You can expect a bunch of camera and gear announcements to go live ahead of CES, and breaking the ice for all of the other companies is Samsung, who today officially released the much rumored and speculated about NX30 Compact System Camera.
Uh-oh... this isn't good. Just as Snapchat's star seemed like it would continue rising indefinitely, the company has suffered a massive setback in the form of an information leak of massive proportions. Taking advantage of a recently-revealed vulnerability, hackers were able to pull 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers from the service and publish them online for the whole world to see.
Turns out you may not have to be stupid enough to post incriminating evidence on Instagram to get busted via photo in the near future. A pair of British researchers are working on a way to collect identifiable images from the reflections of people captured on a photo subject's eyeball.
The camera industry is turning into a two-tier market, with Canon, Nikon and Sony DSLRs at the top, smartphones at the bottom and nothing in the middle, according to a recent Reuters report that finds little traction for mid-tier camera makers counting on mirrorless to save the day.
#اینستاگرم فیلتر شد - #ایران #فیلترینگ #iran @ListenToUs @HassanRouhani pic.twitter.com/NnIDry4jsf— Soheil Gonzalez (@soheilr7) December 28, 2013
In most countries around the world, it's taken for granted that if you'd like to share a photo of your lunch or cat (even if, just maybe, you shouldn't) Instagram is ready and able to help you accomplish your goal. Of course, that's not true everywhere, as the people of Iran found out yesterday.
Well, if you're gonna put a portrait of your mug on Instagram for the whole world to see, this is the way to do it. Taken from outside the ISS during one of the two spacewalks required to replace a faulty water pump, this selfie-like portrait (it is NOT a selfie, contrary to just about every headline you'll read) was uploaded to NASA's Instagram account yesterday.
A few days back, the folks over at Egami spotted a new Canon PowerShot patent that, unlike most, piqued many photographers' interest. That's because this patent seems to show plans for a 100x (or rather almost 100x) superzoom camera.
A few days ago, we shared the tragic news Reuters freelancer Molhem Barakat, who some were claiming was as young as 17-years-old, had been killed while photographing a battle in Syria. Since then, Reuters ethics and business practices have been called into question by an outraged journalistic community that has even gone so far as to start a Change.org petition demanding that the news organization take responsibility for the young boy's murder.
The much-anticipated 150-600mm f/5-6.3 lens from Tamron, which replaces its current 200-500mm, has officially gotten a US …
The popularity of Instagram as a place where you can buy or sell goods (both legal and otherwise) is well-established, but we were still surprised to find out that Leica Brazil has begun selling one of its cameras straight through the photo sharing site.
Olympus' decision to put all its chips on the mirrorless market seems to be paying off, with the once-troubled company finally poised to register a profit next year after several quarters of losses.
Many of you are familiar with the website PhotoStealers, which acts as "a wall of shame... dedicated to photographers that feel that it's okay to steal others work and post it as their own." Photo theft is expertly weeded out and exposed by the site's creator, who has taken on some big names including Jasmine Star and Doug Gordon.
The most recent PhotoStealers post, however, might reach even more epic proportions than the Star/Gordon shame-fest. It involves one Christopher Jones of CJ Photography and, before long, might involve a defamation lawsuit as well.
Snapchat, famous for dealing with the problem of rising attention spans by whittling the life of a photo down to 10 seconds, has gotten a little more time-friendly with an update that includes a limited option for re-viewing images later.
Just incase @29_JL @hullcityteam your not sure the ball is the yellow thing.... not the £6k camera (photo al walter) pic.twitter.com/op6zGrUBVX— Richard Heathcote (@rheathcote) December 21, 2013
Professional sports photographers know their equipment is always at risk, but British Getty Images shooter Richard Heathcote was still surprised and more than a bit miffed when his DSLR bit the dust at Saturday's Hull-vs.-West Bromwich Premiere League soccer match.
A young photographer who was freelancing for news agency Reuters chronicling the ongoing clash between rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in Syria was killed Friday while covering a battle at a hospital in Aleppo.
There are all sorts of statistics we can look up to tell us how the photography industry is doing and whether or not smartphones really are going to steamroll the market (spoiler alert: it's not as bad as some make it out to be). One source of information that probably doesn't cross your mind, however, is Amazon's Most Wished For lists.
Where statistics on cameras shipped give us an idea of what the companies want, Amazon's list gives us a glimpse of what the customers want, which might just be a good indicator of how the big players in the industry are really doing.
Those who see iPhoneography as some kind of barbarian invasion may want to give their DSLRs an extra hug after hearing this: The venerable British Journal of Photography has launched a new e-magazine all about smartphone photography and available only as an iPhone app.
News flash: You can't believe everything you see on Twitter. We know, we were shocked too.
