Released in 2001, Nikon's original 80-400mm telephoto zoom lens has consistently made it onto owners' "please update" lists for over a decade. It was the first of Nikon's lenses to feature VR, and though it wasn't without fault, it was a very versatile lens.

Now 12-years in the making, the new AF-S Nikkor 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR seeks to add to its predecessor's abilities, while improving on common complaints such as slow focus and the inability to use the auto focus with newer SLRs.

Japanese photographer Wataru Yamamoto's "Drawing a Line" project might look like a series of strange photos of a forest, but they're actually self portraits. His description is simple: they're "self-portraits taken in the forest, using a cable release made of string."

Nikon had quite a surprise for the camera world today, as it announced the new Coolpix A -- the company's first compact camera to sport a massive DX-format sensor.

Chinese photographer and artist Liu Bolin was invited to speak at the TED 2013 conference last week, and talked about his widely published photos that show himself blended into various backgrounds thanks to paint that's carefully applied to his body. At the end of this talk (which hasn't been published online yet), he showed a photograph of himself blended into the background of the conference stage. The time-lapse above shows the process that went into making the image.

Apparently robbers in Northern California are starting to learn that photojournalists typically shoot with pretty expensive gear. The …

Adventure photographer and Nikon ambassador Kamil Tamiola of Alpine Photography recently shot a project titled "Cascades of Light." He traveled to the Cascate di Lillaz icefall in Cogne, Italy with professional ice climber Jeff Mercier.

His goal was to capture adventure images of ice climbing in a different light -- literally. Instead of shooting with natural light, he decided to light the scene artificially during both night and day.

Underwater photo gear company Backscatter has released a new product that's designed to give photographers peace of mind when diving with expensive camera gear in waterproof housings. Called the AirLock Vacuum System, it's a new device that lets you verify that your housing is completely free of leaks before you take it into the water.

If you need to chop off portions of the human body while cropping a photograph, where should you draw the line? The folks over at Digital Camera World have released this helpful graphic with suggestions on appropriate and inappropriate areas to crop at.

Oakland Raiders football player Desmond Bryant was arrested this past weekend and charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief (apparently the 27-year-old show up at a neighbor's house drunk). While it's not uncommon for a famous athlete to find themselves in jail, Bryant's case is attracting quite a bit of attention due to the ridiculous way he posed for his mugshot (seen above) when he was booked at around 9:30 in the morning on Sunday.

Brooklyn-based photographer Romain Laurent's "Tilt" project from 2009 is one that turns an oh-so-simple concept into unique photos that instant grab your attention. Each photograph shows a person standing, walking, or skateboarding in an urban environment, except the whole world is tilted around them.

Here's an interesting fusion of analog camera technologies: Kevin over at the Hong Kong-based photo site FilMe figured out how to make his Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera shoot Fujifilm Instax instant photos.

Frustrated with how your camera's CMOS sensor performs in dimly-lit situations? Canon has just announced a new CMOS sensor that'll put a smile on your face. It's a new 35mm full-frame sensor that's designed specifically for capturing video in "exceptionally low-light environments." Canon claims the sensor can capture high quality video with high-sensitivity while keeping noise very low.

Here's how sensitive the new sensor is: it will reportedly be able to see meteor shows, rooms lit with incense sticks, and scenes lit only by moonlight.

Photographer Adam Kennedy has a hobby that's pretty unique among the photo projects we've seen. He photographs fire hydrants and Photoshops them into planets. That sounds random, but the results are actually quite neat.

The photograph above shows a before-and-after of what his original photos look like and what he turns the rusty old hydrants into.

Back in early January, we reported that the Polaroid brand would soon be launching physical retail locations called Polaroid Fotobars. Well, the first of these spaces opened last Friday at the Delray Marketplace in Delray Beach, Florida.

Joey Lawrence, better known by his professional name, "Joey L.," is a Canadian commercial photographer, director and published author based in Brooklyn, New York. Visit his website here.

PetaPixel: Can you tell us about yourself and how you got started in photography?

Joey L: When I was 16 years old and in high school, all my friends were in bands. I could never sing (I'm beyond horrible) or play any instruments, so instead I became the photographer. I would help them build press kits and band profiles for their websites, experimenting along the way and learning everything I could about the technical side of photography.

Designer and web developer Ryan Taylor has developed a nifty piece of online software for photographers that he hopes to get funded through Kickstarter by the end of this month. Dubbed Safelight, the software would offer an online selling and proofing solution for those photographers who want to integrate an interactive store into their online portfolio.

There are a few reason why some of us fight over who gets the window seat on airplanes, and the view that Tim Sessler captured in his mesmerizing short film "Drift" tops that list. While on a flight from San Francisco to Philadelphia (with a layover in Salt Lake City) Sessler pulled out his 5D MarK III and shot some of the stunning vistas outside his airplane window.

