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Tripods are great, even necessary for a lot of photographic situations, but one thing they are not is pocket-sized. Amateur photographers especially will often find themselves within reach of their camera, but too far from their tripods; and if you're just a photography enthusiast who likes to snap photos just about everywhere you go, forget carting around a tripod. That's the dilema Matthew Baty found himself in, and so he developed the Statc, an ultra-portable magnetic tripod head that you …

At first glance, photographer Timothy Pakron's "Silver Print" series of portraits might look like ink paintings or some kind of CG art. They're actually photographs created by hand painting developer onto photo paper in the darkroom instead of immersing the paper entirely in the solution.

Not many wedding photographers get to shoot a wedding portrait that receives over one million Facebook likes, and not many more go to a wedding expecting to shoot a graduation party. But that's the story of photographers Noah Kalina and Allyson Magda, and their experience shooting Mark Zuckerberg and Pricilla Chan's secret wedding.

Digital Camera World magazine created this handy free infographic showing the color temperature scale and where various preset white balance settings are found in it. You can download the full version here.

Over the last couple of days Google has been hosting the "Hangout In Real Life" Google+ Photographers Conference in San Francisco, and if anything has come out of the conference at all, it's that Google is intent on making Google+ the photo sharing service of the future.

Back in 2010, San Diego-based photographer Adam Elmakias launched a geeky fashionable line of gel bracelets based on various lenses. The Lens Bracelets took the web by storm, and now Elmakias is back with a new and improved "pro series" lineup of bracelets that are much more faithful representations of actual lenses by Canon, Nikon, Leica, and Zeiss. The new bracelets are based off $25K+ worth of popular cameras lenses, and are more detailed and more durable than the previous version.

Jack Robinson was a quiet man who mostly kept to himself, which explains why it was his boss, Dan Oppenheimer, who was left to take care of his estate when he passed. Little did Oppenheimer realize, however, that when he opened the closet in Jack Robinson's incredibly tidy apartment, he would find a collection of pristine portraits of celebrities that Robinson shot in his early days as a commercial photographer for Vogue.

The Staples Center in Los Angeles is the official home of two NBA basketball teams (the Lakers and Clippers) and an NHL hockey team (the Kings). All three teams are competing in their respective playoffs this year, and between May 17th and May 20th the arena hosted 6 games. This meant that the interior had to be broken down and set up for each team and each sport. The crazy time-lapse video above shows the six transformations in 1.5 minutes.

Kodak has been selling off its assets left and right as it tries to dig itself out of its financial hole. Most recently, it "successfully" sold its Gallery business to Shutterfly. But Kodak's most prized possession, and the sale it was hoping to make up the most ground with, is its massive collection of patents split into two portfolios.

Canadian fashion model Coco Rocha is quite talented at "freestyling" poses, or doing a bunch of useable poses off the top of her head in rapid succession. Last year a video showing Rocha doing 50 poses in 30 seconds went viral on the web. The video above shows her doing 19 "action poses" in just 30 seconds for a fashion cover shoot. Who knew modeling required so much cardio?

Chinese government officials never seem to learn. If you've been following us for a while, you may remember the Chinese government's Photoshop fail from last year, where three officials were supposedly inspecting a road, but instead looked more like they were floating above it. And on May 9th five more government inspectors were immortalized floating around, this time inspecting a park.

After announcing plans to stop production of APS last July, the time has finally come to say goodbye to Fuji's Advanced Photo System film. The 24mm cartridge film hasn't been a big seller for some time, and after Kodak stopped production last year it was only a matter of time before it disappeared for good. And even though (metaphorically speaking) there probably won't be a long line of mourners at the APS funeral, at the very least the film's memory will live on in the APS-C sensor format that …

From Love to Bingo in 873 Images is an amazing short film created by AlmapBBDO to advertise Getty Images. The team spent 6 months sifting through 5,000 Getty stock photographs to create this beautiful 1-minute story that shows 873 images at 15 images per second. And you thought flipping through your own personal photo archives was difficult...

