According to Photo Rumors, in addition to working on several rugged advancements to their camera line, Pentax is also planning to add a 360-degree camera to their repertoire. This is a camera that would be capable of creating 360-degree panoramas with the push of a button. The idea isn't entirely new -- Tamaggo demoed their 360-imager at CES -- but this would mark the first major photography company to create a similar product.
Looking for a solid photo editing app for your iPhone or iPad? Snapseed, an acclaimed photo editing app for iOS, has been selected as Apple's free app of the week. Apple kicked off the program last week, so this is only the second app to be featured. It ordinarily costs $5.
Creating cinemagraphs -- still photos in which one or another section is moves repetitively -- can be a pretty tricky process, but a new technique developed by Adobe researcher Aseem Agarwala and his UC Berkley colleagues may make it quite a bit easier. Their technique involves "de-animating" a video by "drawing" two sets of "strokes" over the video: one set over the parts you want to move and another over the parts you'd like standing still.
More than most government agencies, NASA is actually pretty enthusiastic about photography (by comparison, we probably won't be seeing CIA photography archives come to light any time soon). When NASA had a problem that needed solving they liked to look towards their cameras, and that's exactly what they did when they needed to test and record the abilities of their space suits.
We've heard of camera manufacturers dipping into unrelated fields before, and we've also seen some pretty interesting marketing stunts, but in the early 90's Kodak had already done both... in a colorful, cuddly sort of way. Back then, as an either desperate or creative ploy to get kids into photography, Kodak came out with the Kolorkins: a set of colorful, collectible stuffed animals.
Want to enjoy a glimpse of photographic awesomeness every time you glimpse at the time at home? Create a giant wall clock with picture frames to mark each hour! You'll need a clock kit (or a disassembled clock) and 12 picture frames. You can be more serious by shooting photos of the numbers 1 through 12 for the frames, or go creative by putting in all kinds of random images.
The world is a serious place, and it seems that even comedians like Saturday Night Live's Fred Armisen think that this is a side worth seeing. So, by way of a fun video project, he's asking viewers to do one simple thing: Be Serious for 30 Seconds... and record it.
Kai over at DigitalRev put together this video that offers photography advice in burst mode: 50 (or 49) short and sweet tips in less than 15 minutes. If you take yourself too seriously, be warned: the tips are presented in Kai's trademark "infotainment" style.
Former Photoshop product manager Kevin Connor and Dartmouth professor (and digital forensic expert) Hany Farid are working together to help put a stop to image manipulation where it doesn't belong. Putting their two brains together they formed a company called Fourandsix, which is primed to release a full suite of software tools that will help law enforcement officers, photo editors and other interested parties detect secret digital photo manipulation.
Flickr user TigTab creates beautiful scenes by light painting with hand-cut stencils. For each shot, the camera's shutter is left open while she moves about the location, firing her flash through the stencils in various locations to add the individual items to the scene. Some photographs take up to four hours to create from start to finish.
Floating is a series of manipulated photographs by Chinese photographer Zhao Huasen showing people in China riding around on invisible bicycles.
For those of you who've ever wondered what it takes to get your work into National Geographic, here's a hint: not "creative" software filters. According to a set of guidelines laid out in a message from the magazine's Director of Photography, certain minor post-processing is ok with the exception of filters. Minimal dodging and burning, black and white, hand tinted images (if you're experienced), and cropping are ok when done well; fish eye lenses are discouraged; but filters are a definite no …
In a recent interview with Fujifilm CEO Shigetaka Komori, German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine dived into some pretty intense financial conversation. Much of what was said didn't pertain directly to photography -- discussions about Fuji's involvement in the medical field and cosmetics for instance -- but certain parts of the interview were very interesting indeed.
Of the photographs that emerged after the recent solar eclipse on May 20th, there aren't many that are more epic than the "Ring of Fire" photo captured by Michael Chow of The Arizona Republic. In an interview with Dallas News, Chow reveals that the photograph was birthed rather spontaneously. Shooting the eclipse in Phoenix's Papago Park -- a hiking area he knows well -- Chow noticed a group of people standing on a butte a quarter mile away. He parked his car, ran across some desert, and …
200 Yards is a neat photo project based in San Francisco that centers around the idea of having photographers point cameras at a small section of a particular city. For each cycle, organizers pick a particular "alternative gallery space" and invite photographers to create photographs within a 200-yard radius of that location (this translates to roughly one block in each direction). Submissions are then whittled down until 12 photographers remain, and these artists are invited to the resulting …
In early March, Nikon offered a temporary fix to a lock up issue that had been plaguing the D4 and D800. At the time you had to turn off the ‘Highlights’ and ‘RGB Histogram’ display options to avoid the issue, but Nikon promised a more permanent fix was in the works. Good news, the fix is finally here in the form of Firmware Update B:1.01.