New York-Based designers Sarah Frances Kuhn (SFK) and Meredith Wendell are teaming up to bring a little bit more fashion into the world of photography. Only their fashion accessories won't be displayed on a model standing in front of your camera, they'll be keeping your camera securely attached to you.

For the upcoming game Rustclad, indie video game studio Skull Theatre is taking a different approach towards designing a virtual world. Instead of creating it entirely inside of a 3D design program and trying to mimic reality, the studio is using a technique called photogrammetry to design the world of Rustclad using photographs of artistically altered real world objects.

Here’s a wonderfully soothing look at how the ink that brings many of our photos from digital to physical …

NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery’s first launch was back on August 30th, 1984 from …

Take a quick look at Chinese photographer Yao Lu's "New Landscapes" photos, and they may look to you like old Chinese paintings of misty mountains, green hills, and choppy brown rivers. Each one even bears a red seal stamp that artists use as signatures on finished works.

Look a little closer, however, and it becomes apparent that something isn't quite right. "Those are some strange looking mountains, you think to yourself." Well, they aren't actually mountains, but rather mounds of garbage covered with green construction netting.

Olympus first ushered its PEN brand into the digital age back in 2009 with the E-P1. Since then, the lineup has split into three distinct tiers: the E-P line for standard PEN cameras, the E-PL line for smaller "Lite" models, and the E-PM line for even smaller "Mini" models. Goldilockean photographers can therefore choose the size and feature set most appropriate to their needs (and hands).

California-based company DigitalOptics debuted their newest creation this week. It's called the Mems|Cam, and it's stirring up a bit of excitement in the tech world. That's because, in addition to blazing fast focus and facial recognition, the camera module actually mimics Lytro's "take now, focus later" abilities -- only it does it in 8-13 megapixel packages that can fit inside the thinnest of phones.

British photographer Luke Massey has been fascinated by the wildlife he has made a living photographing since he was a little boy stealing his sister's camera when he went on walks. Back then he was limited to photographing the wildlife that made its home within walking distance of his front step. Today he travels all over the world.

The gear has improved, his techniques and expertise have improved, but his passion is still the same. And in this short video he talks about that passion, and drops a few tips along the way for those of you who also love snapping photos of wildlife.

In a red carpet interview with Access Hollywood's Billy Bush, Jennifer Lawrence shocked viewers by actually saying that she loves Photoshop "more than anything in the world." The conversation began on the red carpet when Bush showed Lawrence the results of a photo shoot she did for Christian Dior.

The Miss Dior ads she did recently turned out unrealistically stunning. In them she has perfect skin, a long slender neck and incredibly thin arms. Seeing them for the first time on the red carpet, her reaction was a delighted "That doesn't look like me at all!" Followed by the above "I love Photoshop more than anything in the world."

We now take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to direct your attention to an interesting study that was published yesterday by Pingdom. The website tracking company decided to analyze the demographics of the world's top 100 blogs (according to Technorati), sorting them by reader age and gender. It's findings regarding PetaPixel caught our eye.

While in an antique shop looking for old Nikon lenses, the folks over at …

Our pal and fellow photo blogger David Hobby of Strobist is currently over in Dubai for Gulf Photo Plus 2013, and yesterday he had the privilege of purchasing the first Fujifilm X100S to be sold on planet Earth. Hobby tells us he's in love.

We've shown you the snowflake photos you can achieve using a DSLR and a macro lens and also a point-and-shoot and a macro rig. Now, here's what you can achieve using a smartphone.

Photo enthusiast Ben Woodworth shot these snowflake photographs using his iPhone 5 and a tiny macro lens he purchased for $5 online.

Benedict XVI officially resigned yesterday after eight years as the Pope of the Catholic Church. The Vatican decided to commemorate his papacy by publishing a digital photo album to its website. It's a serious set of photos that marks a serious occasion, but it's attracting attention for the wrong reason: most sites that are reporting on it seem to be focusing on the font selections rather than the images themselves.

The text in the album is Comic Sans and the watermarks on the photos are Papyrus.

Still photographs are easy to print and share, but how would you go about sharing a video with someone physically, without having to pass them some kind of tablet computer? HP has a solution: it's called Live Photo, and is an app that uses augmented reality to view videos "embedded" in printed photographs.

"One should still try and get as close as possible to what you want in the initial click."

A friend of a friend just pointed this out in a conversation we were all having on Facebook. It's prompted me to say something. To explain what "getting it right in the camera" means to me now, and what it meant to me in the old days.

Big focal length usually translates into big money. If you don't have thousands to spend on a high-quality far-reaching super-telephoto lens, the fine folks over at Screaming Tree Films came up with this 800mm Frankenlens that'll only make your wallet around $100 lighter (as opposed to thousands).

PocketWizard has just added an affordable entry-level radio trigger to its Plus lineup that will hit shelves with a price tag under $100. It's the PlusX, an "Auto-Sensing Transceiver" that will allow photo enthusiasts to jump into the world of off-camera flash and remote camera triggering without breaking the bank.

