April 2013

Older Sigma lenses that were designed for Canon EOS film cameras often don't work correctly when mounted onto a new EOS digital SLR, even though the newer bodies still use Canon's EF mount. If you're an owner of such a lens, you might have heard that you can send it in to Sigma's service center for them to rechip it in order to make it compatible again.

Did you know that those of you who are handy with electronics can actually do the rechipping yourself at home? Photographer Martin Melchior recently did this with his Sigma 70-210 f/2.8 APO lens, and says that anyone with basic soldering skills can do the same.

A neat way to present a recap of a trip is to take all the photographs taken over many days -- both keepers and unwanted shots -- and string them together into a fast-paced time-lapse video. A problem with this type of video, however, is that the photos often fly by so quickly that it's difficult for your brain to distinguish between them and to pick out "highlights."

Australian photographer Marcus Round of Brisbane, Queensland tells us that an easy way to make these videos a little easier to consume is to help surface the best shots by allowing them to linger.

There is no shortage of landscape photographs of mountains at sunrise on the Internet, but how often do you get to see photographs captured at the same time from the mountain's perspective? Photographer Todd Caudle ('Cloudman' on 500px) was able to capture these two viewpoints simultaneously yesterday morning by shooting with both his personal camera and a live webcam located at the mountain's summit.

The video above is a commercial Canon is running over in Japan to promote its new Kiss X7/Rebel SL1, the world's smallest and lightest DSLR. It shows how the camera is perfect for soccer moms who would like to capture action shots of their "super soccer kids."

What will future generations think of the cameras we're using these days? What will the cameras look like to them? Japanese artist Maico Akiba has a project titled "100 Years Later" that imagines what various modern commonplace objects might look like if rediscovered by people a century later. Among the objects are a number of cameras.

An old class photo taken in 1941 at Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School is about to be auctioned off, and it's set to fetch quite a price. Why, you ask? Well, because a girl by the name of Norma Jeane Baker -- who later became famous as Marilyn Monroe -- both signed and was in the picture.

We've mentioned Sigma's upcoming revolutionary USB dock before, but until today we had no idea when the product would become a reality or how much it would cost. Thankfully, Sigma has cleared that up for us, and thrown in a demo video to boot.

When Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger of the two Boston bombing suspects, was discovered hiding in a man's boat just outside the perimeter police had set up to search for him, the cops took no chances. Rather than sending officers right in and risking injury, they enlisted the help of an impressive aerial camera to confirm his location and then keep watch as police tried to coax him out.

The camera, developed by the FLIR corporation, is called the Star SAFIRE III, and it's the one behind all of the infrared shots of Tsarnaev in the boat that spread like wildfire all over the Internet this weekend.

Somewhere in-between the point-and-shoot and ILC categories falls the superzoom, and it doesn't get much love. Often nearly as bulky as an entry-level DSLR, superzooms present a mix of features that only endear them to certain consumers. Sony's newly announced Cyber-shot aims to expand that market by shrinking down the traditional superzoom to tiny proportions.

'The Unseen Seen' is a project by Austrian photographer Reiner Riedler that captures the beauty of classic cinema in an unconventional way.

By way of his friend Volkmar Ernst, Riedler was able to get access to the old film roll archive of the The Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin. He then photographed a few hundred rolls -- ranging from those of classic movies to ones with interesting titles -- to produce a series of beautiful film roll images that speak volumes about the films themselves.

Miller's Professional Imaging is the largest professional photo lab in the United States, with facilities in Pittsburg, Kansas and Columbia, Missouri that offer a slew of printing services for hobbyists, semi-pro and professional photographers alike. In the above video, Chris Marquardt of Photography Tips from the Top Floor treats us to a behind the scenes look at the company's 40,000 square-foot facility in Columbia, MO.

Earlier today, brothers-in-law Daniel Fujikake and Mac Nguyen of HI Resolution Enterprises announced a new product for the photography enthusiast community that they're trying to get some help funding. Launched via Kickstarter campaign, the Snapzoom is a universal adapter that can attach a slew of optical scopes (i.e. binoculars, telescopes, etc.) to your smartphone in lieu of a telephoto lens.

There's often a degree of anonymity in online classifieds, as you often don't learn what a person looks like until you respond to their ad and meet them in person. Perth, Australia-based photographer Phil Hill has been working on a portrait project featuring the people who post listings to Gumtree, a free online classifieds website that competes with Craigslist.

The portrait subject above had originally posted an ad that said: "Rock hobbyist looking to expand small rock collection, willing to pay for good specimins."

Calgary, Alberta, Canada-based camera store The Camera Store just released this review in which Chris Niccolls takes a look at the new Canon Rebel T5i (also known as the 700D and Kiss X7i). The 1-minute-long video may be the most honest review of the camera yet.

A neat piece of photo-related home (or studio) decor: Brooklyn-based poster printer Pop Chart Lab has created a beautiful new poster called "A Visual Compendium of Cameras" that offers a brief visual history of photography.

Panasonic this morning announced two new cameras: a Lumix G6 Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera and a Lumix LF1 high-end compact camera. Both cameras offer some pretty solid specs for photography enthusiasts.

