Check out this bizarre looking homemade medium format camera spotted by tokyo camera style on the streets of Tokyo, Japan. That bizarre glass bulb you see sticking out of it is the 360 degree lens that projects panoramic views onto the 120 film inside the camera.
Photoshop is a pretty resource intensive program that can slow down to a crawl when you're working with large and/or many files. Aside from beefing up your hardware specs to provide the program with more memory or disk space, there's also a number of Photoshop and operating system preferences you can adjust to make sure the program runs as smoothly and quickly as possible. The Photoshop performance team recently published a helpful guide with 19 adjustments you can make, which range from …
Terje Sorgjerd is a master of out-of-this-world timelapse videos. After stunning all of us with one featuring the northern lights earlier this year, he's back again with an even crazier one that captures the Milky Way over El Teide, Spain's highest mountain. The individual frames were shot using a Canon 5D Mark II with a Canon 17mm TSE, Canon 16-35mm II, Canon 24/1.4II, and Sigma 12-24mm.
Flickr user Frannie 1 shot these beautiful photographs of the rare Canon 50mm f/1.0. The lens currently goes for over $4,000 used on eBay. That is one beautiful piece of glass! …
If you're looking to get started in studio portraiture, here's a great tutorial by prophotolife teaching three different lighting techniques (Rembrandt, butterfly, and edge) you can do using only one light.
Here's a funky fusion of analog and digital: Etsy seller newfocus repurposes 35mm film cassettes by using them to house USB flash drives. You can buy a 2GB one for $19 or a 4GB one for $24 from their Etsy store. They would make pretty fun gift for a photography-lover you know, and if you don't want to buy one you can try your hand at building your own!
To capture "portraits of the sun" and to illustrate its power, General Electric filled 20 weather balloons with hydrogen and helium, surrounded them with 24 Canon DSLR cameras (18 7Ds and 6 60Ds), and shot the balloons exploding Matrix-style.
Shooting the Dalian Oil Spill on assignment for Greenpeace, Chinese photographer Lu Guang witnessed and photographed 25-year-old firefighter Zhang Liang's accidental drowning while attempting to unblock a water pipe in the harbor. His gut-wrenching series of photographs went on to win third prize in the 2011 World Press Photo contest for Spot News. In the video above, he reflects on that day and his role as a photographer in showing the world what happened.
Did you know that Leica was actually the company that first invented autofocus? Between 1960 and 1973 the company patented a number of autofocus technologies, and then showed off the technology at photokina in 1976 and 1978. However, the head honchos of the company believed that their customers knew how to focus and preferred focusing themselves, so they decided to sell the patent rights to Minolta.
The stock prices of major camera equipment manufacturers took a major -- and expected -- dive after the earthquake on March 11, 2011. Though they made a brief recovery afterward, they're continuing to fall due to the risk that gear prices may soon skyrocket soar once decreased production isn't able to meet demand.
Here's a pretty lengthy video tutorial by the (unofficial) Nikon Help Hotline channel on YouTube teaching how to properly and thoroughly clean a camera lens.
Twaggies are fun little comics based on unique Tweets found on Twitter. The above is Twaggie #217, based on this Tweet by @mollymcnearney: …
Forget Little Trees. "Sweet Snapshots" are the air fresheners photo enthusiasts should have hanging from their rear view mirrors. ModCloth sells them for $6 a pop in yellow grapefruit or pink peach. The reviews say the scents don't last very long, so just know that you'd be buying them mostly for aesthetics.
Top of the line DSLR cameras are cheaper, more versatile, and superior in most specs when compared to the $7,000 Leica M9, so why would a photographer ever choose an M9? In this video, NYC hip hop photographer John Ricard argues that it boils down to two things: usability and focus.
Turns out Fujifilm's new FinePix X100 isn't just nice to look at -- DxOMark just published results from testing the camera's APS-C sensor, finding that it delivered better results in all aspects compared to the best Micro Four Thirds camera sensors (namely the Olympus PEN EP2 and Panasonic Lumix DMC GH2) and rivals the quality of the best APS-C sensors found in DSLR and SLT cameras. Now if only the camera would start becoming available here in the US...
Magnum street photographer Bruce Gilden shoots his candid portraits on sidewalks by walking right up to strangers and sticking his camera and flash up into their faces, as seen in the "walking NYC streets" video we featured last year. In the behind-the-scenes video above, British Journal of Photography editor Olivier Laurent follows Gilden around as he shoots a project in Derby, England.
David Eger has a fun 365 day photo project called "365 Days of Clones" in which he posts a daily photo involving Star Wars clone trooper action figures. He also has a neat mini-series in which he recreates famous photographs, called "Cloned Photos". See if you recognize any of these.
