Here are a couple mockups by MacRumors showing what Photoshop might look like on mobile computing devices like the iPad or iPhone. Adobe recently published a presentation they did on various things they're exploring with such devices. An example was using Content Aware Fill to modify a scene by painting over objects to be removed using your finger.
For Halloween these Boing Boing readers decided to open themselves up in Photoshop and press Shift+Ctrl+U (or Shift+Command+U on a Mac).
ThinkGeek is selling a spy-themed T-shirt with a twist -- the camera being used by the spy in the design is actually a working camera. The Electric Spy Camera Shirt shoots 640 x 480 images (storing about 150) with a remote you can use while having it tucked away in your pocket. It costs $40 from the ThinkGeek store.
You've probably seen weird DIY light experiments before, but what about using only iPads as your main light sources? Photographer Jesse Rosten did just that, using 9 iPads (worth a cool $4,500) on maximum brightness on a recent photoshoot. On his blog, he writes, …
A Texas-based photographer named David Langford received quite a surprise earlier this year when his friend tipped him off about a photo of his being used on vehicle registration inspection stickers in Texas. Turns out an estimated 4.5+ million stickers used a silhouette created from a photo of his from 1984 titled "Days End 2". Langford is now suing the state to stop further use of his photo on the stickers -- designed by prison inmates as part of a contract between the Department of Criminal …
Last year, Canon celebrated its 50th anniversary in manufacturing SLR cameras and released three super detailed paper craft cameras that you can print out and build yourself. These included the Canonflex, the AE-1, and the EOS 5D Mk II. Unless you have a good amount of time you can set aside for arts and crafts, this probably isn't for you -- each camera has dozens of pages of detailed instructions and a ton of tiny pieces that come together to form the final replica camera.
Did you know that the first digital camera invented in 1975 didn't actually produce the first digital photograph? The first digital photo actually came almost two decades earlier in 1957 when Russell Kirsch made a 176x176 pixel digital image by scanning a photograph of his three-month-old son. The low resolution was due to the fact that the computer they used wasn't capable of storing more information.
As the cameras on mobile devices are used more and more for augmented reality applications, one thing we'll undoubtedly see more of is augmented reality gaming, where the real world becomes part of the game. The above video shows some test footage of the upcoming game "Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner", which uses the camera on the iPhone (or iPod Touch) to turn real locations into places you need to defend from the Empire's attack.
Panasonic has just pulled the wraps off the Lumix DMC-GF2, the company's smallest and lightest Micro Four Thirds camera. The cameras has a built in flash, employs a 3 inch touchscreen on the back, shoots stills at 12.1MP, captures 1920 x 1080 HD video, and has an ISO range of 100 to 6400. It'll start shipping in January 2011, with the price secret until about a month before then.
Three years before Photoshop 1.0 was released, computer engineers in the USSR were already retouching photographs using some surprisingly advanced technology. The video above shows how the Soviets went about restoring damaged images with the help of rotary scanners, magnetic tape, and trackballs.
Today I spent a couple of hours designing and making a simple box to fit directly onto a normal flash unit. I also made a couple of colored filters. After doing all this I thought I could share this with others and hopefully make them happy by doing so.
We've featured the amazing time-lapse work of Tom Lowe here before (see here and here), but here's another sneak peek at his upcoming debut film titled "TimeScapes" that will drop your jaws. Stunningly beautiful.
Reddit user MacTuitui created this simple diagram (click to enlarge) explaining the idea behind HDR photography. The first low dynamic range (LDR) taken normally with a camera isn't able to capture much of the detail found in the highlight and shadow areas of the scene. Two (or more) photographs are then taken at different exposure values to capture a wider range (the bracketing step) and subsequently combined into a single image with a high dynamic range (HDR). Since most displays aren't …
Turns out having a tripod mount and stand combo is what many iPhone 4 owners have been yearning for -- a Kickstarter funding project for a new mount raised more than ten times what the creators planned to raise. Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost originally intended to raise $10,000 over the course of a month to manufacture the Glif, a new tripod mount and stand for the iPhone 4, but ended up collecting over $135,000 from more than 5,000 backers who want such an accessory. You can find out more on …
If you have a laptop that doesn't have memory card slots built in, then you probably know how annoying it is to have to plug in a card reader every time you transfer photos. The new MR-C25 Series of memory card readers by Elecom tries to solve this problem by making the USB card reader sit flush against the side of your laptop, meaning they can stay attached to your laptop when you stow it away. They also have a 180 degree rotating body that allows you to access other ports that might be …
Here's a pretty interesting 45-minute interview with Pete Souza, which was done via a live web chat at the end of October. Souza is responsible for the behind-the-scenes photographs posted regularly to the official White House Flickr stream. He talks about everything from how photos are selected to crawling around on the floor of the Oval Office to get the perfect shot.
