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Last week we briefly wrote on how Leica played a role in saving Jews by helping them flee Nazi Germany. Turns out the effort was called the Leica Freedom Train, and this short 3-minute documentary tells the story in a bit more detail. An interesting fact is that each Leica refugee was given a Leica camera as a symbol of freedom.

Runners in broad daylight aren't often captured as motion blurs, but that's exactly how Flickr user Justin (just big feet) shot the London Marathon. Just stick a neutral density filter or two onto your lens to restrict the amount of light entering your camera, allowing you to shoot at slower shutter speeds.

Here's an interesting behind-the-scenes video showing photographer Martin Schoeller shooting portraits for Time Magazine's 100 most influential people on earth.

One of the big stories in the photo world last year was when a set of glass negatives purchased for $45 at a garage sale were found to potentially be Ansel Adams photos worth an estimated $200 million. Unfortunately for the finder, the photos were most likely not Ansel's, and ensuing lawsuits prevented him from making a huge profit from the find. Real estate agent John Maloof, on the other hand, could end up making a fortune from his discovery of previously-unknown nanny and street photographer …

Here's an interesting look at what the aperture blades on a Canon 18-55mm (the kit lens for many DSLRs) look like. The video above shows the blades moving into position at 120fps. This happens every time you shoot a photograph and in the blink of an eye.

twine, the same store that sells the ceramic cameras we featured last week, sells these neat Polaroid-shaped beeswax candles. They give off a subtle honey scent, last for approximately 40 hours, and cost $38 a pop from the twine website.

How much does a camera vibrate due to your finger pressing the shutter or the mirror flipping? Camera Technica decided to conduct a test by strapping a laser pointer to the hot shoe of a Canon 7D. They then filmed the red dot on a far wall against some text while shooting normally (i.e. pressing the shutter with a finger), using a remote shutter release, and finally with a remote shutter as well as mirror-lockup.

There's a lot of paranoia when it comes to doing photography in and around airports these days -- much to the dismay of plane spotters -- but wedding photographer and airplane enthusiast Lynn-Kai Chao came up with a neat way to do airplane photography without worrying the TSA: by using airplane models. Believe it or not, the above photograph is actually a Photoshopped photograph of Chao holding a model airplane.

Technicolor just released a new Picture Profile for Canon DSLRs, and recommended that ISO be used in multiples of 160. Andrew Schär decided to test this using his Canon 60D, and found that in terms of the amount of noise present in the footage, ISO numbers that are multiples of 160 are best (i.e. least noise), followed by multiples of 100, and finally multiples of 125 being worst.

National Geographic created this nifty little video teaching how to turn any room with a view into a giant camera obscura. For an even more challenging project, you can try setting up some photo-sensitive paper (either photo paper or paper you paint with emulsion yourself) on the wall to shoot giant photos with your giant camera obscura.

Rather than using traditional instant film that develops on the spot, newer instant cameras are using a special ZINK technology that prints digital photos rather than exposing special paper. As more and more consumers rely solely on their mobile phones for shooting casual snapshots, perhaps the Sophie concept iPhone case is the next step in instant film's evolution: it's a case with a built-in printer that turns your iPhone into a Polaroid-style instant camera. What do you think of the idea?

DreamWorks won't be making a movie about the death of Kodachrome film after all -- Fox will. Turns out the director of the movie, Shawn Levy, had a first look deal with Fox that gives the film studio first dibs on Levy's projects.

Having a coffee table that looks like a giant photo album is already pretty unique, but what about a coffee table that also functions as one? Remembrance is a coffee table designed by North Michigan University design student Mitch Steinmetz that opens up to reveal your photos like any good giant photo album should.

The Nikon F, Nikon's first SLR camera, played an important and influential role in photographic history after it was unveiled in 1959. It was the first to combine many of the emerging camera design ideas into a single body, and was the first SLR system widely adopted by professional photographers around the world. This is an interesting 20 minute documentary film that tells the story of how the camera was designed.

Here's something to try if you feel like shooting some abstract analog photos: drop your film in some rubbing alcohol and let it soak for about ten minutes before shooting with it. Just be sure to let it dry out first lest you want to sanitize the inside of your camera. The resulting photographs should have a blue, green, and purple tint, along with tiny brown dots in random places. These photos were shot by Flickr user Casey Holford using soaked Kodak Ultramax film.

