July 2013

Attention photojournalists: As if times weren't tough enough already, a new startup wants to replace your work with Twitter-based crowdsourcing.

Last month we shared a couple videos showing how it's a bad idea to ask professional golfers to aim at your camera -- there's a good chance you'll end up with shattered glass and a pricey camera repair bill.

Unfortunately, the same thing can sometimes happen even if you don't intentionally put your camera in harms way. ESPN found that out at the British Open today after a golfer accidentally smashed one of its $80,000 high definition cameras.

Bang. Pop. Zip. Zop. Welcome to the review of the Nero Trigger, a lightning, laser and sound sensor that will crank that shutter faster than you can. It also includes a timelapse, HDR and a DIY mode allowing utilization of external sources to trigger the Nero. As their ad copy claims, "Nero Trigger is built to help you shoot high speed photos for the occasions that your shutter finger would not be sufficient."

Photographer Joseph D.R. OLeary wants to live in a world where beards are appreciated as fine art. And so he's doing his best to shape this world into such a place by photographing beards and the men who grow them for his photo series Of Beards and Men.

We reported in December 2012 that Sony was planning to unleash a full frame mirrorless within a year. We're about halfway to that one year mark now, and as Sony gets ready to unveil its latest creation, new details are starting to emerge that paint a clearer picture of the revolutionary camera we'll be seeing.

It wasn't long ago that Flickr rolled out its massive redesign -- met by both boos and cheers -- that entirely changed the way you experience the photos sharing site. Now it's 500px turn. The premium photo sharing platform just announced its own redesign, focused around larger photos and a Focus Viewer feature that offers a "stunning full screen experience."

After a couple of months in beta, the photography review site DPReview is finally announcing the official launch of an online store that bears the website's stamp of approval. Named GearShop, it's a specialty camera store that will stock its shelves with only DPReview recommended and approved products.

When visiting Lancaster, Pennsylvania recently, Portland, Oregon-based photographer Lindsey Boccia made the mistake of not bringing her camera bag along for the journey. Boccia wanted to play around with analog photography, so she decided to buy some disposable cameras.

A quick visit to a nearby camera shop netted her four one-time-use cameras for about $6 each. She then "distressed" them to turn them into experimental lo-fi toy cameras.

At the end of 2012, Swiss photographer Gus Petro took a trip to the United States, and was met with a sharp dichotomy. When he visited New York City, he found density in all its glory. But when he followed that up with a trip to the Grand Canyon, he was struck by the sheer emptiness of it.

This led to a project dubbed Empty, Dense, Merge, and the photos below represent the final third of that triad.

Musician Beyoncé has a love/hate relationship with the camera; or maybe it's a hate/hate relationship. Regardless, her views on the subject came out at a recent show in Atlanta where the singer -- who has gone so far as to ban pro photography entirely -- told a fan to "Put that D**n Camera Down."

One of the neat features in Google's Glass wearable computer (and camera) is voice commands. Say "okay glass," and the device will start listening for an instruction from you. Here's an interesting (and humorous) piece of trivia: did you know that Google considered using "pew pew pew" as the activation phrase?

Yesterday, we shared the groundbreaking news that Magic Lantern's a1ex had managed to squeeze 3 more stops of dynamic range out of Canon's 5D Mark III and 7D by using a new feature dubbed Dual ISO. Today, we have a comparison that shows what RAW video shot on the 5D Mark III looks like taken both with and without the Dual ISO feature enabled.

Still life photographer Peter Schafrick recently built a custom contraption he calls "The Spinster." It's a mostly wooden device that allows him to spin paint-covered objects around an axis, capturing colorful images of paint being flung outward by centrifugal force. The resulting series is titled "Toys."

Rolling Stone magazine unveiled the cover of their August 1st issue yesterday, and immediately felt the Internet's wrath. That's because the cover -- often reserved for celebrities, rock stars, etc. -- features a photo of the infamous Boston Bomber #2 in the white hat: suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

I'm photographing a wedding in a couple of weeks. During one of our meetings, I asked the bride whether she and her fiancé had made a decision regarding their guests being allowed to photograph during the ceremony and reception. She started shaking her head, saying that it hadn't even occurred to her.

