H.Y. Leung recreated the special white edition of the Leica M8 rangefinder using LEGO pieces. The attention to detail is amazing, and you can even look through the viewfinder! You can find a couple more photos here.
All the way back at the beginning of 2011, Nikon Rumors confirmed that the image sensors in Nikon's D3, D3s, D700 and D3100 were all designed by the Japanese company itself. And now, a recent teardown of the D3200 by Chipworks shows that Nikon was behind the sensor found inside that camera as well. There has been speculation for a while that Nikon is distancing themselves from Sony sensors, and if rumors of the full-frame D600 sensor being made by Aptina turn out to be true, then the list of …
The video above was put together by the European art duo known as Sweatshoppe, and believe it or not, there was no post-production used in creating it what-so-ever. They call the technique -- which they pioneered -- video painting, and they make it happen by using custom-built electronic paint rollers and custom-designed software. As you can see, the final result is pretty awesome. For more info, check out the video's Vimeo page.
There's an overabundance of ways to share and organize your photos these days. From Flickr and 500px, to Facebook and Shutterfly, you can store and share your photos in many places. But according to Yahoo!, many people still use good ol' fashioned e-mail. Yahoo!'s senior director of product management Dave McDowell said that over 500-million photos are sent through Yahoo! Mail every day, and so in an attempt to streamline that process and better cater to the needs of their 300-million users, …
Ever since their financial scandal, Olympus has been looking to bring on a big name investor to help get them out of trouble. Earlier this month that investor seemed to be Panasonic, but when that fell through everybody looked to the remaining three possible investors -- Sony, Fujifilm and Terumo -- to see if anybody was going to make the leap. According to Japanese business daily Nikkei, that investor is Sony.
The photographs in Isabel M. Martínez's Quantum Blink project look like they were stitched together using Photoshop, but they were actually all created in-camera. She writes, …
Late last month several rumors pointed to the fact that Canon would be announcing two new cameras in June. The first, Canon's new EOS T4i, was already announced, but as June approaches its final days many were wondering if Canon had pushed back the announcement date for their much anticipated first mirrorless camera. Unfortunately, according to Canon Rumors, that does seem to be the case.
You know society has gone a little filter-crazy when a concept for Instagram glasses shows up on the scene, but we have to admit that Instaglasses make for an interesting idea. The basic premise is that Instagram fanatics aficionados would be able to use these to always see the world in filters. When they then glimpsed a scene that looked especially artsy with the Amaro or Inkwell filters applied, they could use a button on the side of the glasses to capture and upload that image to Instagram.
When photographer Michael Wolf had to move to Paris in 2008 because of a job opportunity for his wife, he wasn't too thrilled with the situation. He thought that living in one of the most photographed cities of all time, surrounded by the inevitable cliches of such a place, wasn't conducive to creative, unique photography. So he sat down at his computer and began browsing through the then only 6-month old Google Street View, which ultimately led to a unique photographical project that fit right …
On a trip to the famous Louvre in Paris, photographer and artist Taylor Holland found himself more drawn in by the highly ornate frames around the art than with the art itself. This got him thinking about a project that would challenge "the viewer’s notion not only of what art is, but the viewer’s own perceptions about where to find and appreciate art in various settings such as the Louvre." Thus was born Fra[mes].
Yesterday was the first day of summer, so it's only right that we would run across a product that is equal parts camera bag and cooler. The Camera Cooler, by camping equipment company Poler, combines the usefulness of a cooler and the looks/functionality of a camera bag into one multi-purpose product.
Two Halves is a series of landscape photos by Jeronimo Fantini in which each square-format shot is bisected neatly through the middle by the horizon line.
Ever since the move to digital, and especially with the advent of the camera phone, we've seen a huge spike in photography -- everybody is taking pictures. But even so, our four legged friends haven't really gotten in on the action. That may soon change, however, if a concept camera by designer Jaehwa Lee ever becomes a reality.
It looks like Nokia wasted no time putting the folks at Scalado to work for them. As we reported a week ago, Nokia is acquiring Scalado's developers, technologies and IP portfolio, and we're already seeing Scalado's well-known "rewind" technology make its way into Nokia's new Camera Extras app.
A camera's dimensions are often reported alongside its other specs (e.g. megapixels, ISO), but it's pretty difficult to gauge exactly how large it is by those numbers alone. RealSize is a helpful iPad app that helps you get a better sense of size by displaying gadgets on its screen at exactly the size they are in real life.
For all you DIY-ers out there looking for a fast, fun photography project, here's a quick way to create a make-shift fisheye lens for your camera using only a 200-degree peephole, some drawer liner, a PVC reducer and some tape. The final product certainly doesn't look like a professional fisheye lens -- this definitely falls into the "fun weekend project" category -- but even so, the results turned out better than you would expect from a 200-degree peephole and some PVC.
