The Leica R 600mm f/5 Apo-Telyt prototype lens has appeared on eBay with a hefty price tag of $230,000. We say "the" instead of "a" because only a single copy of this lens was ever made for the company's Apo-Telyt line -- lenses don't get rarer than this.
There's a sweet (and rare) deal going on today that many photographers may find beneficial: Amazon is discounting its Amazon Prime membership for one day only. It costs just $72 today through a special promotion, compared to the ordinary price tag of $99.
If you've been dying to get your own copy of the super rare Nikon Reflex-Nikkor 2000mm f/11 mirror lens, here's a prime opportunity to snag one: a copy of the lens has appeared on eBay, complete with a leather "lens cap" and a nice aluminum case for transporting the beast. The buy it now price is a cool $32,777.
Noted Nigerian photographer Chief S.O. Alonge was the very first indigenous photographer of the Royal Court of Benin in Nigeria, and for some five decades, he captured thousands of Kodak glass-plate negatives of the ritual, pageantry and regalia of the Nigerian obas (kings), their wives and retainers.
Now, these rarely seen images and the fascinating world they preserved are being pulled out of the archives of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American Art and shown to the world once more.
Six rare photographs of the Beatles from their Abbey Road album cover photo shoot are going up for auction, including the iconic shot that was chosen for the final cover.
Bellamy Hunt of Japan Camera Hunter recently stumbled across a very rare Leica IIIc Red Curtain Rangefinder -- rare because it comes complete with Nazi engravings on it. And though these Nazi symbols were not placed on the camera by Leica themselves -- the company actually helped Jews flee Nazi Germany during the Holocaust -- it's still a fascinating camera find.
The ultra-rare lens that B&H Photo dubbed "The Mother of All Telephoto Lenses", the Canon EF 1200mm f/5.6L USM Super-telephoto, has surfaced once more on the World Wide Web. And with enough money and upper body strength, this one-of-about-twenty behemoth of a lens could be all yours.
British wildlife photographer Chris Weston recently had one of the most interesting 'first time' GoPro experiences of anyone out there: upon setting the camera up for the very first time, it nearly got swallowed by a 500 lb grizzly bear.
For the first time ever, a meteor has been captured on camera falling through the sky after it has finished burning. And that's not all: the baseball-sized space rock nearly slammed into the man behind the camera.
When it comes to wildlife photography, the Snow Leopard is almost unicorn-like. No, it's not mythical, but it's almost as hard to capture one of these infamous "gray ghosts of the Himalayas" on camera as it is to track down a creature that doesn't actually exist.
Imagine, then, how amazed the people on a recent INDRI Ultimate Wildlife Tour were when they got to watch AND photograph a Snow Leopard making a successful kill -- a world's first.
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.
It's a good day at the World Wildlife Fund when one of your camera traps captures a photo so rare, you won't find another like it taken in the last 15 years. The photograph shows a "saola," an animal so rare it is more commonly known as the 'Asian Unicorn' and hasn't been photographed in the wild since 1998.
The last time we wrote about the Nikkor 2000mm f/11 C Reflex lens was in 2010 when a working version of the behemoth was up on eBay for the not-so-affordable price of $19,950. Given that information, how much would you pay for a broken, beat-up version of the same lens 3 years later? Well, someone on eBay thinks it's worth $25K.
Two days ago, the late great Robert Capa would have turned 100 years old. There was quite a bit of revelry surrounding what would have been the iconic photographer's centennial, but even though gallery openings and the like all paid homage to the great conflict photographer, one particular release is perhaps most special of all.
Thanks to an incredibly fortuitous set of circumstances, the International Center of Photography has managed to get its hands on and release a copy of an incredibly rare interview Mr. Capa gave back in October of 1947 -- affording anyone who didn't know him the first ever opportunity to hear his voice.
Iconic artist Andy Warhol is a legend in the arts community. The Andy Warhol Museum -- which contains a massive archive of his creations -- is actually the largest US museum dedicated to a single artist.
But one thing the museum doesn't have that you could -- assuming you have about $50K in spare change hidden under you couch cushions -- is Andy Warhol's personal SX-70 Polaroid Land Camera.
Want to capture images of a scene that's lit purely with candlelight? You can now rent a pair of Zeiss f/0.7 lenses -- two of the largest aperture lenses ever seen in the history of photography.
Check out this aurora photograph captured last Friday night by photographer Mike Hollingshead. See those small red squiggly lines in the sky? That's an extremely rare form of lightning called a sprite. This photograph is one of the only times a sprite and an aurora have been captured in the same frame.
