Want something fancy to prop up your growing collection of photography books? These snazzy vintage camera bookends sell for $50 on Amazon, and could also make a fun gift for your favorite photography-enthusiast bookworm.
Google just launched a new eBookstore containing over 3 million titles (the web's largest collection of ebooks). What's neat is that there's a large number of free -- albeit old -- photography-related books that enthusiasts might find interesting or educational. Just do a "free only" search with keywords such as "photography" or "camera".
Cinematographer Tom Guilmette has a simple way you can shoot your own aerial shots if flying kites or RC planes/helicopters isn't for you: fill up a large number of helium balloons, attach a camera to them, and send it high into the air attached to a fishing pole. Guilmette attached a GoPro HD camera to 30 balloons, and was able to get some remarkably smooth footage from 400+ feet in the air. Be warned though... doing this in high winds or near trees can be risky business.
The folks over at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have created a camera modeled after a fly's eye that provides a 360° view of the world. Packed with the 100 small cameras, what the camera captures is combined on a computer to provide a single 3D view of the world.
CNN recently did a story on NYU professor Wafaa Bilal and the camera he had implanted on the back of his head. The video above gives you a glimpse into what it looks like and how the system works. Turns out it wasn't a working camera that was permanently embedded into Bilal's skull, but rather a baseplate to which the wired camera can be mounted magnetically.
PhotoWeeklyOnline came up with this awesomely geeky periodic table of photography elements. You can also view a larger JPG version, or download a high-res PDF to print the thing out for your wall.
Tor Even Mathisen created this stunning timelapse video of the aurora borealis over Tromsø, Norway, shooting the still frames with a Canon 5D Mark II and 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens. The individual frames captured are beautiful in themselves, but the result of combining them into a timelapse video is breathtaking.
How do you take a picture of something above the surface of the water and below at the same time? Well if you had the "underabove" camera, it would be a snap. The concept design features two lenses; one on the top half filled with air and one on the bottom half filled with water. It sports a flash and even a "time wheel" so you can take an underwater self portrait. The camera then stitches the images together and displays them on the LCD screen.
Perpignan, France is known in the photography world for the international photojournalism festival (Visa pour l'Image) it hosts every year, but recently it made photo-related news for quite a different reason -- earlier this week a mentally-ill 47-year-old woman murdered her sister... with a tripod. Yikes...
"Nowhere Near Here" is a creative video by Pahnl that uses light painted stencils for stop-motion animation, following a glowing dog on its journeys around a city. Production took over 300 hours, and involved getting down on the knees to light paint over 200 stencils. Ironically, a dog almost peed on the camera during shooting.
If you think the Japanese come up with the strangest product ideas, it's because they do. The Fuvi Chocolate camera is designed for people who want to look like they're shooting with a chocolate bar, with dark, vanilla, and strawberry as the possible flavors. Sadly, what's gained in looks is lost in specs -- the camera only boasts a 0.3 megapixel sensor and is limited to onboard memory (i.e. it doesn't use a memory card). If you're a chocolate lover and need this camera on your keychain now …
Polaroid is sending out the above teaser, informing people of a special event the company will be holding at CES 2011 next month. While the teaser as-is isn't very revealing, enhancing the image brings out some interesting details.
Apparently this is what Pentax considers "legendary collaboration": a Korejanai robot edition (Korejanairobomoderu) of the K-r DSLR. It doesn't boast any spec upgrades from the stock version, but instead sports a wacky primary color paint job and a robot head attached to the hotshoe. You'll also get a matching special edition 35mm ƒ/2.4 prime lens to complete the horrifying awesome look. If only these were working DSLR cameras that also transformed into robot action figures.
Noah Kalina's famous "everyday" project spanned six years of his life, but began when he was 19 years old. "Natalie Time Lapse" is similar, but begins when the subject is born and ends when she is ten years old. Even though the pose and expression are far from being as precise as in Kalina's video, it's quite interesting watching someone go from newborn to ten-year-old.
If the first level of photo-geekiness is wearing USB cufflinks, and the second level is wearing camera cufflinks, then these mode dial cufflinks must be level three. Boy are these geeky. You can pick them for $50 on Amazon.
What do 225,000 watts of light get you when shooting with the high-speed Phantom camera? Not much. Just ask Vincent Laforet who shot this commercial using the uber-expensive camera. Even with that much light, he still needed a 2.0 aperture. That only created more problems of staying in focus while using dolly moves in slow motion.