Here's a neat necklace for photo geeks -- it's a 35mm "cropper" that you can use to see what a scene would look like in a photograph. There's even rule of thirds lines built into it. They're handmade, crafted in Korea, and cost $49 over on Etsy. If you want an equally geeky tool without paying such a ridiculous price, you can punch the film out of a 35mm slide and use that.
Andrew Lathrop came up with this novel way of building a simple radiation detector using an old compact camera, plastic scintillators, some reflective material, and black tape. A scintillator is material that lights up when exposed to radiation, and might be a little difficult for you to get your hands on unless you work in a science lab. Lathrop sent his idea to newspapers in Japan after the recent earthquake, but none of them decided to publish it.
Alberto Korda's iconic photo of Che Guevara, titled "Guerrillero Heroico", is constantly at the center of copyright battles, with Koda's daughter Diana Díaz even licensing the image for branded products in order to fund the legal fights. The latest case involves a London gift company, takkoda, which recently began selling products featuring a dog Photoshopped to look like Che in Korda's photo. The designers insist that there was no copyright infringement but, rather than risking a prolonged …
As Instagram continues its meteoric rise, an ecosystem of third-party services is developing around it. Postagram is one such service by Xobni co-founder Matt Brezina and his new company Sincerely. It lets you easy send physical prints of your Instagram photos as postcards with personalized messages. The photo itself pops out of the postcard as a glossy 300-dpi print. Postagram is available as a free download in the App Store, while each postcard costs $1 and arrives in 2-5 days.
We covered the WVIL (wireless viewfinder interchangeable lens) concept camera at the beginning of the year when the design team behind it released a fake video of it being showed off at CES 2011. The above video is another neat glimpse at the supposedly patent-pending design, which puts all the camera functions in the lens itself, leaving the camera body to function as a wireless display and control panel. What do you think of the idea?
Looks like Nikon has a new 50mm lens primed for announcement. Earlier today a AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G product page appeared on Nikon's website, but was quickly pulled -- but not before it was already widely reported (here's a screenshot of the page). The lens features a Silent Wave Motor for quiet focusing, and a "newly developed optical system employing an aspherical lens element". It will be compatible with both DX and FX format cameras. No word on when this lens will become official or how …
Earlier this week Adobe launched a new subscription-based model for their Creative Suite line of software products. The program ordinarily costs $699, but a yearly subscription costs $420 and gives you access to the latest version. You can also subscribe for a monthly fee of $49 if you need the program on a short term basis. While this won't be very enticing for heavy users of the programs who can just save money by buying and upgrading, renting is a good option for anyone who needs the latest …
Eye-Fi announced their new Mobile X2 memory card today, which allows you to instantly transfer photos taken with your camera to mobile devices running iOS or Android. With the card in your camera and their special app on your device, a direct Wi-Fi connection will be established allowing you to shoot straight to your device. The 8GB card will be available later this week for $80.
Goodbye Flip Video camera. Cisco announced today that they're killing off the camera line in an attempt to refocus their consumer electronics business. They purchased the company behind the camera, Pure Digital Technologies, back in 2009. Flip Video cameras have long held the bestselling spots for camcorders on websites like Amazon by offering both HD video recording and convenient transferring with a built-in USB connection, but competition from rival camcorders and the introduction of HD …
At weddings, guests are often given disposable cameras that they can use to capture memories from their vantage point, but collecting and processing them afterwards can be a hassle and it's definitely not something that has caught up with our digital photography age. Hitch is a concept camera idea by industrial design student Martin Spurway that makes a lot of sense -- guests at an event are given simplified digital cameras, and photographs from the cameras are automatically collected when the …
For their Multimedia Installation class project, Pratt graduate students Alex Crawford and Austin Nelson built a Rube Golberg photobooth that starts with a Instax instant photo and ends with a digital one about thirty seconds later. 30 hours went into building this creative -- albeit useless -- contraption.
Photographer Chuck Miller got his hands on a roll of Super-XX 120 government surplus film from eBay with an expiration date of May 1959 -- film that's 50+ years old and, as Miller notes, older than the Los Angeles Angels baseball team.
If you want to make a "bullet time" video like the kind made famous by The Matrix, you don't need a gigantic budget or 52 DSLRs lined up in a row. Just get a large group of friends, stand in a circle around your subjects, and snap pictures at the same time! Photoblog.hk recently held an event called "See You Around Hong Kong" where large groups of photography enthusiasts gathered to do just that.
Customer: Hi. I'm a professional photographer but I don't understand why are my pictures green, and then sometimes blue. Salesperson: Do you have a certain mode enabled? Maybe a colour swap feature has been accidentally turned on, try resetting the camera back to the original factory settings. Customer: No, no. I know about that -- I've been published before with some of the pictures I've taken... I know what I'm doing. Salesperson: So reseting the camera didn't work? Customer: No. Salesperson: …
Here's an interesting portrait of Steven Sasson by David Friedman, shot at Kodak's headquarters in Rochester, New York. Sasson invented the digital camera as a Kodak engineer back in 1975, and provides an interesting glimpse in this video into how that first camera worked.
