Polaroid pictures might have an iconic look, but finding an elegant frame for them requires more than a trip to your nearest department store. Swiss design group Refurnished has a beautiful "Polaroid SX70 frame" that protects your white-bordered pictures inside a handmade wooden case.
Beginners: Ever wonder why your photos don’t look ‘professional?’ Amateurs: ever wonder why you lack consistency? Pros: Ever wonder why you lose your edge or drive? Wonder no longer. This article deals with some of the most common oversights by photographers of all kinds, and how to avoid them.
The Onion's Tech Trends has a hilarious satirical video warning of the "insidious" Internet scams through Kickstarter: bad projects that guilt people into donating in order to fulfill a life-long dream.
Landscape photographer Apo Japo captures beautiful landscape photographs of mountains and hills in Scotland, Norway, the Alps, and the Dolomites.
The UK government issued an updated copyright policy statement today that's intended to modernize copyright law in a digital era. But here's where those traditionally protected under copyright -- authors, poets, artists, photographers and so forth -- begin to cringe: sweeping definitions of "orphan works" and Extended Collective Licensing could allow companies to buy chunks of content without compensating original authors.
Tired of your boring Nikon point and shoot? Does the sleek modern silver clash with your vintage threads? Breathe easy: German company PimpmyDigicam offers these sticker "leather kits" for Nikon J1 cameras for a retro look that will pair impeccably with your vintage Oxfords.
Dustin Henderlong of Snapjoy shot this time-lapse video last week of the massive Colorado wildfires from his 5th-floor office window. He used a Canon 5D Mark III, 50mm f/1.4 lens, an intervalometer, and an A/C adapter to continuously snap photos from 3pm Tuesday to 10am Thursday.
For Windows users who frequently need access to Creative Commons photography, Abelssoft's free desktop app CCFinder can help streamline the hunt for a good image.
Today's dose of inspiration comes in the form of two videos for the price of one. Both videos feature well-known and well-respected photographer and photojournalist Steve McCurry -- the man behind the unforgettable Afghan Girl photo that graced the cover of NatGeo -- but each offer a different sort of insight into his world.
Photographer Gloria Baker Feinstein recently moved due to some health issues her husband was dealing with. As part of the transition, the couple was forced to sell off some of their possessions in an estate sale. To cope with the emotional difficulty of parting with precious memories, Feinstein decided to shoot iPhone portraits of buyers as they left with her things -- creating new memories as old ones left the door.
Indiana university historian Patrick Feaster recently discovered a record featuring the voice of Emile Berliner -- inventor of the phonograph. Created in 1889, the record is likely the oldest in the world. What's interesting, however, is how Feaster managed to obtain it: through a photograph. That's right, Feaster discovered an image of the disc preserved in an old 1890 German magazine from the same year and then was able to recreate it by scanning and analyzing the photo.
Here's a cool DIY project, courtesy of creator Derte84 and the folks over at Instructables, for those of you who have a bunch of slides sitting around but no slide projector in sight. Putting the whole thing together will require a little bit of hardware (e.g. you'll either need the tools to cut the wood yourself or an account with a laser cutting service) but the final product is pretty cool.
Boat racing photographer Rob Thorn had a close call at America's Cup World Series Newport last week. One of the racing catamarans (ORACLE TEAM USA Coutts) clipped the small boat Thorn was shooting on top of, knocking him off balance and nearly sending his Canon 7D, 5D Mark II, and set of lenses into the ocean. Luckily, he was able to regain his balance, and even managed to snap a photograph of the boats colliding.
Back in April of this year, Canon officially announced its EOS 1D C: a 4K cinema DSLR. And even though consumers (with significant amounts of spare cash) won't be getting their hands on it until sometime late this year, the first 4K video sample from the camera surfaced a few days ago.
Here's a short and sweet video in which photographer/entrepreneur Gary Fong shares his "red hallway" trick for turning a drab background into something colorful. The basic idea is to trick your camera into thinking the world is a certain color by doing custom white balancing with a colored gel in front of the lens. Once you have the WB set, use the gel over your flash to color balance your subject while the background is transformed.
Nikon D4 owners looking to speed up their transfer rates may take well to the news that Sony has just announced its new S-Series XQD cards -- although their wallets probably won't react in kind. The new cards, which will be available in Japan on July 11th, can hit transfer speeds of up to 168MB/s, and will come in both 32 and 64 gigabyte sizes.
We've shared photos of photobooth marriage proposals before, but how about a video? After Nick recently proposed to his girlfriend Louise in a photobooth, Louise's father contacted the owner of the booth -- a friend -- to have the video retrieved(booths apparently keep video logs to track vandalism). The owner then published the video on YouTube and contacted the newly-engaged couple.
You may think that shooting 4K video is reserved for people with deep pockets and cinematographic aspirations, but a new camera from Point Grey begs to differ. The company's new Flea3 webcam seeks to offer that same super-high resolution in a tiny package and for a significantly smaller (though still not small) price tag than, say, a RED Epic.
