Nokia Photo Challenge Shows Off the Low-Light Ability of PureView Cameras

Nokia has endured a torrent of bad press over the past couple days over its faked promo video, but the truth is, the company is investing heavily in improving photography in its mobile phones, and its PureView technology is definitely something we should be keeping our eyes on.

In order to back up its claim that PureView low light performance is "unbeatable", Nokia set up a "photo challenge" booth at its launch party and invited passers-by to pit their cameraphones against the Lumia 920. The challenge involved shooting a photograph of a still life setup stuffed inside a dark cubby hole in a brick wall. Check out the video above for a glimpse of how the phone's camera stacked up against the iPhone's and the Samsung Galaxy's.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Master Tweets Photos of “Mugging Attempt” as it Unfolds

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighter Renzo Gracie was walking on the sidewalk at 22nd street and 10th avenue in Manhattan last night, when he noticed two shady-looking fellows following him. Suspecting that they were planning to mug him, Gracie began sending live tweets and photos to his 100,000+ followers on Twitter. Once the two men finally approached him, asking for a cigarette, he decided to launch a preemptive strike by beating the crap out of the would-be assailants... while live-blogging the whole thing.

Yup, Nokia Faked the Still Photos In Its PureView Promo

Nokia has already confessed and apologized for faking the optical image stabilization sample footage in a new promo video for its Lumia 920 phone. In case you weren't sure: yes, the sample still photographs in the video were faked as well.

Designer Youssef Sarhan did some investigative work after the story initially broke, and came to the conclusion that the images were almost certainly taken with a camera other than the Lumia 920.

Portraits of High School Football Players in the Style of Political Campaign Photos

Four years ago, Kai-Huei Yau had an idea. During a presidential election year, why not create a series of high school football preview photographs that tie into the political atmosphere? This year, the Tri-City Herald photographer finally put the idea into motion. His "Football Campaign 2012" series features portraits of local high school football players that make them look like they're running for office rather than preparing for a season of war on the gridiron.

Photographs of Astronauts Using DSLRs on Spacewalks

This photograph of Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide taking a self-portrait was published to NASA's amazing 2Explore Flickr account on Wednesday. It was snapped during a six-and-a-half hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station. The EXIF data embedded in the photo reveals that he was using a Nikon D2Xs with a 10.5mm fisheye lens at f/11, 1/500, and ISO 200.

Photographer Finds Identity of Couple in ‘Last Kiss’ Photo After Internet Hunt

Photographer Mo Gelber was standing outside the Manhattan Criminal Court on August 16th when he noticed a couple being led in handcuffs toward the courthouse by two officers. Just as they were about to enter the building to be booked, the young man leaned in to his significant other for one last kiss. Gelber instinctively snapped a photograph, resulting in the picture-perfect image seen above.

How It Was Photographed: Emerald Isles

Last week, a seascape photo I made showed up on link-sharing powerhouse Reddit. It caused a bit of a stir since it is a copyrighted image and was rehosted and posted without my permission. A lot of the photographers in r/photography and r/pics (where it was originally posted by a user) made it known that it was I who had created the work. I’m very grateful for both the exposure that posting gave me, and even more grateful for the support I received from my fellow photographers and Redditors.

After the image was posted, I noticed a lot of people claiming that there was no chance this was taken in Ocean City, New Jersey. I also received a long slew of messages asking me how I made this image. I thought I’d both prove it was and explain my process here for anyone who is interested.

Fujifilm Unveils New Firmware for the X-Pro1 That Makes Autofocus Snappier

In addition to the new X-E1 announced this morning, Fujifilm has also unveiled its upcoming version 2.0 of its X-Pro1 firmware. Autofocus has been a much-griped-about feature of the X-Pro1 (and the X100, for that matter), and the new firmware addresses that issue by improving the AF capabilities of the camera in different ways.

What if Movies Were Written and Voiced-Over by Little Kids?

Lets say you find an imaginative kid, put a pen in one of his hands, put a camera in the other, and ask him to create a movie. What would you get?

