2012

An anonymous reader emailed us with a complaint about the way Fujifilm is marketing the X-E1 in a non-gender-neutral way.

Russian photographer Andrew Osokin is a master of winter macro photography. His photo collection is chock full of gorgeous super-close-up photographs of insects, flowers, snow, and frost. Among his most impressive shots are photographs of individual snowflakes that have fallen upon the ground and are in the process of melting away. The shots are so detailed and so perfectly framed that you might suspect them of being computer-generated fabrications.

Over the last year, no news has been good news for Eastman Kodak. The company's slow and painful climb out of bankruptcy has involved everything from corporate greed to lost patent wars and sub-par auction outcomes. But just a few weeks ago a flickering light emerged at the end of the tunnel for Kodak in the form of $793M in conditional financing.

In fact, since we last reported on the story, the loan amount has gotten even bigger. That sizable $793M has been upped to $830M, every dime of which Kodak desperately needs to get its hands on if it ever intends to escape bankruptcy. But as the saying goes: there's no such thing as a free lunch -- and definitely not one worth $830M. The banks that have agreed to help Kodak out made the financing conditional: Kodak doesn't get the money unless the company's long-awaited patent sale exceeds $500M.

Back in October, we shared some photos taken inside a small Chinese studio lighting maker named NiceFoto. Now we have a look at what operations look like at a much larger manufacturer: Godox. It's reportedly the second largest studio lighting producer in all of China.

The saga of anti-virus pioneer John McAfee's run from the law is a strange one, but this much is clear: McAfee wishes geotagging wasn't a feature built into modern cameras. After a month of fleeing from Belizean law enforcement after a neighbor was found murdered, the software tycoon was finally taken into custody this week, largely due to a single photo loaded with GPS data.

We've all used a little bit of Photoshop magic to take care of a blemish or two when taking portraits, but Sony's newly announced Smart Skin Evaluation Program (SSKEP) is taking on blemishes in a whole new way. The sensor technology, which was announced just a few days ago, can actually go beyond skin-deep and take a peek at blemishes that haven't even surfaced yet.

Custom photo frame maker Alphabet Photography has scored one of the first big viral marketing wins of this holiday season by releasing the creative video above a couple of weeks ago. In it, they play the popular Christmas tune Carol of the Bells using various objects inside the warehouse in which the company's photo frames are made.

Canon has issued a couple of service advisories to notify customers of known issues with the 6D and 1D X DSLRs. The former camera has a YouTube problem, while the latter has some autofocus issues for certain customers.

Self-portraits snapped with an outstretched arm can be seen everywhere these days, from profile pictures on Facebook to filtered shots on Instagram. Among iconic historical photos? Not so much.

However, Cape Town, South Africa-based newspaper Cape Times has launched a brilliant new advertising campaign that imagines what those photos were look like if they had been captured with arm's-length "selfies".

You may have heard that there are 12 Hasselblad film cameras sitting on the surface of the moon at this very moment, left there by astronauts who needed to lighten their vessel's load as much as possible. However, did you know that at least one of those cameras was left there to test the durability of the gear?

A little earlier today, we reported on how Sohail Mamdani of BorrowLenses had discovered that one particular Nikon D600 he was testing was consistently overexposing photographs by two stops. After searching long and hard for the cause, he stumbled upon the culprit: the D600 wasn't closing the aperture blades to the correct opening size.

If Adobe Photoshop tools could work their magic in the real world, what would people use them for? One obvious application would be as a beauty product, which would allow people to 'shop actual faces instead of photos of faces. Budapest, Hungary-based photographer and graphic designer Flora Borsi recently shot a series of photos that humorously depict how it might work. The project is titled, "Photoshop in Real Life."

Once upon a time there was an industry largely dominated by two companies. Their domination, over some 30 years, was so nearly complete that they became understandably a bit arrogant. After all, their products were the biggest, the best, and by far the most popular.

Well, what do you know: upgrading a Fujifilm X-E1 is easy! A photographer named Richard over at Fuji Rumors figured out how to transform his $1,000 X-E1 into a $6,400 Leica M9 digital rangefinder. The upgrade costs just pennies -- it only requires four strategically placed decal stickers.

Gear reviewer Sohail Mamdani over at BorrowLenses was testing the Canon 6D and Nikon D600 last week by shooting nighttime photos of San Francisco Bay, when he discovered something strange: the DSLRs exposed the scene differently even when all the settings were identical in full manual. The photograph above was captured using the D600 at f/8, 30s, and ISO 100 (in JPEG mode).