4K video is the realm of high end cinematography gear right? Maybe not. Two new 16MP sensors announced yesterday by OmniVision may be bringing smooth 4K video technology to everything from compacts to smartphones. The sensors, which are the tiny 1/2.3-inch format, can record 4K (3840 x 2160) video at 60fps, or even higher resolution (4608 x 3456) at 30fps.

Dreamland is a series of diptychs by Italian photographer Francesca Guadagnini that's based around the simple question "where would you like to live?". Guadagnini shot portraits of the subjects and then photos of their answers as well, creating images that offer a small peek into the brain and personality of each person.

Artist Thomas Allen creates vintage scenes by cutting up pulp fiction book covers and turning them into dioramas. He also uses depth of field and lighting to add an extra dimension to the scenes.

If you ever create a slideshow of portraits, you might want to avoid showing them aligned side-by-side with a gap in between. The video above shows a crazy optical illusion that researchers have dubbed the "Flashed Face Distortion Effect". By flashing ordinary portraits aligned at the eyes, the human brain begins to compare and exaggerate the differences, causing the faces to seem hideous and ogre-like. Researcher Matthew Thompson writes, …

Pancake lenses are becoming quite popular in the industry, especially with smaller mirrorless cameras, as their small form factor allows for greater portability. Canon will soon be jumping onto the pancake bandwagon with its EF line of lenses. Canon Rumors reports that Canon will be announcing a small, thin, and light EF 40mm f/2.8 pancake lens that should cost less than $300. Expect to see the lens announced next month along with the new Rebel T4i and a new EF-S 18-135mm IS II lens.

"Blind Self-Portrait" is a project by artists Kyle McDonald and Matt Mets that's based around a machine that can help you turn photographs into sketches. The machine constantly track's the subject's face using a camera and translates the image into a line-drawing and x- and y-coordinates. The user then rests their hand on the machine's "hand" and presses a pen into a piece of paper. The robot hand does the rest of the work, guiding the hand into drawing the photograph as the person sits back …

Pentax has officially announced its new K-30 DSLR, a mid-level weather-sealed camera that's geared towards active outdoor photographers. In addition to its durable build, the camera features a 16MP APS-C sensor, 6fps burst mode, speed autofocus with 9/11 cross-type points, in-camera stabilization (4 stops), 60fps Live View, an optical viewfinder with 100% coverage, a 3-inch LCD screen, dual electronic diables, 1080p HD video recording, ISO 100-12800 (expandable to 25600), and three body colors …

Are you so bad at photography that all your photographs are completely overexposed to the point of pure white? Good news: there may yet be artistic hope for you. The Hayward Gallery in London is planning to mount an "Emperor's New Clothes"-style exhibition titled "Invisible", which will only feature artwork that can't be seen. Pieces include Tom Friedman's "1000 Hours of Staring" (shown above) -- a blank sheet of paper that the artist stared at for hours upon hours over the course of five years …

Back in 2010, street artist JR won the $100,000 TED Prize to continue his massive photographic street installations. He then started the Inside Out project to encourage people around the world to use giant posters of portraits to "connect communities, make change, and turn the world inside out." The video above shows a talk JR gave at TED earlier this month to report on how the project is going and how it's changing the world.

Germany-based freelance photographer Michael Hughes is an avid traveler and has visited over 200 countries. Throughout his travels, he has been working on a running photo series in which he places souvenirs found at various locations into shots of the tourist locations themselves. The famous landmarks in his photographs are replaced with miniature models, pen holders, and even paper cups.

When photographer Robert Johnson of Business Insider was denied so much as a tour of the Alberta Oil Sands, he could have given up. Instead he chose a more... aerial approach, renting a Cessna 172 to secretly photograph the secretive operation from just over 1,000 feet.

