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.
When Hamburg, Germany-based photographer Florian Bison first saw a video of parkour, he was mesmerized by the concept and curious as to how he could integrate it into a photography project. That's when he came up with the Double Gravity series, a mixture of real and parkour/camera created gravity. The video above offers a behind-the-scenes look at how he created the final product, which was shot using a Nikon D700 with a Nikkor 24-70mm F/2.8 lens and a Pocket Wizard triggered Profoto B2 with …
After discovering that multiple websites had used one of his photos without permission, photographer Jay Lee began sending out DMCA takedown notifications to web hosts in an attempt to protect his copyright. One of the websites was owned by a woman named Candice Schwager, who had 14 of her sites temporarily taken offline as a result of the takedown request. Turns out Schwager is involved in both helping represent special needs children and helping a man named Louis Guthrie get elected as County …
If you think 14fps on a high end DSLR is fast, check out this video by Mike's Electric Stuff. In it, he does an extreme teardown of a cheap Panasonic Lumix compact camera and spends 30 minutes exploring and explaining the various components.
Hovering somewhere between "novel idea" and "pointlessly stupid," InstaCRT is a new iOS app that bills itself as "the world's first real camera filter." Photographs processed through the app are given a CRT monitor look that doesn't involve any digital fakery. Instead, your photo is actually sent to the creators' machine located in Stockholm, Sweden, where it's displayed on a tiny CRT monitor and then photographed by a DSLR. The new photo is then beamed back to your phone in less than a minute.
Since November 2011 I’d been thinking about an astrophotography project: take a photo of the moon each day from full moon to full moon, then combine it into a seamless movie that looks as if someone had moved the sun around the moon for one minute. I found similar videos, but most were simulations done in software, or photographic ones that weren’t very smooth. Seemed simple enough, mostly because I didn’t see the complications that would come along with this project caused by... physics.
For her most recent exhibition, Brooklyn-based Dutch photographer Anouk Kruithof wanted to do something revolutionary, to change the way we experience the typical art exhibit -- thus was born her exhibit "Untitled: I've Taken Too Many Photos, I've Never Taken Any Photos."
Life Backwards is a beautiful short by Ryan Jay and Alexander Shahmiri showing life on the streets of San Francisco moving in reverse.
It's strange to think that cartography laws could somehow affect the functionality of your camera overseas, but a recent article on Ogle Earth points out that just such a thing has been going on with GPS-enabled cameras as far back as 2010. The whole "investigation" into the matter began with the release of the Panasonic TS4 earlier this year. For some reason the press release cautioned that the GPS in the camera "may not work in China or in the border regions of countries neighboring China." …
It happens every time you press the shutter. Tiny circuits spring into action and furiously record the information from every sensor pixel onto your memory card. But pixel information is not all that is recorded. With every shutter press, your camera records dozens of interesting details about how the photo was taken. These details are tucked away deep inside the labyrinth of code that comprises your photo file. Photo editing softwares, such as Photoshop or Lightroom, can unlock some of this …
This amazing image has been going viral on the Internet, usually accompanied with the caption: …
Yesterday we shared some new sample photos published by Google showing what its Project Glass prototype camera glasses are currently capable of. The video above is the first sample video captured using the glasses, and is a short 15-second clip showing a first person view of someone doing flips on a trampoline. With current cameras, the only way to achieve this kind of hands-free footage would be to use some kind of (relatively) unwieldy camera strapped to the head or body (e.g. a GoPro mounted …
I try to stay involved as much as I can with students studying photography at different institutions in the area. Every year I go back to RIT and do a lecture on the business of photography and I feel it's important that I do so.
Caleb and Candra Pence had a couple unexpected guests crash their wedding in Kansas last Saturday: tornadoes! The two twisters touched down roughly 10 miles away during the ceremony but -- luckily for everyone involved -- were not moving. Wedding photographer Cate Eighmey took advantage of the rare situation by having the newlyweds pose with the twisters in the background. The resulting photographs have taken the Internet by storm (haha, get it?), and the Pences have spent their honeymoon in …
Google Glass team member Max Braun took to the stage at the Google+ Photography Conference yesterday to show off a prototype device, talk about the project's potential impact in photography, and show off some new sample photographs.
Using keyboard shortcuts while editing your photos can save you loads of time, and cheat sheets are a good way of learning them. If you're too lazy to print one out or save one as an image on your computer, there's an app called CheatSheet that's designed just for you. It's a free Mac App that runs silently in the background. Whenever you hold down the Command (⌘) key for ~3 seconds, it brings up a complete list of command shortcuts offered by whatever app you're currently using. We've tested …