In certain countries around the world, death row prisoners who are about to face execution are offered a special last meal to eat. Authorities do their best to accommodate the special food requests, and these choices are often published to the media after the execution is carried out.

Photographer Henry Hargreaves decided to do a photo project to document what these last suppers comprised and what they might have looked like. He looked up the requests of some of history's most notorious executed criminals, recreated those meals, and photographed them. The project is titled "No Seconds."

I was standing at the top of the stairs in the Suzzallo Library on the University of Washington campus, looking down at my phone when someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind. I turned to see an older gentleman who gestured towards the hardwood box resting on the handrail of the stairway.

When Nik Software was acquired by Google back in September, one of the prized catches -- besides Nik's impressive suite of high-end photo editing software -- was Snapseed, a highly popular photo editing app for iOS. Many people suspected that Google was gearing up to fight more directly with Instagram, now the Facebook-owned 800lb gorilla in the mobile photo sharing space.

Whether or not that was the motivation, it certainly seems like the case now: Google today launched Snapseed for Android, and has also made the app free for both platforms.

Who are the people behind Instagram's most-followed handles? Soon-to-be-shuttered iPad newspaper The Daily wants to know, and has a video series titled "#No Filter: Behind the Lens with Instagram's Biggest Stars." They're creating short profiles for each iPhoneographer to give a glimpse into their lives and their motivations.

You've probably heard of The Blue Marble, an iconic photo of Earth captured in 1972 from 28,000 miles away by astronauts on the Apollo 17 spacecraft. Well, NASA has just released a number of photographs titled "Black Marble." They offer the same perspective as the iconic photo, except these new images show what our planet looks like at night!

The New York Post got the whole world talking about it yesterday after publishing a morbid front page photo showing a man about to be struck by a subway train. The photographer behind the image, freelance photojournalist R. Umar Abbasi, has received criticism from people who believe he should have done more to help the victim, or, at the very least, do anything but snap photographs of what was about to happen.

Sitting in a movie theater is probably a very familiar experience to most of you, but what's it like to watch the movie from the projection room -- that room with a small window at the back of each theater that holds the projector.

New York City-based photographer Joseph O. Holmes has a new project called The Booth that offers a glimpse into these rooms and the people who work in them.

After Polaroid film died off, the The Impossible Project spent years rebooting the factories and breathing new life into old lines of instant film. However, the white-bordered film isn't the only thing Impossible has brought back from the dead. The company has also recreated Polaroid fashion from decades ago, launching the Polaroid Classic Factory Jacket.

How well do you know the area in which you live? Or any area you regularly visit, for that matter? This may seem like the question of an idiot -- of course you know your area of residence -- but do you really? Have you explored every road and back road and high street and side street and pathway and alleyway? I’m aware I strayed into polysyndeton, but it’s relevant to the question I’m asking: how well do you know the area in which you live?

Earlier today, Instagram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom took to the stage at the Le Web conference in Paris to talk about where his service is headed. He revealed that Instagram is planning to stay independent of Facebook for the foreseeable future and that the service is slowly cutting ties with its rival, Twitter.

What defines a portrait? Is it still a portrait if the subject is present in the frame but hidden from the eye? If the answer is yes, then photographer Chris Buck has captured a series of unique celebrity portraits through his project titled Presence. If not, then each of the photographs simply shows a random scene.

The photograph above? That's a portrait of famous American photographer Cindy Sherman.

Canon is reportedly planning to introduce yet another model name to its Speedlite family sometime early next year. Canon Rumors hears from a good source that two new Speedlites will be arriving in the first or early second quarter of 2013. Both are said to be replacements of the bestselling 430EX II, which was announced back in June 2008.

Fashion company Pierre Cardin did a marketing campaign earlier this year that revolved around the slogan: "Simply Cool." It enlisted the help of Brazilian art director Cláudia Xavier and luxury still life photographer Norimich Inoguchi for a series of advertising photographs. The creatives decided to convey that "it's cool to wear Pierre Cardin" in a very literal way: they photographed various clothing items and accessories frozen into large blocks of ice.

The camera film industry may be struggling, but there are certain segments that are still profitable. One such niche is the one-time-use disposable film camera market, and Ilford Photo wants a piece of the pie. The company, which makes widely used films, papers, and chemicals, announced two new black & white disposable cameras today.

After seeing an online tutorial on steel wool light painting, photographer Simon Berger found a friend to model for him and went out to try his hand at the technique. After some initial success, he started brainstorming creative ideas that he hadn't seen before. The result of the brainstorming was this stunning shot that makes the sparks from a burning piece of steel wool look like rain falling on an umbrella.