That's the basic idea behind Kid Snippets, a cute and hilarious new web series by BoredShortsTV. For the short above, titled "Salesman", filmmaker Ryan Haldeman had a couple kids come up with an interaction between a salesman and a customer. He then took the resulting audio, and had actors John and Brett Roberts act it out and mouth the words. What resulted was the humorous sketch seen above.

Photos Showing the Lines and Symmetry of Subway Stations

German student Hans Findling has some interesting architectural photos captured deep underground in subway stations around Europe. The images, snapped in Germany, Austria, and Spain, are generally devoid of the hustle and bustle you usually find inside a metro system. Findling chooses to focus on capturing the eye-catching patterns, lines, and symmetry built into many parts of these stations.

Infographic: How Women Feel About Being in Photos

Photo printing company PhotoBox recently conducted a survey of 1,000 women aged 18-65 to find out how they feel about being in photographs. An interesting finding was that the women generally cared much more about how other women view the images than how men view them. Only 10% of women care about what men think of their photogenic-ness. Of the other 9 in 10 women, it's the 36-45 demographic that cares the most about being judged by other women.

Fuji Announces the X-E1, the Smaller and Cheaper 16.3MP Sibling of the X-Pro1

Fuji has announced its new, much leaked, X-E1 mirrorless camera. It features the same high-quality CMOS sensor as the X-Pro1, but packs it into a smaller and lighter body for increased portability. Specs include a 16.3 megapixel APS-C sensor, a 2.8-inch LCD, a pop-up flash, ISO of 200-6400 (expandable to 100-25600), shutter lag of just 0.05 seconds, focusing speed of up to 0.1 seconds, and RAW and built-in RAW conversion.

Thermal Cameras Could One Day Have Drunk-Face Recognition

Over the past decade, many airports around the world have adopted special thermal cameras that can determine whether or not a passenger has a fever. The goal of these cameras is to prevent infectious diseases from spreading and causing an epidemic (or pandemic). Greek scientists Georgia Koukiou and Vassilis Anastassopoulos recently came up with a similar concept, except their thermal camera is used to detect drunk people instead of contagious people.

Use Gunnar Glasses to Reduce the Strain Post-Processing Puts On Your Eyes

Since launching back in 2007, Gunnar glasses have received a considerable amount of attention in the tech world for their ability to combat computer vision syndrome (CVS). If you spend hours upon hours every day staring at your computer monitor while post-processing your photographs, you might have experienced the symptoms of CVS, which include eye fatigue, visual stress, irritation, burning, tearing, and dryness.

Nokia Caught Faking PureView Floating Lens Stabilization in Promo Video

This promo video for Nokia's new "floating lens" image stabilization technology is causing a lot of discussion... and not for reasons Nokia should be proud about. After we included the video in a post today about the Lumia 920's PureView camera, commenters pointed us to a post over on The Verge revealing that the video was faked.

Nokia’s Lumia 920 Shows that PureView Isn’t About the Megapixels

After Nokia unleashed its 41-megapixel 808 PureView phone back in February, most people thought that it would set the bar for future phones branded with the PureView monkier. "PureView" came to mean, "a ridiculous number of megapixels in a phone camera." Turns out that's not the case.

The company unveiled its new Lumia 920 phone today, which also carries the PureView name. It features a much more modest 8-megapixel camera, showing that PureView isn't about the megapixels after all.

Beautiful Satellite Photos Showing Fractal Patterns on the Face of the Earth

Fractal-like patterns are found widely in nature, "in phenomena including clouds, river networks, geologic fault lines, mountains, coastlines, animal coloration, snow flakes, crystals blood vessel branching, ocean waves and many others." The fact that it appears on a large scale in geographical formations means that many of these beautiful patterns can be captured as photographs from space.

Comic: The Fortune 500 in the Year 2030

DOGHOUSEDIARIES created this humorous glimpse into what the Fortune 500 company list will look like 18 years from now, in the year 2030. We see that "Undo Instagram Filters Inc." leads the pack with $2.88 trillion in annual revenue.

