December 2014

There have been a few film versus digital articles here and there on the interwebs, but seems like very few have approached the subject in a scientific fashion or with the advice of both film and digital experts.

However, with the help of Joe Cornish (a landscape photographer who made his living shooting on medium and large format but now shoots Phase One IQ280s), Chris Ireland (who sells Phase One cameras), and myself, Tim Parkin, (I shoot film and run a drum scanning service), a definitive test was born.

500px released a major update to its iOS app today. Users can now take advantage of an in-app camera and editing tools powered by Adobe Lightroom technologies.

Route 66 is a famous highway that crosses the United States, connecting Santa Monica, California on the west with Chicago, Illinois toward the east. It was one of the original highways of the US Highway System.

The route is also the subject of a project by photographer Natalie Slater, titled "The Mother Road Revisited." Slater found old photos of the route from decades ago and rephotographed them as they appear today.

Instant photos are fun and were at one time super popular, but they aren't exactly cheap. Shooting with new Impossible Project film costs about $3 per shot these days. But what if you could shoot casual instant snapshots on a physical medium for less than a penny per shot?

That's the idea behind the PrintSnap. It's an instant camera that captures photos on standard receipt paper.

Casio has announced a new Android app called SynchroShot that lets photographers perfectly synchronize up to seven of its new Exilim EX-100PRO cameras for photos or video.

A pair of high school sweethearts named Kevin and Molly got engaged this past week after being together for 7 years. To document his proposal, rather than hire a photographer or task a friend with hiding in the bushes, Kevin chose to take his unsuspecting girlfriend into a photo booth that captures both photos and video. The video above is what resulted.

For a new marketing campaign titled "Inspired Light," Infiniti invited Canadian professional light painting photographer Patrick Rochon to Dubai to transform three of its cars into "moving light painting brushes."

Photosharing service EyeEm has rolled out version 5 of its popular app. The main new feature to appear is one called Open Edit, which lets you explore the edits other photographers have used on their photos.

eBay and Craigslist are two services photographers often turn to if they're trying to buy or sell some used camera gear. It looks like Facebook may be gunning for a piece of that pie.

The company is testing a new feature that's allowing some users to sell goods in Facebook groups with an official new "Sell Something" feature. The new post type creates a simple for sale listing that's reminiscent of what you might see on Craigslist.

Hello. My name’s Tom. After two years of tinkering around with DSLR photography, I believe that I may have passed an important milestone and successfully made the transition from amateur to enthusiast. I am by no means great, but I am aware of how great I’m not, which I’m told is a significant step.

Reporters all over the world are digging for nuggets in documents that were leaked in Sony's hacking. Here's one of the interesting finds: back in March, Snapchat secretly purchased a company that builds stealthy camera glasses.

Canon will be launching a new high megapixel DSLR sometime in 2015. The camera will reportedly offer a resolution of somewhere around 50 megapixels, and the body shape will not be of the EOS-1 style with a built-in vertical grip.

Here's a term that most of you have probably experienced before, but some of you may never have heard before. It's called "focus breathing" (or simply "breathing"), and it refers to the shift in angle of view that often occurs when you focus a lens. If you've ever carefully composed a shot, refocused, and then discovered that your composition changed, you've been a victim of focus breathing.

Samsung has launched a clever new marketing campaign to promote its tiny NX Mini mirrorless camera. The ads imagine a few famous self-portrait paintings as a result of selfies captured with the company's camera.

Los Angeles will be the first major city in the United States to equip every one of its officers on the street with a body camera. The city will be purchasing 7,000 cameras in order to document the activities of its officers and to promote transparency.

Back in September, we reported that Chinese manufacturer Yongnuo has expanded its cloned gear business to include copycat lenses, starting with the Canon 50mm f/1.4. Now a new clone has emerged: the super popular "thrifty fifty" Canon 50mm f/1.8 II (also known as the "nifty fifty" and "plastic fantastic").

"What would chairs look like if they were people?" It's a strange question that forms the basis of an interesting and creative project by photographer Horia Manolache. It consists of pairs of photos showing various chairs and Manolache's ideas of what those chairs would look like in human form.

Fyuse is a new "spatial photography" app that wants to be the Instagram of 3D photos. Capture a dynamic photo by moving your phone around during capture, and viewers will be able to explore your 3D photo by tilting their phone in their hands.

