Archives

Jump to articles by year, month, or day.

Year
Month
Day

Year alone opens that year’s archive. Add a month or day to narrow it.

Nikon D4 Specs Leaked: A 16.2MP Rival to the Canon 1DX

Nikon has more than just a 36-megapixel D800 up its sleeve. The company is also planning to launch a Nikon D4 DSLR to rival the Canon 1DX, and specs of the camera were leaked this past weekend by Nikon Rumors. The camera will reportedly offer 16.2MP, 11fps, ISO 102400 (expandable to 204800), support for the new XQD memory card format in addition to CF, integrated ethernet, 51 AF points, face detection/recognition, and improved video capabilities (e.g. uncompressed video output and buttons for …

Lens Band is Like a Gel Bracelet That Gives Your Cell Phone Macro Powers

Add-on lenses for cell phones are pretty common nowadays, but usually they're specifically made for certain models and are incompatible with others. The Macro Cell Lens Band is different -- it's a stretchable band with a macro lens baked right in. Simply slip the band onto your phone, place the lens over your phone's camera, and voila! Instant macro shots. When you're not using it, you can also wear it around like a gel bracelet. They cost $15 each over at Photojojo.

Photo of a Nuclear Explosion Less than 1 Millisecond After Detonation

This might look like some kind of microscopic organism, but it's actually a high-speed photograph of a nuclear explosion. It was captured less than 1 millisecond after the detonation using a rapatronic camera, which is capable of exposure times as brief as 10 nanoseconds (one nanosecond is one billionth of a second). The photograph was shot from roughly 7 miles away during the Tumbler-Snapper tests in Nevada (1952). The fireball is roughly 20 meters in diameter, and three times hotter than the …

Instagram Picked by Apple as the “iPhone App of the Year”

Instagram is holding onto its place as the darling of the mobile photo sharing world. After adding a whopping two million new users in a month thanks to Thanksgiving and the release of the iPhone 4S, the app now has a shiny new trophy for its shelf: it has been selected as Apple's "iPhone App of the Year". The future is looking extremely bright for the 13-month-old, 7-man company: Goldman Sachs recently designated it as a potential IPO candidate and founder Kevin Systrom expects the membership …

Turn a Sunstar Soft-Picks Case into a DIY SD Card Holder

Wanting a cheap and compact way to carry, protect, and manage his SD cards, Instructables member FrankenPaper discovered that the plastic cases that come with Sunstar GUM Soft-Picks are the perfect size for holding 2 cards. To keep the cards from jostling around and to track whether they're full or empty, he created an insert that you can print, cut, and fold yourself (download the PDF here).

Portraits of Online Gamers Next to Their Alter Egos

For his project Alter Ego, photographer Robbie Cooper traveled around the world to shoot portraits of online gamers. He then combined his portraits with screenshots of the gamers' avatars in the various games they play, showing an interesting side-by-side comparison of what the people look like in the real world compared to what they choose to look like in their fantasy worlds. The project got its start back in 2003 after Cooper did a shoot with a CEO who used the game Everquest to communicate …

Magic Cable Trio: One USB Cable to Rule Them All

Tired of packing a huge mess of cables every time you go on a trip? The Magic Cable Trio is a 3-in-1 cable designed to cut down on your clutter. It lets you power and sync a wide range of devices ranging from phones, iOS systems (e.g. the iPad), music players, and compact cameras. Just make sure your device uses miniUSB, microUSB, or an iPhone dock connector. The three connections are daisy-chained, making it uber-compact and easy to manage. They cost $20 over at Innergie.

CompactFlash Cards to Be Replaced with the Smaller XQD Format

Perhaps in response to the growing capacities and falling prices of SD cards, the CompactFlash Association has announced a new format to replace CF cards for professional photographers. It's called XQD, and has a size that falls between CF and SD cards (it's thicker than SD cards, but smaller than CF cards). The interface used is PCI Express, which has a theoretical max write speed of roughly 600MB/s, though the target for real-world write speeds at first will be 125MB/s. It'll start making …

Man-Made Objects Spotted in Nature

Norwegian photographer Rune Guneriussen photographs man-made objects in nature as if they belonged there. The objects are arranged to look like packs of animals, humans, and natural formations.

Entire Olympus Board to Resign After Panel Issues Damning Report

It looks like Olympus ex-CEO Michael Woodford will be getting his wish after all as the Olympus scandal continues to unfold. A day after an independent panel issued a report that slammed the company's top management as being rotten (though at the same time finding no links to organized crime), the entire board of directors has indicated that it will step down. Perhaps confident that the company will soon be back on the right track, investors have pushed the stock price back up to over ¥1,100 …

TimeScapes: An Epic Time-Lapse Portrait of the American Southwest

Photographer Tome Lowe has spent the past two years working on TimeScapes, his debut feature film that presents a breathtaking time-lapse portrait of the American Southwest. Just to give you an idea of how epic the film will be: every time he releases a sneak peek of the film, the video goes viral and receives hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of views. This trailer is no different.

