According to a recent report by Fuji Rumors, Fujifilm users with X-Trans sensor cameras will have some additional incentive to use Adobe Lightroom and Camera RAW. Apparently, there's a soon-to-be-released update in the works that will improve Adobe's support of Fuji's X-Trans RAF files.
During Felix Baumgartner's record-breaking Stratos jump from 128,100 feet above the Earth, he was packing a total of seven GoPro Hero2's on his person. Red Bull has been slow to release all the footage from the jump and a couple of days ago we found out why -- it seems they were saving it for the short film "Red Bull Stratos -- The Full Story."
While covering the pre-election violence in the Thai capital of Bangkok, renowned photojournalist James Nachtwey was shot in the leg, reports the Wall Street Journal. Fortunately, according to a report in TIME, it seems the photog wasn't badly injured and returned to work soon after being shot.
On a recent trip to Hong Kong, David Hobby (aka. Strobist) caught up with his friends over at DigitalRev and offered some wise advice for the traveling photographer.
Right before Christmas, news broke that Sony had an update in the pipeline for the QX10 and QX100 lens cameras that would help them take better photos in low light and improve video quality. Well, that update has finally arrived.
Chances are good you've already seen Queenie Liao's touching nap time photo series Wengenn in Wonderland. Late last year, the series went viral as parents and photographers alike marveled at the creativity of this mother that brought her child's nap time adventures to life using only her imagination and household items near at hand.
Now, thanks to the folks at Flickr, we get to go behind the scenes with Liao as she explains what the series is about and how it all comes together each day when Wengenn falls asleep.
It's a question we hope none of you ever have to answer, but one that a talented colleague and PetaPixel reader is facing with incredible optimism and strength.
Wedding photographer Anthony Carbajal was recently diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), better known as Lou Gehrig's disease. And he's now reaching out to the photography community for support as he comes to terms with the end of a three-year professional career that was everything he could have hoped for.
If there's a secret contest going on for most terrifying action camera video, then 25-year-old skydiver James Lee recently gave the skydivers in the mid-air plane crash a run for their money. In a terrifying video captured on the veteran skydiver's helmet cam, you see him get knocked unconscious just seconds after jumping, and then get rescued by his fellow skydivers.
Despite all of the crazy gloom and doom talk that tends to circulate in the photography industry, it seems us photographers are still an optimistic bunch.
PhotoShelter has just released their "Photographer's Outlook on 2014 Survey," and besides being chock full on interesting and useful tidbits about who to follow and what to read (we're proud to say PetaPixel made the most-read blogs list!), it also showed that photographers have a very positive perspective on the upcoming year.
What's the best way to entice the professional photography market to buy into your device? Insult them of course! At least that seems to be Nokia's strategy in its latest Lumia 1020 Ad, "Goodbye DSLR, Hello Lumia 1020."
A new app called 'Flag' is exploding on Kickstarter today, and it's based on a very simple premise. The app will print and mail you museum quality, 220 gsm prints of 20 photos per month absolutely free... just as long as you allow them to place advertisements on the usually-blank back side of the photo.
That's it: no catch, no shipping charges, nothing. For now, you have to live in the US, but they hope to expand out soon.
Artist Jon Burgerman thinks there are too many violent film posters greeting us everywhere we go. These posters of movie and TV show characters holding weapons are all too common, and most of them show the protagonist brandishing their weapon right at the viewer.
And so, Burgerman decided to fight back using a little bit of fake blood, a sense of humor and photography.
Update: According to collectSPACE, this might not have been the only camera brought back from the moon. Check out the update at the bottom for details.
A total of fourteen Hasselblad cameras made it to the moon on the Apollo missions; but of those 14, only one ever made it back. And now, that one camera is going to go home with a lucky (and rich) collector pending an auction at WestLicht in Vienna on March 21st.
Update: Andrew recently created a Facebook page where you can follow him as he continues to go on enviable adventures. Be sure to give him a follow if you found this interview and his work interesting.
A few weeks ago, we shared some photos taken by adventure travel photographer Dr. Andrew Peacock who was stranded on the Russian ship M.V. Akademik Shokalskiy in the Antarctic. The thing is, we didn't want to stop there. When we visited his site in search of his contact information, we immediately fell in love with his photography.
Our "Permission to Share Photos" email quickly evolved into a "Permission to Share Photos and Interview Request" email. Fortunately for us, he said yes.
If the first two SmugMug Films features are any indication, we're going to be covering them all... and we doubt anybody is going to complain.
First, SmugMug took you behind the scenes with Benjamin Von Wong as he created magical worlds with the click of a shutter. Today, they visit the other side of the spectrum by featuring air-to-air photographer Jessica Ambats.
LEGO and baking powder, that and some Star Wars inspiration is all Finnish photographer (and PetaPixel reader, we might add) Vesa Lehtimäki needs to blow your mind and send you into a nerd frenzy that'll have you digging up your old D&D set.
Well, at least that's how we feel about it, because we couldn't have geeked out any harder than we did when we stumbled across Lehtimäki's miniature movie scene photography.