There have been a number of devastating tornadoes in the Southeastern United States this past week, with the homes in many communities reduced to rubble. While certain things can be rebuilt or replaced, photographs lost in the storm often cannot be. A new Facebook page has been created after the storms that aims to reunite owners with photographs scattered in the winds, and already boasts close to 50,000 fans and 600+ uploaded photographs. It's a neat idea, and a great example of how Facebook …

If Legolas from Lord of the Rings ever decided to trade his bow for a camera, the new Urban Quiver by the newly formed Blackstone Bags is a camera bag he might use. The quiver shape keeps it from attracting too much attention from would-be thieves, while the compactness allows it to be stored in small spaces like the overhead bins on airplanes.

We've featured examples of creative photographer promos before, but this one by Casey Templeton takes the cake. He created it back in 2010 and mailed it to 300 of the top creative agencies around the country. His hard work sure paid off -- check out all the responses that he got back at the end!

twine sells these neat ceramic cameras that remind me of the popular Munny toy that kids can decorate. Rather than giving one of these to a photography-lovin' friend as is, you could customize it yourself for a unique camera-related gift. The instamatic and folding Polaroid cameras are available for $34 each, while the Land camera doesn't seem to be available anymore.

The highly publicized wedding of Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton is happening tomorrow, and Reuters will be sending a 15 member team composed of photographers from all across Europe to cover the event. The photo above by team member Phil Noble shows the crazy amount of gear he and photographer Kai Pfaffenbach will be carrying.

Melbourne-based design studio Betty Wants In captured some skydiving footage using a GoPro HD camera and then slowed it down with Twixtor for an ethereal faux slow-motion video of skydivers floating through the heavens.

Transforming foods into pinhole cameras appears to be one of the popular trends. We already shared the egg pinhole camera, and now here's the pine nut pinhole camera. Italian photography student Francesco Capponi created this tiny camera by painting the inside of the shell black, poking a hole in one side, loading it with a piece of photographic paper, and using his thumb as a shutter. He calls it the "PinHolo", a play on words since "pinolo" is Italian for "pine nut".

When learning about ISO, you've probably heard that the lower the number, the lower the noise and the higher the image quality, but did you know that this isn't always the case? The reason is something called the base (or native) ISO of a camera -- the ISO achieved without amplifying the data from the sensor. This is usually somewhere between ISO 100 and ISO 200.

If you have an old or broken flatbed scanner lying around and gathering dust, a neat thing you can do is convert it into a cheap, do-it-yourself lightbox for viewing negatives and slides. Photo-enthusiast James Wilson did this as a weekend project: …

In December 2010, Russian security firm ElcomSoft announced that they had cracked the encryption software that Canon uses to prove that photographs are genuine and unmodified. Today they announced that they've also cracked Nikon's system, which shows that forged images can be made to pass validation using Nikon Image Authentication Software. To prove their point (like they did in the previous case), they released a series of ridiculous images that pass validation. The above image shows Russian …

Here's a short documentary film directed by Oskar Barnack (father of 35mm photography and inventor of the Leica camera) showing the workings of the factory where the first Leica cameras were made. The film includes footage showing the assembly of the Leica 1, produced between 1925 and 1932.

28 Camera Drawings is a beautiful drawing by Christine Berrie that features 28 different old-school cameras. It's available as a limited-edition 14''x11'' print over on 20x200 for $50.

Play Kalei is a creative new puzzle game by Chillingo that allows you to use your photo collection as part of the fun. It takes a particular section of a photograph and turns it into a kaleidoscope-style pattern, and you're objective is to figure out where that point in the photo is. The normal version is available for $1, and there's also an HD version designed for the iPad for $2.

Production issues experienced by Canon and Nikon (caused by the earthquake and tsunami) may soon allow competitors to eat into their dominant DSLR market shares and, according to a story by USA TODAY, Sony is pegged as one of the main benefactors: …

Compact cameras are portable and convenient, but often they trade ergonomics for their small size. If your camera is a bit too small to hold comfortably in your large hand, Flipbac Camera Grips are designed to help you get a grip. Their shapes are inspired by actual grips found on larger compact cameras, and each one sticks to your camera securely and non-messily using 3M adhesive.

Did you know that Leica boss Ernst Leitz II is considered the "photographic industry equivalent of Oskar Schindler" for helping Jews flee Nazi Germany? …

Here's a neat idea for displaying your photos: pick up a set of blank Russian nesting dolls, saw little slits into the top, paint them, and use them as a cute set of photo holders! Check out the full tutorial here.

After being accidentally leaked on Nikon's website a couple weeks ago, Nikon's new AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G lens was officially announced today. The lens -- compatible with both DX and FX DSLRs -- features an unusual aspherical element that typically isn't found in lenses like this. It will be available starting June 16th for $220, which includes a lens hood.

For his project Lakes and Reservoirs, photographer Matthew Brandt exposed using both light and water -- after shooting photos of each lake or reservoir (i.e. exposing with light), he made a chromogenic print and then soaked the photo in the water that was photographed, thus exposing it to water.

