More good news for photographers in the UK. A week after UK’s terror tsar called for the abolition of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, UK’s Crime Minister David Hanson has new statements assuring photographers that anti-terrorism legislation should not be used to hinder photography. He is quoted as saying,

I recently met with Austin Mitchell MP, members of the Parliamentary All Party Photography Group and representatives of the photographic press and the Royal Photographic Society to discuss the issue of counter terrorism powers and offences in relation to photography.

I welcomed the opportunity to reassure all those concerned with this issue that we have no intention of Section 44 or Section 58A being used to stop ordinary people taking photos or to curtail legitimate journalistic activity.

Guidance has been provided to all police forces advising that these powers and offences should not be used to stop innocent member of the public, tourists or responsible journalists from taking photographs.

These powers and offences are intended to help protect the public and those on the front line of our counter terrorism operations from terrorist attack. For the 58A offence to be committed, the information is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

I have committed to writing to Austin Mitchell MP to reinforce this message and to follow-up on the representations made.

Indeed, news of photographers being stopped unreasonably has died down in recent weeks, so it seems as though things are becoming more photographer-friendly in the UK. If you’re in the UK, have you noticed any improvement?

(via Digital Photography Now)

Image credit: Shooting the Man by neate photos

Facebook recently announced that it has increased the maximum size of photographs from 604 pixels to 720 pixels, a difference of 19.2%. They posted the above photograph showing the relative difference in size.

While this is pretty exciting news for those of you who upload your photographs to Facebook (how many of you are there, really?), this is actually a much bigger deal for the company that most people probably realize. With a 20% increase in the size of photograph they allow, they increase their storage demands by at least 20%.

20% for a smaller photo sharing service might not be too significant, but for Facebook it’s a huge change. Why? Because Facebook is the most popular photo sharing service on the web. We’re talking billions of photographs per month, and petabytes of total storage. Just how much data is a petabyte? Check out this neat infographic by Mozy.

Don’t worry though. Facebook’s revenues are expected to be up to $2 billion this year.

P.S. Did we mention we love the prefix “peta”?

Adobe has just announced that the Photoshop.com Mobile application is now available to third-party developers to integrate into their own applications.

[...] take for example a “sell-your-home-fast” application that allowed you to upload pictures and descriptions of your home to some web site that will advertise your home to millions of people all over the planet. Now imagine that this “sell-your-home-fast” application allowed you to not only snap and upload pictures – but also edit those pictures so that your home looks its very, very best. Well now that scenario is possible – all the “sell-your-home-fast” developer needs to do is use standard Android APIs to incorporate the Photoshop.com Mobile editor into their application.

By doing this, Adobe is trying to assert its software as the de facto standard for mobile image editing, allowing it to have a bigger control over things like interoperability and file types. It’s a lesson well learned from Adobe Acrobat and the PDF.

Some years ago Canon offered a f/1.0 version of its 50mm L lens. They’ve since stopped manufacturing lenses faster than f/1.2, and US-based company Noktor thinks there’s an opportunity for relatively affordable “hyperprime” lenses.

Today, it announced the Noktor HyperPrime 50mm f/0.95, a manual focus lens designed for Micro Four Thirds cameras. The $750 lens will begin shipping on April 15th, but the company is accepting preorders on their website. In addition to Micro Four Thirds, the company has a poll asking which mount it should design lenses for next.

Here’s a photograph shot with the lens showing its low light performance:

One of the problems with having such a large aperture is that the resulting depth-of-field is so shallow. The lens, being more than a stop faster than an f/1.4 lens, could be very difficult to focus correctly for shots were precision is needed. It was one of the complaints people had against the Canon 50mm f/1.0, though that lens was autofocus.

It’s interesting to see another lens company pop up for a specific type of lens, just like Lensbaby and its creative focus lenses.

P.S.: Various sources are saying the lens is almost identical to the Senko 50mm f/0.95 C-mount CCTV lens.

This morning Apple introduced the latest version of their photo editing software: Aperture 3. The $199 program ($99 for existing users) adds over 200 new features to the previous version, including the Faces and Places features that were popular in the latest release of iPhoto. In addition, there is now a Brushes feature that allows you to “paint” adjustments onto photographs, much like the feature that was added to Adobe Photoshop CS4. The new version will also run in 64-bit mode, which Apple claims will allow it to run an “order of magnitude” faster.

Today’s big story is announcement of the Canon 550D, also known as the Canon Rebel T2i. This camera offers many of the same features as the Canon 7D, including an 18 megapixel sensor, an ISO range of 100–6400, full 1080p video (at 30, 24 or 25fps with manual exposure control), 1.6x crop factor, and a 3-inch LCD screen.

Differences between the 7D and 550D include a rugged magnesium alloy body vs. cheaper build, 8 frames per second vs. 3.7, 8-channel readout vs. 4, two image processors vs. 1, and 19 autofocus points vs. 9. Also, unlike the 7D, there is no word on the 550D having a 100% viewfinder or built in speedlite transmitter.

The 550D is priced at $899 as a kit or $799 for the body only. HD video recording capabilities are now extremely affordable for any photographer wishing to try their hand at filming.

Here’s a hands-on video of the camera by PhotoPlus magazine:

P.S. Turns out the rumor we heard about the 550D having an articulating screen is untrue.

Our Facebook page has been pretty popular since we started it months back. Up to this point, we’ve only been showing PetaPixel articles as entries on the page wall. We’re now opening up the wall for all of you to submit and share your own content with the PetaPixel community. Have a photograph you’d like seen? We’d like to see it! Have a link you’d like to share? Feel free to post it! If you have any questions regarding photography, you could ask on the wall as well. Of course, you can always set the filter to only show PetaPixel entries if you’d like.

We look forward to seeing all your awesome content! You can visit and become a fan of our Facebook Page here.