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Shoot In-Camera Double Exposure Digital Photos with the MINIMO-X

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 …

Steve Jobs’ Role Model? Edwin Land, the Founder of Polaroid

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: …

Nikon Prices May Increase Next Week Due to New Unilateral Pricing Policy

According to Nikon Rumors, Nikon has introduced a new Unilateral Pricing Policy on DSLR gear sold in the US that will take effect on October 16th. Saying that the policy is "designed to allow customers to make purchasing decisions based on service provided and not have to worry about hunting for a better price", Nikon plans to withhold sales to any store caught pricing equipment below "national prices" that the company will set for each product.

Sneak Peek at the Crazy Image Deblurring Feature That May Appear in Photoshop

At the Adobe MAX 2011 event in LA last week, the company gave a sneak peek into an advanced Image Deblurring feature that may appear in an upcoming version of Photoshop. Provided with a blurred photograph, the feature uses advanced algorithms to calculate the camera movements that caused the blur, which allows the program to do a very accurate unblurring of the photograph. The video is a bit shaky and the quality isn't the best, but judging from the audience's reaction when the example photo is …

UK Man Questioned by Police After Cell Phone Photo of Daughter in Mall

Last Friday, 45-year-old Chris White was at the Braehead shopping center near Glasgow, when he took a snapshot of his daughter Hazel eating some ice cream. He was then confronted by security guards -- and later the police -- who cited the Prevention of Terrorism Act to explain that it was in their rights to confiscate his phone. While they did allow him to keep the photos, they demanded his personal details. Afterward, White created a Facebook page titled "Boycott Braehead" in an effort to draw …

Turn a White Plastic Flask into a Quick DIY Flash Diffuser

Photographer Joseph Nienstedt was at a grocery store recently when he spotted a $4 plastic flask that reminded him of a curved light modifier he had seen before. After buying it and transforming it into a diffuser using a razor, Nienstedt discovered that it provided softer light than his Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce due to the 5x larger surface area. While it's not a very respectable look for a professional environment, using a plastic bottle as a DIY diffuser could be an option if you're in a pinch or …

Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Slaying Family Photographs

Photographer Jessica Bjorn was recently hired by the Owen family to shoot some post-apocalyptic zombie slaying family portraits. The husband makes and sells chainmail armor and costumes through his Etsy store ChainCrafts, and made all the costumes seen in these photos using things such as hubcaps, soda tabs, and a railroad crossing sign.

How to Make a Photo Showing “Little People” on a Bookshelf

Photo enthusiast Robert Simpson created this informative behind-the-scenes video detailing how he created a composite photograph showing tiny children running along a bookshelf. Although a ton of planning and preparation went into the shot, everything was done at home on a small budget rather than in a fancy studio. This may inspire you to dream a little bigger using your current resources.

Photo Projects That Deal with the Passage of Time or Obsessive Documentation

Artist Jonathan Keller Keller first started taking a self-portrait of himself every day starting in 2000, and later created a time-lapse video showing eight years of his life passing in less than two minutes (similar to Noah Kalina's famous everyday video). What's neat is that Keller maintains a directory of other similar photo projects out there. All the projects either deal with the passage of time or the obsessive documentation of something.

Painting with Light: Lighting and Layering a B-25 Bomber

Here's an illuminating (pun intended) video walkthrough by photographer Eric Curry, showing how he went about creating a photo of a B-25 bomber. His technique for lighting the plane is similar to the real estate photography walkthrough that we featured last weekend, and involves lighting the scene a bazillion times from different angles, and then combining the different parts of the photo in Photoshop.

The Basics of Photography by National Geographic

Here's a helpful 22-page guide by National Geographic that explains many of the basic concepts of photography, from lens types to composition. It's a free excerpt taken from the 400-page book "National Geographic Ultimate Field Guide to Photography", and is a great read for anyone just starting out.

Turn an Unwanted Globe Into a Unique Photo Display

For her husband's 40th birthday, Jen had the idea of turning an old, unwanted globe into a unique photo gift showing "his world". She printed photographs onto white tissue paper, and then adhered the photographs to the globe using Mod Podge. Head on over to her site for a step-by-step walkthrough.

Colorful and Clever Camera Decorations

These Diana cameras were decorated and auctioned for Lomography's Diana World Tour this year. If you regularly photograph young children, giving your camera a colorful costume can help make it a lot less intimidating (Camera Creatures work well too).