We're giving away two (2) copies of Perfect Photo Suite 5.5 by onOne Software, a set of seven photography plugins that normally costs $500. The seven plugins work for Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture, and five of them also work as standalone applications. To see the list of plugins included in the suite, visit this page.
Back in September we featured a creative technique that used an iPad to "light paint" 3D objects and text. Now there's an app called Holographium that allows anyone to light paint words with an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. All you do is provide some text, start taking a long exposure photo, and then drag your iPad (or whatever iDevice) through the photo while the app slowly displays the various slices of the text. The resulting photograph will show the text spelled out in 3D and floating in the …
The British Journal of Photography is reporting today that Geoffrey Crawley -- the world-renowned photographer who debunked the Cottingley Fairies hoax in the 1980's -- has died. The hoax began in 1917 when two cousins named Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths (aged 16 and 10, respectively) claimed to have discovered fairies and, after borrowing a camera, produced photos to prove it. The controversial photographs captured the world's attention for decades and even deceived Sir Arthur Conan Doyle …
Here's another beautiful example of what Twixtor, the $300 frame-rate conversion software, can do for footage captured with ordinary cameras. This one was shot with the entry level Canon 550D (i.e. T2i), a Canon 18-55mm kit lens, and a Sigma 70-300. Though motion approximation can present issues such as warping, this kind of software is a good alternative for people who want slow motion but can't afford to rent ($2,500/day) or buy ($118,000) a Phantom camera.
Fernando Ramírez Martínez (snipfer on Flickr) created this awesomely geeky medium format camera using Lego pieces.
Claire O'Neill and Mito Habe-Evans over at NPR's The Picture Show blog have just posted a fun experimental project you can try out this halloween: making a pinhole camera out of a pumpkin. What you'll need is a pumpkin, aluminum foil, a knife, tape, photo paper, dark spray paint, and access to a dark room. Along with the disturbing skull camera we shared earlier today, this would be a fun way to capture photos of trick-or-treaters this halloween.
This is Flickr user MrDAT's homemade halloween costume. He used a Nikon SB-600 flash mounted on helmet and an Ezybox softbox. With a little more work and some cardboard, this costume could be turned into a giant, working human flash unit! …
There probably isn't a more suitable camera for halloween picture taking than "Third Eye", a macabre pinhole camera created with a 150-year-old human skull by Wayne Martin Belger. Light enters the camera through the "third eye" on the forehead, exposing the film that's placed in the middle of the skull.
Halloween is coming up -- are you geeky enough to make your pumpkin photography-themed? This one has a Graflex camera carved into it.
Light Studio is a new iPhone app designed to teach you the basics of studio lighting for portraiture. In addition to sections with examples of setups and tutorials, there's a 3D modeling feature that allows you to position up to three hard light sources and watch how the lights affect the 3D face model. The app is available for $1.99 in the App Store.
After a long night of working in CMYK, you're ready for a change, so what do you do? Bust out some food coloring and convert some brownscale pancakes to RGB RYB, of course! …
When Apple unveiled the iPhone 4, they also showed off a white version that would be available alongside the black one. Since then, however, the company repeatedly pushed back the launch date for the white version, claiming that the white one was, "more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected".
My buddy Kyle and I were traversing a mountain road near my home town of Tillamook, Oregon. I am intending to create a tour company that will comprise of local tours in and around the Tillamook County area. We have many beaches, mountains, rivers and bays here and I intend to show people. Without getting too off-track, we were heading up into the mountains on a gravel logging road to calculate mileage and timing for a tour. A road I'd been on regularly as I had worked for the state department …
This is a Kodak advertisement that ran in the The Saturday Evening Post 100 years ago, on April 30th, 1910, and shows how people back then gave their children a taste of photography.
A couple days ago we covered the winning image of the British Journal of Photography's international photo contest and how many readers disagreed with the photo's merits. The prize for that contest was a one week exhibition and a Sigma digital compact camera. Now compare that to the above photograph, which won AU $80,000 in the 2010 Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize, one of the richest prizes in the world. Like the BJP photo, this photograph became the subject of debate.
Jenny from I Love Muffins created these awesome mini fondant lomo cameras for decorating cakes with. If you enjoy making cakes, this could be a fun project when making them for photography-enthusiast friends.
