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Daniel strapped a small camera to his pug to capture what the world looks like from his dog's perspective.

Here's a strange (and extremely rare) piece of camera gear: the Leica Telephoto Assembly Rifle. Also known as "the Leica Gun", it was made for photographers at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany, and became popular among wildlife and sports photographers during the interwar years. One of them will be auctioned off at the Tamarkin Rare Camera Auction on October 30th, and is expected to fetch up to $100,000.

Here's a test comparing the 1080p HD video recording capabilities of the iPhone 4S and the Canon 5D Mark II. Vimeo user Robino Films shot the same scenes at the same time with both cameras using a special rig, and then synched the footage together. They also tried to match the exposure, shutter speed, frame rate, and picture style as much as possible.

Here's a scene from NBC's comedy show Parks and Recreation that can give you some ideas on how to direct your subjects the next time you're doing a family portrait session.

Have an idea for a photo product and an entrepreneurial itch? PDN published an article this past week with three stories of people who successfully turned their ideas into products (and businesses). One of them is the story of Gary Fong and his Lightsphere: …

Google+ is becoming pretty popular among photographers as a way to share work and connect with others. If you've been thinking about jumping in but don't know where to begin, Scott Kelby and Co. made this helpful (and free) hour-long primer with tips on how to use the service effectively.

Here are some fantastic compliations of commercials promoting Japanese camera companies. They aired from the 1970s to the 1990s. The video above is the Canon collection.

Having this image on your camera might get you out of a situation where someone illegally demands that you delete a photograph. You can download a higher res version here.

Here's the second half of Tamara Lackey's recent interview with photographer Chase Jarvis.

Product developer and part-time wedding photographer Joel Malone has come up with a product called "Lens Filter Coasters": 4 colored or UV filters and an indestructible steel coaster holder. The coasters are actual 86mm filters made of optic polycarbonate resin (similar to plexiglass). Malone is currently raising funds for the project through Kickstarter: $40 will preorder you a UV set, and $50 will land you a colored one.

In this video, photographer Julie Johnson offers some helpful tips and tricks for photographing pets. For example: to get your dog's attention and its ears to perk up, ask it some questions.

Photographer Zack Arias has written up a lengthy and insightful post detailing how he goes about updating and editing his portfolio: …

Photographer Carli Davidson -- now Internet-famous for her portraits of dogs shaking off water -- has a heartwarming project titled Pets with Disabilities in which she uses portraits to tell the stories of happy dogs that have various handicaps. For the photo above: …

Over the past year, major movie camera manufacturers ARRI, Panavision and Aaton have all quietly stopped manufacturing film cameras -- a tough blow to film, and grim news for film photographers. Debra Kaufman over at Creative COW writes, …

Earlier this year, UT Austin grad student Matthew Goodman set up a Canon DSLR on Razorback mountain, which overlooks the desert where Burning Man was held. Over the next two months, the camera snapped a photograph every 10 minutes, resulting in roughly 8,000 12-megapixel photographs. Goodman then used the images to create this impressive time-lapse video showing 5 weeks of Burning Man in just 5 minutes. Every second shows 3 hours, so a full day passes every 8 seconds.

Canon is set to announce a new EOS DSLR next Tuesday, and Canon Rumors is reporting that the camera will mark the merging of the company's flagship 1D and 1Ds lines. It makes sense too, since the camera packs the best of both worlds: it has an 18MP full frame sensor, yet also shoots at a whopping 12fps with 61 AF points. Pros will no longer have to choose between crop factor and speed.

Australian photographer Liam McHenry tells the inspiring story of an encounter he had with a confrontational teenager when doing street photography. What started out as a situation spiraling out of control instantly changed when his subject suddenly "understood" his photography. McHenry says that the big revelation he had through the experience was: "it's never just a photo."