Have numerous SD cards you need to access at once? The Elecom MR-C27 SD card reader is a four-slot card reader that allows you to do just that. It allows you to access up to 64GB of data, and looks like a cute little toaster connected to your computer via USB. It'll be available for ¥3,980 (~$48) starting mid-December in Japan.
Man-made technologies are often inspired by things found in nature, right? Well, the big camera corps could learn a thing or two about in-body image-stabilization/vibration-reduction from chickens.
If you care about not having your photographs used with permission, there's a Firefox extension called Image Search Options that can help you find copyright violations easily. What it does is add reverse image search options to the right click menu for images, allowing you to find other places on the web your photos appear (if any) with a couple clicks instead of having to manually enter the image URL into reverse image search engines (IQDB, SauceNAO, TinEye, GazoPa and Ascii2D).
Canonites in Japan who often find their mode dial inadvertently changed can now choose to have their camera upgraded with a locking mode dial. The service upgrade costs ¥10,500 (~$125) and adds a button to the center of the mode dial that must be pressed before the dial can be changed. Maybe DSLR makers should find a way to have this be an available (but not mandatory) option on all DSLR models. What do you think? …
Update on 12/18/21: This video has been removed by its creator.
Dmitry Sklyarov of Russian software company ElcomSoft announced yesterday that the encryption system used by Canon to prove the authenticity of photographs is flawed and unfixable. This is the system that's used to prove that images were not altered after being captured by the camera, and has applications in things such as court cases.
"Freeze Tag" is an award-winning commercial by Canon in which people play the popular children's game using Canon DSLR cameras instead of the boring act of tagging. Too bad magical cameras like these don't actually exist in real life. If you're interested in how this commercial was made, check out this behind-the-scenes video.
Nikon, Sony, and Sandisk have announced that they're teaming up to develop a set of specifications for the next generation of memory cards. The new format uses a new interface (PCI Express, previously Parallel ATA) that allows data transfer rates of up to 500MB per second. The theoretical maximum capacities of the cards would also be increased from the current 2 terabyte ceiling.
Instructables member willferrari599 recently posted a funny tutorial on how to turn a cheap $20 disposable camera into a ridiculously ghetto looking fake Leica. It'd be sad if you took this tutorial seriously, but a camera like this might make a hilarious present for a photography-loving friend! …
Here's a interesting little teaser video for "The President’s Photographer: Fifty Years Inside the Oval Office", a PBS documentary that premiered on November 24th, 2010. It takes you behind the scenes with Pete Souza, the official White House photographer who follows President Obama around everywhere he goes, capturing tens of thousands of photographs every month.
As photo-making devices become more and more location aware, many people unwittingly give up a lot of privacy by publishing location-tagged images online. If privacy is something you care about and you'd rather not broadcast location data along with your photography, a free Windows program called Geotag Security can help you scrub the geotag information from your pics. All you do is select a folder to scan, and the program will check the images within for location data and remove it.
Okay, so you have a memory card full of timelapse photos taken over a long-ish period of time using a DSLR camera and intervalometer. Now what? In the above video, filmmaker Philip Bloom shows how you can easily combine them into a timelapse video using Quicktime Pro.
Did you know that the first digital rangefinder camera to hit the market was the Epson R-D1 back in 2004? What's more, rumor has it that Epson may be considering a followup digital rangefinder to succeed the R-D1, which was made in a partnership with Cosina.
Ever wonder how we'll be interacting with our digital photos in the future? The BendDesk is a curved interactive surface being researched/developed by the Media Computing Group at RWTH Aachen University seamlessly blends vertical and horizontal multi-touch surfaces. The demo video above has a segment showing how photos can be sorted using the desk (it starts 46 seconds in). Say hello to the future.
I have always been enthralled ring flashes, but they are so expensive! I recently found a pizza box ring flash how to, but it didn’t go on my camera (it was meant as an off camera ring flash) so I made some changes. And here, for all to use, is my version of the pizza box ring flash.
If you're looking for creative portrait ideas, here's a fun one to try: focus on your subject through the glass of a second lens. It'll help throw everything else out of the focus (including the subject in the background) for a pretty cool look. You can also flip the photo upside down afterward for a right-side-up portrait.
Threadless' in-house graffiti artist Joe Suta creates 3 giant (48'' x 36'') paintings for their Chicago store window each week, which are then sold through the Threadless website for $250 a pop.
Turns out those crazy high speed photography shots you see of bullets shattering things aren't as difficult to achieve as you might have thought. All you need is about $20 and some brains (aka circuit skills). YouTube user destinws2 shows how its done in this 5 minute tutorial.