The Sprocket Rocket is a new analog camera by Lomography that the company claims is the first camera dedicated to sprocket hole photography. The sprocket holes of 35mm film are included in each panoramic exposure, giving the resulting images a unique look. Two knobs on the camera wind the film in both directions, allowing you to create multiple exposures images as well.
Earlier this month we reported that there was a star-studded short film being shot entirely with the Nokia N8 phone. It was just released, and gives a pretty interesting look at what mobile phone cameras are capable of now.
This photograph of Boulevard du Temple in Paris was made in 1838 by Louis Daguerre, the brilliant guy that invented the daguerreotype process of photography. Aside from its distinction of being a super early photograph, it's also the first photograph to ever include a human being. Because the image required an exposure time of over ten minutes, all the people, carriages, and other moving things disappear from the scene. However, in the bottom left hand corner is a man who just so happened to …
There was a rumor circulating today that Sony was potentially an acquisition target of Apple, which has $51 billion in cash lying around waiting to be used. Shares of Sony were up nearly 3 percent at one point before the rumors were quashed by analysts. If Apple did somehow acquire Sony in the future, it would bring the company back into the digital camera market that the company explored and then abandoned back in the 90s. However, it doesn't seem likely that we'll see an Apple Alpha DSLR …
Maybe this is what "Photoshop" would be like if computers had never been invented. This workspace has it all -- tools, rulers, layers, etc... These are probably the tools the "I Have PSD" guy uses.
Wanting to capture a nighttime panoramic photograph of Toledo, Spain in which darker areas were illuminated, the Photographic Association of Toledo decided to eschew HDR and attempt something new -- light-painting on an epic scale. They enlisted the help of 50 association photographers who strolled around the city firing off their flashes multiple times per minute. The resulting photograph was illuminated by over 3000 flashes covering 100K square meters. Wowzers! …
The Pinwide is a new pinhole cap by Wanderlust Cameras that takes advantage of the mirrorless nature of Micro Four Thirds cameras by recessing the cap into the body of the camera, achieving a wide field of view and strong natural vignetting. The "lens" is the equivalent of a 22mm on a 35mm camera, and boasts a perfectly round pinhole "made with the same precision etching technology used to manufacture semicoductors" to ensure sharpness.
Nikon is a player in the 3D game now, though not by releasing any 3D-capable camera. Instead, they've announced my Picturetown 3D, a 3D conversion and sharing service for registered members of their photo sharing and storage service my Picturetown. The service can take your boring old-school 2D photographs and convert them into 3D for you.
Goodwill has an online auction site called shopgoodwill, and categories in the Cameras & Camcorders section include film cameras, lenses and accessories, and vintage cameras. It's not nearly as well-known as popular auction sites (e.g. eBay), so you might be able to find a good deal on camera gear!
The British Journal of Photography announced recently that South African photographer Michelle Sank's image "Man asleep on the Golden Mile, Durban, South Africa." had won the single image category of its International Photography Award.
This is one of the most creative examples of light painting we've seen -- Flickr user Janne Parviainen created this unique light painting photograph to show a skeleton jumping out of a body. It's straight from the camera without any Photoshop trickery.
Amazon is selling the 10 megapixel Panasonic DMC-F2K Lumix compact camera for $69 today on its deal of the day Gold Box page. If you're looking for a cheap camera for yourself or as a gift for the upcoming Christmas season, you might want to take a look.
"Nuit Blanche" is a 4-minute long short film by Arev Manoukian of SpyFilms that will blow your mind. While you're watching it, try to guess how it was created -- see if you can pick out what's real and what's "shopped". It may remind you a bit of The Third & The Seventh, another mind-blogging short we shared at the beginning of the year.
If you have 20 minutes to spare, here's an interesting video in which winning photographers of the 66th Pictures of the Year International contest discuss the power of photojournalism and some of their work. This is similar to the "What Makes a Great Picture?" by National Geographic that we shared back in September.
Here's a quick photo related life hack: if you have a lens filter that just won't come off, try using a rubber jar opener to do the task. If you don't have one already in your kitchen, there might be cheap ones at your local dollar store!
Brian T. linked to this XKCD comic titled "Photoshops" in the comments of our "Photoshop in real life" post today. I've seen it before, but it's still pretty funny.
Update on 12/9/21: This video has been taken down by the creator.
If you're ever in beautiful San Francisco, you might want to pay a visit to the giant camera obscura, a room sized "camera" built in 1946 and based on a 15th century design by Leonardo da Vinci. It's designed to look like someone left a giant 35mm there with its lens pointed to the sky.