PlayMemories Teaser Site Offers Glimpse into What Sony Camera Apps Will Be Like

We're in the year of the camera's app. Not the camera app, which you use on your phone, but the camera's app, which is found on your camera. A boatload of new cameras this year will have Internet connectivity and app support built right in, giving photographers access to all kinds of custom features and functions that weren't easily available in the old age of cameras.

While Android is one of the big operating systems manufacturers have gravitated towards, Sony has decided to go the Sony way and make its system proprietary. Instead of running Android, the Sony NEX-5R and the NEX-6 will offer apps through the PlayMemories ecosystem.

Male and Female Photographers See the World Differently

If you think male and female photographers sometimes have very different styles, the reason might go beyond their tastes and approaches to shooting. Men and women see the world differently -- literally. A new study by vision researchers have found that the two genders have different ways of collecting visual information.

According to the findings, men are more sensitive to moving objects and seeing small details, while women tend to be sharper in seeing color changes.

Casio QV-10: The First Digital Camera that Offered an LCD Screen and Live View

Did you know that LCD screens and live view didn't arrive until a number of years after digital cameras hit the market? The first consumer digital camera that featured those technologies was the Casio QV-10 (seen above), which hit store shelves in 1995. However, the screen was purely for framing shots, not for eyeballing exposure, and it took roughly 10 years for live view as we know it to become ubiquitous.

Man Nearly Earns a Darwin Award Trying to Capture the Perfect Racing Photo

Photographers sometimes put themselves in harms way in order to capture the perfect shot, but there's a fine line between taking calculated risks and foolishly putting your life in danger. This 16-second-long video clip shows a guy doing the latter, nearly earning himself a Darwin Award while trying to photograph drifting cars at the Karpacz 2012 races in Poland.

12.5 Years of Self-Portraits by Noah Kalina in 7.5 Minutes

On August 27, 2006, photographer Noah Kalina uploaded a highly influential video to YouTube. Titled everyday, the video was a time-lapse spanning six years of self-portraits showing Kalina staring expressionlessly into the camera. The video has since amassed tens of millions of views, and has spawned countless copycat projects and videos.

Luckily for the Internet, Noah has kept up his daily picture taking, and today he uploaded an updated version of the video spanning 12 years and 5 months. It contains over 4500 daily portraits and runs a little less than 8 minutes in length. This translates to roughly 10 frames every second, and 1 month every three seconds.

Interview with Mike Lerner, Justin Bieber’s Concert Photographer

Mike Lerner is a freelance photographer who has worked with some of the music industries hottest stars. He is currently Justin Bieber's official concert photographer. Visit his website here.

PetaPixel: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Mike Lerner: I'm 27 years old and based out of Brooklyn, NY. I was born and raised on Long Island. I have been photographing professionally for about 2 years now, but started my interest in photography roughly 5 years ago.

The Macbook Air as a Concert Camera

Redditor bottleface was watching the live stream of Jay-Z's first annual "Budweiser Made in America" festival this past weekend, when something caught his eye. One of the concert goers standing in the front rows had made a pretty unique camera choice: a Macbook Air. While the fans around him held up smartphones to snap photos and record videos, the Macbookographer was proudly holding up his laptop with the FaceTime camera pointed at the performance.

$150 Open-Source Attachment Turns the iPhone into a Thermal Imaging Camera

Modder Andy Rawson needed an easy way to find air leaks in his 100-year-old house in order to improve its energy efficiency. Not wanting to spend thousands of dollars on a thermal imaging camera, he decided to go the DIY route. He built a box containing a 64-zone temperature sensor, and managed to connect the device to his iPhone via the dock. By overlaying the temperature data onto the iPhone's camera display, the $150 attachment instantly turns the iPhone into a cheap thermal imaging camera.

Use “Focus Peaking” in Photoshop to Select In-Focus Areas of a Photo

Last week, we wrote about an emerging digital camera feature called "focus peaking", which lets users easily focus lenses through live view by using colorful pixels to highlight in-focus areas. Photographer Karel Donk wanted the same feature in Photoshop, which doesn't currently offer it, so he decided to create it himself.