October 2011

Brussels-based jewelry designer Clement Marquaire creates one-of-a-kind earrings using old 35mm film. A pair will cost you $15 over in Marquaire's Esty store.

Some Atlanta-based photographer posted a humorous Craigslist ad on Monday highlighting the fact that people often assume that photographers will be happy to do work for free.

In this social media age, companies are constantly dreaming up all kinds of random ideas for demonstrating the benefits of their products, and hoping that the videos will go viral (an example would be this bulletproof glass CEO that literally stood behind his product).

If you've been wishing for an interchangeable lens version of the popular Fujifilm X100, then this news should be music to your ears: Fujifilm has just announced that it will launch a new interchangeable lens mirrorless camera system in the spring of 2012. CEO Shigetaka Komori stated that both the resolution and the low noise levels would be better than 35mm full frame sensors. Judging from the popularity of the X100's retro look, it would be a smart move for the company to launch something …

Here's an amazingly cute idea for baby portraits: dress them up as adults while they're sleeping. Photographer Handri Karya and ad agency Grey Group made these photographs as part of an ad campaign for Indonesian mattress company Comforta.

A photographer was recently reunited with his lost photographs after another photographer happened to stumble upon them at a flea market. Photographer-turned-filmmaker Alexi Tan lost his entire photographic archive some time ago while shooting his first feature film in China. He had accidentally let his credit card expire, leading his New York-based storage company to auction off his archive.

Last year, Apple purchased Swedish facial recognition firm Polar Rose for $22 million, and yesterday's iPhone 4S announcement revealed that the technology is now baked into iOS and is touted as one of big new camera features. The iPhone is now a compact camera and mobile computer that can detect -- and possibly recognize -- faces.

As you might know, different copies of the same lens can vary in quality, and some people go as far as to purchase multiple copies to pick the sharpest one before returning the others. Roger Cicala over at LensRentals wanted to quantify exactly how much variation actually exists between copies of the same lens, so he subjected some to Imatest quality tests: …

Here's a fascinating video in which Italian photographer Ruben Salvadori demonstrates how dishonest many conflict photographs are. Salvadori spent a significant amount of time in East Jerusalem, studying the role photojournalists play in what the world sees. By turning his camera on the photographers themselves, he shows how photojournalists often influence the events they're supposed to document objectively, and how photographers are often pushed to seek and create drama even in situations …

Nice Photography Magazine editor Zeke Kamm has come up with a new product called "The Nice Clip" that acts as both a universal clip for lens caps, and also a cord catcher to keep your desk organized. The clip uses a strong 3M VHB adhesive to stick to your lens cap, which can then be clipped to your camera strap, belt, bag, etc... Attach the clip to the side of your desk, and it can help you keep your cables from falling to the floor when they're not plugged in.

A couple days ago 60 Minutes aired a piece on Alex Honnold, a climber who scales insane cliffs with only a pair of climbing shoes and some chalk. To capture footage of Honnold doing a death-defying climb, they attached GoPro cameras to various points on the cliff and had photographers hanging nearby with Canon 5D Mark II DSLRs. The result is an amazing glimpse into an activity that only a handful of people on earth would even think about attempting.

If printing your film photos with the usual chemicals isn't old school enough for your taste, you should try your hand at making a salt print.

Focus stacking is a technique for creating photos with a large depth of field by combining multiple photos with shallow depth of fields. One of the applications is in macro photography, where the technique is often used to make sharp images of tiny insects. Oleg over at Circuits@Home wanted an easier way to focus stack while shooting in the field, so he build a focus stacking assistant using Arduino. Given two focal points, the tool automatically takes a sequence of photographs, moving the …

Apple has just announced its new iPhone 4S, and the new camera found on the phone is pretty impressive. It packs an 8MP (3264x2448) CMOS sensor that's backside-illuminated, allowing it to gather 73% more light and capture images 33% faster. The lens is now an f/2.4 lens that contains 5 separate elements, which provide 30% more sharpness. Snapping a first shot now takes 1.1 seconds, and subsequent shots require only an addition .5 seconds each.

Instagram released a new update today in response to user complaints regarding the filter differences in Version 2.0. Version 2.0.1 features rewritten Earlybird and Branna filters that act much more like their Version 1 counterparts (they were "accidentally altered" in V2). The company also acknowledges that other filters were intentionally changed, but that they're working hard to bridge the gap between the new and old versions. Other improvements in the update include a smoother tilt-shift …

Having cameras passed from person to person around the world isn't a new idea, but FOCUSED is a project that takes it a step further by using entire SLR camera kits. Five of the kits will be sent out in early November to photojournalists, with each kit containing a vintage 35mm SLR preloaded with ISO 200 film, a manual focus lens (24mm, 35mm, or 50mm), a small notebook, an emergency roll of film, and a camera strap.

