For her series titled Face to Face, photographer Ann Hamilton placed a pinhole camera in her mouth and shot photographs by simply opening her mouth at people. Upon first glance, the view almost looks like you're looking out someone's eye.
What if you could take perfect group photographs by first shooting multiple frames and then selecting the best portions of each one? Microsoft amazed us with this concept last year with its Photo Fuse technology, and now we may soon be seeing something similar coming to mobile phone cameras (and hopefully compact cameras as well). Imaging technology company Scalado gave the above demonstration at a conference earlier this month showing off Rewind, a super-useful feature that shoots a burst of …
One sad truth about the photo industry is that there's a ton of counterfeit products floating around, and unless you buy directly from a reputable source, it can be difficult to know for sure whether you're getting the real thing. Last month we posted on how up to 1/3 of memory cards labeled "SanDisk" are actually counterfeit. Over on Nikon's website, there's a support page that shows photographs of counterfeit Nikon accessories next to genuine ones, with many of them almost indistinguishable …
San Francisco-based photographer Ian Tuttle came up with this funky way of adding silhouettes to his Diana F+ photos without Photoshop -- using some Elmer's glue, he attached a couple 1/8” figurines (the kind meant for model railroads) inside the camera upside down. The resulting photographs show a couple shadowy tourists looking at each scene!
Hacker Rob Flickenger wasn't satisfied with ordinary photographs of his ongoing Tesla coil experiments, so he decided to shoot Matrix-style "bullet time" images to capture "3D lightning". He purchased 10 Canon A470 cameras and configured them to function as a single 70-megapixel 10-angle camera.
After having images of it leaked onto the Interwebs last week, Panasonic's DMC GF3 Micro Four Thirds camera is now official. Like its predecessor, the GF2, the GF3 packs a 12-megapixel sensor, has a 3-inch LCD touchscreen, and shoots 1080p 1080/60i AVCHD video. In terms of differences, it has a faster processor that allows for faster autofocus times weighs 15% less, is 17% smaller, and is also even more simple than the GF2 -- it lacks a hot shoe and has a pop-up flash there instead.
Turns out turning photographs into stencils isn't transformative enough to be defended as "fair use". In a case that has many similarities to the Shepard Fairey vs. AP legal battle, a judge ruled earlier this week against graffiti artist Thierry Guetta after Guetta (AKA Mr. Brainwash) had used a "stencil-ized" photo of Run DMC by Glen E. Friedman to promote an exhibition, concluding that Guetta's piece didn't differ enough from the original image to be considered fair use.
Amateur astronomy enthusiasts may be content with shooting the stars with a DSLR through a telescope, but what would a consortium of astronomy institutes use for photographing the night sky? The answer is the OmegaCam, a giant 1,700-lb camera found at the heart of the largest telescope designed for visible light surveying: the VST. It uses 32 separate CCD sensors that work together to form a giant 268-megapixel sensor, capturing 30 terabytes worth of photographs every year. The photograph seen …
Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signed a new law last week that makes it a crime to post images to the Internet that "frighten, intimidate, or cause emotional distress." Violators found guilty of doing so now face up to one year in jail and $2,500 in fines.
It's not every where you get to watch and hear someone picking the brain of a National Geographic photographer. The Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library recorded this video interview with photographer Jim Richardson and asked him to share about his experiences and words of advice. Richardson also has an interesting FAQ page on his website that answers a lot of questions about shooting for the famous yellow-bordered magazine.
The USPS has unveiled a new set of stamps called "Pioneers of American Industrial Design" that honors 12 of the most influential American industrial designers of the 20th century, and one of them is Walter Dorwin Teague.
Observant Micro-Four Thirds fans recently spotted a strange looking camera in a promo video on YouTube (which was quickly taken down). The camera is most likely Panasonic's new Lumix GF3, a camera that's expected to be officially unveiled on June 13th. Its rumored to pack the same 16 megapixel sensor as the G3, not have a hot shoe, and to have a touchscreen-based interface. The company also seems to be taking the "large sensor in a small body" thing quite seriously -- this camera is tiny!
Here's an educational video that provides a helpful visual demonstration of what a polarizing filter can do for your photographs.
For part of his MA in Documentary Photography at the University of Wales, Brendan Corrigan visited car boot sales -- a kind of market where people sell things out of their trunks -- and purchased old cameras for about the price of a roll of film. He then had the used film inside each camera developed, publishing the photos online alongside the cameras they were found in (along with the price he paid for the camera). His project is called "Make me an offer".
NASA captured this incredible photograph of the tornado that tracked across Massachusetts last week, showing the storm's destructiveness as seen from space. The Westfield-Charlton tornado remained on the ground for an hour and ten minutes, carving a 39-mile-long path of destruction into the ground that was half a mile wide at some points.
