In composition, it is often considered that putting objects of interest on the key attention points helps build more powerful images. Daniel Cohen-Or and Lior Wolf at Tel-Aviv University, Israel, with colleagues at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, created a software program that automatically re-organizes photos to make them more powerful, more pleasing. NS link…
Category: Technology
In the Sun light
Sunshine is a Danny Boyle movie from 2007 which scenrizes the crew of a space ship sent to save a dying sun. The American Cinematographer offers us a long interview with Alwin Küchler who designed the shooting and the light of this film. Even (or preferably) for a studio photographer, it will be quite interesting…
DIY long-distance radio trigger
In most case, long-distance trigger are very limited (by wire length, by price, etc.) This is why some people decide to go DIY. They build their own radio trigger. Here is exactly what DIYPhotography describes us from a concept developed by Marco Jetti.
Save a drowned camera or lens
You just dropped your photo camera or a lens in water; What can you do now if it was not weather-sealed or water-tight? The first thing to do is to remove all electrical power source. Electricity does ugly things to metal and electronics. So, start by removing the batteries right now. You may be able…
3D for rookies
I am not 100% sure that 3D photography will be a real hit soon (while 3D TV and 3D cinema coul well be), but it is fairly certain there is a need for some support when starting to use it. The photogrpahers willing to wet their toes in this new etchnology will apperciate to find…
ISO is the new MP
During years we have been worried because people seemed only interested in getting more Mega-Pixels (MP) out of the new photo cameras (or camera feature sheets). It has been repeated often enough that this single quantity is not a good measure of camera performance. It was, when cameras had so few pixels (less than 3-5…
Photo camera touch screen on DSLR
In the “It had to happen” Department, here is a little bit on information: Canon has submitted a patent application for what looks like a touch screen Man-Machine Interface for a DSLR camera. Of course, this is not exactly new technology (it’s everywhere from point-and-shoot cameras to mobile phones) but a patent from Canon probably…
DIY slide duplicator
When seeing the DIY tilt-shift lens described here a few weeks ago, Ted, one of our most active commenters, mentioned that he had done about the same for a DIY high-quality slide duplicator. Here is how he described his craft to me: As I did not want to put my hard-earned money in a new…
A new kind of DSLR
All Digital SLR cameras look a like because it’s a tried design solution. But what about other forms and patterns? Erin Fong is trying to offer something completely different with this Nova camera concept. Innovative, for sure. From designer Erin Fong.
How lenses are made?
If you don’t know, you may be interested in this video from Canon. YouTube link
Photo fakery in History
Even before Photoshop was available, some photographers tried to improve their photos. Sometimes, it was to clean little blemishes, but it could go to quite significant upgrades: removing somebody form a group portrait (like with chairman Mao, below), putting a better body under the head of VIP, etc. Source: NY Times.
Ultra-macro-photo on a telephone
totally on the opposite side from the use of an SLR camera with a specialized lens, here is an article offering to use the lens stolen from a dead DVD player to transform a mobile phone into a ultra-micrographic photo camera. Apparently, the harder part is to attach the lens to the phone. But then,…
DIY tilt-shift lens
When you want to go cheap, you’d better be able to build your own devices. For most photographers, a tilt-shit lens is often too expensive for something that you’ll nearly never use. So, why not build your own tilt-shift lens from cheap plumbing parts? Bhautik Joshi did exactly that. $10 for the whole project, including…
Canon EOS 5D: Shutter in slow motion
Did you already see an SLR camera operating in slow motion? The video here will show you the steps -normally invisible to the naked eye- that are splitting the shutter operation in individual stages: mirror going up, shutter uncovering the sensor, nearly immediately, shutter covering it again (the image is now “in the box”), mirror…
Super sensor at Sony
To make it simpler than it really may be, you can expect that the next Sony Alpha 950 (probable name of the successor to the Sony Alpha 900, improved in the beginning of 2010) will have no less than 32 mega-pixels. Even for a Full Frame sensor, this is a lot of pixels. But this…
Sony Alpha 7 will come with a new AF system
We had no difficult in imagining that the predicted disappearance of the Sony Alpha 700 would lead Sony to offer a true replacement (somewhere between the Sony Alpha 500/550 and the Full Frame cameras like the Alpha 850). But this is an informant of Photo-Rumors who presents what a new auto-focus (AF) system would look…
Cheap DIY video camera stabilizer
Those interested in video probably already know it, pros often use a stabilization system essentially made out of a heavy suspended mass to limit the camera moves when the operator uses it while walking or running. Unfortunately, as many understood it quickly, those devices are awfully expensive. For us, SLR camera lovers, today attracted to…
Fuji+Nikon, still going on?
Important update: It has been brought to my attention that Fujitsu is not the mother company of Fuji photo cameras (it would rather be Fujifilm). So, this announcement probably has no influence on the future of Fuji SLR cameras which will stay very dark. After quite some time waiting for announcements from Fuji, we were…
Sony video SLR cameras
It is now very obvious for everybody that the SLR cameras from Sony do not participate to the general move in direction of the integration of video capture. We thought so, but it has now been confirmed by the senior general manager AMC division of Sony’s Digital Imaging Business group, Toru Katsumoto: The inclusion of…
130MP, would it be enough for you?
Forget about the Full Frame cameras. The Canon EOS 5D Mk II isn’t enough, the Sony Alpha 900 is too small. A Japanese amateur did re-use a HP scanner sensor to build a 130MP photo camera. See his Flickr page.
Focal length and photo lenses
Tamron rewrote its web site. This was the occasion to move the Lens Comparison Tool but it is still useful to compare a 400mm with a 500mm (or a 35mm with a 50mm). But you can also find a similar tool at Olympus (and it takes into account the specificities of 4/3 sensor format, of…
Computer recognizes tiger photos
Image recognition is an impressive mean to analyze images. This software allows the direct exploitation of photos taken of wild tigers or of their skins after poaching, and the identification of the individual animals. Computer recognizes tigers, on YLovePhoto.
Similarity search engine
Some time ago we had presented the excellent TinEye search engine which is able to do search-by-similarity on images (you give it an image and it will find all similar images: cropped, reframed, slightly modified). Very useful to track pirates, copiers and illegal uses of your photos. Several other products or in-development technologies also exist,…
Sony Alpha 380, Alpha 330: LiveView Autofocus
The new Sony Alpha 330 and Sony Alpha 380 have a nice specificity that is worth mentionning separately: A special autofocus (AF) system designed to maintain maximum performance even in LiveView mode. Usually, the LiveView mode is done merely by moving the reflex mirror up. The image is then projected onto the single image sensor…
Calibrate your screen for free
You’d better use a calibration software with an external sensor, but if you don’t have access to such equipment, it is still possible to do a pretty useful calibration of your screen (and what photographer would not want to improve his computer environment in such a way?) I found two calibration solutions/offers that are easily…