Beauty dishes are pricey, and so are dedicated cases for carrying them around. If you want a cheap and simple way to protect your dish, LA-based photographer Mariusz Jeglinski suggests buying a Christmas wreath bag for less than $10. The shape works nicely for dishes, and you can add some extra padding to the case if you want added protection.

(via Strobist)

Image credits: Photographs by Mariusz Jeglinski/Strobist and M. Nguyen

Japanese camera site digicame-info is reporting that an upcoming announcement of a D700 successor (possibly the D800) has been cancelled due to the ongoing flooding in Thailand, and that Nikon’s product supply has nearly come to a standstill — affecting existing products in addition to upcoming ones. Even if the D800 is being manufactured in Japan like the D700 is, some components may be produced in Nikon’s flood-damaged factory.

(via digicame-info via Foto Actualidad)

Here’s a strange (and extremely rare) piece of camera gear: the Leica Telephoto Assembly Rifle. Also known as “the Leica Gun”, it was made for photographers at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany, and became popular among wildlife and sports photographers during the interwar years. One of them will be auctioned off at the Tamarkin Rare Camera Auction on October 30th, and is expected to fetch up to $100,000.

Who knows, maybe shoulder stocks will make a comeback as a form of image stabilization.

Leica Telephoto Assembly Rifle (via Leica Rumors)

Photographer Mitchell Feinberg wanted to continue shooting 8×10 large format once his Polaroid stockpile runs out, so he decided to create his own 8×10 digital back. He spent over a year looking for a manufacturer and designing the back, and shelled out enough money to buy a good-sized house:

The development and production of two backs (I wanted to have a spare) was equal to the cost of a good size house – before the housing crash. I know it sounds insane, but the financials on it are not so bad: I used to shoot on average 7.5 Polaroids per photo, and I shoot between 400 to 500 images a year. That’s at least 3000 Polaroids. At 15 bucks a pop. Or about 50K per year, minimum. Polaroid was at one point my highest single cost.

Now he’s the owner of the world’s largest color capture back (two of them, in fact), which shoots 10MP photos. He uses it to shoot test shots before using film for the final captures.

Mitchell Feinberg’s 8×10 Digital Capture Back [A Photo Editor]

Image credit: Photograph by Mitchell Feinberg and used with permission

Lost in the commotion of Sony’s awesome camera announcements was the official unveiling of the LA-EA2 A-mount adapter, which we reported on a couple weeks ago. This fancy lens adapter lets you use Sony’s Alpha line of DSLR lenses with NEX mirrorless bodies without the loss of autofocus functionality by having a translucent mirror and autofocus system baked into the adapter itself!

Adding a large lens and electronic viewfinder to a NEX body leaves you with one strange looking camera, but the ability to use your existing lens collection on a new mirrorless camera is definitely a big deal (hopefully Canon and Nikon offer something similar if they announce mirrorless cameras soon). The LA-EA2 will cost $400 when it arrives in November.

(via Foto Actualidad)

Last year we featured the work of Matthew and William Burrard-Lucas, two brothers who mounted their Canon DSLR to a remote-controlled car to shoot close-up photographs of dangerous African animals. The behind-the-scenes video above was just published yesterday, and shows the RC DSLR being driven up to different animals, all of which are clearly thinking, “what the heck is this thing”? They should offer these “BeetleCams” for sale. I want one.

CineSkates are new patent-pending wheels that attach to JOBY’s GorillaPod Focus tripod, allowing you to capture fluid, stabilized video with your DSLR without bulky or expensive equipment.

Here’s a brief introduction to the project that shows some neat shots you can capture using the skates:

Developed as part of a MIT MediaLab class by Justin Jensen, CineSkates is currently being funded through Kickstarter. You can support the project and pre-order a set of CineSkates with a $150 contribution.

CineSkates Camera Sliders (via TechCrunch)

Rather than being built from scratch with new designs, new camera lenses are designed by taking existing lens designs that work well and then improving on them. As a result, virtually every lens design can be traced back to one of six basic lens designs developed in the early 1900s (shown above). Roger Cicala of LensRentals writes,

Those original lenses in their pure form each had strengths and weaknesses. Modern lenses derived from them have ‘inherited’ those same underlying tendencies. Many of the complex technologies used in a modern lens are put there to correct the underlying problems of the original design.

Head on over to his post to learn about lenses derived from the first three of these designs.

Lens Genealogy Part 1 [Lens Rentals]

If you had any doubts that Leica’s new M9-P is simply the M9 given a cosmetic makeover, get this: Leica is offering to upgrade any customer’s M9 camera into an M9-P. For the low Leica-esque price of $1,995, the company will give your camera “sapphire glass” for your LCD screen and a new top cover without the famous Leica red dot. If only upgrading to the latest DSLR were this easy!

(via PDN)

One of the things you’ve likely seen when looking at product or review pages for lenses is an MTF chart, used by manufacturers to give consumers an idea of how sharp a particular lens is. If you’ve never gotten around to learning how to interpret these charts, here’s a helpful 10-minute video tutorial on the subject. Luminous Landscape and Cambridge in Colour have great tutorials on this as well if you’re more comfortable with text-based tutorials.