Olympus fired CEO and President Michael Woodford today, causing the company's stock price to take a 17% dive. The 51-year-old Briton was accused by the board of ignoring the management culture that the firm has had in place for 92 years. Chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa (who replaces Woodford) says, …

Exploded Flowers is a project by Singapore-based photographer Qi Wei in which he carefully disassembles various flowers into their most basic "parts", and photographs them neatly arranged against a white background.

Check out this Humunga Stache dog toy -- it's a rubber ball toy that adds some culture to photos of your dog by giving it a massive mustache. They cost $10 each over on Amazon.

For three years, Italy-based photographer James Mollison visited music concerts and photographed the rabid fans outside. The resulting photographs became an interesting project titled, The Disciples, which shows how people emulate the singers and bands they love to form their identity.

The 'Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera' is an awesome new camera developed by a group of computer science researchers led by Jonas Pfeil.

Photographer Tony Wu constantly receives requests that ask whether he would be willing to work for free in exchange for "credit" and "exposure". Instead of a lengthy response explaining why he doesn't want to work for free, Wu often leaves the emails unanswered, or worse, ends up sending snippy responses that he later regrets. He recently came up with the idea of writing a generic and informational response that all professional photographers can respond with.

John (AKA knife141) loves turning junk into unusual creations, and one day came up with idea of building a camera for the sole purpose of confusing strangers. He took a $15 digicam and transformed it into a Argus C3 from the mid-1900s: …

Lytro's revolutionary consumer light field camera is rumored to be in production now, and photographers currently testing the super-secret prototypes are saying some pretty positive things about the camera.

Street artists Jana & JS visit cities across Europe and paint portraits of themselves (and sometimes others) shooting with various film cameras. Each piece first starts out as a photograph, which is then turned into a stencil that's used to put up the painting.

There are a number of products out there that connect your strap to your DSLR via the tripod mount, allowing it to swivel, but taking up the mount is an inconvenience for photographers who actually use it regularly with their tripod. San Francisco-based Custom SLR (makers of the C-Loop) has come up with a solution that offers the best of both worlds: the M-Plate.

Photographer Jan von Holleben, known for his Dreams of Flying series, was recently hired by a German newspaper to make photos using his signature "lying on the ground" style for a feature on dreams. He ended up shooting photographs showing a girl's dream using a mattress and other ordinary objects you might find inside a bedroom.

If you've ever wondered how Facebook profile pictures come about -- and why so many of them look so similar -- check out this behind-the-scenes video with professional Facebook photographer Nickolas Grisham. He specializes in everything from duckface to Photobooth portraits for couples, and is famous for his "modern Facebook expressionism".

The rumblings in the rumor mill are getting stronger, and it seems like there's a good chance that we'll be seeing new DSLRs announced by both Canon and Nikon by the end of the month. Craig Blair over at Canon Rumors says that he knows with near certainty that Canon will be announcing a new full frame DSLR on October 18th. The camera is rumored to pack between 16-18 megapixels, have ISO that goes up to 51,200, shoot at high speeds (possibly between 12-14fps), and have 61 AF points.

Graphic designer Ksenia Podgornaya makes and sells these nifty Polaroid camera greeting cards that feature an original watercolor illustration printed on 100lb satin paper.

Chinese photo enthusiast Benny Wong mounted his large (and rare) Canon 50mm f/0.95 lens onto his tiny Olympus E-P1 Micro for a pretty awesome looking setup.

We've featured photographs of paintings and candies captured in drops of water before, but photographer Markus Reugels' water drops double as planets. By photographing drops of water in front of images of Earth and the moon, he's able to transform the liquid spheres into beautiful worlds.