Ready to see an improvement in all of your Facebook friends' snaps? Facebook is rolling out a new auto-enhance feature for its mobile app that will automatically correct things like light, shadows, and clarity in your smartphone shots.

The Tower of David in the Venezuelan capital city of Caracas is an unfinished skyscraper and the third tallest building in the country. The construction of the tower came to an abrupt halt in 1994 due to the Venezuelan banking crisis, and it was quickly taken over by squatters. Thus, for years the building was known as the "tallest slum in the world."

24-year-old photographer Alejandro Cegarra spent time with the residents and documented their way of life through images. The resulting project is titled, "The Other Side of the Tower."

In a show of solidarity with photojournalists who are seeing their jobs disappear, some reporters in the UK are resolving to not take assignments that should go to professional photographers.

Heads up: there are fake Nikon D800E DSLRs floating around. That's according to Nikon Europe, which posted a notice "regarding fraudulent Nikon D800E digital SLR." Apparently some unscrupulous folk are taking the D800, replacing its outer shell with the D800E cover, and selling the fake cameras through online auction sites (presumably eBay).

Here's a short clip from the Smithsonian Channel's series "Hunt for the Super Predator." It shows an encounter a team of photographers and scientists had with killer whales at Bremer Canyon off the coast of Western Australia.

Using a special camera rig he designed, wildlife cameraman David Riggs shot some amazing underwater footage of killer whales that looks too good to be true (you can find it at 1:35 in the video).

Instagram today announced that it has added five new photo filters to its enormously popular app. The filter selection process has also been revamped in order to make it easier to use.

If you're a photographer today, you're probably sharing your photos everywhere from Facebook to Flickr. Your photos are being seen on every device possible: iPhones, Samsung Galaxys, crappy Dell office monitors, and Mac Retina Displays. Each online service, each device, even each web browser handles color differently. If you're putting your photos up online, you really need to think about how you output files for the web. If you accidentally save to the wrong color space, you can really change people's perception of your photos.

Ever since the Nikon 1 Series mirrorless cameras were announced with their 2.7x crop factor sensor, Nikon shooters have been waiting for a mirrorless camera with a larger sensor. The wait may soon be coming to an end.

A newly discovered Japanese patent shows that Nikon may be planning quite a jump in sensor size for its mirrorless cameras: from 2.7x crop to full frame.

Here's an example in which having a "YOLO" attitude during a photo shoot turned out to be a very bad idea. Photographer Jarrett Hucks was photographing a soon-to-be bride on a beach when a group of equestrians rode by. The client decided that "since you only live once," she wanted a photo of herself riding a horse. What happened next is captured in the video above.

Over the past 6 months, photographer Justin Bettman and stylist Gozde Eker have been building elaborate sets on the sidewalks of New York City using unwanted furniture and household items, most of which is found discarded on the street. The sets are made to look like the rooms of a house.

What if displaying your favorite photos were more like playing your favorite vinyl records? A couple of Swedish designers want to introduce a similar ecosystem of "discs," sleeves, and "players" to the world of photo frames. The idea is called the Frameworks One, a backlit frame for printed photos that can quickly be physically swapped in and out.

Last week, visitors to the Grand Canyon were treated with a rare visual treat: the canyon was filled with a sea of clouds due to a rare weather phenomenon known as a "total inversion."

Photos for Life is a "charity photo bank" where all the stock photos are created by cancer patients and survivors and for other cancer patients. Each of the models you see in the images was personally affected by cancer in their own lives. "They love their lives and want to show it to the world!" the website says.

Lens and camera body caps aren't usually very informative or personalized, and LenzBuddy wants to change that. The Dallas, Texas-based business sells custom lens caps that help photographers both add branding to their gear and find lenses in their bags more quickly.

Joel Snow was visiting a flea market in Colorado this past October when he came across a box with several packets of old negatives at the bottom. After digitizing them, Snow realized that it was a fascinating collection of old photos from the early part of the 20th century.

Griffin Lamb is a 19-year-old freelance photographer based out of Seattle, Washington. On weekends Lamb goes on adventures, hiking and backpacking in the great outdoors with his friends.