Photographer Josh Owens spent a little over a month staying at various hotels in Manhattan and shooting stills a Canon 5D Mark II and two 7Ds. He ended up with over an hour's worth of time-lapse footage, which he whittled down into this stunning 4-minute video showing Manhattan in motion.
Textify.it is a neat little web and iPhone app that recreates photographs using colored text. Simply drag and drop a photograph from your computer onto the page to get started. The image above is a photograph of Crater Lake that we turned into text using the letters from "PetaPixel".
Needed a Polaroid picture for a project I'm working on, so I purchased a Polaroid One Step camera for $15 off a guy on Craigslist and a pack of Polaroid 600 film that expired back in 2003 for $26 with shipping from eBay. I was a bit concerned that the film wouldn't work anymore, but found that the battery in the film pack still had some juice and that the film still developed, though the upper corners of the image are messed up.
If you're like me, you have a bazillion photographs backed up on external hard drives, but have you ever wondered how digital photographs are stored on the magnetic surface of a platter spinning at thousands of rotations per minute? This interesting video provides a neat look at how hard drives work, though it will probably also convince you to back up your photographs by some other means as well (e.g. online or on discs). The engineering that makes hard drives possible is amazing!
Need some inspiration? The "Endless Interestingness" page by designers Mark Barcinski and Adrien Jeanjean -- they have an awesome website, BTW -- shows thumbnails of interesting Flickr photographs, and extends endlessly in every direction. If you see a photo you like, simply click it to open up the original Flickr page.
Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli recently captured some amazing one-of-a-kind photographs of the Space Shuttle Endeavour docked with the International Space Station from about 600 feet away using a Nikon D3x and 24-120mm lens.
Apple is looking to make an even bigger splash in the camera market with the photography-related features they've included in the upcoming iOS 5, with one of the huge ones being cloud connectivity. iPhones running iOS 5 will be connected to iCloud, Apple's online backup solution, and every photograph captured will be automatically and wirelessly copied to the cloud and into the user's "Photo Stream". The photos can then be accessed from other computers and devices, and are deleted after 30 days …
About a week ago, a Dutch woman uploaded a video to YouTube that appeared to show her getting a sleeve tattoo showing the Facebook profile photographs of 152 of her friends. The video spread like wildfire, and news outlets ranging from CNN to Forbes published the story. Now, she's admitting that it was actually a publicity stunt intended to get the tattoo shop some free publicity, and that the tattoo was actually a temporary one that washes off in a couple days.
Here's a crash course on getting started with using Photoshop Layers and Masks by Sean Armenta of Fstoppers. If you've been making edits on your photographs directly without creating new layers, watch this video to have your eyes opened to the power of layers.
An unfortunate photo-lover in Hong Kong recently got into a fight with his girlfriend, who proceeded to smash his beautiful collection of Nikon lenses. Among the casualties were a Nikkor 28-70 f2.8D, Tokina 28-70 F2.6-2.8, Nikkor 80-200 f2.8D, Nikkor 17-35 F2.8D, and a Nikon TC-20E teleconverter.
Need a break from work? Photographer Murray Fredericks created this beautiful 10-minute time-lapse video of clouds forming and dissipating over a body of water. Best when viewed in full screen and in HD.
After photographs of the cameras were leaked back in April 2011, Sony has now officially announced its A35 translucent mirror camera to replace the A33 and the NEX-C3. The A35 has the same resolution as the A55 -- 16.2 megapixels -- and can shoot 1080/60 video and 7 frames per second for stills (though resolution is reduced to 8.4MP at this rate. ISO goes up to 25600, and there's a large 3-inch touchscreen on the back. The A35 will be available in August for $600, or $700 if you want the …
Photographer Gary Cruz is one lucky dude -- not only did he get his hands on a Fujifilm X100, but he got what might be the world's first X100 cake as well! It was given to him by his talented wife Beverly.
Math major and photo enthusiast Kris Hollingsworth created this beautiful photograph in which he light-painted an entire poem! It took patience and perseverance: practicing the technique took 15 hours, while the actual light painting took another two hours. The image is actually 9 separate photographs in one -- eight lines of poetry and the self-portrait of Hollingsworth.
Confused about what a certain acronym means when it comes to Nikon's line of Nikkor lenses? There's a helpful Lens Glossary over on the company's website that provides a short explanation of each one.
On Memorial Day 2011, Narces Benoit witnessed and filmed a group of Miami police officers shooting and killing a suspect in a car chase and armed robbery. He was then confronted by officers who handcuffed him and smashed his cell phone, but Benoit was able to sneakily preserve the video with some quick thinking. The Miami Herald writes, …
Photographer Don Barnard made this video tutorial showing how to convert a styrofoam shipping box into a DIY softbox. The video is pretty in-depth and runs nearly 10 minutes, but the basic idea is to line the inside of the box with some reflective material, stick a strong light inside, and cover it with some cloth to soften the light. It's a neat way to make a useful lighting tool for under $20. Check out some sample photos taken with the softbox here.
