any preparation or planning. Luckily, the location was pretty nice (we were at a hostel) and the weather was a bit cloudy so there wasn't harsh sunlight.

Did you know that flatbed scanners make fun portrait cameras as well? Just place your cat on the glass, do a quick scan, and you'll have a strange looking portrait shot from below! Apparently this is pretty popular among cat lovers -- a Flickr search for "cat scanner" returns thousands of results! This gives "cat scan" a whole new meaning!

When a fake camera technology is unveiled, it's normally called a "concept". When it's published on April 1st, however, it's called an April Fool's Joke (e.g. last Friday's Canon iPad monitor). The RE-35 is another fun idea that would be absolutely awesome if it actually existed -- it's a 35mm canister that transforms any 35mm film camera into a digital one using a flexible sensor. Simply load the canister into the camera as you would with film, shoot your photos, and download them by …

Photographer Denis Smith creates photos giant balls of light without any digital trickery, relying instead on light-painting. His technique is to spin a light around while slowly turning his body, creating spheres of light when seen in a long exposure photo.

Customer: I want to test this camera with my memory card so I can check the pictures at home on my computer.
Salesperson: That's very smart of you - of course I'll let you do that.
Customer: Can I try it with a background flash?
Salesperson: Normally I'd say no, but I'm not busy... so... sure, why not?
Customer: Can we shoot it on a white wall with even lighting?
Salesperson: Whatever you'd like.

Sure this might be an April Fool's joke, but it's also a pretty interesting concept demo. Perhaps this is a glimpse of how we might be operating cameras in the future.