Apertures can get pretty big, but a new patent from Nikon seems to imply that a future Nikon 1 mirrorless lens could weigh in at f/0.7. The patent, which gives an example of a 32mm f/1.2 (pictured above), clearly states that the new technology could successfully yield smaller numbers due to optimization of the aperture diameter, flange back length and image circle.
If you liked the the "impossible shot" from the film Contact that we shared earlier this week, you'll enjoy this clip as well. It's a shot from the film Sucker Punch that uses some clever camera work and trickery rather than CGI to create its mind-bending effect. Interestingly enough, both this clip and the Contact one feature actress Jena Malone (albeit at different ages).
Just yesterday news broke that Michael Woodford -- the former Olympus CEO who blew the whistle on the now-infamous scandal and was subsequently fired -- would be suing his former employer over unfair dismissal for a whopping $60 million dollars. And today, in an altogether not unexpected turn of events, Olympus is said to be preparing to settle out of court for a smaller (yet still massive) amount of money -- "only" $15.5 million.
Video technology is advancing at an alarming rate, and the question that seems to be on many a photographer's mind is: "will video ever render still photography obsolete?" In the future, will shooting a sunset simply involve going out and recording 30 minutes to an hour of video and then pulling your favorite frames into Photoshop or Lightroom? Well, that's the question that this video from Fstoppers is trying to answer.
Photographer Jack Long has an absolutely amazing series of photographs titled Vessels and Blooms that features liquid flowers captured by shooting high speed photographs of splashes. The images are not faked with Photoshop, but are instead single exposures that result from months of planning and testing.
What do you get if you apply every Instagram filter to a single photograph? Belgian blog Appelogen decided to find out, starting with a normal photo of a pathway and applying one filter at a time. The resulting image is pretty abstract, and prompted them to ask the question, "is it art?" …
If there was an official list of things that are too epic, this video would probably be somewhere on it. It's a compilation of videos showing various extreme sports captured in super slow motion.
Here's an interesting idea by Oregon-based engineering consultant Paul Anderson called The Daylight Viewfinder. The patent pending invention, which is in the process of raising $44,000 on Kickstarter, is a suction mountable, sun blocking viewfinder/app combo that allows you to take great pictures with your phone (currently iOS only) even in bright daylight.
Have you ever walked out to your car and seen someone abysmally parked next to you, or up on the sidewalk? Even if they aren't blocking you in specifically, didn't you wish there was a way -- other than leaving a less than professional note -- to let people know that the owner of this car is a jerk? Well, the people over at the Moscow Newspaper The Village decided to takle this problem (which is apparently much worse in Russia) head on by designing and releasing Parking Douche, an Android app …
Last weekend we mentioned that the Bump app had just added browser integration, allowing you to transfer photos from your mobile device to your computer by simply "bumping" the space bar. And now another sharing app called PhotoBeamer has crossed our virtual desk that does something a little bit different, but does it just as well.
Hanging pictures straight is a bit difficult as it is, but when we're talking about two screw or two nail frames, getting them exactly right can be downright frustrating. Fortunately, the folks behind the DIY site It's Overflowing have a solution for those of you that have a bunch of these tricky frames laying around. Just use a piece of painters tape (or any tape really) to mark the distance between the two holes, and then use the tape to line up and level the holes you drill. Voila, …
There's something profoundly sad about a missing persons poster. That rectangular piece of paper often signifies a last ditch effort, a one in a million chance, and it's that desperation and sadness that Graham MacIndoe captures with his "Missing Persons" photo series. Started way back in 1989, the series takes an up close and personal look at the posters many of us pass daily but never notice.
Leica's new black & white rangefinder, the M Monochrom, eschews the standard color filter found in ordinary camera sensors in order to capture higher quality monochrome photographs. How much of a difference does this make compared to the standard practice of converting color images to B&W? David Farkas over at Red Dot Forum decided to find out by doing a head-to-head comparison of the camera with a Leica M9. He photographed the same scene at different ISOs, and then published the photos with a …
Canadian camera shop The Camera Store are the masters of viral photography-related ads (they're the ones behind the Battle at F-Stop Ridge and its sequel). Now, with the Olympics just around the corner, they've released this humorous new video showing an imaginary "2012 World Photo Games" in which photo gear is used for Olympic sports.
Twice per year something really cool happens: the stars, or rather one particular star, aligns with the grid of streets running through Manhattan island, offering photographers and astronomers alike an opportunity to go out and snap a few very unique and very cool photos. On May 29th (today) and July 12th of this year (it varies a bit each year) the sun sets in perfect alignment with the Manhattan grid. It's known as "Manhattanhenge". On those specific days, when the sun sets, you will see half …
The link between the camera and gun is evident in a shared metaphor, but is historically closer than we might imagine.
We're gonna call this rumor "significantly farfetched," but stranger things have happen and we'd hate to miss out on this one just in case somehow it comes to fruition. Someone personally told the folks over at Northlight Images that Nikon and Canon are swapping some patents, the result of which will be a Nikon camera with an EF mount.