Last week one of the big stories in the world of photography was that Kuwait had banned the use of DSLR cameras in public places. The story originated with an article in the Kuwait Times, and was then widely reported by publications ranging from The Guardian to Amateur Photographer. People were in disbelief that a country would take such an unreasonable stance against a particular camera technology while leaving others legal (e.g. mobile phones, compact cameras, etc...). Turns out the whole …
Flickr member scenery_and_fish found a Kowa 65mm f/0.75 x-ray lens, and mounted it to a Nikon D90 by using macro extension tubes and epoxy. The lens is fixed focus, lacks an iris, and is one beastly piece of glass.
Twitter sees hundreds or thousands of Tweets published every second, and many of these are photos of things happening real-time. Hashalbum is a new website that aims to help you browse this constant stream of images in real time by allowing you to do a simple search by hashtag, returning images that are found in Tweets containing that hashtag.
What does a rainbow mean to you? An interesting atmospheric phenomena.... gay pride... the 42nd Infantry Division? To me a rainbow screams, "Polaroid Corporation!". Even when Polaroid was actually making cameras, the camera straps were disappointingly plain vanilla. Polaroid missed a critical branding opportunity! In this tutorial, I'll attempt to make a new camera strap for my Polaroid 100 camera by recycling rainbow colored luggage belts.
Japanese architect Hideyuki Nakayama teamed up with door knob manufacturer UNION to create this funky glass globe knob that gives you a fisheye view of the next room. Now all Nakayama needs to do is find some way to incorporate film and a shutter...
Graeme Taylor took his Casio High Speed EXILIM EX-FH20 camera and shot some 210fps footage out the window, resulting in some pretty beautiful slow-motion footage.
Aviary just launched a new HTML5 photo editor that lets you quickly and easily edit images without Flash. Third-party websites can also embed the editor, allowing images to be edited in place without having to visit Aviary's website. The widget provides some basic features expected from image editors (e.g. cropping, brightness, contrast, saturation), but also some Hipstamatic-style image filters (instant, toy camera, old photo, retro) that style your photos with a single click.
Want to have the geekiest photo-storage device amongst all your photo-loving friends? Check out this 1:18 scale replica of the DeLorean Time Machine from Back to the Future. In addition to be a super faithful clone of the "real thing", it also doubles as a 500GB Seagate external hard drive, allowing you to grab images from the past if you ever accidentally delete them. Well... maybe not, but for $250 you get a lot more than the average, boring old hard drive.
Photographers do a lot to get the perfect shot, and sometimes even put gear safety above personal well-being in dangerous situations. Here's a fun video photographer Joe McNally posted showing him getting knocked over by a longboarder while trying to capture a shot. Notice how he holds his position long enough to snap the pic, deftly moves his camera to his other hand when falling over, and immediately checks the photo when he gets back up. True pro.
Thinking of buying a love one a digital photo frame this Christmas? You might want to reconsider. A recent survey of 2,000 people by the British Video Association found that digital photo frames were the most unwelcome gifts, followed by foot spas, blenders and digital organizers.
You don't need fancy camera gear to capture beautiful images and video of the night sky. The above video shows a timelapse created using 1262 photos captured with a Canon 20D at 30 second exposures and ISO 800. At the end there's a star trails photo created by combining all the stills into a single image. It's a great 1.25 minute dose of relaxation and inspiration.
Olympus recently filed for a patent for this strange monocle-esque viewfinder system where the camera user dons a pair(?) of half-glasses. When the shutter is closed, the user is shown what's on the LCD.
Another entry for our list of "random things made awesome by slow motion": here's a video of a steel ball being dropped into fine sand heated to about 500° C, at which point it takes on strange liquid properties. Be sure to also check out the water drop at 2000 fps video we posted in the beginning of the year if you haven't seen it.
Last week we wrote that NYU arts professor Wafaa Bilal was planning to have a camera surgically implanted on the back of his head as part of an art project. Today the Washington Post is reporting that the surgery was completed and camera successfully embedded into Bilal's skull. Turns out it wasn't just an elaborate hoax after all.
If you're subscribed to the New York Times, you might have noticed some unique-looking war photographs featured as the top story when opening up the paper yesterday. The four photographs were actually iPhone photos taken by NYT photographer Damon Winter in Afghanistan, and processed with the popular app Hipstamatic. Earlier this year AP photographer David Guttenfelder did the same thing in Afghanistan with an iPhone and a Polaroid filter app.
"Red Eye Flashes Twice" is a humorous photography-related song by YouTube personality Julian Smith in which he delivers an important public service announcement: don't be stupid, red eye flashes twice.