Tech company Rambus just announced "Binary Pixels," a new sensor technology that intends to bring ultra-high dynamic range to small sensors like those found in smartphones and P&S cameras. By allowing pixels to "reset" and saturate more than once, the pixel tech promises to expand the dynamic range of these sensors to "single-shot HDR" levels.

If you want to know what the market is like for high-end camera gear that has been destroyed by water damage, check out this eBay auction by a Hastings, Victoria-based Australian photographer who goes by the handle tallguy069. The poor guy accidentally dropped his Canon 1D Mark III DSLR and Canon 600mm f/4L lens ($10,000+ in gear) off a boat into saltwater, completely destroying the functionality of both pieces.

In a copyright dispute with So Delicious this past week, photographer Theron Humphrey chose to follow in Brandon Stanton's footsteps and give the infringers a positive way out of the situation. Instead of getting the long arm of the law involved, Humphrey suggested that the offending company instead donate the money he was owed to charity.

It looks like we'll be seeing at least two new DSLRs appear on the market between now and the end of this year. The latest rumors are saying that Canon will be launching a successor to the 60D shortly -- perhaps by the end of this month -- and that Olympus will be following up its E-5 DSLR with another pro-level Four Thirds DSLR body.

Russian photographer Murad Osmann has been attracting quite a bit of attention this past week on the Internet for his images. No, it's not his professional photos of people and places, but rather a clever project he has been putting together on his Instagram account.

It's titled "Follow Me," and features a unique perpective: each shot is from Osmann's point of view, and shows the back of his girlfriend Nataly Zakharova's body as she leads him by the hand through various locations around the world.

Here's another option for DSLR-toting photogs who want to control their gear wirelessly from a distance without spending a fortune. It doesn't have the range of the CamRanger or the ability to send over a live view like, say, the built-in wireless on the Canon 6D; however, it's less than one sixth the price of the first, and you won't have to upgrade your camera to get it.

It's the Satechi Bluetooth Smart Trigger, and it comes in three versions that are compatible with a range of Canon and Nikon DSLRs (plus a couple of Pentax options) for only $45.

Did you know that the White House was completely gutted and rebuilt on the inside between 1949 and 1952? After decades of poor maintenance, the building was in danger of collapsing in 1948, which forced President Harry Truman to move out and commission a complete gutting and rebuilding of the building's insides.

The U.S. National Archives has been publishing photographs showing the gutted White House to its Flickr photostream.

A few months back we shared the news that, assuming Instagram's trademark lawyers didn't get ahold of it first, the Socialmatic camera would indeed be making an appearance IRL. And now, none other than Polaroid has stepped up to place its name on the Instagram icon turned physical camera.

A number of users over in the GoPro forums and beyond are reporting a serious problem with the GoPro Hero3. Namely, those who have been putting up the money to buy 64GB microSD cards (the largest the Hero3 will take) are finding that the GoPro is actually frying the cards after only a few days of use.

Belgian photographer Filip Bunkens recently did an engagement photo shoot with a couple named Mattias and Adinda, who proposed that it be 1920s-themed. Last Sunday morning they gathered at a local jazz bar for the session.

In February of 1993, 10-year-olds Jon Venables and Robert Thompson kidnapped and murdered two-year-old James Bulger. The two were eventually caught, and became the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history.

Their life sentences were cut short, however, when they were released in 2001 under the protection of new identities and a court order that prohibited the publication of any info that could reveal who they were. Now a full 12 years after their release, UK Attorney General Dominic Grieve is finally getting a chance to enforce that court order.

When the new Google Chromebook Pixel was announced a week ago, one of the new apps announced alongside it was for managing photographs. Photography played a bit part in the laptop's design: it has a 12.85-inch, 4.3 million pixel touchscreen (the highest pixel density of any laptop) that has a strange aspect ratio of 3:2 -- the aspect ratio of classic 35mm film.

Photographer Ed Pingol was sick of battling carpal tunnel every time he needed to cull or edit photos in Lightroom. So instead, he developed the Cullinator, a software app for Mac that pairs perfectly with an attachable gaming controller to keep you editing and culling ergonomically for hours without fatigue.

Memphis, Tennessee-based photographer and X-ray technician Blake Billings has a set of images showing what various cameras look like when photographed with an X-ray machine. What you see above is a Nikon D60 DSLR.

When Malik Bendjelloul -- director of the Academy Award-winning documentary 'Searching for Sugar Man' -- ran out of money just a few necessary shots away from completing his film, he wasn't sure what he was going to do. He had decided to shoot the film on a Super 8 film camera, but the cost of film had taken a larger toll on his budget than he had expected.

That's when he stumbled onto the $2 iPhone app that saved his film and, to some extent, is the reason Bendjelloul now has an Oscar sitting on his mantle.