This 4GB USB flash drive looks exactly like a miniature Canon Digital IXUS 200 IS compact camera. Not sure whether it's simply a concept design or something that's actually available for purchase... Anyone know? …
Adobe announced new tools today that lets developers create tablet apps -- called Photoshop Touch Apps -- that interact directly with Photoshop CS5. They also created a few apps to showcase some of the possibilities of using a tablet while working in Photoshop, including one called Adobe Nav.
Claire Chauvin over at Poopscape has a fun project for those of you who have useless 35mm negatives that are lying around and waiting to be tossed. All you need is a cheap and simple lamp (Chauvin used a $7 Ikea Grönö lamp) and some glue (e.g. Mod Podge). Carefully glue the strips onto the lamp and you'll have yourself a unique, personalized lamp that'll liven up any room in your house!
TechnoFotografia created a concept design for the yet-to-be-announced Nikon D800 DSLR. One of the novel features dreamed up for the design is a LCD screen that can be detached from the camera and used remotely (seen above). If this were to ever exist on a DSLR, losing the screens would be an issue, and replacing them would likely cost a fortune.
Judging from the strange novelty products coming out of Japan, there's apparently a huge population of people there who love both photography and cats. If a picture taking cat isn't enough to satisfy you, you can add this cat-shaped memory card reader to your collection. It reads SD cards and Memory Stick cards using slots that are exposed when you lower the cat's tail. They're available from Donya for ¥399, or about $5.
Olympus has a new "Spokesman Series" of commercials that try to convey the different strengths of their compact cameras in creative ways. They remind me a tiny bit of the Old Spice Guy commercials.
One of the biggest hits this past April Fool's Day was RE-35, a futuristic cartridge that transforms any 35mm film camera into a digital one. As the website went viral, many people actually thought it was a real product, prompting the design company behind the design to issue a notice on the website explaining that it was fake. As stated by numerous readers, digital film isn't exactly a new idea -- an actual company called Silicon Film attempted this product about a decade ago (and even gave a …
Here's a video comparing the mirror and shutter curtain mechanisms of the Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 7D, Nikon D700, and Nikon D7000 DSLRs. It's pretty surprising how much the Canon mirrors bounce compared to the Nikon ones...
If you need a break and an opportunity to flex your brain muscles, see if you can figure out these photo riddles. The answer to each clue is a particular camera equipment brand.
This time-lapse video was shot by Nate Bolt using a Canon 5D Mark II, a 16-35mm lens, a tripod, and an intervalometer on an Air France flight from San Francisco to Paris. The camera snapped a photo every 2-30 seconds throughout the 11 hour flight, roughly capturing one photo every two miles of the journey.
Photographer JP Cariño experienced the awesomeness of pro DSLR weather sealing when doing bird photography from a floating blind: …
Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and announced below.
We've seen camera shaped pendants before, but these new Camera Lingo Necklaces definitely take you into uncharted levels of geekiness. Each one has a "secret code word" that will be appreciated by other photo enthusiasts, but may befuddle ordinary, unenlightened (no pun intended) folk. They come in four colors and designs -- JPEG, CR2, NEF, and a no-flash symbol -- and cost $20 bucks each over at Photojojo.
Philip Bloom shot this beautiful time-lapse video using a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon Rebel T2i, Canon Rebel T3i and Panasonic GH2. All the cameras were pointed out of a hotel window on a pretty cloudy and gloomy day.
As the world of photography collides with the world of computing in smart phones, we will undoubtedly be seeing many mind-boggling applications (e.g. augmented reality translation) that utilize cell phone cameras in the near future. A new app called Meal Snap fits that description -- it's an app that analyzes photos you take of food, telling you both the ingredients and the number of calories you'll be consuming. It's only available for iOS 4+ and costs $3 from the App Store.
Pentax is super big on the customization and design aspect of cameras (much to the annoyance of photography purists), offering colorful DSLRs and all kinds of strange special edition ones as well. Now, with the introduction of customizable faceplates on the RS1500, they've discovered a new way to make money from their camera lines -- special faceplates made by other companies. They just announced today that they've partnered with DC Comics for a custom faceplate pack. Available for £120 …
Photo editor John G. Morris is a legendary photo editor who played a huge role in how we perceived major world events in the 20th century. Here's an interesting behind-the-scenes look at his role in shaping history.
While Nikon Corporation was established in 1917 (as Nippon Kōgaku Tōkyō K.K.), the company was a lens manufacturing company and didn't make the first Nikon branded camera until 1948. The first camera was named the Nikon I, and started with serial number 60922. On May 28th, Nikon I No. 60924 will be auctioned at the Westlicht Photographica auction. This is the third Nikon production camera ever made, and the oldest known surviving Nikon camera. Bidding starts at €70,000 (~$100,000), and the …