It's been almost three months to the day since the well-respected camera equipment rating service DxOMark crowned the Nikon D800 as its new king, giving the camera's 36.3MP sensor an incredible overall score of 95 -- but now its reign is over. The Nikon D800 has been officially beaten out, and appropriately enough it has happened at the hands of its nearly identical twin brother, the Nikon D800E.
Seattle-based techie Matt Harding became an Internet celebrity back in 2005 after a video of him dancing in various locations around the world went viral online. Now he's back again with a new 2012 edition that's sure to go just as viral. Harding spent months traveling to tens of countries around the world, capturing short clips of himself dancing with thousands of people. The project is titled, "Where the Hell is Matt?".
Musicians, and all creative types really, often cross over into other creative endeavors that may or may not have anything to do with the field they're famous for. It was only a few weeks ago that we featured a video of musician Moby talking about how much he loved photographing LA architecture. And today Leica has put together another of their "Leica Portraits," this one on soul musician -- and, of course, photography enthusiast -- Seal.
If you've ever gone out to try your hand at street photography you probably experienced your fair share of anxiety once you were out there. Taking photos of strangers, even on crowded city streets, takes practice and time, time that's mostly spent getting over the natural fear of taking people's photos without their permission. But the fact that it requires practice and time doesn't mean that a few good tips won't speed the process along significantly.
There's nothing new about creating 3D spacial diagrams using 2D photos, but what a group of Japanese researchers is currently working on may speed up and streamline the process so much so that anybody can use it. Their system uses no special camera equipment, all you need is a point-and-shoot and a wireless SD card so that you can upload form anywhere.
Scientists at Duke University have created a digital camera that boasts a whopping 50 gigapixels. The camera, dubbed AWARE-2, uses 98 separate 14-megapixel microcameras and a special spherical lens. Each microcamera captures a tiny portion of the scene and a specially designed processor stitches the images together. Processing the data is so hardware intensive that 97% of the camera is made up of electronics and computer components (the other 3% is the optical elements).
People either love or hate Instagram, but if you happen to fall into the former category then you now have a wearable option. That's right, you can wear your favorite Instagram shots. The company that makes this happen is called Instapparel, and it's easy enough to use: just authorize the website to access your Instagram account and you're off to the races. You can customize the size of the shirt, choose between color and cream, pick the size and placement of your photos, and then buy the whole …
We've seen 'Blue Marble' photos of Earth before, but this latest NASA photo is different: it's the first photo of its kind shot from above our planet's North Pole. The photo is a composite of images captured by a satellite as it passed over the North Pole 15 times at an altitude of 512 miles.
The camera obscura has been around for a long time (Middle Ages long) and typically consisted of a box or room with a hole in one side through which an image of its surroundings could be formed. As you can see from the example above, any room -- in this case a bathroom -- can be turned into a camera obscura given a small enough "aperture." Unfortunately, most rooms have big, blaring windows that let in too much light, and the only image formed on the opposite wall is a shadowy blob.
Do professional photographers belong in delivery rooms? More and more of them are showing up there. The New York Times has an interesting piece on the rise of birth photography as a up-and-coming niche:
Earlier this month was iconic photo Napalm Girl's 40 year anniversary, and while most of the world was looking back on one of the most striking images ever taken, one photographer was reminiscing over a lost opportunity.
Here's a creative series of photographs by photographer Nithin Rao Kumblekar. He shot models from above as they sprawled out on the ground over intricate chalk drawings, using perspective to blend them into the scenes. The work reminds us of Jan von Holleben's 'Dreams of Flying' project, except chalk is used instead of props.
Ever notice how food at McDonald's never looks like the ones pictured in advertisements? Here's a behind-the-scenes video that offers a look at how McDonald's burgers are photographed.
It seems like every month another company is acquired by Facebook; be it Instagram, Lightbox or now Face.com, it's clear that Facebook is looking to make some serious improvements on the photo side of things, and we certainly won't complain about that. Face.com's facial recognition IP has been very well-received so it's no surprise the people over at Zuckerberg Corp Facebook have decided to snatch up the Israeli-based startup before anybody else does.
If you've ever deleted a photo by accident you probably already know about applications like DiskDigger that can go in and recover the image from the electronic beyond. This can come in really handy when an overzealous clicking finger accidentally erases several worthwhile pictures from your hard drive. Up until now, however, there was no way to perform the same search and rescue on your mobile device. Fortunately, DiskDigger for Android changes that.
Portrait photographer Peter Hurley gave this talk at the recent Google+ Photography Conference in SF. His training on headshots have made quite a splash in the photo world in the past year, and this free hour-long lecture is a great way to glean some tips for your work.
Artist Rodrigo Torres creates amazing 3D topographic sculptures of landscapes using a stack of 2D prints. This idea would be amazing for cityscape sculptures.