The point-and-shoot may be on its way out, but it certainly isn't going out without a fight. A few weeks ago we saw Sony release the RX100, which has been called "the best pocket camera of all time," and now Sigma is following that up with its own high-end compact to hit shelves on July 12th: the DP2 Merrill.
If you're at all familiar with Lytro cameras and their light field technology, you'll have heard of founder and CEO Ren Ng. However, he won't be holding the title of CEO much longer. Two days ago Ng announced via blog post that he would be stepping aside as the CEO of Lytro and moving into the Executive Chairman position previously occupied by Charles Chi (who, incidentally, is now the interim CEO).
Ever wondered how one of those exploded view photos comes together? Well, the above video by photographer Adam Voorhes should shed some light on the matter. When he was asked to photograph an exploded view of a Kawasaki motorcross bike for ESPN, he decided to put together this video that crunches 2 days worth of dismantling and hanging at Kawasaki headquarters in California into just under a minute.
Photographer Joe Klamar has been receiving some criticism over his portraits of the US Olympic Team that many believe could have been done better. Most of the criticism, as you would imagine, comes from photographers who believe they could have done a better job representing the athletes. And with access to these athletes for photographic purposes being so restricted, it's understandable that photogs would get upset over sub-par portraits.
Back in 1967 Yoko Ono said that it was her ultimate goal "to make a film which includes a smiling face snap of every single human being in the world." And now that the 21st century has arrived she's one technological step closer to achieving that goal. Her new app, #smilesfilm, compiles all of the pictures of people's smiles taken and uploaded to either Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #smilesfilm into one easy-to-browse place.
If you've ever wondered when, or how, or why you might use a ring light or ring flash, this short lighting tutorial from The Slanted Lens should help you answer all of those questions. In this case, Jay P. Morgan was shooting for Zombie Juice soda and he took the opportunity to explain why he chose to use a ring flash, some of the disadvantages of ring flashes, and how he supplemented it to get the perfect shot.
You'd think the biggest name in DSLR online buyer satisfaction would be someone like Nikon or Canon, but according to J.D. Power and Associates, it's actually Pentax. J.D. Power and Associates released their 2012 DSLR Online Buyer Report a couple of days ago, and it was Pentax that took the crown, scoring 899 our of 1,000. The runners up, in case you're interested, were Nikon with an 891 and Canon with an 888.
Where the action cam market is concerned, GoPro is king. For the last few years if you wanted to go sky diving, snowbording, mountain biking, or any other extreme sport and video tape yourself doing it, you'd probably be strapping a GoPro to one of your appendages. Sony and JVC, however, are looking to get in on some of the extreme sports action -- and both are doing it in style with new action cam offerings.
Falling somewhere in the "really cool idea" category, this fully-automatic, working photo booth is made entirely out of cardboard. Everything from the outside to the gears, cogs and belts that make up the innards is all cardboard and 100% automatic. To use the machine all you have to do is insert your cardboard token and then sit perfectly still while the box exposes, develops and fixes a silver-gelatin photograph of you and yours.
Flickr announced today that it has partnered with Nokia to overhaul its geotagging feature. The new maps and satellite images will offer increased coverage (e.g. bye bye photos in ambiguous blobs of land), detail, and zoom. The company isn't turning its back on Open Street Map completely, though: the old map tiles will still be used in areas that aren't covered by Nokia's commercial maps.
"Science can be beautiful. Art can be scientific." This latest episode of the PBS series Off Book, titled "Seeing Beyond the Human Eye", looks into how science and photographic techniques are helping transform how we see the world.
This idea came to me after I had shot this photo in the daytime. I had been seeing a lot of celestial-type shots on the Internet, but most were just landscapes with no action. My main focus is action sports, and I love a challenge. I figured I would give it a try.
If you're creating a short film that requires a "through the viewfinder" clip, there's an easier way to create it than pointing your camera through an actual viewfinder (does anyone actually do that?). In the short tutorial above, Luke Neumann of Neumann Films shows how you can simulate the look of a viewfinder by overlaying your footage with some focusing screen images. All the necessary image and audio files are available as a free download.
Love to zoom? Samsung has launched a new camera for you. The WB100 is a new superzoom camera that features a 16-megapixel sensor and 22.3-579.8mm equivalent lens. Features include dual image stabilization (i.e. both optical and digital), 3D photography, live panorama creation, 720p video recording, ISO 80-1,600 and the option of being powered by either AA batteries of lithium-ion rechargeable ones.
Massive wildfires in the Rockies have destroyed hundreds of homes and scorched tens of thousands of acres over the past week. To get an idea of how massive these fires are, check out this photograph captured by a NASA satellite.