At a public lecture in Pittsburgh in 1934, four hundred lucky students were privy to a lecture by Albert Einstein, in which the great man mathematically derived his famous mass-energy equivalence equation: E=mc2. What you see above is a photo from that lecture, and what is thought to be the only surviving photo that shows Einstein working on that derivation.
Edith Widder is one of the three scientists that managed to capture the first high-resolution video footage of an actual giant squid. And about a month ago, her TED talk describing how she and her team did it (embedded above) was finally posted online.
Almost 2 stories tall, you would think that something that massive would have already been photographed or video taped. But it was Widder's common-sense approach that would yield the groundbreaking footage. So, how did scientists manage to finally catch a giant squid on camera? One word: quietly.
Photographer Shannon Bileski of Signature Exposures captured this beautiful photograph last Friday at Patricia Beach in Canada. It shows a bright meteor streaking through a sky filled with the green glow of the aurora borealis.
Photographer Bertrand Kulik was standing at his window in Paris last week when he noticed something peculiar about the horizon. Although his view is ordinarily quite beautiful because of the Eiffel Tower dominating the cityscape, this time it had something he was treated with a bright and colorful horizon rainbow painted across the sky in the distance.
This past Sunday, there was a 2-hour-long police chase in Inglewood, California. A man named Jason Lee was watching …
Behold: a box set of Nikon prime lenses. This unique kit is a limited-edition item currently being sold by Nikon exclusively in certain European countries (it's available in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK). Inside the Nikon-branded aluminum case are three f/1.8 lenses: the 28mm, 50mm, and 85mm. Oh, and you get the manuals, lens hoods, and soft cases as well.
On the night of April 14th, 1912, the Titanic collided with a massive iceberg and sank, ending the lives of more than 1,000 people and becoming one of the deadliest maritime disasters in history. Now, one hundred years later, a photo that may the only surviving print showing that infamous chunk of ice is going up for auction. It's expected to fetch up to $10,000.
Back in May, a 1923 Leica O-Series camera became the most expensive camera on the planet after being sold for roughly $2.79 million at a WestLicht auction. That camera was a prototype camera, and just one of 25 made (only 12 of them exist today). If you're wondering what the most expensive non-prototype camera is, look no further than the latest WestLicht auction that was held earlier today. The Leica M3D seen above fetched a staggering €1.68 million, or roughly $2.18 million, becoming "the most expensive camera from a serial production ever."
A blacked-out New York City wasn't the only rare photo op that Hurricane Sandy left in her wake. NASA solar physicist David Hathaway captured the above photo in Huntsville, Alabama two days ago after seeing the strange rings surrounding the afternoon sun.
The Canon 50mm f/1.0 was the fastest SLR lens in production before it was discontinued in 2000 and replaced with the f/1.2. There aren't too many copies of this lens floating around on the used market, so photographers who want to use the ridiculous aperture it offers must pay a hefty premium in order to purchase one; the lenses commonly sell for two or three times the original retail value.
When reader Bryan Soderlind switched from film to digital a while back, he decided to splurge and go "all the way" by buying a 50mm f/1.0 for a little over $3,000 -- a relative bargain. The lens was in "impeccable shape" and was in focus even when using the razor sharp depth of field at f/1.0. Here are some of his thoughts on what it's like to use the lens, and some sample photos from his shoots.
Usain Bolt ran beyond the boundaries of sports and made headlines in the world of photography earlier this year at the London Olympics. After winning yet another gold in his 200m race, he ran over to Scandinavian newspaper photographer Jimmy Wixtröm, grabbed his Nikon D4, and began shooting some awesome photographs of what he was experiencing.
Wixtröm just sent us an email with some neat news: the famous D4 is now being auctioned with the proceeds going to charity.
Behold: one of the rarest photobooks in the world. What you're looking at is an exceedingly rare complete set of American photographer Edward S. Curtis' book The North American Indian. It contains 772 large-format photogravures on Japanese tissue, 111 signed plates, and 20 extra text volumes that contain an additional 1,505 photogravures, 4 maps, and 2 diagrams.
Swann Galleries will be auctioning it off on October 4, 2012 with an estimated price of $1,250,000 - $1,750,000. This figure, however, may end up being much lower than the actual price it'll sell for. A similar set of this photobook was auctioned by Christie's back in April. After giving that set an estimated price of $1,000,000 - $1,500,000, it ended up selling for a whopping $2,882,500.
Do you love the design of Apple products? Do you have infinitely deep pockets? If you said yes to both questions, then I have some good news for you.
At Leica's special event last night, after the new Leica M was announced, company owner Dr. Andreas Kaufmann revealed that they've got a very special limited edition version of the camera planned -- one that's designed by legendary Apple designer Sir Jonathan Ive.