I’d love to say I coined the term "Like farm", but it’s entirely possible I read it somewhere before, as a brief search on that term turned up other articles on the growing phenomenon of content farms on Facebook. For a while now, I’ve been watching my own news feed fill up with unattributed photos and artwork. And I think we've all seen the equally unattributed and ubiquitous quote art (either graphic design or simply pasted over photos). Although the amount of this content seems to rise and fall, it has seemed like it is growing of late. Or perhaps I've just become more sensitive to it?

Back in 2010, we shared some statistics from CareerCast's annual list of the best and worst jobs, and things weren't looking good for the photography profession. At the time, "Photographer" ranked 126th of 200 on that list, with "Photojournalist" coming in near the very bottom at 189th. Sadly, in the intervening years since we last shared the info, things haven't exactly gotten better.

In response to September 11th and London Bombings, the UK drafted a series of Terrorism Acts, giving their officers certain rights they thought would help fight terrorism. This included a section (58a) added in 2008 that made it illegal to photograph or film a police officer if the footage was likely to be useful to a terrorist. The police's interpretation of that section has since changed, but not before that "if" caused some newsworthy controversy.

This short animated documentary covers that controversy from the point of view of one of the act's victims, Gemma Atkinson, who was assaulted by police in 2009 because she was filming them searching her boyfriend. It tells the story of the subsequent legal battle she went through trying to get the act changed and hold the police officers who were unnecessarily rough with her accountable.

Call it the an energy, call it an artist's personality, call it whatever you want, Canadian portrait photographer Christopher Wahl has it. One of the best and best-known portrait photographers from the Great White North, his pictures have been published in every major magazine in his own country, and many beyond its borders.

And in this short segment, television program 16x9 goes behind the scenes at his studio and gives us a peek at one of the most energetic and passionate masters in the business.

In 2010, then BU journalism student Johannes Hirn put together a photo essay titled "Will Box for Passport." The essay was based around a boxer by the name of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, better known now as "Suspect #1" or the "Black Hat bomber" from the Boston Marathon bombing.

According to an NPPA report, once Tsarnaev and his younger brother were listed as suspects, several publishers both large and small found and began using content from the essay without ever ascertaining Hirn's permission. All the while, Hirn was on the phone with his former BU professor Peter Southwick to figure out how he could properly license the images before websites and blogs began stealing them -- it was already too late.

If you're planning to attend the Kentucky Derby early next month, you might want to make sure you'll be content with capturing your memories with a smartphone or point-and-shoot. Churchill Downs, the racetrack that hosts the famous horse race, has unveiled new security measures that will prevent attendees from bringing certain items onto the grounds. Among them: all interchangeable lens cameras.

More and more photographers are attempting to build their own DIY lightboxes these days as they look for ways to easily digitize their film at home using a digital camera. However, a common problem that plagues these lightboxes is vignetting -- lighting is uneven and shadows form gradients near the edges of the surface.

Photographer Rafał Nitychoruk of Gdynia, Poland tells us that he has solved the problem with his own custom lightbox. The trick? Make your lightbox short, and stack multiple layers of glass.

Marta Crass of Knoxville, Tennessee is quite handy with cardboard. She runs an Etsy shop called CisforCardboard that's dedicated to her custom cardboard art. She handcrafts signs, wall hangings, letters, and anything else you can dream up... including cameras.

What you see here is a replica of Crass' grandfather's 1960's era Nikon F SLR, created using ordinary pieces of cardboard.

This beautiful video shows three years in the life of the Sun in three minutes. The photographs are shown at a pace of two photos for each day. Thus, there are a little over 2000 photos in this video that are shown at around 12 frames per second.

If you're ever in England and come across an old camper van with the words "Camper Obscura" splashed across the side, knock on the door and say hi to photographers Jonathan Blyth and Matthew Pontin. Since the summer of 2010, Blyth and Pontin have traveled widely around the South West of England, teaching people about photography from the rear cabin of the vehicle.

Having your laptop and photographs stolen usually isn't a good thing, but for photographer Melanie Willhide, it actually helped her career move forward.

From most angles, it looks like a bunch of lights flickering at random. But stand in just the right spot, and you’ll perceive moving bodies. Jim Campbell’s installation for Light Show – a new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London – is a powerful antidote to the high-tech obsession with performance, the endless competition to pack more megapixels into a smaller screen or sensor. It also provides fresh insight into human vision.

One of the big trends in the camera industry these days is the stuffing of "big camera" sensors into "small camera" bodies. After all, if you can get the same image quality from a camera that's smaller in size, why wouldn't you want to? (That's the idea, at least).

The quality and portability of cameras these days would be quite astonishing to photographers from back in the earlier days of photography -- the days in which you needed both hands and a strong back to work as a photojournalist. In this post, we've compiled photos from those "good ol' days" to see how far photography has come.

F-Stop Gear has decided to put together a miniseries of inspirational shorts about the pro photographers they sponsor. These f-stop pros are some of the best outdoor photographers in the business, and the company would like to give its fans some insight into the men and women behind the epic shots.