Hopefully, you know me for my level-headed and impartial analysis of the photography business. Forget that. Today I’m going to go off on someone who is not only doing a disservice to the industry that he purports to serve, he’s actively working to destroy it. In the words of The Dude (from The Big Lebowski): “This aggression will not stand!”
It seems we're entering into the final chapter of the Kodak Bankruptcy epic. After filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy in January of 2012, the ex-camera company's final plan to exit bankruptcy received court approval on Monday. What emerges from the ashes, however, will be a company that does zero business with consumers directly.
One of the downsides to living in an uber-connected digital world is the ease with which intellectual property can be stolen. Whichever bogus excuse they choose to use, many people seem less than concerned when it comes to stealing someone's photography and claiming it as their own these days.
There's a new compact camera on the block, only this one isn't made by Sony or Samsung or Nikon or any of the other brands you might expect to see scrawled across the front of the device. No, this one is made by a little-known Swedish lifestyle company called theQ, and its all-new theQ Camera comes touting the self-assigned title of "world's first social camera."
Back when Instagram first came on the scene -- you know, before Facebook paid 735 Million dollars to snatch the company up before Twitter could get its hands on it -- the photo sharing app actually encouraged connected apps to use the terms "insta" and "gram" in their names. Thus were born services like Statigram, Webstagram, Luxogram and more.
Last Thursday, we told you about the newest anti-paparazzi bill to hit the California State Assembly. Focused on expanding the definition of harassment, SB 606 was drafted for the specific purpose of protecting the children of celebrities -- some hollywood actresses have already spoken out in support of the bill.
Last week, we reported on a rumor that Canon has been investing heavily in a major European medium format camera manufacturer. Some believe the company to be Phase One.
Sob alert: Fashion/celebrity photographer Terry Richardson says he's likely to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars due to a recent ruling in a suit against Lady Gaga.
It seems like new and improved camera gear pops up every couple of weeks these days, leading to an endless cycle of discover, buy, sell and repeat. Well, if you're the kind of person who always wants to have the newest gear around, and you're constantly selling off your old gear on eBay to make it happen, the website has just officially announced a new feature that will make your life much easier.
When the words "Getty" and "Free" make their way into the same sentence -- as they have a few times before -- photographers tend to tense up before they read on. But when we say that the Getty Museum is sharing 4,600 images for free, there's no need to fret.
Actresses Halle Berry and Jennifer Garner testified before the California Legislature on Tuesday in support of an anti-paparazzi bill that would ban taking pictures of children without their parents' written consent.
Researchers at a California company specializing in high-speed imaging equipment have developed a camera add-on capable of freezing objects traveling at up to 7,500 miles per hour -- that's almost 10 times the speed of sound.
Ever since June of 2011, NASA has had cause to retire the photographic equipment it used to capture shuttle launches because, well, they don't plan on launching any more shuttles. But before that decision was made, it looks like NASA was finally giving digital photographic equipment a chance to oust the analog cameras they had always used in the past.
When the term model is thrown around, there's a fairly typical image that probably comes to mind for most people. In the male department, six-pack abs or a clean-cut look might fit the bill. And the female department more often than not involves the descriptors tall and slender.
Early last month, just days after Carl Zeiss rebranded itself simply as "ZEISS," Pentax Ricoh announced that it would be dropping the Pentax from its name, reverting the "Pentax" name to brand status. Now that people have had a month to let that news sink in, Ricoh is making the first major post-name-change alterations by rebranding the Pentax websites and social network accounts.
In yet another triumph for the "Look, it moves!" school of photography, supermodel Tyra Banks has signed on as a supporter of cinemagraph maker Flixel Photos.
Smartphones might be bludgeoning the point-and-shoot market, and wearable computers like Google Glass may someday return the favor, but there's a new gadget picking up steam that could help the smartphone retain superiority. We're talking about the smartwatch, and if the new Hyetis Crossbow is any indication, smartwatches aren't playing around when it comes to photography.
