October 2012

When Canon unveiled the followup lens to its popular Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L back in February, many photographers found it strange that the lens eschewed Image Stabilization even while two wide-angle prime lenses announced at the same time had IS. After all, a $2,300 lens that extends to 70mm on the telephoto end seems like it would benefit more from stabilization than 24mm and 28mm lenses. If you've been yearning for a "Brick" (as the 24-70mm used to be called) with IS, here's some good news: the lens reportedly exists, and may already be floating around in the wild for initial tests.

A few hours ago, the official Facebook page of the First Army Division East posted the above photograph with the caption:

Soldiers of the 3rd Inf Reg continue to stand guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, despite the worsening weather conditions surrounding Hurricane Sandy. The tomb has been guarded continuously since 1948.

The powerful photograph instantly attracted tens of thousands of Likes and Shares, and began going viral online.

Apple may have launched a neat panorama feature with iOS 6, but Google is one-upping the Cupertino-based company today with its new Jelly Bean flavor: Android 4.2. The OS now comes with an official 360-degree panorama app called Photo Sphere.

Remember the remote Instagram printer called Instaprint? Although the Kickstarter fundraising campaign for the product raised nearly a quarter of a million bucks from 800+ backers, it failed to reach its goal of $500K, and we haven't heard much about the device since then.

Mecca in Saudi Arabia is considered to be the holiest city of Islam, and is only accessible to Muslims. 38-year-old London photographer Toufic Beyhum wanted to document what a pilgrimage is like for a Muslim and to "portray the peaceful and spiritual side of Islam", so he brought along a Hasselblad 500 medium-format camera when he visited the city. His images -- a few of which were snapped in locations where photography was prohibited -- offer an intimate look at locations that most people will never be allowed to see in their lifetimes.

Here's an interesting video in which renowned photojournalist Steve McCurry shares some thoughts on documentary portraiture. Titled Close Up: Photographers at Work, the video takes us behind-the-scenes with McCurry as he shoots some candid portraits on the street and then reviews some of his most prized shots captured over the course of his career. (There's a brief glimpse of the original film slides of his iconic Afghan Girl photo.)

Yesterday we reported that Nikon Photo Contest is no longer accepting film photos starting this year. Turns out it's not the only prestigious photo contest with rules that are causing some discussion. Check out what National Geographic Photo Contest 2012 says under the rules section "Who May Enter":

Contest is open only to individuals who have reached the age of majority in their jurisdiction of residence at the time of entry and who do NOT reside in Cuba, Iran, New Jersey, North Korea, the Province of Quebec, Sudan, Syria or Vermont. Employees of National Geographic Society, and its subsidiaries and affiliates [...] CONTEST IS VOID IN CUBA, IRAN, NEW JERSEY, NORTH KOREA, THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC, SUDAN, SYRIA, VERMONT AND WHERE PROHIBITED.

Iran and North Korea? Those are understandable... but New Jersey and Vermont? Turns out there's a pretty simple answer for those states as well: state laws.

Earlier this month, we featured an upcoming license plate frame that uses bright flashes of light to prevent traffic enforcement photographs. In the article, we mentioned that the concept could potentially be used by the rich and famous to avoid the constant gaze of paparazzi cameras. Turns out the rich and famous are already one step ahead of us.

Eclipse, the world's largest private yacht owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, already features a high-tech anti-photography system that uses lasers to seek out and deny cameras.

Shooting portraits of strangers in cars isn't uncommon, but have you ever tried using off-camera lighting to illuminate their faces? That's what photographer Jonathan Castillo is doing for his ongoing series called Car Culture.

Castillo, an undergraduate BFA student at CSU Long Beach, shoots candid, artificially-lit photos of people driving around on the roads of Los Angeles. While the photos are captured from a car directly in front of the subjects, Castillo lights the scenes using a second specially-rigged vehicle driving to the side.

Over the past couple of years, German photographer Markus Reugels has attracted quite a bit of attention for his high-speed photographs of water drop splashes. His project, titled "Liquid Splashes", consists of split-second photos that make colorful splashes look like tiny glass sculptures hovering in the air above a mirror. In the video above, Reugels introduces himself and his work, and takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour showing how he goes about creating his beautiful photographs.

Underwater housings for DSLR cameras usually aren't the cheapest accessory. Professional ones often cost as much as the cameras they house. If you'd like to add a simple layer of waterproofing to your DSLR without shelling out big bucks, check out this camera case dry bag. It's a thick, durable, and watertight plastic case that comes with transparent sections on both sides for your lens and LCD screen.

Another sign of the times (and bad news for film-photography enthusiasts): one of the most prestigious photo competitions in the world no longer accepts film photographs. Earlier this week Nikon published a "call for entries" for its 34th Nikon Photo Contest.