Here's a good example of when HDR photography is useful: NASA created this image of the Space Shuttle Endeavour lifting off for the final time by combining six separate photographs.
When Eadweard Muybridge shot the first motion picture of a galloping horse back in 1878, he used 24 individual cameras placed 27 inches apart, using trip wires to fire off each camera one thousandth of a second after the previous one. With fancy high-speed camera rentals priced at thousands of dollars a day, YouTube member Destin came up with a Muybridge-esque technique for capturing a bullet flying through the air using an ordinary DSLR: he shoots a bullet for each frame and uses a fancy …
The next time you're planning a birthday party for someone who loves photography, try making a giant camera piñata using cardboard and paper-mache. You can fill it with candy and treats, or take your photo-geekness to the next level by filling it with photography-related gifts and accessories.
The Twig Pod is a new lightweight aluminum monopod for compact cameras (not DSLRs) that collapses like a tent rod into four 8-inch segments. It has a pointy base that can be planted into the ground for hands free shooting. In addition to stabilizing your camera when propped up, the head also bends, allowing you to take self-portraits from further than an arm's length away (two similar products are the XShot and QuikPod). You can pick up a Twig Pod for $28 over on Photojojo.
DEAR PHOTOGRAPH is a neat photo project by Taylor Jones that collects pictures of pictures from the past in the present. These are images that show old photos held up and aligned to the present day location, offering a glimpse into what once was.
Photographer Ian Richardson made this paper camera out of the novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens, with a small glass pot serving as the lens.
Here's a neat photo project for you to try: find a friend who loves photography just as much as you do, and share a roll of film. After one person finishes using up a roll, rewind it and send it to the other person. That's what photographers Lexi and Natalie did with their project Exposed Far Away.
Here's how Chuck Norris might wash a dirty Nikon D300S. Too bad his never gets dirty...
Apple unveiled its new iOS 5 at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2011 today, which includes some notable upgrades to the camera functionality on the iPhone. First off, the volume up button now doubles as a shutter button, allowing the phone to be used more easily in a camera orientation. There's also a new camera button on the phone's unlock screen, letting you quickly switch to the app before a precious moment slips away. Finally, a AE/AF lock feature will allow you to tap any area on the …
With HD video cameras getting smaller and smaller, people are constantly attaching them to random things to give us bizarre perspectives that weren't very easy to capture before, whether it's the end of a broadsword or the tip of an arrow. In the video above, some friends decided to attach a GoPro camera to the end of a stick and throw it back and forth while running around. At 6 minutes, it runs a bit long, but who knew the simple idea could create such awesome results? …
We've seen quite a few solutions for storing lens caps when they're not in use, ranging from velcro attachments to small lens cap pouches. The Camera Lens Cap Holder is a new patent-pending holder by mechanical engineer Mark Stevenson that lets you attach your lens caps to your strap in the way they're designed to be attached -- they simply snap onto it in the same way they snap onto lenses. Stevenson is currently funding the project through Kickstarter, and a $15 contribution will pre-order …
Swedish Alex Breton spent 11 years and and $10 million developing the PrintBrush, a printer that lets you print onto paper by simply rubbing the handheld device across the surface. While traditional printers must move paper through a machine in order to accurately track the position of the page, the PrintBrush works more like an optical mouse, tracking the paper underneath with lasers. A camera-equipped PaintBrush is set to hit the market in early 2012, letting people everywhere print photos …
The lens mug craze seems to be cooling down, but now there's another product on the market that can help you stay cool (literally): the Canon lens cooling fan. They're powered by two AAA batteries and somewhat resemble the same Canon 70-200mm lens that the original mugs were based on. You can buy one for $5.60 with free shipping from DealExtreme.
Here's another video tutorial teaching how to give your bokeh custom shapes.
"Tombstoning" is what people in the UK call jumping into water from a cliff upright and feet first, like a tombstone. If you have a friend gutsy enough to do this, try shooting multiple exposures as they're falling and combine them into a single image. Photographer Alastair Sopp captured the beautiful image above of a nameless daredevil jumping from a 100 foot cliff into 20 feet of water (yikes!).
Designer Chris Abbas took a large number of black and white photographs captured on NASA's Cassini Mission to Saturn and created this strange and hypnotic video that provides a pretty unique way of looking at space.
In the market for a cheap compact camera? Amazon's Gold Box deal of the day today is a Canon A490 for $50. Be sure to also grab the free Lowepro case if you decide to buy.
Here's a photograph we've all taken... only in our bathroom mirror. NASA astronaut Michael Fincke shot this photograph with what looks like one of the Nikon DSLRs on board using a reflective-portion of the International Space Station. This means he shot a self-portrait roughly 200 miles above the ground while zipping around the planet at 17,000 mph.
