What happens when you try to take a nighttime shot without a tripod? Apparently, a ghost wanders into the frame and cocks up the whole thing. At least that's what British photographer Jules Annan is claiming happened to him.
Got a couple of boxes of old transparencies and a bare window? Then designer/upcycler Scott Sherwood has come up with a great idea that will put those slides to functional, creative and colorful use.
Yes, we're all fascinated by what you had for lunch. But sometimes actual news/history is shared in the Instagram universe, and now there's a convenient new way to browse through and find pictures of those events.
Certain indie filmmakers may be all in love with shaky-cam production values, but for the rest of us, nausea still isn't terribly valued as a special effect. So huzzah to the ShadowCam S-5, an upcoming stabilizer for DSLRs and pro series cinema cameras (Red Epic, Canon C models, etc.) that promises to dampen motion like no other stabilizer.
The past year saw a mini-boom in musicians discouraging or outright prohibiting fans from taking photos at gigs, pitched mainly as a "pay attention to the music" measure. But now the trend is attracting a sort of venue where reckless flash photography would only seem to add to the experience: electronic dance clubs.
Sad news came out of Atlanta, GA, where a veteran Associated Press photographer suffered a fatal heart attack on the field shortly after the conclusion of the Chick-fil-A Bowl this last Tuesday.
Maybe you thought year-end 'best-of' lists were only for desperate journalists trying to survive the holiday news doldrums or news agencies looking to wow you with the photographs they compiled over the course of the year. Au contraire.
You, of course, are an analog purist who will forever be devoted to film. Other folks, however, may be wondering what they're going to do with a bunch of darkroom equipment that's getting lonelier by the year.
Turns out you may not have to be stupid enough to post incriminating evidence on Instagram to get busted via photo in the near future. A pair of British researchers are working on a way to collect identifiable images from the reflections of people captured on a photo subject's eyeball.
The camera industry is turning into a two-tier market, with Canon, Nikon and Sony DSLRs at the top, smartphones at the bottom and nothing in the middle, according to a recent Reuters report that finds little traction for mid-tier camera makers counting on mirrorless to save the day.
Olympus' decision to put all its chips on the mirrorless market seems to be paying off, with the once-troubled company finally poised to register a profit next year after several quarters of losses.
Snapchat, famous for dealing with the problem of rising attention spans by whittling the life of a photo down to 10 seconds, has gotten a little more time-friendly with an update that includes a limited option for re-viewing images later.
Just incase @29_JL @hullcityteam your not sure the ball is the yellow thing.... not the £6k camera (photo al walter) pic.twitter.com/op6zGrUBVX— Richard Heathcote (@rheathcote) December 21, 2013
Professional sports photographers know their equipment is always at risk, but British Getty Images shooter Richard Heathcote was still surprised and more than a bit miffed when his DSLR bit the dust at Saturday's Hull-vs.-West Bromwich Premiere League soccer match.
Forget gold plating and celebrity altruism -- the rarest Leica camera of them all may be made entirely out of plastic.
Those who see iPhoneography as some kind of barbarian invasion may want to give their DSLRs an extra hug after hearing this: The venerable British Journal of Photography has launched a new e-magazine all about smartphone photography and available only as an iPhone app.
News flash: You can't believe everything you see on Twitter. We know, we were shocked too.
Such was the case with this striking sepia-toned image that started lighting up the mediasphere yesterday billed as "the Earliest Photograph Taken of New York City - Broadway, May 1850." (And immediately started attracting comments in the vein of: "And they haven't fixed the potholes since!")
Being "journalists" more or less restricted to "facts," we can only look with awe and envy at New Camera News: a blog that tells the truth about the photography industry by making up witty, insider satire in the mode of The Onion
Rejoice, all ye illustrators and designers, at least if your work involves antiquarian subjects. The British Library has just posted more than a million copyright-free images to its Flickr photostream, and the pickings are choice if you need to illustrate anything from phrenology to 17th century geological theories.
(Private Video -- Use password "stolen")
Often there's a fine line between inspiration and theft. But watching side-by-side comparisons of wedding workshops conducted by videographers Adam Forgione and Rob Adams, it's hard not to conclude there's wholesale plagiarism going on.
About 88,000 people in the U.S. are missing all or part of an arm, and among the things that are difficult or impossible for them to do is use an full-size camera. Smaller point-and-shoots and phones allow simultaneous holding and operation, but anything bigger is out of the question without a tripod.
Last week's memorial for Nelson Mandela had more than its share of media moments, from the fake sign language interpreter to the handshake heard 'round the world. But nothing caught on quite as tenaciously or curiously as what we'll dub "The Great Obama Selfie Beatdown."