Tablet photography is something of an oxymoron for most photographers, but there are those who occasionally (or more than occasionally) snap a photo on their iOS or Android tablet, and Sony would like to help those people take better pictures.
To that effect, the company has released a new add-on that will allow tablet users to securely fasten their QX10 or QX100 lens cameras to their tablets as well as their phones.
The Mars Opportunity Rover has found a jelly donut on Mars... man would that be an awesome headline. Unfortunately we couldn't run that unless we were intent on click baiting you (we're not...). What the 10-year-veteran Mars Rover did find (and photograph) is a mysterious rock that looks like -- and has been nicknamed -- the 'jelly donut.'
Why mysterious? Because it seemed to appear out of nowhere in pictures of the exact same spot on the Martian ground only 12 Martian days (or Sols) apart.
Don McCullin is a household name in the photographic community, but as far as he is concerned, it's for all the wrong reasons. In this incredibly poignant and thought-provoking interview, he shares his thoughts about an illustrious career that was spent photographing atrocities, and left him somewhat haunted.
Dominic, the guy behind the popular web comic Domics, put together this humorous …
On the weekend of the 18th, 23-year-old Annie 'Kim' Pham accidentally photobombed a group of strangers in front of a Santa Ana nightclub while out with her friends. That accident cost her her life, as the strangers converged on her and beat her to the point where she had to be put on life support before ultimately succumbing to her injuries one week ago yesterday.
The E-M10 wasn't the only announcement to come out of Olympus tonight. Also arriving (and also noteworthy) is the longest superzoom Olympus has ever made, and a new, tougher tough camera -- both of which have some world's first features to their name.
Alright, it's time to set aside all the Fujifilm talk for a moment, because it's now Olympus' time to shine. Debuting tonight is the new OM-D E-M10. A camera that packs features from the E-M1 and E-M5 into a more affordable package that Olympus is proud to call 'the OM-D for all.'
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If you were watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night, you might have noticed a friend of ours stopped by. It was an expensive friend known as the Leica M Monochrom, and it earned a surprised and somewhat confused reaction from Jon Stewart.
We've embedded the five-minute segment above, but truth be told, the camera only plays a role at the very beginning and end of the video. It's nice to see a gorgeous piece of photographic gear getting some primetime airtime though, and it seems Jon Stewart reacted to it just like most people would: "wow that's a beautiful camera" is followed by "wait, it only shoots black and white!?"
Okay, fine, the normal human being would follow THAT up with a third statement: "What do you mean it costs eight grand!?"
Wedding photography gets a bum rap among many photographers, but the thing is, it gets that bum rap because it's hard! You're working in a high-stress environment, tasked with capturing someone's 'most important day of their lives'... and you'd better be doing it on par with the 3,426 amazing wedding photos they've compiled on Pinterest in preparation for this day.
Yesterday we featured a far too common headline that went something like "*insert newspaper here* fires all photographers." This time, it was an entire chain of local UK papers, and like the Chicago Sun Times before it, the chain is planning to replace these pros with freelancers, submitted photos and reporters with smartphones.
These kinds of headlines and stories make us sad, because we believe that the newspapers are making a grave mistake in undervaluing photography and the professionals who call it their vocation, but one Guardian writer has caused an uproar by holding to the exact opposite opinion.
For some reason we're fascinated by photographs of real things made to look like drawings or paintings. Series like Alexander Khokhlov's 2D or Not 2D and pretty much Alexa Meade's entire portfolio are great examples of this.
Now we have another similar series to share with you. Created by artist Cynthia Greig, Representations is a series of photographs of everyday objects that have been white washed and outlined so that they look like very simple drawings.
Nikon's release of the D610 was met with a bit of... hostility... from many of the D600 users who were and still are dealing with sensor spot/oil/dust (whatever the heck you wanna call it) issues. But it looks like at least a few D600 owners have been treated to a nice surprise from the company service center.
It's finally here! About one bazillion (official statistic) leaks and one teaser later, Fujifilm has finally announced the much-longed-for X-T1. With a weather-resistant body, a large and powerful OLED EVF and the fastest autofocus in its class, Fuji promises that this camera will make for a "truly remarkable photographic experience."
When DxOMark tests out the quality of mobile phone cameras, they usually classify and rank them as such. There's a whole mobile section to the site where one can compare different smartphone cameras using a different scoring system.
The thing is, the Lumia 1020 is no typical smartphone. Nokia has touted it as a camera first, and it seems DxOMark was listening. When they put the Lumia 1020 through its paces, they tested it as a full-fledged camera. And it didn't perform half bad.
Sometimes, all that's required to take a standard photo and turn it into something special and unique is to flip your camera upside down. That's what artist Peter Wegner did for his Buildings Made of Sky series, which features 'skyscrapers' outlined by the New York City streets when you flip your perspective.
I don't think we've referred to a time-lapse as "dramatic" before, but when it comes to photographer Nicolaus Wegner's most recent time-lapse creation, no other word fits quite as well.