Ever wonder how much you're paying to keep your rechargeable camera batteries juiced? The answer: probably around a buck or two a year. Researcher Baskar Vairmohan of EPRI conducted a study to determine the effect of popular gadgets on our nation's power grid, calculating the annual electricity costs of various devices. He found that an iPhone uses $0.25, an iPad uses $1.36, a 60-watt light bulb uses $1.61, a laptop uses $8.31, a desktop uses $28.21, and a fridge uses $65.72. Camera batteries …
I often ask myself, “When and how it is it that I decided to become a commercial photographer?” The answer to this question is usually a long drawn out tale that goes back to when I was a junior in high school back in Miami. I’ll save you the long story and only share the story of my favorite photography class and assignment and why it was so great.
UK-based nothinghereok purchased an old engine off eBay to replace his old one and then began to document the disassembly process with his DSLR. He soon realized that the project would make a neat stop motion video, so he ended up shooting over 3,000 photographs during the 11 months of disassembly. After combining the photos and adding some music, this is what resulted.
Artists Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen have a two-year-long project titled 100 Posterworks that features B&W portraits in various locations, with standard compositions, featuring witty messages on hand-painted signs.
Watch out, Flickr -- Instagram is coming for you. The popular photo sharing app has quietly updated its website to include commenting and liking on individual photo pages. Previously the website was "read only", and any interaction with the social network was limited to its mobile interface. The new website, which also features larger images and a slick blue theme, suggests that the company may soon be breathing down Flickr's neck by expanding beyond mobile. However, it still noticeably lacks …
To celebrate Google+'s one year anniversary, photographer Alex Koloskov and retoucher Genia Larionova teamed up on a photo project to recreate the Google logo using photographs of paint. They tossed paint matching the colors of each letter into the air multiple times and picked out the best shapes, which were then combined in Photoshop.
When Picnik bit the dust several months back, it handed the web-editor baton, in large part, over the the Aviary photo editor. Since then Aviary has been running on all cylinders making consistent improvements and otherwise trying to get you to forget about that one Pic-something editor -- and it doesn't look like the company will be stopping any time soon. Having launched full-blown Android and iOS apps less than two weeks ago, Aviary has now secured $6-million in capital from several …
Here's a tutorial by photographer Stephen Davies on how you can create a pseudo double exposure photograph using a couple simple steps in Photoshop.
Music photographers in the UK have organized a boycott of indie band The Stone Roses reunion concerts (to be held this weekend) over a contract that they say is unfairly strict with their image rights. All press and music photographers are familiar with the typical restrictions that come with photographing an event or band, but the Stone Roses have asked the photogs to "assign to the Group, with full title guarantee, all Rights in perpetuity throughout the world..." A request for which the band …
If you're the owner of a Fujifilm X-Pro1 and you've been yearning for a little bit of zoom capability out of your lenses, then it looks like relief isn't far off. A couple of days ago Fujifilm announced the lens roadmap for the X-Pro1 (seen above), which shows that we'll be seeing a few zoom lenses added to the family, one of which will be here as early as this Fall.
Who says you can't make money selling photos taken on your iPhone? Certainly not the creators of a new app dubbed Foap, which allows you to do just that. The app is pretty easy to use: just download it for free off the iTunes store, upload your best pics, tag them so they're easier to find, and submit. After that every photo will have to be manually approved before it's put up on the Foap Marketplace for $10 a pop, $5 of which goes to the photographer.
Remember the mysterious camera NYTimes columnist David Pogue was gushing over earlier this month? Turns out it's the Sony RX100. In his review of the camera published yesterday, Pogue calls it "best pocket camera ever made" and writes, …
Video game developers have learned over the years that socially-shared achievements are a great way to encourage beginners to learn new tasks. Taking a page from their book, Adobe has a neat new game called LevelUp that encourages Photoshop learning using the same tricks. Available for CS5 and above, the extension encourages exploration and assigns missions to introduce features and tools that player might never have seen before. Tasks include removing redeye, whitening teeth, and replacing the …
It's a shame that the digital age brought with it such widespread copyright infringement and, sometimes, downright theft, but it's a reality we have to live with. Fortunately, there's a new website up on Tumblr that is looking to help expose the people who are taking credit for other's work, and in the process help to cut down on some of the blatant infringement many photographers deal with week in and week out.
Here's the live demo of Google's Project Glass that was given by co-founder Sergey Brin yesterday at the company's I/O conference in San Francisco. As we reported, they had five skydivers wearing the camera glasses beam footage of their jump live into the conference center through a Google+ hangout. If you think cameras are connected to the Internet now, just wait till Google Glass goggles are released sometime next year.
Earlier this month we reported on rumors of a significant Canon EOS 7D firmware update that was possibly in the works, and today that update became official. Not surprisingly, the rumors seem to have been spot on, as firmware v2 for the 7D brings many of the highly-anticipated and frequently-requested features that users of Canon's flagship APS-C SLR have been pining for.
Google demoed its much-hyped Project Glass at its I/O conference today, showing how the sleek camera-equipped "goggles" could one day allow point-of-view photos and videos to be beamed directly to others through the Internet. Four skydivers wearing the glasses beamed footage of their jump live through Google+ to the attendees in the SF conference center (see above video). They then "passed the baton" onto a group of bikers who did some tricks on the roof and then biked into the center, showing …