There's a trend in the camera world these days that involves stuffing large sensors into small cameras. The goal is to squeeze professional-grade image-making ability into a pint-sized package. Sigma's new horse in this race is the DP1 Merrill, a fixed-lens compact with an APS-C sensor at its core; not just any ol' APS-C sensor, mind you, but a 46-megapixel Foveon sensor.

A few years ago, I came up with a theory. Every person has some balance of two incredibly valuable assets: Time and Money. If you have an excess of one of them, there’s a good chance that you don’t have much of the other. I’d like to take some time and reflect on how being aware of how you spend your time can potentially improve your business... and maybe even your life.

If you regularly shoot in dusty or sandy environments, here’s a handy tip for keeping your camera clean: create …

Looking for a photo project to play around with this weekend? Try exploring a technique known as the Harris Shutter. Invented in the days of film photography by Robert Harris of Kodak, it involves capturing three sequential exposures of a scene through red, green, and blue filters, and then stacking the images into a single frame. This causes all the static elements within the scene to appear as they ordinarily would in a color photo, while all the moving elements in the shot show up in one of the three RGB colors.

New York City is undoubtedly one of the most photographed cities on Earth, but photographer Richard Silver doesn't let that fact faze him. He's on a personal mission to capture facets of The Big Apple in ways people have never seen before. A month ago, we shared his New York Sliced series, which consists of spliced photos of buildings that show day turning into night.

Silver has now followed that project up with a new one titled, NY Churches, which documents the various churches in NYC through beautiful (and disorienting) vertical panoramas.

Photographer Richard Esposito has written an interesting …

Here's a fun photo idea you might want to try out this Halloween: shoot epic portraits showing beams of light streaming in from the background. All you need are a perforated hardboard, a couple of flashes, and a fog/smoke machine (or some method of generating smoke).

Now here's a creative idea that we've never seen before... For this short film titled New York: Night and Day, New York City-based filmmaker and animator Philip Stockton blended daytime and nighttime images of his city into single shots. He explains,

New York: Night and Day is a combination of non-traditional video time-lapse and animation. I filmed day and night scenes from around New York City and combined them back into single sequences using rotoscoping techniques. The piece explores the relationships between night and day, by compositing together scenes shot in the same location over a time period ranging from 4 - 8 hours. I hope you enjoy it.

The photograph seen here was shot using a tablet computer -- one that doesn't officially exist yet. Google engineering SVP Vic Gundotra posted the image to Google+ at 4:57 this morning with the caption, "Early morning walk on the beach." A quick peek at the EXIF data reveals that it was captured with the "Google Nexus 10," a tablet that'll reportedly be unveiled at a press event next Monday.

Notice anything cringeworthy in the photo above? Yup, that's a Canon 5D Mark III (with a battery grip attached) and 70-200mm f/2.8 IS lens flying through the air.

Canon released its quarterly financial results yesterday, and things aren't looking so rosy based on Q3 2012. Revenue has fallen 13% to $10.3 billion from the same period last year, and profit dropped 42% to $908 million.

A 16-year-old aspiring journalist named Jakub Markiewicz was arrested last month at the shopping mall Metropolis at Metrotown, the 2nd largest mall in Canada. After photographing security guards arresting a man, he was unable to comply with multiple demands to delete the photographs he had taken... from a film camera.

Clemson University is apparently ditching film photography and going digital. The public South Carolina-based school has just turned to government surplus auctions to unload its analog gear, and the equipment is being snatched up for ridiculously low prices. The lot of 9 "excellent condition" Hasselblad 500 EL/M medium format camera bodies seen above was just sold for $1,200, which comes out to about $133 for each camera (granted, there are some taxes and processing fees tacked on).

Check out this geeky Instagram-inspired Halloween costume created by photographer Eric Micotto. What's neat is that it actually "works" as a camera: it's powered by a Nikon D800 snapping photos through the "lens", and has an iPad on the back that acts as the camera's giant LCD screen. Subjects who have their photo taken by the costume can run around to the back to take a peek at how it turned out.

After almost two years of shooting film nonstop and more than $1,000 worth of expenses on processing and prints, I needed to reconsider my budget and find a way of being able to shoot more and pay less. I thus began to process my C-41 rolls at home. It's extremely easy to do and I‘ll show you today how to do it, step by step.

You've probably seen macro photographs of everything from bugs to blooms, but have you seen any of ocean waves? That's the niche that Australian photographer Deb Morris has carved out for herself, and it's working out quite nicely.

Want to see how studio lighting equipment is made? David Selby of Lighting Rumors was recently invited to tour the Shenzhen factory of a Chinese lighting company called NiceFoto, which sells gear both under its own brand name and to various international distributors under different marques. He snapped a number of photographs showing various workspaces where equipment is assembled.

In addition to analyzing the use of Sony sensors in Nikon DSLRs, Chipworks has also published …