Such was the case with this striking sepia-toned image that started lighting up the mediasphere yesterday billed as "the Earliest Photograph Taken of New York City - Broadway, May 1850." (And immediately started attracting comments in the vein of: "And they haven't fixed the potholes since!")
You think 41 megapixels is a lot? Try 1000 megapixels! That's how much resolution the camera attached to the ESA's Gaia satellite is packing; a satellite that, as of yesterday, has left the Earth in its quest to photograph things that have never been photographed before at a resolution as of yet unheard of in space photography.
Yesterday night, Yahoo! took yet another step forward in the Flickr renaissance, although we doubt all photographers will see it this way. In a bid to make the service more share-friendly, Yahoo! has introduced new, cleaner embedding capability to the photo sharing site.
Fans of Sony's QX10 and QX100 lens cameras -- you know, the ones that use your smartphone as a controller/LCD but pack all of the important bits in an external unit -- have reason to rejoice today, because it looks like there's a major update coming to both versions.
One of the most popular camera apps on iOS is Camera+. In fact, it's so popular it currently ranks at #33 on Apple's top paid apps chart. But that number is likely to jump after today, because version 5.0 has just been released, and this update is a big one.
It's common knowledge that the Giottos Rocket Blowers and the TSA don't get along. In the past we've told you to just leave it at home unless you want it confiscated with no more reason than "it looks like a bomb." But the reason photographer and Canon Rumors forum user Surapon got was a whole lot more entertaining than that.
One of the common complaints people hesitant to switch to mirrorless systems have is that there just isn't enough glass for this that or the other mount. Micro Four Thirds cameras don't really suffer from this problem, but proprietary mounts like Sony's E-Mount (especially full-frame) and Fuji's X-Mount certainly don't offer the kind of selection you get from Canon or Nikon.
The good news is, they're catching up. And a great case in point is the Fuji X-Mount 10-24mm f/4 lens announced today.
Being "journalists" more or less restricted to "facts," we can only look with awe and envy at New Camera News: a blog that tells the truth about the photography industry by making up witty, insider satire in the mode of The Onion
Rejoice, all ye illustrators and designers, at least if your work involves antiquarian subjects. The British Library has just posted more than a million copyright-free images to its Flickr photostream, and the pickings are choice if you need to illustrate anything from phrenology to 17th century geological theories.
(Private Video -- Use password "stolen")
Often there's a fine line between inspiration and theft. But watching side-by-side comparisons of wedding workshops conducted by videographers Adam Forgione and Rob Adams, it's hard not to conclude there's wholesale plagiarism going on.
Admittedly, it's not last-minute Christmas shopping until 10 minutes after the stores close on Christmas Eve, but if you plan to order your photography gifts online, you might want to get on that so you're sure they arrive in time for the big day.
Then again, there are benefits to having waited this long. Namely: we just got an email from B&H Photo about some awesome discounts that may have you tempted even if you've already finished gift shopping.
Last week's memorial for Nelson Mandela had more than its share of media moments, from the fake sign language interpreter to the handshake heard 'round the world. But nothing caught on quite as tenaciously or curiously as what we'll dub "The Great Obama Selfie Beatdown."
Throwable camera balls and their ilk might be all shiny and cool, but what if you want to grab high-quality 360-degree images with the camera you already have in your bag?
Enter Eye Mirror, a startup launched by U.K. inventors Dan Burton and Thomas Seidl, whose namesake product attaches to just about any camera and allows it to shoot 360-degree panoramas and videos.
Lenstag's stated goal is to put a stop to camera and lens theft, and for that reason alone photographers love them. The service is basically an online registry where you can securely document all of the gear you own and, in the event the unthinkable happens, report it as stolen and make it much more difficult for the thieves to sell that piece of gear.
But Lenstag creator Trevor Sehrer wasn't done when he debuted the website -- which you can learn a lot more about here. Last week Lenstag took another step towards the company goal when it released brand new iOS and Android apps.
This was NOT a good week for moronic criminals with access to Instagram. After posting a bunch of ill-advised selfies on the photo sharing site, a Florida teenager now finds himself behind bars and facing 142 felony counts thanks to his oversharing habit.
Every time we decide to post something about Instagram, we go through a bit of an internal dilemma. On the one hand, it's the most popular photo sharing app in the world, and many photographers have used it to great effect -- for those reasons alone we can't exactly ignore it. On the other hand, a solid percentage, perhaps even a majority, of you guys hate the app with a passion that defies our collective vocabulary to describe.
Speed freaks (at least where lenses are concerned) who love their mirrorless camera get ready to celebrate, because there's a new super-fast lens on the market that is claiming the title of "fastest lens in the world for mirrorless systems" -- the Ibelux 40mm f/0.85.
What's that? The ZEISS 55mm f/1.4 Otus haunts your dreams when it's not keeping you up wondering how you're going to sell a kidney on the black market to afford it? Well then, you might want to ignore this post, because there's another Otus confirmed for 2014!