Nokia made quite a splash earlier this year by unveiling the PureView 808 -- a smartphone with a large 41-megapixel sensor and a high quality Carl Zeiss lens. The 8-minute behind-the-scenes video above -- filmed entirely with the phone, by the way -- is the story of how this device was born, starting from a napkin sketch in a Tokyo bar. Nokia is currently the world's largest manufacturer of cameras, and devoted 400 employees toward the creation of the PureView 808.

When photographer Ian Spanier was assigned to shoot 4-time Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler at his home in Vegas, the budget wouldn't allow him to hire an assistant. Still, this was an important shoot, the editor of Muscular Development had stuck his neck out to get him this gig, and he wanted to do as good a job as possible. So instead of depending on natural light, or shooting with a standard top mount flash, he decided to hack together something better.

Depending on your subject matter, it can be a very good idea to take out a damage waiver when renting camera equipment. Wildlife photographer Andrew Kane learned this recently after renting gear from LensRentals for a shoot in Yellowstone. Here's his account of how the borrowed equipment ended up broken: …

Say you're shooting a wedding, and say for some reason you're taking a food break, and say for some other reason you happen to be taking that break while the father is giving a toast you should probably be taking pictures of. You'd think that given all of that, you'd at least keep a low profile...

If you went outdoors to observe the solar eclipse yesterday, you might have noticed that the shadows cast by trees had suddenly become quite strange. The tiny gaps between leaves act as pinhole lenses, projecting crescent shaped images of the eclipsed sun onto the world below.

It's certainly not as strange or unexpected as their possible move into the world of cosmetics, but rumors are now floating around that Nikon is getting serious about making video cameras. In an interview with TechRadar, a spokesperson for Nikon UK said that Nikon "is not a broadcast company... yet." He went on to imply that they may be breaking into broadcast depending on the feedback they continue getting from their friends in the industry.

Photographer Cory Poole created this time-lapse video of yesterday's solar eclipse using 700 photographs shot through a telescope that filters out the sun's photosphere and captures its chromosphere. Wikipedia has some neat photos of the eclipse, including images of crescent shaped shadows cast by the sun during the event.

Have you ever wondered how Leica chooses its pricing for its high-end cameras? J Shin has written up a great post over at Leica Rumors that offers a geeky and lengthy explanation of the economics behind the company's pricing decisions: …

As the saying goes "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," but why not make it better? That's probably the attitude Ricoh is approaching their newest patent with, because they're making modifications to one of the few pieces of camera equipment that hasn't changed since the early days -- the lens cap.

Reuters photographer Murad Sezer was shooting at an uber-important soccer final in Turkey last Saturday when he found himself in the midst of a massive clash between frenzied fans and police officers. In the chaos, fans started picking up everything they could get their hands on to use as projectiles, including camera lenses. Sezer writes, …

News recently broke that the 30 minute (or rather 29 minute and 59 second) time limit on DSLR video may soon be a thing of the past. Interestingly however, the reason for the potential change has nothing to do with updated hardware or software. The only reason DSLRs don't already shoot longer video is because camera manufacturers want to bypass the 5.6% duty applied to video cameras, and the time limit allows them to avoid being classified as such.

Bellamy Hunt of Japan Camera Hunter recently got his hands on this amazing handmade camera pendant by jeweller Luke Satoru. The attention to detail is amazing: it's a tiny Olympus Trip 35 camera crafted from multiple pieces of brass, and the various components actually work! You can open up the back to look at the film plane, turn the rewind knob, move the advance winder, and the whole shebang.

Bad news in the world of film is pretty common these days; we're constantly hearing about film being discontinued or prices being jacked up. But, once in a while, there's a glimmer of hope for those who still prefer the world of analogue to digital. And one such glimmer came recently in the form of toy camera company Lomography, which has decided to bring back 110 format film.