Captured over 14 months in the Wyoming wilderness, beautiful motion landscape sequences are juxtaposed masterfully with weather that he calls 'terrorific' -- terrifying, horrific and terrific all rolled into one -- in Wegner's Wyoming Wildscapes II.
Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner has been announced at the end of this post.
Alright ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the first of MANY giveaways this year (yes, many, so stick around), and we thought we'd start 2014 off with something fun: a Fujifilm Instax Mini 90 Neo Classic instant camera and twenty 20-count packs of film to keep you shooting all year long!
A few weeks ago, we shared a video by photographer Karl Taylor that gave you a behind the scenes look at what a day-long fashion shoot in his studio was like. And even though a few of our readers poked fun at the video's obvious product placement, a lot of people learned a thing or two and came back with followup questions regarding the light modifiers that Taylor was using throughout the day.
Fortunately for us, Taylor was listening, and has produced this very informative follow-up video in which he discusses the differences between his go-to modifiers, complete with side-by-side comparisons.
When the Mars Rover Opportunity landed on our planetary neighbor on January 25th, 2004 it was undertaking a three-month mission. Well, it's a full decade later and the little guy is still alive and kickin' (in a robotic kind of way).
And what better way to celebrate that achievement then by taking a good ol' fashioned, 2014-like selfie?
For the second time in one week, the Associated Press is making headlines of its own. Earlier in the week, the agency was praised by some and condemned by others when it decided to let a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer go over an edited photo, and now the AP is going after George Zimmerman over a painting he was selling.
Artist and professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, Dennis Hlynsky, is interested in studying the way small-brained animals flock in groups. Using a special editing technique, he can visualize the paths of each individual in the flock, and though he's recorded everything from ants to fish to flies, the most fascinating examples of this technique in action involve flocks of birds.
Almost 25 years later, the country of Romania is still in the midst of a difficult transformation from one of the region’s hardest dictatorships to a modern European nation. A transformation that photographer Tamas Dezso masterfully captures in his series Notes for an Epilogue.
William Albert Allard has shot over 40 stories for National Geographic, and in the short video above he shares some of what he's learned since starting his career for the magazine as an intern in 1964.
If your advertising campaign's goal is to redefine beauty and help High School girls accept and even embrace the flaws so studiously eliminated on magazine covers, you've got an uphill battle ahead of you. But Dove is fighting (and maybe even winning) that battle, and one of the ways they're doing it is by putting the selfie to more empowering use.
Well, that didn't last long. Only a few days after Hasselblad revealed the exciting news that a 50MP CMOS Medium Format camera was in the works, PhaseOne has made a very similar announcement. Like Hasselblad, PhaseOne is calling this one a "world's first," only this time the title is "world's first CMOS-based medium format digital camera back."
People familiar with the Brother's Grimm fairy tales know that the Disney versions of many of these tales were rather less dark than the original, broody, oh-my-goodness-did-that-just-happen-in-a-fiary-tale versions.
The photographs in German photographer Kilian Schoenberger's series Brothers Grimm's Homeland represent the latter universe: a foggy, dark, ominous place where the next footfall you hear might send you running.
We're big fans of cheesy, photo-related novelty products like lens clocks and speakers that look like a Canon DSLR. But when it comes to cheesy, the Polaroid-like Say Cheese Instant Slicer just took the cake... or cheese.
When it comes to major Photoshop alterations, serious news organizations have a zero-tolerance policy, as AP freelance photographer Narciso Contreras recently discovered. After admitting that he had cloned out a piece of a Syrian conflict image, the news agency was forced to 'sever ties' with the Pulitzer Prize winner.
We’ve seen some really creative time-lapse videos that take stock of a year or more in someone’s life. They …
Many people don't know this, but for a brief stretch of time, there was an Academy Award given out for the category of Still Photography. And now, one of the three of these medals ever awarded is up for auction.
The JPEG standard made its debut in 1991 (publicly in 1992), and since then it's become the most widely used lossy compression format for digital images. Now, The Independent JPEG Group at the Leipzig Institute for Applied Informatics -- the folks responsible for defining the standard -- has released an all new version 9.1 of the software library that comes with some powerful new abilities.
Most of the specs and information on the recently-teased Fuji X-T1 that will make landfall on January 28th have already leaked, but the final piece of the rumor puzzle fell into place today when Digicameinfo published the official-looking product shots you see here.
When we shared photographer Adam Magyar's talk in which he describes the techniques he used to capture the mesmerizing photos and footage in his portfolio, he said 'everything looks cool in slow-motion.' And even though he's probably right, we would add an Orwellian addendum to that statement: 'but some things look cooler than others.'
That's the case with this macro footage of a match head lighting on fire, which was captured at 4,000fps by Emmy Award-winning cinematographer and founder of UltraSlo, Alan Teitel.
You might not come out on top if you weigh the pros and cons of storm chasing, but there are definitely pros beyond feeling like a bada** and a deep fulfillment of your twin passions for meteorology and spiking your adrenaline. If you want proof of that, just check out the awe-inspiring photography of storm chaser Mike Hollingshead.