Over the years, he has built up quite an impressive portfolio of breathtaking landscape photographs that capture the beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

Back in September of this year, Olympus announced that it would be trying its hand at "lens cameras" with a new "Open Platform" project. The goal is to create a camera module that features a sensor, a lens mount, and wireless pairing with a smartphone.

Early illustrations showed a cube-like camera, but Olympus is now showing off a new rounded prototype that looks a lot more like a lens than it does a camera.

Using super-telephoto lenses to frame people against the rising moon has become quite popular as of late. Just last year we shared examples featuring people at a lookout, a high-line walker, and a mountain biker.

Photographer Göran Strand recently decided to take the idea a bit further by framing his subjects against the sun.

Did you know that your ordinary DSLR camera has the power to detect planets orbiting other stars? You don't need a high-powered telescope to look through either. All that's required is a DSLR, a telephoto lens, and a special contraption that helps your camera track stars.

How have camera sales changed over the past 60 or 70 years? The chart above offers an interesting look at this question. It shows camera production between 1947 and 2014.

Want to make a photography gift this holiday season instead of buying one? The video above offers 6 fun ideas for easy DIY photo gifts you can try your hand at. Each product is a different way to share your photography with someone.

Profoto has been teasing the letters HSS over the past week, and today the big announcement finally came: it's the introduction of High-Speed Sync (HSS) to the company's popular B1 off-camera flash through a simple firmware update.

The "Special Moments" camera is a cheap plastic 35mm camera that you can pick up at certain dollar stores for just a buck.

Photography enthusiast Daniel Goodale-Porter wanted to make his even more "special," so he set out to see how much he could improve the design and functionality of the camera, DIY-style.

If you're just starting out in Lightroom (or haven't explored its features much), perhaps you haven't heard of the powerful "Match Total Exposures" feature. This is a feature that lets you quickly adjust the exposure of multiple photos to match a target photo of your choice.

Aerial Wallpapers is a website filled with beautiful wallpapers for your mobile device. Each of the images is a 1242×2208 pixel crop of a beautiful satellite photograph.

The project is curated by João Paulo Bernardes, who searches through the Creative Commons archives of NASA and the Airbus Defense and Space.

Travel photographers get to traverse the world in search of one-of-a-kind photo ops, so finding interesting things to capture usually isn't a problem for them. But what if you're limited in terms of mobility and find yourself shooting in the same locations, day after day? Things can quickly start to feel dry and "boring."

If you're just starting out in photography and that describes how you feel about where you are, here's a nice video that may inspire you and jump start your creativity. In it, photography instructor Mike Browne offers some advice on how to take interesting photos in seemingly mundane places.

Colorizing old black and white photographs in Photoshop has become quite a trend over the past few years, and communities of retouchers have sprung up in order to share and compare their work.

One particular colorizer named Jordan Lloyd has decided to turn his hobby into a business called Dynamichrome. It specializes "in high fidelity colour reconstruction services in culture, history and entertainment."

Back in 2012, the George Eastman House released a series of six videos showing six photo processes used in the history of photography. This month, the museum re-released those six videos alongside six new ones. It's a video series that now spans 12 videos showing major processes spanning from the Daguerreotype all the way up through digital photography.

For the last 21 days I have been in Japan putting Fujifilm's new X100T through its paces.

This review will not cover every technical aspect of the X100T, but rather how it feels to shoot with it every day and how it fits in with my workflow.

Check out this crazy self-portrait photo by a guy named Timothy LaBranche. It's a composite image showing LaBranche posing as all 100 passengers in the cabin of a passenger plane.

(Newswire, December 13th, Las Vegas) -- A group of leading photographers, curators, and general taste arbiters has determined that Peter Lik's sale of a photograph may constitute torture under the Geneva conventions.

The photograph in question, an open edition of a mundane Southwestern landscape, sold recently for $6.5 million, the largest figure for a photograph in history.

Have a ton of old prints lying around but not enough time or energy to scan them? Since 1990, Southern California-based ScanMyPhotos has helped customers scan over 250 million physical prints. As digitizing old family photos is catching on as a trend, the company's most popular service is something it pioneered: the USPS prepaid box deal.

It's a flat rate option for scanning large quantities of photos. Pack as many photos as you can into it, send it in, and receive digital versions of every photo.