First Ever Photograph of a Fourth-Order Rainbow

Seeing a double rainbow is a relatively rare treat, but how about three or four rainbows? Scientists have only reported seeing triple rainbows five times over the past 250 years, but German photographer Michael Theusner was recently able to capture this first ever photograph of a fourth-order rainbow. Ordinary rainbows (first and second order) appear in the area of the sky opposite the sun (and aren't seen in his shot), but when higher order rainbows appear, they show up on the sunward side.

Researchers Turn iPhone Camera into Cheap Microscope with $40 Lens

A team of researchers at UC Davis have come up with a super-cheap way of turning an iPhone into a microscope -- useful for diagnosing diseases in areas where medical equipment is hard to come by. Inspired by the CellScope project at UC Berkeley, Sebastian Wachsmann-Hogiu decided to create something even smaller and cheaper. By taping a 1-millimeter ball lens embedded in a rubber sheet to the iPhone, he was able to boost magnification by 5x, which allows the camera to photograph blood cells.

Expressions of Sheer Terror Captured by a Haunted House Camera

Nightmares Fear Factory in Niagara Falls, Canada, which calls itself the scariest haunted house in North America, has an automatic camera set up at one particularly horrifying point in the house. The camera takes a photograph of visitors at precisely the moment when sheer terror reaches their brain, and the resulting expressions are hilarious.

Mind-Blowing Research Into Inserting Artificial Objects into Photographs

We always get a laugh when news organizations or governments try to pass off bad Photoshop jobs as real images, but with the way graphics technology is advancing, bad Photoshop jobs may soon become a thing of the past. Here's a fascinating demo into technology that can quickly and realistically insert fake 3D objects into photographs -- lighting, shading and all. Aside from a few annotations provided by the user (e.g. where the light sources are), the software doesn't need to know anything …

Pinhole Photos That Show a Day in the Life of a Mouth

Mouthpiece is a series of photographs by photographer Justin Quinell in which he documents some of his life's experiences as seen by his mouth. The photographs were captured using a custom pinhole camera created from a 110 film cartridge. It's a unique perspective of the world that we don't often see in photographs.

The Story Behind Albert Watson’s Portrait of Steve Jobs

After Apple founder Steve Jobs passed away yesterday, the company replaced its homepage with a well-known photo of the brilliant innovator made in 2006 by photographer Albert Watson. An article published by PDN Pulse today reveals the story behind the (perhaps soon to be iconic) photo: …

Indie Band Creates Music Video Using Crowdsourced Instagram Photos

Instagram is changing not just the way photos can be shared, but how music videos can be made. UK indie rock band The Vaccines recently created a website that asked fans to snap photographs of themselves while at music festivals and then tag them with "#VACCINESVIDEO". After receiving nearly 3,000 submissions, the band used them to create the music video for their song "Wetsuit". Aside from a few video clips, everything you see in the video was submitted through Instagram.

Free Photo Class Phonar Now Underway

Phonar, the free and open undergraduate photo class we wrote about a couple months ago, is now underway. While the physical class can only be attended by students at Coventry University, the general public can take part through the assignments and recorded materials shared through the website. Here's the first assignment that's due on October 13th: …

How to Make a DIY Portable Light Box

Needing a portable light box, Instructables member HHarry came up with a ingenious collapsible design that has built-in lighting. He's also written up a tutorial on how you can build one too, but be warned: the materials may cost you up to $80, and you'll need a good amount of know-how. However, if you're looking for a hefty weekend project and need a convenient way to light and photograph small objects on-the-go, this one's for you.

Photoshop’s Content Aware Fill is Only the Tip of the Iceberg

Demos at graphics conferences are often interesting to watch because they offer a sneak peek at technologies that may soon become available to the general public. The video above is a demo for "PatchMatch", an algorithm developed by researchers at Princeton and Adobe. Although you might be unfamiliar with PatchMatch, you've probably heard of its most famous feature: Content Aware Fill. Only a small piece of this amazing technology was introduced in Photoshop CS5, so the amazing image …

Fujifilm Adds the Non-Retro X-S1 to the X Series Lineup

Fujifilm's press event yesterday wasn't just to announce that they're working on a new mirrorless system camera: they also announced the X-S1, the first non-retro styled camera to appear in the X lineup. The camera looks like a DSLR with a kit lens attached, but actually uses a fixed 26x f/2.8-5.6 lens and an electronic viewfinder. It uses the same 2/3-inch sensor size as the X10, which has about 1/4 of the area of a Micro Four Thirds sensor.