Photographer Wendelin Spiess created this series of images for the latest edition of USED magazine. Spiess took photographs of models, split the faces down the middle, and mirrored them. They say human beauty has a lot to do with facial symmetry -- perhaps models' faces are more symmetrical than your average mug?
The fact that UK camera retailer Jessops has been struggling financially is pretty well established; what's now under debate is whether or not Canon is going to make a sizable invest to bail them out. Just how sizable are we talking? Ten million pounds, or roughly 16 million dollars. According to an article in The Sunday Times ( in which no source was named) Canon is set to pull the trigger on the hefty investment in order to keep Jessops, the only specialized camera retailer in the UK, in …
For his project titled Perspe, Italian photographer Gustav Willeit created imaginary locations by mirroring landscape photographs and then adding in non-symmetrical elements into the images.
Some of the biggest recent advancements in imaging technology have come in the form of video. Case in point, the new Ultra-High-Definition video camera made by NHK in Japan. This baby takes in 33-megapixel video at a mind numbing 120fps -- that translates into an input of 4 billion pixels per second (count 'em... it'll take a while).
The Little Slide Dress by Emily Steel is a geeky photographic take on the classic litte black dress. Created using strips of slide film, the dress also features LED lights that automatically provide a proper amount of illumination based on ambient lighting. When in a bright room, the lights turn off and cause the dress to look like a shiny black dress. When the lights go down, the dress lights up and turns you into a walking lightbox.
Getting personalized recommendations for the music you listen to became common practice many years ago with the Music Genome Project and personalized radio stations by the likes of Pandora. Up until now, however, we haven't seen anything that takes that same sort of technology and applies it to photography. That's where Flexplore comes in.
Etsy shop Tyndall's Polymerclay sells earphone jack accessories shaped like tiny DSLRs. The plugs are based on popular camera models (e.g. Canon 5D, Nikon D90, Nikon D3), and are created from polymer clay for the body and resin for the lens.
This has to do with filmmaking rather than photography, but check out this jaw-dropping shot from the 1997 movie Contact. Can you figure out how it was created? Here's the answer.
Livestreaming events on YouTube is becoming commonplace, but besides the experience of being there, the one thing that livestreams don't provide is a way to take pictures and remember the event. When you're there you're taking video or snapping a shot, when you're on your couch you're watching video and, at best, grabbing a few screenshots -- not the most effective method.
Wanting to shed its image of being "old media" and "old fashioned", Getty Images has unveiled a new watermark that does away with the annoying logo in favor of short links. Rather than plaster the words "Getty Images" across the front of photos, the new watermark is actually useful: it provides a short link that directs viewers to the webpage for that particular image and also gives credit to the creator of the work. Inspired by the plaques found at exhibitions, the new watermark is offset to …
Last Thursday, 13-year-old Addison Logan of Wichita, Kansas found something really cool at a garage sale: an old Polaroid camera for only $1 (score!). But when Addison got it home and started looking up how to use it on the internet, what he found in the cartridge was even cooler, or maybe creepier. Inside the Polaroid camera, bought from a family they don't even know, was a picture of his uncle Scott who died some 23 years ago in a car accident:
Ken Burns is a documentary legend, and even though he comes from a filmmaking perspective, his ideas on what makes a story worth telling (or, in our case, a moment worth capturing) are universal and universally inspiring.
As behind-the-scenes videos go, this one is pretty short, but it still offers an interesting look at how photographer Thomas David put together his popular Dust and Dance photo shoot. Obviously there was some post processing involved to go from initial image to final product, but it's always great to see a talented photographer put a novel idea into action.
If you've been using smartphones for any length of time you've probably heard of Bump, the app that allows you to transfer photos and contact information between two phones with a simple... well... bump. And now they've expanded their functionality to include a website/webapp that makes transferring photos from your phone to your computer a breeze.
For those of you who use your Sony NEX-5N to shoot video, you may have noticed that longer clips have a tendency to lock up your camera. It's not a problem for shorter videos, but clips over 20 minutes, especially in hot weather, often brings the camera up to a temperature it would rather avoid. To solve this problem, Aron Anderson of trinityfxmg had the idea of modding the camera by adding a battery powered fan to keep it cool even in blistering weather.
In Episode 1 of the Framed Network series Film, hosts and photographers Tanja Lippert, Ryan Muirhead and Tia Reagan take an in depth look at the history of photography. If you love the analog way of life then you're going to want to stick around and watch the entire thing, because when Tanja, Ryan and Tia aren't being a bit crazy, they're sharing some really interesting information about the roots of film photography and, therefore, photography in general. People without a sense of humor …
The ability to connect your camera to your smartphone wirelessly is starting to really gather some steam. Unfortunately, up until now, that technology usually required a WiFi connection and an adapter that often cost some serious dinero. But if all you're looking to do is share the photos you take instantly sans WiFi network, you don't have many options. Enter CloudPic Mobile.