Today was the day of the mystery Instagram event that had many a tech site speculating about what the Facebook-owned image sharing giant would announce. A couple of sources were close, but there's no longer any need to speculate because Instagram has let the cat out of the bag, and that cat's name is Instagram Direct.
Already live as I write this, Instagram Direct is a new service that will allow users to send direct messages complete with text and either photos or videos to a select group of people, rather than sharing them with your entire follower base.
While cover a fast food workers strike at the National Air and Space Museum last week, photographer Kristoffer Tripplaar was forcefully brought down by no less than three security guards when he accidentally bumped into one of them in an attempt to protect his equipment.
The tech world is full of 'wars,' all of them over the attention of that flighty creature known as 'the consumer.' And one of the wars being raged most furiously is between the major social networks: the established behemoths Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; that stubborn network loved by photogs, Google+; and the new kid on the block that has everybody's undergarments in a bunch: Snapchat.
Well, Facebook has had its go at stealing some of Snapchat's market (both literally and through acquisition) and has been ultimately unsuccessful on all counts. Now it's Twitter's turn.
If you're shopping for a young person who'd benefit from learning a little more about the principles of photography, you may want to consider the LAST Camera: a build-it-yourself 35mm film camera that could well outfreak Lomography for quirky build and artfully distressed images.
If you've followed PetaPixel even just the last month, you might have noticed that Adobe extended its Photoshop Photography Program (also referred to as the Photography Bundle) to people regardless of whether or not they own a previous version of Photoshop not once, not twice, but three times.
That is: this special promotion that allowed everyone to sign up was supposed to end on the 2nd... then on the 8th... and now is extended all the way to the end of the year. And while our you guys have come up with all manner of reasons in the comments as to why Adobe might be doing this, a new survey reveals the real reason: it's working really well.
Here's something that both photographers and the typical millennial have to look forward to in old age: Your memory is going to suck because of all the photos you took when you should have been paying attention to what was happening around you.
That's the upshot of a new psychological study that finds you can have a good photographic record of an event or a good memory, but not both.
A late-breaking holiday shopping tip: If someone offers you a screamingly good deal on a Leica Summilux-C movie lens, be very suspicious. That's because there's currently $500,000 worth of stolen gear floating around the black market -- including a $200K set of Summilux-C lenses -- that was taken off the set of a Los Angeles film shoot..
It's been a little while since we've seen fit to report on a rumor. Most of what has passed through the rumor mill of late has either not been significant enough, or only worth linking out to. This news, however, caught our eye: it seems Sony is working on a 'non-Bayer' sensor that might appear in cameras as early as late 2015.
GoPro cameras may be ready to migrate from helmets to film schools thanks to the Ribcage, an in-development assembly that allows the tiny action cams to be outfitted with interchangeable lenses.
It seems the Nikon engineers had some tricks up their sleeves when they put the D4 sensor inside the new Nikon Df, because while the sensor earned identical scores to the D4 in almost every category when DxOMark put it through its paces, the Df actually BEAT the D4 in the "low-light ISO" category.
But more than that, it beat EVERYBODY in that category, narrowly edging out the previous champion D3s to claim the number one low-light spot among DxOMark's rankings.
Backlighting can be all moody and subtle, but you can seldom go wrong with full-on, straight-behind illumination. Especially if your subject is the planet on which your family, friends and all of humanity happens to reside.
That's what the trio of Apollo 17 astronauts -- and soon, the whole world -- discovered 41 years and two days ago today. Navigating towards the moon on Dec. 7, 1972, the spacecraft had the sun behind it, providing a rare, fully illuminated view of the Earth.
A lot of film people have deep connections to Super 8 cameras, once the medium of choice for everyone from film school students to porn directors. But it's getting harder and harder to actually use the things, as stocks of film cartridges dwindle.
To the rescue comes Nolab, a project to build a digital adapter that will allow any Super 8 camera to shoot 720p HD video.
Nikon recently released a firmware update for its D3100, D3200, D5100, D5200, and P7700 cameras that maximized battery performance and allowed the camera to more accurately tell you how much charge you have left. But it seems there was an unintended (or maybe not so unintended) side-effect: third party batteries no longer work.
There are a lot of photo book makers out there -- even Flicker joined the fray not too long ago -- but one company that we've been really impressed with ever since it debuted is Mosaic, and now, Android users can take advantage of the service as well!
A couple of weeks ago, we told you that Adobe was extending its special $10/month Photoshop Photography Program (better known around these parts as the 'Photography Bundle') to everybody, even if they didn't own a previous copy of Photoshop.
That deal was supposed to end on December 2nd but, thanks to widespread positive response from photographers, they've decided to extend the deadline to December 8th!