Throwable camera balls and their ilk might be all shiny and cool, but what if you want to grab high-quality 360-degree images with the camera you already have in your bag?
Enter Eye Mirror, a startup launched by U.K. inventors Dan Burton and Thomas Seidl, whose namesake product attaches to just about any camera and allows it to shoot 360-degree panoramas and videos.
If you're shopping for a young person who'd benefit from learning a little more about the principles of photography, you may want to consider the LAST Camera: a build-it-yourself 35mm film camera that could well outfreak Lomography for quirky build and artfully distressed images.
Lenticular printing has been around for ages as a commercial gimmick, producing untold hordes of postcards, luggage tags and other novelties with images that seem to move when you jostle the shiny surface. (Also, the particularly hideous faux-3D cover for my 1978 high school yearbook.)
Here's something that both photographers and the typical millennial have to look forward to in old age: Your memory is going to suck because of all the photos you took when you should have been paying attention to what was happening around you.
That's the upshot of a new psychological study that finds you can have a good photographic record of an event or a good memory, but not both.
A late-breaking holiday shopping tip: If someone offers you a screamingly good deal on a Leica Summilux-C movie lens, be very suspicious. That's because there's currently $500,000 worth of stolen gear floating around the black market -- including a $200K set of Summilux-C lenses -- that was taken off the set of a Los Angeles film shoot..
GoPro cameras may be ready to migrate from helmets to film schools thanks to the Ribcage, an in-development assembly that allows the tiny action cams to be outfitted with interchangeable lenses.
Backlighting can be all moody and subtle, but you can seldom go wrong with full-on, straight-behind illumination. Especially if your subject is the planet on which your family, friends and all of humanity happens to reside.
That's what the trio of Apollo 17 astronauts -- and soon, the whole world -- discovered 41 years and two days ago today. Navigating towards the moon on Dec. 7, 1972, the spacecraft had the sun behind it, providing a rare, fully illuminated view of the Earth.
A lot of film people have deep connections to Super 8 cameras, once the medium of choice for everyone from film school students to porn directors. But it's getting harder and harder to actually use the things, as stocks of film cartridges dwindle.
To the rescue comes Nolab, a project to build a digital adapter that will allow any Super 8 camera to shoot 720p HD video.
Photojournalist Christopher Morris has documented some of the world's hottest war zones, reclusive North Korea and the 2012 Republican National Convention. But it took modern Detroit to totally punk him, with thieves there stealing $15,000 in camera equipment and another crook cheating him out of $200 in reward money later that same day.
Rest easy, future astronauts. If occasional filmmaker and full-time tinkerer Mark Rober and his pals are any indication, NASA engineers can MacGyver their way into or out of any situation.
Selfie, schmelfie! How self-absorbed do you really have to be to spend all of 20 seconds pointing a phone at yourself and tapping a few buttons? But a process that requires up to 15 minutes of statue-still posing, exposure to hazardous chemicals and construction of custom camera? Now that's something worth bragging about.
So all hail pioneering American photographer Robert Cornelius, whose rough but certainly recognizable image, taken mere months after Louis Daugerre revealed his daguerrotype process in 1839, is undoubtedly the world's first photographic self-portrait and may even be the first photographic portrait of any kind.
So emergency workers are all over the Brooklyn Bridge, trying to talk down a suicidal man poised to jump. Media people are everywhere, doing their usual sensitive storytelling. A big chunk of the city is holding its breath, waiting to see how the life-and-death drama plays out.
Perfect time for a selfie, right?
What do you do when you're not busy destroying rebel planets, choking out generals and dealing with traumatizing father issues? Why, you grab a quality selfie and upload it to Instagram of course.
Canon owners certainly boast the most advanced custom firmware with Magic Lantern, but Nikon Hacker is making some progress. Case in point: with the release of a new hack, Nikon D5100 owners can now use manual controls while shooting in LiveView.
Try all the tricky ski moves and skateboard jumps you want, but it'll be hard to beat the latest action video auteur -- a curious Australian sea eagle who snagged a wildlife camera to create a brief but exciting aerial tour of his neighborhood.
"Put down that phone and eat!" That's what a lot of frustrated cooks must have been yelling Thursday, as Instagram set a new one-day record for uploads thanks to the overlapping of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.
Media giant Clear Channel recently stirred up some controversy when it decided to flat out reject an advertising image of an American soldier embracing a veiled Muslim woman from its Times Square billboards due to its 'uncomfortable' nature.
Photographers around the country are banding together to figure out the best way to help out a once-prominent photojournalist who has ended up homeless and panhandling on the streets of Manhattan.
Here's a new way to be violated in the social media era: Post a photo of yourself on Instagram, then wait for somebody you don't know and didn't authorize to repost an edited version that looks vaguely like you, except shinier and with a lot more makeup.