Ever since Lytro caused a stir by releasing the world's first consumer light field camera almost two years ago, the company has been somewhat quiet. With the exception of a few updates in November of last year and an iOS app released a couple of months ago, most of the stories we've covered with "Lytro" in the title had to do with competitors working on Lytro-like features. All of that is about to change, however, in 2014.
The idea that Canon would take the leap into medium format has been tossed around as both rumor and joke. Last August, we were told to expect a Canon Medium Format DSLR at Photokina -- obviously that rumor didn't pan out. Eight months later, photographer Krik Tuck made an April Fools announcement along the same lines.
There is no shortage of apps available to you if you'd like to create a photo book on your smartphone or tablet computer (apps like Mosaic immediately come to mind). But one of the big guys just entered the market.
There seems to be a growing desire among the networks to give sports fans the absolute best angle of the action when they're watching a game on TV, but what angle is that? …
Imagine, if you will, a secret week-long conclave held in a trendy Northwestern city renowned for its adherence to a strict social order. The walls of the luxuriously appointed host establishment are covered with hundreds of photographs immortalizing moments in the glorious lives of supreme leaders and other luminaries past and present.
You do not have to be a professional photographer to profit from selling your photos for use online, on mobile devices, and traditional publications. Just ask Google. Starting with the big names like APImages, Reuters, Sipa Images, Getty Images, Corbis, Fine Art American, Wireimage, Jupitermedia, Shutterstock, Depositphotos, Istockphotos, Veer, Dreamstime, and seemingly not finding a final search result -- the market has ballooned. Or you can also ask Corbis.
Yahoo is getting serious about making sure Flickr thrives: the company has hired former Google executive Bernardo Hernández to lead the popular photo sharing service. Hernández announced the news today through his Twitter account.
There's a slight mystery of sorts taking place in the stock photo community at this time. Stock photo service stock.xchng, reachable at sxc.hu, has been down for days now without reasonable explanation. The website is run by HAAP Media Ltd., a Getty Images subsidiary based in Hungary, and offers free-to-use images and illustrations to the masses.
We've featured build-it-yourself cameras before, but those DIY products aren't often suitable for children. One in particular was made entirely from 3D-printed parts, a DIY SLR for crafty adults that would be both fun and educational to make.
In the space of a few days, two major newspapers have been sold from their corporate entities to billionaires. On August 3, The New York Times Co agreed to sell The Boston Globe to John Henry, the owner of the Boston Red Sox, for a pittance of $70M. And on August 5, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos agreed to buy the Washington Post for $250M.
It works for politics, so why not consumer electronics? Nokia has decided to go negative with it's latest ad campaign, denigrating the quality of the iPhone 5 camera while lauding the photo features in the Nokia Lumia 925.
UK lighting manufacturer Rotolight recently earned itself a good bit of bad press when the company allegedly used a DMCA notice to get an unfavorable video review taken down by Vimeo, sparking free speech outrage within the photographic community.
A British group working to preserve the work of influential 19th-century photographer William Henry Fox Talbot has discovered previously unseen work by the innovator.
GoPro just released a new version of its app that has users everywhere excited at the possibilities. Everything from a live feed, to total control over settings, to social sharing capabilities have been built right in to really enhance the GoPro Hero experience.
The launch of Android 4.2 in October of last year brought with it the ability to create special 360° panoramas called "Photo Spheres." But as cool as these panoramas were, there was no real way to share them with the exception of a widget Google released a few months back.
Italian photography company Ferrania is ready to start making film again, years after giving up its primary business as a lost cause.
According to a report in today's Wall Street Journal, the market is not looking great for digital cameras. The report states that as the popularity of smartphones has increased, sales of digital cameras have decreased.
It would appear as if popular photo sharing service Instagram is potentially blocking the uploading of images through third-party app clients, such as Instance for Windows Phone 8, according to reports surfacing on the web.
