cool

Researchers at Stanford University want to give your drone superpowers. Okay maybe not superpowers, but they have developed a drone that can land on walls and ceilings, clinging there like a robotic insect.

Capturing the supersonic shockwaves of a fighter jet going faster than the speed of sound might seem like science fiction, but NASA actually captured this phenomenon on camera. Not only that, they did it by using a 150-year-old German photography technique.

We won't waste time hemming and hawing: this is just plain cool. Using a patented technology, Satellite Lab can move a light source around an object at 10,000 feet per second while capturing that same object in super slow motion, creating an effect we'll call "bullet time 2.0".

Kodak CEO Jeff Clarke is on a mission to bring film back, and his business card reflects that: it's literally a strip of 35mm film that has his information displayed on it.

While major art museums around the world are issuing bans on selfie sticks, there's one unusual museum in the Philippines that's continuing to encourage visitors to capture silly portraits with paintings. In fact, that's what the museum is all about.

Called Art in Island, the museum is full of creative paintings that are designed to act as 3D illusion photo backdrops for guests.

Jong Chool Do created this video showing some mesmerizing effects you can get …

Here's a neat idea you can try next time the seasons change. All it took to create the image above was a couple of months of dedication, a smartphone, and a bit of work in Photoshop. No special gear, and not that much in way of effort, but a pretty cool (if a bit over-saturated) final product.

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.

Never let anyone tell you to stop taking photos of your food... not because you should be proud of the habit, but because it might someday lead to an accidentally awesome photo like the one above: a wasp photobomb.

Got a few dozen spare DSLRs and fistful of startup capital? Then you, too, could get into the emerging field of 3D selfies, as pioneered by Texas photo studio Captured Dimensions.

Photographer Jordan Williams started the business a few years ago after becoming convinced there was more to 3D printing than making industrial prototypes and the like. He fashioned a 360-degree photo studio in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, outfitted with more than 60 DSLRs, all remoted-out for simultaneous shutter release.

Wildlife researchers now have a much clearer idea of how bats fly, thanks to the wicked-looking X-Ray video above that shows the animal's skeleton at work.

When Toronto-based photo enthusiast Alexander Kolomietz had a birthday party recently, he asked …

Seeing as the Voyager-1 spacecraft has been in the news recently, here's the story of a very special photograph that it took 23 years ago known as "The Pale Blue Dot".

In 1990, 13 years after Voyager-1 left Earth on its mission to visit two of the gas giants and their moons of our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn, one last command was sent to the spacecraft as suggested by Carl Sagan who was then part of the Voyager-1's imaging team. That instruction was to turn back around and take one last photo of our solar system before continuing on its epic journey away from the Sun and the planets.

Check out this DSLR Paparazzi lamp, created by Spanish design studio Monoculo Design Studio. It's a wooden hanging lamp that's shaped like a gigantic Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 camera lens.

Behold, the coolest photography-related toy we've seen so far this year: War Journalist: Battlefield Hero. It's a 1/6-scale Toymaster-brand action figure that lets kids play make believe with their very own conflict photographer!

For their project 24x360, Patrick Rochon, Timecode Lab, and Eric Paré combined a 360-degree "bullet time" rig with light painting and produced some pretty sweet results. The short teaser above shows some of the pieces they created.

Filmmaker Ian Gamester created this video of moments collected over the course of several years, inspired by artist David Hockney's photocollages, his famous "joiners."

You wouldn't think the world of instant film could learn much from the world of beer -- and on most counts you'd be right -- but in this particular case, a little bit of Coors inspiration may have played a role in The Impossible Projects new line of COOL Polaroid films. The specialty instant film, part of The Impossible Project's Spring 2012 line, are kept in a temperature-sensitive package. In order to maintain its shelf life, the packaging will warn you when you're storing it in too warm an environment by displaying the message "Keep Me Cool."