After releasing firmware update 1.01 last month and fixing the D4/D800 lock up issues, Nikon Rumors is reporting that the Japanese camera company has another firmware update up its sleeve -- this one dealing with some different issues that have come up with the same two cameras.
A couple of years ago, FujiFilm sent a Real 3D W1 up to the International Space Station for the astronauts to play with in what we can only assume is their abundant free time. That camera yielded the pictures you see above and below -- which you can experience in their full glory with a pair of 3D glasses -- and now FujiFilm has sent up the updated W3 to hopefully continue this tradition of documenting life on the ISS in 3D.
Think you're good with Photoshop? Graphic designer Alexander Koshelkov created this amazing time-lapse video showing how he created an epic plane crash image in Photoshop using elements found in other photographs (e.g. freeways, an airplane, destroyed engines and cars). The project took Koshelkov nearly 4.5 hours and required 244 separate layers.
If you've ever played the video game Portal you'll know how addicting it can be. Sort of like a first person puzzle, the game and its sequel require you to use a portal gun to create linked "portals" through space in order to get out of sticky situations. Well, photographer Jeremy Jackson had an interesting idea: why not recreate the world of Portal with a well-planned light painting exposure? …
Paris-based photographer Marina Gadonneix documents the artificial spaces that are television studios while they are off the air and completely devoid of humans. The project is titled "Remote Control".
Over the last few days the NokiaUS Facebook page has been dropping hints left and right of an 808 PureView announcement coming on 6.18.12. For most people it wasn't immediately obvious, but as the astute folks over at AllThingsD pointed out, every one of the pictures released with the aforementioned date on it had something to do with the number 808.
Software engineer Vijay Pandurangan had a theory, that turned into an experiment, that ultimately turned into some pretty interesting results. His theory was that over the years our color bias, specifically where movie posters are concerned, has gone more dark and blue. To test this he analyzed 35,000 posters from 1914 to present day and came up with the visual representation pictured above.
There are so many things to do and never enough time to do them. You talk about starting that new personal photography project, about updating your website, or wanting to call those prospective new clients. You know that these things need to be done if you are to succeed and you really want to do them. Yet, more often than not, you decide they can wait until tomorrow.
A new Panasonic patent uncovered earlier by Egami shows some exciting new sensor technology that may be heading our way soon. The new tech allows for the exposure values to be adjusted for each individual row of pixels. Essentially, the sensor could automatically apply a graduated ND filter to your images without the need for an actual filter.
Dutch photographers Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm shot a series of photographs for a Dove ad campaign that uses the Thatcher effect for some stealthy creepiness. The effect is created by flipping a portrait upside down while keeping the eyes and/or mouth right side up. The human brain has a difficult time detecting these subtle "local" changes, and the portraits may look normal until you see them flipped. Try turning your monitor or head to look at these images upside down.
Here's a quick tip from photographer Jeffrey Guyer that'll help to keep you from warping a stuck filter when trying to take it off your lens. Instead of grabbing it with your fingers or using a jar opener, you can just use rubbery drawer liner. Simply place the liner on a flat surface, press your lens (filter down of course) onto it, and turn. This allows you to get the filter unstuck while applying even pressure -- no broken/warped filters, no sad photographers.
There's been a lot of talk about new full frames making their debut in the next year, Nikon and Canon monopolizing most of the news with their rumored entry-level offerings, but one company that might slip in under the radar is Pentax. Rumors of Pentax's K-3 full frame have been circulating for some time, but Photo Rumors recently reported on a few updates including possible announcement and release dates.
Portland-based photographer Jimmy Hickey made this helpful video in which he shares how he goes about shooting portraits of complete strangers he meets during his travels both overseas and on his local streets. He has some great tips that you can easily apply to your own street/documentary photography.
For his project titled Peep, Japanese photographer Koji Takiguchi aimed to share glimpses into the lives of his fellow countrymen by capturing triptychs showing them at work, home, and play. He photographed people ranging from office workers to security guards, photographing them on the job, resting at home, and engaging in their favorite pastime.
Admittedly, people didn't react all that well when Lomography announced that they were bringing 110 film back from the grave, but you have to give them credit for pressing on. Despite criticism that the old toy camera film was never any good to begin with, Lomography have now announced their new Fisheye Baby 110, a pocket-sized camera to go with the pocket sized film.
Some might think that taking photos in exotic locations like Hawaii is "too easy." But anybody who has tried and failed to capture that perfect sunset or gorgeous beach photo knows that seeing beauty, or even being surrounded by it, doesn't mean you'll be able to snap great pictures of it. In this video we follow award-winning photographer Aaron Feinberg as he hikes to several of his favorite locations and composes some beautiful shots.
Ever since the release of Nikon's well-loved 14-24mm f/2.8G lens (pictured above), Canon users have been pining for one of their own. So far that pining has led only to speculation, but now, according to Canon Rumors, it looks like we might be seeing an official announcement sometime in the next 12 months.
