This is the first photo of Canon’s upcoming 24-70mm f/2.8L II, the followup to an extremely popular and well-regarded lens. It’ll weigh less than the first version (which is nicknamed “The Brick”) and have a 82mm filter thread (up from 77mm), but — to the dismay of Canonites everywhere — won’t have Image Stabilization. No word on availability, but Canon Rumors thinks it’ll be priced between $1,800 and $1,900 when it hits store shelves.

(via digicame-info via Canon Rumors)

Here’s a Photoshop protip: before saving a final version of a photo for publishing on the web, make sure all the layers you want in the image are actually visible. Apparently some Photoshopper working for JCrew got careless with his layers, which led to the above catalog photo showing a model with transparent hair (in fact, the hair appeared by itself in a separate photo). The catalog entry has since been fixed, with the invisible-haired woman replaced with a boring photo of a blue blazer.

(via PSDisasters via Neatorama)

If you’re a photographer in the UK, you might want to think twice about shooting and selling a photograph that has a similar composition to an existing photo. Souvenir company Temple Island Collection has won a copyright infringement case against tea company New English Teas after a photo of a red London bus was used on tea packaging. Photo copyright expert and lawyer Charles Swan states,

His honour Judge Birss QC decided that a photograph of a red London bus against a black and white background of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, with a blank sky, was similar enough to another photograph of the same subject matter to infringe copyright.

The decision is perhaps surprising, given the commonplace subject matter of the photographs. The judge himself admitted that he found it a difficult question, but in the end he decided that a substantial part of photograph one [Temple Island's image, top] had been reproduced in photograph two [New English Teas', bottom].

Although the photo itself wasn’t copied, the judge ruled that the similarity of the ‘visual contrast’ of the red bus and B&W background infringed on the original photographer’s ‘intellectual creation’. The case is reminiscent of photographer David LaChapelle’s lawsuit against Rihanna for infringing upon his style in one of her music videos. Rihanna ended up paying an undisclosed sum of money to LaChapelle to settle the case.

Photographers Face Copyright Threat after Shock Ruling [Amateur Photographer]

Casio is showing off a crazy 2D to 3D conversion service at CES that turns ordinary photographs into three-dimensional sculptures. The service takes a photograph, calculates depth using some fancy technology, and then prints out the result using a proprietary 3D printer. The examples they’re showing off aren’t too flattering though — the dog and cat sample photos were turned into sculptures that look like transdimensional taxidermy.

(via Gizmodo)

Image credits: Photographs by Andrew Liszewski/Gizmodo

French magazine Réponses Photo has spilled the beans on the Nikon D4, one day ahead of its official announcement. A two-page scan from the magazine leaked onto the Internet, revealing photos of the camera and confirming the specs that we shared yesterday and last December. Some confirmed details: 16 megapixels, ISO 100-12800 (expandable to 50-204800), 51 autofocus points, 100% viewfinder coverage, 10-12fps, 91000 point metering system, 1080p video recording, CF/XQD card slots, 1.34kg weight, and a price of €5,800.
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Nikon will reportedly announce its new D4 DSLR at a press event this Friday, but new details beyond previously leaked specs are emerging. The 16.2MP camera will be available starting next month for $6,000. Its ISO goes up to 102,400, but can be expanded to 204,800. There’s also a heavy emphasis on video: it’ll have a dedicated video button, H.264 B frame compression, contrast detect AF during recording, a low pass filter, and a smooth aperture change feature.

(via Nikon Rumors)

This photo shows what 5MB of hard drive storage looked like in 1956. The IBM 305 RAMAC hard disk was state of the art, weighed just shy of a ton, required a forklift to be carried around, and was composed of 50 separate 24-inch discs that occupied 16 square feet. The annual cost of using it was a staggering $35,000 — steep even in today’s money. Nowadays most RAW photos outweigh the storage capabilities of that behemoth of an external hard drive…

(via Engadget via TexomaTube)

A 19-year-old man in the UK has been sentenced to two months in prison for snapping a courtroom photo. Paul Thompson was sitting in a public gallery last week — the defendant was a friend who was on trial for robbery — when another friend texted him to ask where he was. Thompson decided to snap a picture with his Blackberry to explain why he couldn’t talk, but was quickly arrested by officers who noticed what he was doing. He was then sentenced to two months in prison for “contempt of court” by Judge Barbara Mensah, who wanted to send out a strong message:

There are notices all around the court building about not taking photographs in court. This is a serious offence and the message must go out that people cannot take photos.

Although two months in jail seems harsh, it could have been worse: CBS News notes that the law gives the courts the right to jail someone for up to two years for photography.

(via The Guardian via Small Aperture)

Update: Apparently the teen was being a lot more disruptive than most news sources are reporting. Thanks Tom.

Image credit: Courtroom by ☺ Lee J Haywood

What you see here may be the first leaked photograph shot with the upcoming iPhone 5. The EXIF data claims it was shot with the iPhone 4, but other EXIF details indicate otherwise. Although the leaked image was cropped, the original size of the image was 3264×2448 (roughly 8MP), the rumored resolution found on the next iPhone. The lens info was recorded as “4.3mm f/2.4″, more similar to a point-and-shoot than then 3.85mm f/2.8 lens found on the iPhone 4. Finally, the geotag info in the photo shows it was taken at 37.33216667,-122.03033333 — the location of Apple’s headquarters. Check out the full-res file with EXIF intact here.
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This photo that allegedly shows the mount and sensor on Nikon’s upcoming mirrorless camera was just leaked onto the Chinese forum Xitek. My initial reaction was, “wow, that sensor looks small!”. However, the camera is in fact rumored to have a relatively small 2.6x crop sensor (by comparison, the new Pentax Q has a 5.7x crop sensor).
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