H&M Photoshops Model Heads Onto CGI Bodies

Clothing retailer H&M has sparked quite a bit of controversy after admitting that most of the models featured on its website are computer generated. The company says that pasting real model heads onto CGI bodies provides a better way of displaying clothes made for humans than using real humans to model them. Spokeswoman Nicole Christine tells ABC News: …

Photographer Collects Photographs of Identical Twins

Diane Arbus might have one iconic photograph of identical twins, but Spanish photographer Maria Zarazua has devoted much of her career to finding and photographing them. Her goal is to show the intimate relationship between them, and their individualities despite being genetic carbon copies.

‘Star Wars’ Movie Camera Auctioned for a Record-Setting $625,000

The Panavision PSR 35mm movie camera that was used for most of the principal photography in the original 1977 'Star Wars' movie has been sold at auction for $625,000 -- the highest price ever paid for a movie camera. While the price is record-setting for both Star Wars memorabilia and film movie cameras, it still pales in comparison to prices seen in the world of still photography -- the most expensive camera was auctioned earlier this year for $1.9 million.

Facebook Flaw Allows Access to Private Photos, Including Zuckerberg’s

A recently discovered flaw in Facebook's abuse reporting tool allowed anyone to access private photographs of other users, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Until it was fixed today, the reporting tool allowed anyone who reported a public photograph's owner to also peruse that user's images, both public and private. After members of a bodybuilding forum discovered the security hole, they proceeded to target Zuckerberg's account and publish a number of his private photographs online.

A Working Papercraft Polaroid Camera

Photographer Matthew Nicholson, the guy behind the amazing Lie-ca paper pinhole camera, is at it again. This time he's building a working paper camera that looks just like a Polaroid One Step Rainbow camera! Branded as the Fauxlaroid Land Camera, it will apparently use actual instant film that the user "processes" manually.

Crowdfunded TriggerTrap Universal Camera Trigger Now In Production

Back in June we reported that Haje Jan Kamps of Photocritic was working on a neat new universal camera trigger called the TriggerTrap. Since then, he has managed to raise a whopping $77,262 for the project through Kickstarter and is now announcing that the device has gone into production. The TriggerTrap can be triggered by pretty much anything you can think of thanks to its laser trigger, sound detector, intervalometer, and AUX-port. It'll cost $125 once it begins shipping in February 2012.

DSLRs Banned from UK Tube Station

Photographer Tim Allen spotted this sign outside the Aldwych tube station, an abandoned London Underground station that recently opened up for tours. While photography bans are pretty common, the station has decided to only ban DSLRs due to "their combination of high quality sensor and high resolution". Other cameras are allowed in, as long as they don't look "big" enough to shoot amazing photos.

A Night-Vision Lens Used by US Military Photographers

Think your lens is good in low-light conditions? Check out this Nikon D700 with a Nightstalker II night-vision system attached -- standard issue for the Navy's Combat Camera unit. PopPhoto has published an interesting article that offers a glimpse into what life is like as a US military photographer. You an also see an example photo shot with the above lens here.

Is 75 Years in Prison for Recording Police in Public Constitutional? Illinois Says Yes

Three years ago, an Illinois man named Michael Allison was arrested for videotaping police in public in accordance with the state's extremely strict wiretapping laws. He faced up to 75 years in prison for his crime, but a few months ago an Illinois judge ruled that the laws were unconstitutional and threw out the case. However, the State of Illinois is now appealing to the Supreme Court to have the dismissal overturned.

Creepy Commercial for the Fujifilm X10

Japanese camera ads are sometimes very different from those you might see in the US. We're still trying to figure out whether this is a commercial for the Fujifilm X10 or a trailer for an upcoming horror movie...

Blink Aims to Bring Some Color to Boring Ol’ Lens Caps

Tired of using generic black lens caps? There's a new company called Blink that's trying to bring some color to the world of lens protection. It's currently trying to raise $55,000 through crowdfunding to manufacture a line of 58mm lens caps in 6 designs, which are designed to make people smile when they catch a glimpse of your camera. The caps are significantly more expensive than your standard lens cap though: you'll have to donate $25 to the campaign to land one of them.

Quickly Look up Development Times with the Film Development Database

Knowing how long to develop film for is easy if you use popular films and developers, but what if you want to use some obscure combination that isn't well documented? If that's you, check out the Photocritic Film Development Database. It's a simple service that outputs development times for 1440 different film/developer combinations. For combinations that aren't officially published, creator Haje Jan Kamps has come with a formula that estimates the time -- a formula that he says is surprisingly …

A Time-Lapse Journey Through Oregon

Here's an amazing time-lapse video that was made using time-lapse photography shot over six months in the beautiful state of Oregon. This interview quote by Ben Canales gives a glimpse into how much dedication this kind of project requires: …

Knobroom Lets You Control Lightroom Using a MIDI Controller

Knobroom is a free add-on for Lightroom that lets you use the knobs and sliders on a MIDI Controller to edit photos in Lightroom. Unlike PADDY, which we featured last year, Knobroom is also available to Mac users. The brief demo above shows Lightroom being controlled with a Behringer BCF2000. Freelance photographer Max Edin has written up an informative review on setting up and using the add-on.

Add a Clip to Lens Caps to Make Them Easier to Hold On To

Have a habit of losing your lens caps? Add a clip to them to keep them attached to your camera strap when not in use! All you need are a lapel clip -- the kind found on old wired cellphone headsets work great -- and some strong mounting tape. It's basically a DIY version of the Nice Clip, which we featured back in October.