I could tell she was getting a little agitated thinking about whether they would offend their guests if they told them they couldn't take pictures. So we talked about the pros and cons of it. They haven't made their decision yet.

On Christmas Day of last year, we shared the news that Instagram was still dealing with fallout after their infamous Terms of Service mishap. Even after scaling back the Policy to pacify angry users, the company still faced with a class action lawsuit.

Well, fortunately for parent company Facebook, that chapter seems to finally be closing, and it's doing so without the social network having to write a many-zeroed check.

News photographers have a potentially valuable new tool with Covertimes, a new website that congregates images of front pages from newspapers around the world.

Here's a little something that might help start off your work day with a smile, or perhaps an "aww." This video above is a mock movie trailer put together by Fresno, CA firefighter Cory Kalanick using footage he captured of a kitten rescue and resuscitation he performed last month.

All of the updates coming out of Magic Lantern's camp recently have been RAW video related. And while there has been news enough on that front to keep us excited, we were happy to see something new coming from the ML team today.

There's a brand new service in town that's looking to help out those photographers who choose to share their images for free with the online community. Powered by Creative Commons, the new website Dotspin uses a hashtag and voting system to determine a photo's quality and give the photographer a chance to earn credits towards rewards such as restaurant gift cards.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters angry over the verdict in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin trial swarmed San Francisco streets this weekend in numbers huge enough to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge.

At least that's what happened in the world of social media, where a photo (above) of a pedestrian-filled 1987 celebration of the iconic bridge's 50th anniversary circulated on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and their ilk posing as evidence of mass San Francisco reaction to Zimmerman's acquittal.

Wet plate photographer Rob Gibson believes that there are those among us who are "flame-keepers of the past," and if such people exist, he is certainly one of them. Like the others out there who continue to practice age-old photographic techniques such as the daguerreotype or wet collodion process, his passion harkens back to a simpler time -- a time he does his best to recreate with 100% accuracy through his lens.

There hasn't been a lot to report vis-à-vis of memory cards lately. With the exception of the occasional limited time price drop and creative idea (like the partitioned "Wise" CF Card from Amulet with its instant backup capabilities) the last few months have been somewhat silent.

Enter Toshiba and its new Exceria Pro series of SDHC cards that will offer "the world's fastest data write speeds," and we again have something to get excited about in the world of storage.

Detroit police are investigating an incident last week in which a photographer for the Detroit Free Press was arrested and had her camera seized while covering a police action.

The smartphone has not only revolutionized the way we live but also completely altered the landscape of modern photography. If you have any doubts just go to a concert and try to see past the ocean of glowing screens snapping shots or filming their own shaky and out of focus rendition of the show.

Yes, pretty much everybody on the street has a camera on them at all times thanks to their phone. But accessibility is just the surface. If you truly want to see how phones are changing the world of photography you have to look at the apps.

Every so often I get an email asking me to jump in on some forum argument or other. I rarely do that because of the language barrier.

Two of the common languages spoken on forums are CAKWAF (Complete, Absolute Knowledge Without Any Facts) and AFIDAWAB (Any Facts I Don’t Agree With Are Bullstuff). Since I am not fluent in those languages, I tend not to get involved in the more, uhm, enthusiastic online discussions. But sometimes I can’t help myself, repeating the behavior of adding facts to a ‘vigorous’ discussion and always expecting a different result.

Niagara Falls is (or rather are) a sight to behold, and while capturing the falls from a boat or one of the overlooks is impressive enough, why not take to the air? That's what YouTube user questpact did, creating the video above using his DJI Phantom quad-copter and GoPro Hero 3.

In Japanese, "Muku" means “clean” and “simple,” and that's what Muku Labs has done its best to create with its first product, the Muku Shuttr. A clean and simple little wireless shutter release that works with iOS and certain Android devices.

Some people say that the secret to striking it rich during a gold rush is to sell shovels. That's kind of what Roger Cicala is doing. With photography exploding in popularity as of late, Cicala has found huge success in loaning out gear to photographers who would rather rent than buy.

Can you trust camera reviews submitted by customers of online retailers? Not entirely, suggests a new academic study, and not for the reasons you might think.