A Higher Quality Setting in Photoshop Sometimes Reduces JPEG Quality
While looking into the new compression service JPEGmini yesterday, the following statement caught my eye in an interview they did with Megapixel: …
While looking into the new compression service JPEGmini yesterday, the following statement caught my eye in an interview they did with Megapixel: …
Photo sharing is proving to be one of the main battlegrounds in the social networking war between Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Facebook launched another counterattack today by increasing the resolution of displayed photos yet again from 720px to 960px, a 33% increase (last year they increased by 20% from 604px to 720px). Furthermore, the company claims that photos now load twice as fast as before.
Today Panasonic unveiled a new line of Lumix X lenses for Micro Four Thirds cameras, introducing two new zoom lenses: the 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 and the 45-175mm f/4-5.6. What's unique about them is that they're both power zoom lenses, meaning the focal length is controlled electronically using a rocker on the side of the lens. The 45-175mm also has standard zoom and focus rings, but these are electronic controls as well.
You might want to skip this post if you're squeamish. A filmmaker named Rob Spence has successfully become a cyborg by replacing an eye he lost through a childhood accident with a wireless camera that transmits everything he sees to a computer. Spence believes that technology may soon reach the point where are be tempted to swap out their body parts for superior prosthetics. No word on when he'll be able to apply Instagram filters to his eye camera photos.
Forget model airplanes... This Plamodel snap model kit is the one to buy if you're a photo-enthusiast (or want to make your kid one). Created by Japanese design house superheadz, it uses simple snap-together parts that allow even the "not-so-mechanically inclined" to assemble their own 35mm camera. There's 44 individual parts, and an instruction manual for building the camera is available online. You can check out some sample photos in this Flickr group pool, and buy one for $17 over on Amazon.
While we're on the subject of photos of Earth, did you know that the first photo showing the entire planet was captured by an unmanned NASA orbiter from the moon back in 1966? To accomplish this, they had to come up with a camera that could expose, process, scan, and transmit film photographs -- something "akin to a flying television station and photographic mini-lab".
As Hurricane Irene bears down on the East Coast, NASA has published a satellite photograph of Earth to its Flickr stream in which the storm is clearly visible. The storm has a diameter of 510 miles -- roughly 1/3 the length of the East Coast -- so it could probably be seen very clearly from someone standing on the moon. President Obama is warning Americans that the hurricane could be of "historic proportions".
Lomo shooter wn7ant came up with a neat way of turning instant film photos into one-of-a-kind business cards. After printing out his business card design onto a transparency, he cuts it out and sticks it onto an Instax film cartridge. To create a new card, he simply takes a picture -- the contact information on the transparency is printed onto every photograph!
Well, that was fast. Just a week after opening up its Photovine photo sharing app to the public, Google is now planning to kill it off, along with its second -- and not-yet-launched -- app Pool Party. Google is planning to focus its photo-sharing efforts on Google+, and will be shutting down Slide, the company behind the apps, which Google acquired last August for $200 million. The Slide employees were developing the apps independently, which explains why they were being made for iOS initially …
In the future, after you print photos onto paper using your camera, you'll be able to scan them and share them on Flickr using your mouse. At CES earlier this year, LG showed off an amazing new mouse that lets you quickly scan images and documents by simply waving the mouse over them. Now it's available -- if you live in the UK, you can buy one from Dabs for £90 (~$150).
Photographer Murray Fredericks took sixteen solo trips over eight years to the center of Lake Eyre in Australia, the largest lake in the country and one that forms salt flats every year when the water evaporates. These salt flats provide a perfectly flat, featureless landscape that extends to infinity in every direction, and allow for beautiful abstract photographs.