As higher resolution photography (and photography in general) has become ubiquitous, photo sharing and storage websites have had to adjust to keep up. From increasing storage capacity and file-size limitations to launching "spectacular" redesigns that offer beautiful browsing experiences, everybody is adjusting in their own way.
While smartphones have, especially of late, taken to blurring the lines between camera and phone, "smartcameras" like Samsung's Galaxy Camera flipped the idea on its head by putting a phone's operating system on a camera rather than the other way around.
When Yahoo! launched the new Flickr at the end of May, not every part of the website got the "spectacular" treatment. One of the sections of the site that has been lagging behind the rest were the Groups pages, and Flickr has finally decided to bring them up to speed.
A couple of days ago, we shared the news that NBC's Sunday Night Football was going to show you pro football like you've never seen it before: in bullet time. Details were a bit thin, but it looked like a 24-camera bullet time rig would be installed in each end zone, providing Matrix-like replays that would do their best to blow your mind.
A few months ago, an Apple commercial touted the iPhone as "the world's most popular camera." Nokia's new ad for the Lumia 1020 takes a less statistical approach: the company is admitting that the 41-megapixel behemoth is first a camera, and then a phone.
Panasonic is having a hard time keeping a lid on its upcoming rangefinder-styled GX7 Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera. Just last week, the first images and a list of specs leaked through an online photo magazine, and now we have a full set of specs and product shots to look at.
It's not uncommon for photography companies to launch strange teaser campaigns that get folks wondering what the company has up its sleeve. In the past, we've seen everything from bags of walnuts to mysteriously worded ads. The latest from Sigma falls into the second category, and has the entire photographic community buzzing with speculation and excitement.
Sunday Night Football is about to get a lot more fun to watch. Not even two months after we shared the news that the folks over at NHK had put together a robotic bullet time rig that could shoot 360° slow-motion replays, NBC has announced its plan to bring matrix-style replays to the world of pro football.
If you're an active participant in the stock photography industry, you've likely heard of the big rumblings as of late. Earlier this month, bestselling microstock photographer Yuri Arcurs announced both a $1.2 million investment in Scoopshot (a crowdsourced photo app) and a new exclusivity agreement with Getty Images/iStockphoto.
About a week ago, the first images of Hasselblad's upcoming compact camera, the Stellar, leaked onto the Internet amongst rumors that it would essentially be a Sony RX100 with some very exotic housing materials and a much steeper price tag. Basically, people were thinking the RX100 would be to the Stellar what the NEX-7 was to the Lunar.
Earlier this month, we told you that Panasonic was planning to jump onto the retro-style bandwagon sometime in August with the release of its GX7 Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera.
In 2003, my first "Mastering Digital Printing" book came out. My goal was to create an in-depth reference to the new world of digital printing for photography and fine art. I had a sense that there was a need, especially by photographers, for good information about "this new way to print" images (digitally). I guess I was right because the book was an instant success; it was actually in the Top 5 on Amazon Books jockeying with John Grisham and Michael Crichton in sales ranks for a short while.
LensRentals is at the height of its popularity and still growing. About a week ago, we shared some stats that more than proved this, showing how a company started by one man and $5,500 dollars in 2006 is now a 42 person operation on track to bring in $13 million this year.
Recently, I was looking through a photo gallery of a potential new hire and was a bit dismayed by her use of a particular photo enhancement editing choice. All of her photos were very overly processed with multiple styles, much like the photo below. She did have a wonderful eye, and her composition and posing were really lovely. But her processing choices really distracted from the beauty of her work. The people in her photos didn’t look real.
About a week ago, the stock photography website Dreamstime got in touch with us to offer us some exclusive information. Having recently added a "search-by-camera" feature, they had compiled a huge amount of statistical data on the most popular cameras being used by their 150,000+ contributing photographers.