The Stolen Camera Finder is a new search engine developed over the past two years by programmer Matt Burns. His idea is to search the web for photographs that have a stolen camera's serial number embedded in the EXIF information. It uses two web crawlers -- the first is a standard one that accesses Flickr's API, while the second is a Google Chrome browser plugin that silently runs in the background and peeks at the serial numbers of images on any webpage viewed. These serial numbers and URLs …

Flickr user Steve Kushnir came up with this neat idea of building a cheap DIY diffuser using a Pringles can, two layers of paper towels, and some rubber bands. He attached it to his Nikon D5000's popup flash and uses it for macro photographs of creepy crawlies.

Here's an interesting video that walks through how the highly regarded -- and fully manual -- Voigtlander Nokton 25mm f/0.95 lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras is made at the Cosina plant in Nagano, Japan (jump to 2:30 to skip the intro). It's interesting how each of the 10 aperture blades must be carefully set in the lens using tweezers.

If you've ever wanted to know what the guts of a Nikon D5100 look like, iFixit just published a meticulously documented teardown of the camera. Aside from pointing out the various parts found in the body, an interesting conclusion the iFixit team came to was that the D5100 has a horrible "Repairability Score" of 2/10, where 10 is easiest to repair. The reason? "Approximately 4 billion screws hold the device together" (They're exaggerating, of course).

Photographer Jamie Beck has a beautiful series of images that she calls "cinemagraphs". They're animated GIFs in which only a small piece each photograph is animated, making them a neat fusion of still and moving images. It's amazing how much a tiny bit of movement in a still photo can do. They're almost like the moving pictures you see in Harry Potter!

Yuri Arcurs -- AKA the "King of Microstock" -- is the best selling microstock photographer in the world, selling over 2,000 images a day and 2 million a year. Visit his website here.

If you've never used a rangefinder camera before, this video provides a visual look at how focusing works (a Leica M2 is used). Basically you're given a second (smaller) image of the scene, and your goal is turn the focus ring until the two images match up for the subject you'd like to have in focus.

Having old photographs restored is a service that many residents in China can't afford, but a 76-year-old man named Baojun Yuan is doing his part to help his fellow citizens by offering his astonishing Photoshop talents free of charge. After learning how to use the program when he was 60 years old, Yuan purchased a computer and scanner, and has fixed more than 2,000 photographs. He says, "my teacher just taught me how to repair the photos, but he forgot to tell me how to charge."

On Nikon's question and answer Facebook app, a guy named Andrew Yu offered the idea of replacing the shutter button with two touch sensors and received the above response from Nikon. It's an interesting look at how Nikon, camera manufacturers, and big corporations in general usually respond to ideas and suggestions from the general public.

In the past week or two there has been an interesting controversy regarding the use of stock photography: vegan blogger quarrygirl.com published a post on April 13th accusing the nations leading vegan magazine VegNews of using non-vegan stock photos to illustrate its vegan recipes. An example presented is a "Vegan Spare Ribs" article that uses a Photoshopped iStockPhoto image of actual barbecue spare ribs (shown above).

The Leica i9 is a concept camera case dreamed up by design firm BLACK Design Associates for the iPhone 4. Unlike the Slow Photography Camera we shared last week, the i9 is actually an independent camera that simply uses the iPhone as a giant touch screen and as a modem for the web.

This might be something you'd see if Flickr moved into the advertising business. It's an advertising spot taken over by Homer.

This advertisement might not seem too special or difficult to do at first glance, until you find out that it was done completely in Photoshop.

Francesco Capponi was inspired yesterday (AKA Easter and World Pinhole Photography Day) to create pinhole cameras out of eggs. He painted the insides with emulsion to make it light-sensitive after drilling a hole, exposed it through a pinhole, then filled the egg with processing and fixing chemicals to develop the photo. You can find a full walkthrough of his process over on Lomography. The process isn't easy -- in creating four satisfactory photos Capponi ended up destroying fifty eggs!

Last week a United Airlines flight out of Denver International Airport was returned to the gate after being ready for takeoff when a passenger noticed "suspicious behavior" and notified a flight attendant. The plane was evacuated and swept for suspicious devices, the suspicious passengers were taken and questioned, and the flight was delayed by 2.5 hours. Now it's believed that the passengers were simply taking pictures during taxiing, though the fact that two of the picture takers were of …

Here's an interesting video produced by Nikon that explains how their Nano Crystal Coat technology came about and how it works to reduce ghosting. The music and sound effects are pretty dramatic compared to what a Western company would put in a video like this.