Here’s a super cool trick: instead of buying a special macro lens for your smart phone, simply use a …

After seeing the LEGO large format camera we featured last year, Norway-based photographer Carl-Frederic Salicath set out to create his own LEGO camera. Rather than go with large format, he decided to build a more complicated Rolleiflex-style twin-lens reflex camera that uses 120 film. Aside from LEGOs, he also used some matte ground glass, a mirror, and lenses taken from a binocular.

A week ago we published a tongue-in-cheek post on how to improve the quality of your Canon kit lens by painting a red ring around it. While that wasn't intended to be taken seriously, we were pointed to a Korean workshop named Park in Style that actually takes custom lens body work quite seriously. What you see above is a Canon 18-55mm kit lens that they disassembled, painted, and then reassembled to look like a Canon L lens!

Evan Sharboneau over at Photo Extremist shot this crazy photograph of “a room …

The New York Public Library has a massive collection of over 40,000 vintage stereographs (two photos taken from slightly different points of view). To properly share them with the world in 3D, the library has launched a new tool called the Stereogranimator. It lets you convert an old stereograph into either an animated 3D GIF (which uses "wiggle stereoscopy") or an anaglyph (the kind that requires special glasses).

Creating tiny planets by projecting panoramic photographs onto a sphere is something you've probably seen before, but Dutch photographer Wouter van Buuren creates his planets a bit differently. rather than shoot panoramas from the ground, van Buuren climbs to the top of towers, cranes, skyscrapers, and bridges and points his camera in every direction below. He then takes the resulting photographs and arranges them into compact worlds.

Here’s something that’ll blow your mind (sorry that it’s an ad): stare at the colored dots on this girl’s …

Chilean artist Diego Castillo Roa used a giant wall decal to turn this circular window into a camera lens …

Aviation photographer Justin de Reuck has an awesome job: rather than do photo …

Freelance photographer Bill Rhodes captured this X-Ray photograph that reveals what various pieces of camera equipment look like on the inside. There's lenses, a camera, a radio transmitter, remote shutter release, light modifiers, and batteries.

Check out these gigantic backlit Polaroid-style photographs, called Polaboys, by Jirko Bannas and …

These photos might look like they were computer generated, but they're actually unmodified photographs. Ron Brinkmann took 6 mirror tiles and made a box with them with the help of some duct tape. He then placed a camera inside and triggered shots using the timer.

Check out this incredible 360-degree video by northStudio360, titled "The Nimmo Bay Experience". They attached the camera(s) to the bottom of a helicopter, and flew through some incredibly beautiful landscapes. Simply click and drag to move the camera's direction.

Here's something you've probably never seen before: a white "L" version of the cheap Canon 50mm f/1.8 (AKA the "nifty fifty"). No, it's not an uber-rare and expensive special edition. It's a custom paint job by Clubsnap forum member nntenzo.

So this is how some photographers always manage to capture awesome action shots… Now if only Neo or Max …

The Image Fulgurator is a brilliant device created -- and patented -- by Berlin-based artist Julius von Bismarck. It's an optically triggered slave flash that fires through the back of a camera, projecting a message or image on the film through the lens -- basically, it's an optically triggered projector. What this allows von Bismarck to do is prank unsuspecting photographers by adding random pictures or words into their photographs whenever they use their camera's flash.

Here’s a strange (and extremely rare) piece of camera gear: the Leica Telephoto …

Here's a quick and easy tutorial that'll teach you a cool method of transferring a photo print (black and white or color) onto a block of wood.

Here’s a fun and creative idea that requires brains rather than a big budget: using an ordinary video-capable camera …

Cut Out + Keep member Myam made …

Flickr user Alex12Ga turned his Canon 5D Mark II into a DIY digital view camera by mounting a Novar-Anastigmat 75mm f/3.5 lens from 1949 with its original bellows. He mounted the bellows to his camera using an aluminum plate and an EOS mount ring that he salvaged from a broken Sigma lens.