If you’re a fan of Fujifilm’s X100 and X10, then you might want to brace yourself: the company’s next camera might be the one mirrorless camera to rule them all. Fujifilm’s upcoming mirrorless camera will likely have the same sleek styling as the X100, but with one colossal difference: a revolutionary new “organic sensor”. Fuji has been developing the technology for years now, and the new camera — supposedly named the Fujifilm LX — is rumored to be the first to pack the sensor. Read the rest of this entry »
Photographer Yasuaki Segawa captured this incredible photograph of the Milky Way rising above the ocean, as seen from Taketomi Island, Japan. In addition to the uber-sharp stars, reflections of two bright stars can be seen in the waters. Segawa used a Canon 5D Mark II with a 24mm f/1.4 lens, and composited 5 separate photos to make this image (allowing him to expose the sky and the foreground separately). He also compensated for star rotation to sharpen the sky and prevent star trails. A higher-res version can be found here.
Apparently Annie Leibovitz is a proponent of the idea that the best camera is the one you have with you. When asked by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams about her camera recommendation to friends, the famed portrait photographer made a surprising pick: the iPhone. Read the rest of this entry »
This video was shot by a German film crew in the early 1980s, and shows American street photographer Garry Winogrand at work. Although he died of bladder cancer at age 56, his photographic output during his lifetime was enormous, even compared to other photographers:
Consider this: at his death, Winogrand left behind 2500 undeveloped rolls of 36-exposure 35mm film (mostly Tri-X), 6,500 rolls of film that had been developed but not contact-printed–not to mention 300 apparently untouched, unedited 35mm contact sheets.
Do the math. Conservatively, that’s at least 300,000 pictures – equal to at least two life’s work for anyone else–that Winogrand took but never even saw, so busy he already had been photographing the world around him. [#]
That explains why Winogrand is able to load new film into his Leica so effortlessly while talking to the camera — he could probably do it in his sleep.
The Apesnake Photobooth is a novel photobooth triggered by facial expressions. Created by Che-Wei Wang & David Penuela, it detects the eyes and mouth of the subject and triggers the shutter on a Canon 1000D when they’re found to match a desired expression (they chose the Manwolf face). The booth also automatically uploads photographs to a dedicated Facebook page. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re ever sitting down in a public place with your camera bag, having it close by isn’t enough to protect it from theft — you need to make sure it can’t be easily snatched. Tom Bird of the UK learned this the hard way: he was at a pub recently when his camera bag suddenly disappeared. It’s contents? Just thousands of dollars worth of gear including a Canon 5D Mark II, a 24-70mm f/2.8, a 50mm f/1.2, a 16-35mm f/2.8 and a laptop. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’ve been waiting to upgrade Photoshop CS3 or CS4 to CS6 when it’s released sometime next year, here’s some bad news: the upgrade price won’t apply to you. Starting with CS6, Adobe will be enforcing a new upgrade policy:
[...] we are changing our policy for perpetual license customers. In order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions). If our customers are not yet on those versions, we’re offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011 which will qualify them for upgrade pricing when we release CS6.
The existing policy is that customers with software from three versions back quality for upgrade pricing. For example, owners of CS2, CS3, and CS4 and upgrade to CS5. Buying the full version of Photoshop CS5 right now costs nearly $500, while the upgrade is only priced at ~$150.
Holga is selling an iPhone Lens Filter Kit that packs 9 separate “retro” filters into a single accessory using a rotary dial. While the design itself is pretty clever, the resulting photographs are a bit… strange. They sell for $25 over in the Holga store.
You probably know that stopping down (i.e. increasing your f-stop number) can increase the sharpness of your subject, but how much should you stop down to boost resolution without losing that nice, creamy bokeh? Roger Cicala did some research on this question and writes:
For those lenses that do benefit, stopping down just to f/2.0 provides the majority of resolution improvement. The difference between wide open and f/2.0 is generally much greater than the difference between f/2.0 and the maximum resolution.
Getting the edges and corners sharp requires stopping down to at least f/4 for most wide-aperture primes, and some really need f/5.6. Stopping down to f/2.8 may maximize center sharpness but often makes only a slight difference in the corners, at least on a full-frame camera.
None of the lenses performed any better after f/5.6 (for the center) or f/8 for the corners. Most were clearly getting softer at f/11.
If you’re using a wide-aperture lens, stopping down to just f/2.0 will reap big gains in sharpness while still keeping the depth-of-field narrow. Furthermore, for some lenses you don’t really even need to worry about stopping down for sharpness, since it hasn’t a relatively negligible effect on the outcome.