Photographer Philip Karlberg, whose "33 RPM" project we featured before, shot these images of celebrities wearing sunglasses for Plaza Magazine using carefully arranged wooden pins. Shooting 6 faces required 6 days and ~1200 pins. Can you recognize all of the celebrities?

Several weeks ago we mentioned a new Google Maps feature that allows you to take virtual tours of famous locations all over the world. And now -- coming out of a partnership between design firm Dassault Systèmes, Harvard University and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts -- you can take a historically accurate, 3-dimensional, online look at Egypt's entire Giza plateau online.

If you've ever had the urge to clothe yourself in photography -- or just wanted an easy DIY guide for getting photos onto fabric -- Wearable Photos courtesy of Photojojo offers a great solution to your sartorial dilemma. If you intend on making clothing then you'll need to have some sewing ability, but if that doesn't appeal to you there are many other fabrics that could do with some photography pasted on it.

Over the last couple of weeks, USA Today has been under fire for deciding not to send their seasoned veteran photographers to cover the London Olympics. Having just bought US Presswire last September, parent company Gannett have decided instead to use the photographers and contractors at their disposal through them.

While working on some light painting shots, Sawo from Enlightpaintment was frustrated that he had to keep running back and forth from his camera. Even using an IR remote he was adding seconds of unnecessary exposure during which he wasn't actually doing anything but running. So, in a fit of creativity, he decided to put together his own DIY wireless remote using about $20 worth of equipment from Radio Shack and eBay.

Trey Ratcliff is the well-known and well-loved HDR photographer behind the travel photography blog Stuck in Customs, and in this behind-the-scenes video he talks you though his gear and how he sets up a few shots of this rocky beach in the Virgin Islands. The video offers some great insight into Trey's thought process as he composes the resulting HDR images, one of which you can see in higher resolution (including some 100% crops) here.

This fascinating video by Hayley Morris for Hilary Hahn and Hauschka's "Bounce Bounce" is both a very creative use of stop motion, and a testament to her skill as a craftsman. She actually created the entire underwater world, sketching and creating the characters herself.

Many a photographer would love to have a medium format camera gracing their camera bag, but not everyone can afford to drop anywhere between twenty and forty thousand dollars on a Hasselblad. Fortunately, the price of owning one just dropped by 22.9-percent. In an attempt to make medium formats more affordable and commonplace, Hasselblad is launching a global marketing initiative that will significantly drop the price of many of their cameras, including the entry-level H4D-31 (down by ~$5,000), …

If you've ever wondered how a professional moving still is put together, this behind-the-scenes video of Dave Hill's shoot for Fiat should shed a little light on the matter. The final product is a composite mix of stills shot using a 5D Mark II and a Hasselblad H3D-50, and high-speed video shot using a Phantom Flex and a Phantom Gold.

You might remember the Olympus marketing stunt from a few weeks ago when they sent a box complete with two walnuts and a note that simply read "coming soon" to a few different tech blogs. Since then we've seen the release of the new TG-1, but apparently Olympus isn't done with either their new releases or the marketing stunts that go along with them.

If you haven't seen Kirsty Mitchell's Wonderland series yet, then you're bound to start running into it everywhere. Inspired by the fairytales her late mother used to tell her before she passed, the series wasn't actually shot in exotic locations. In fact, some of the photos took months of planning to get right.

Earlier today Amateur Photographer reported that the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) in Glasgow, Scotland is set to impose a series of bylaws for the cities transport, including a ban in section 12.1 which would prohibit riders from "take[ing] photographs, or make[ing] video, audio or visual recordings on any part of the subway." In fact, the only way around the ban would be to get express written permission from the SPT and show it to any officer that may request to see it.

Some strange news from Nikon today: the company published a press release detailing some decisions made at a meeting of the Board of Directors that was held today. The directors were discussing some proposed amendments to the company's Articles of Incorporation that will be discussed at the general shareholders meeting on June 28th. Under the section that spells out Nikon's business activities, they're proposing the following amendment: …