"Men-ups!" is a humorous project by photographer Rion Sabean featuring men doing pin-up-style poses. It's interesting how much more absurd some poses instantly look when they're being done by men.

If for some reason you hate both buttons and touchscreens, then Rotor is a camera for you. It's a concept camera designed by Charlie Nghiem that bases its entire user interface around a stack of physical mode dials. Rotate any of the dials, and the corresponding settings appear on the screen.

"What Light" is an incredible stop-motion video that features sunlight dancing around a bedroom. It might look like it was done with CGI, but the sunlight was actually manipulated using cut-outs and stencils placed in the window. Creator Sarah Wickens says, …

If you thought the megapixel wars were dying down, think again: the upcoming Nikon D800 is rumored to shoot at a whopping 36 megapixels. If true, it would be a crazy leap in resolution from the 12.1 megapixel D700. The rumor originally showed up last week on Japanese site digicame-info, and was "confirmed" today by Nikon Rumors. In addition to the model name and number of megapixels, some other details include: 4fps shooting, 1080/30p video recording, support for both CF and SD, and a shutter …

Here's an interesting piece of photographic and optical trivia: did you know that the word "lens" came from the Latin name of the lentil plant? The scientific name of the lentil we most commonly eat is Lens culinaris. It was named after the legume because double-convex lenses look just like lentils! …

Adobe has announced a new Android app called Photoshop Touch for tablet owners. Rather than provide a full suite of image editing features, the app appears to be more geared towards minor edits, effects, and sharing. It'll be released in the near future for Android at a price of $10, and an iOS version is on the way as well.

You don't need an instant film camera to shoot instant film photos: Flickr user Angex Lin shot the above photograph using an old-school Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera loaded with Fujifilm Instax Mini instant film.

Here's a breathtaking time-lapse video showing the northern lights over Finland. It was created using DSLRs by Flatlight Films for the Finnish Tourist Board's Visit Finland website, and is meant to convince people to visit the country. We're convinced.

Camera startup Lytro made a splash back in June when it announced that it was working on a revolutionary new light-field camera geared towards consumers. Rather than capture traditional 2D images, the new camera will record information about the scene's light field, allowing photographers to do things such as refocus a shot after it is made or display any photo in 3D. The camera is scheduled to be announced within the next few months.

Back in 2003, Canon published a tutorial on how to carve a Canon 1D mockup out of balsa wood. The tutorial has since been taken down, but thanks to Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, much of the tutorial has been preserved. If for whatever reason you suddenly feel the urge to carve a fake camera, Canon's step-by-step guide is a great place to start.

Back in July, we reported that Hoya had agreed to sell the Pentax camera business to Ricoh for roughly $124 million. The deal was completed over this past weekend, and now the business is officially called the "Pentax Ricoh Imaging Company". Ricoh wanted Pentax -- currently the 10th largest digicam brand -- for its SLR technologies, so we might be seeing some increased activity from Ricoh and Pentax in the DSLR market very soon.

Designer Miha Feuš doesn't think the user interfaces on low-end compact cameras are very useable for the average consumer, so earlier this year he set out to create a better camera interface. After a good amount of thinking, building, and testing, Feuš made this video to share his ideas, show off his prototype, and report on his results.

CNN recently published a pop-quiz with 10 photos and a simple question: was the photo taken with a phone or DSLR? The test is meant to open the public's eyes to the fact that phone cameras are getting to be just as good as expensive DSLRs. It's misleading though, and Neal Krawetz over at Hacker Factor has a great explanation as to why: …

Here's an inspiring and educational video in which Marc Silber sits down to chat with photographer Michael Zagaris -- a man who has had a career as the official shooter for both rock bands (e.g. Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin) and sports teams (e.g. San Francisco 49ers, Oakland A's).

Canon once sold these telephoto lens keychain flashlights in its online store for $7. They're out of stock now, but they sometimes appear on eBay for about $15. They perform quite well in low light situations.

Here's a quick tutorial in which photographer Lee Morris shows how you can wirelessly tether your camera to an iPad using an Eye-Fi card. Previously, you had to jailbreak your iPad to get this setup working, but now you can quickly set up a connection for transferring images to your iPad as you shoot them.

The popular deal-a-day website Woot made this fun behind-the-scenes video showing how the site's product photographs are made.

Like many electronic devices, cameras often come with certain cables that are neither necessary enough to be used often nor useless enough to be tossed into the trash. A neat trick for keeping them organized and away from other cables is to stick them into toilet paper rolls. You can even go a step further by making a DIY cable organizer using a shoe box, which makes finding a particular cable a breeze.

Samsung made this creative paper camera ad a couple years ago to promote its WB500 compact camera. The magical pencil in the ad would be one heck of a camera accessory.