The African Elephant Durability Test for Camera Gear

In this social media age, companies are constantly dreaming up all kinds of random ideas for demonstrating the benefits of their products, and hoping that the videos will go viral (an example would be this bulletproof glass CEO that literally stood behind his product).

Fujifilm to Release an Interchangeable Lens Mirrorless Camera in Early 2012

If you've been wishing for an interchangeable lens version of the popular Fujifilm X100, then this news should be music to your ears: Fujifilm has just announced that it will launch a new interchangeable lens mirrorless camera system in the spring of 2012. CEO Shigetaka Komori stated that both the resolution and the low noise levels would be better than 35mm full frame sensors. Judging from the popularity of the X100's retro look, it would be a smart move for the company to launch something …

Babies Sleeping in Grown-Up Clothes

Here's an amazingly cute idea for baby portraits: dress them up as adults while they're sleeping. Photographer Handri Karya and ad agency Grey Group made these photographs as part of an ad campaign for Indonesian mattress company Comforta.

Photographer Buys Back Own Work After Lost Archive Found at Flea Market

A photographer was recently reunited with his lost photographs after another photographer happened to stumble upon them at a flea market. Photographer-turned-filmmaker Alexi Tan lost his entire photographic archive some time ago while shooting his first feature film in China. He had accidentally let his credit card expire, leading his New York-based storage company to auction off his archive.

Facial Recognition with the iPhone May Lead to Pretty Creepy Apps

Last year, Apple purchased Swedish facial recognition firm Polar Rose for $22 million, and yesterday's iPhone 4S announcement revealed that the technology is now baked into iOS and is touted as one of big new camera features. The iPhone is now a compact camera and mobile computer that can detect -- and possibly recognize -- faces.

Quantifying the Variation in Sharpness Between Copies of the Same Lens

As you might know, different copies of the same lens can vary in quality, and some people go as far as to purchase multiple copies to pick the sharpest one before returning the others. Roger Cicala over at LensRentals wanted to quantify exactly how much variation actually exists between copies of the same lens, so he subjected some to Imatest quality tests: …

An Eye-Opening Look at How Many Conflict Photos Are Staged

Here's a fascinating video in which Italian photographer Ruben Salvadori demonstrates how dishonest many conflict photographs are. Salvadori spent a significant amount of time in East Jerusalem, studying the role photojournalists play in what the world sees. By turning his camera on the photographers themselves, he shows how photojournalists often influence the events they're supposed to document objectively, and how photographers are often pushed to seek and create drama even in situations …

The Nice Clip: A Universal Lens Cap Clip That Doubles as a Cord Catcher

Nice Photography Magazine editor Zeke Kamm has come up with a new product called "The Nice Clip" that acts as both a universal clip for lens caps, and also a cord catcher to keep your desk organized. The clip uses a strong 3M VHB adhesive to stick to your lens cap, which can then be clipped to your camera strap, belt, bag, etc... Attach the clip to the side of your desk, and it can help you keep your cables from falling to the floor when they're not plugged in.

DSLR and GoPro Cameras Used to Film Insane Rope-free Climbing

A couple days ago 60 Minutes aired a piece on Alex Honnold, a climber who scales insane cliffs with only a pair of climbing shoes and some chalk. To capture footage of Honnold doing a death-defying climb, they attached GoPro cameras to various points on the cliff and had photographers hanging nearby with Canon 5D Mark II DSLRs. The result is an amazing glimpse into an activity that only a handful of people on earth would even think about attempting.

DIY Tool Makes Focus Stacking a Breeze

Focus stacking is a technique for creating photos with a large depth of field by combining multiple photos with shallow depth of fields. One of the applications is in macro photography, where the technique is often used to make sharp images of tiny insects. Oleg over at Circuits@Home wanted an easier way to focus stack while shooting in the field, so he build a focus stacking assistant using Arduino. Given two focal points, the tool automatically takes a sequence of photographs, moving the …