Want a wooden DSLR? If you have extremely deep pockets, nows your chance: Sigma has announced a special wood edition of its high-end SD1 DSLR, which ordinarily sells for $9,700. dpreview writes, …

iPhone photography app Hipstamatic was the king of retro filters before Instagram came along and stole its crown. Now, the developers are hoping to capitalize on the retro photo app craze with a new idea: delivering a disposable camera experience on an iPhone. Pocket-lint reports, …

Photographer duo Joachim Guanzon and Marden Blake (AKA aesonica) created this short behind-the-scenes video showing how they recently shot and Photoshopped an Audi A4 photo for a print advertisement. You can read a longer how-to over on the aesonica website: …

When clients Janet and Darrell asked Australian photographer Hailey Bartholomew for a creative engagement shoot earlier this year, she came up with the idea of having the couple wear oversized bear heads.

One of the main reasons Apple has been so successful as a tech company is its focus on usability. Even as competitors' smartphones screens are approaching tablet screen sizes, Apple has stuck with 3.5-inches -- an optimal size for operating the phone with one hand. John Gruber of Daring Fireball just published his review of the iPhone 4S today, and writes that Apple focused on speed as one of the main improvements featured in the iPhone 4S camera: …

"What is Life?" is a creative stop motion animation created by a group of students at the MAPS Film School in South Australia, featuring the responses of people around the world who were asked that three-word question. Every single frame in the video is an individual light-painting photograph drawn with lights and torches and captured through a long-exposure shot.

Forget sending cameras up to the edges of space on a weather balloon: rockets are much, much cooler (and faster). A man named Derek Deville created a homemade rocket in an effort to win The Carmack Prize, which offers $10K to anyone who can launch a rocket to above 100K feet, take a GPS reading, and then recover the vehicle. Although he failed to take a GPS reading, Deville's rocket managed to reach 121,000ft (~23 miles) in 84 seconds.

Back in August, it came to light that some of Leica's $7,000 M9 cameras had a problem in which they would corrupt the SD card being used -- a problem that caused one photographer to permanently lose work after a day of shooting.

By Martin Pannier on picuous …

Videographer Joel Loukus created a continuous ring light source -- which he calls the "WreathLight" -- using a wreath frame and two strings of Christmas lights. The total cost came out to $24. It's a cheap and easy way of adding some soft lighting to your portraits.

Instagram just celebrated its first birthday last week, and now early adopters have a new toy to play with: And7YearsAgram. It's like Photojojo's Photo Time Capsule, but for Instagram instead of Flickr. The service sends you a daily email with the photographs you captured on that day the year before, giving you a fun and visual glimpse of your past (and reminding you of how fast time flies).

Thailand is experiencing the worst flooding it has seen in more than 50 years, and Nikon is also getting hit hard. A statement released by the company today (and photos emerging from the area) reveals that the company's entry-level DSLR factory there is now swamped with water: …

After seeing his close-up photographs of human eyes become enormously popular last year, photographer Suren Manvelyan turned to a more difficult subject: animals. He somehow managed to create a series of photographs showing the stunning eyes of animals ranging from crocodiles to horses.

Here's a quick and easy photo hack: cut a slice out of a white film canister to soften the light from your DSLR's built-in flash.

Expose two images without advancing your film, and you have yourself an in-camera double exposure photograph. With the advent of digital photography, creating a double exposure image has largely moved to image editing programs. The MINIMO-X, however, is a digital camera that has double exposure built-in as a feature. The pocket-sized toy digicam lets you snap two exposures on the same frame, combining the fun of analog with the convenience of digital. You can find them for $130 each over in the …

Advertising photographer Paul Ripke's project "Man Babies" features portraits of parents with their children... with their heads swapped. Ripke enlisted the help of two professional Photoshoppin' friends, and says that the photographs were purely for fun and to test the limits of Photoshop.

If you think about it, there are many parallels between Apple and Polaroid: both companies introduced innovative products that redefined markets in their time, both were founded by college dropouts, and both emphasized design and usability in their products. What you might not know is that it's not a coincidence. Christopher Bonanos wrote a fascinating article for the New York Times on how Steve Jobs idolized Polaroid founder Edwin Land and modeled his career after Land's: …