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Caught on camera: Lightning strike hits storm-chasing photographer’s car and disables it

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With the advancements in tech, the proliferation of relatively inexpensive camera equipment and the ever pervasive advancement of social media and YouTube over the last decade or so, storm-chasing has become a big thing. Once a task only pursued by scientists and the absolutely insane, it’s now become pretty normal. For a storm chaster who goes by the name Pi (and More Pi on YouTube), though, this trip was anything but normal.

While looking for tornadoes in Iowa, his car (which he was inside) was struck by lightning and completely disabled. It also fried one of his in-car cameras. Fortunately for us, he had his own cameras recording and the whole event was also captured on camera from the vantage point of his friend, High Risk Chris, in a separate car.

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Shutterstock acquires stock video platform Pond5 for $210 million

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After Turbosquid and PicMonkey, stock photo platform Shutterstock has acquired another company. This time, it’s Pond5, one of the major stock video platforms in the world. Shutterstock has disclosed the details of the deal, revealing that they acquired Pond5 for $210 million.

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Camera lens inspired by eyes of extinct trilobites can focus on near and far objects at the same time

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Inspiration for new technology is everywhere, even in the fossils of prehistoric creatures it seems. Scientists have developed a nanophotonic light field camera with extreme depth of field capabilities, based on the eye of the extinct trilobite, Dalmanitina socialis.

Ask any palaeontology (or just about any 5 year old) and they will tell you that the trilobite was one of the first animals to develop complex eyes. Very complex it turns out. What made it unique was the fact that it could focus on both near and far objects simultaneously. Most eyes and cameras simply cannot achieve this dual focus feat.

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First photo of the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way is revealed

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Astronomers have unveiled the first image ever of Sagitarrius A* (Sgr A*), the enormous black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. The image was created by a global research team called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, using observations from a global network of radio telescopes.

The image is important and long-anticipated. Scientists had previously recorded stars orbiting around something invisible, compact, and very massive at the centre of the Milky Way. This strongly suggested that this object is a black hole, and the image is the first direct visual evidence to confirm this theory.

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The UK’s Royal Mail is planning to start delivering mail by drones

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Well, if Royal Mail’s service wasn’t bad enough already, they’re about to add drones into the mix. They’ve announced plans to open up 50 postal routes for delivery drones over the next three years as part of an operation to ultimately deploy over 500 UAVs to remote areas of the country. The whole thing is subject to Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) approval, of course, but this is Royal Mail, so they’ll probably figure out a way.

It’s happening in partnership with Windracers, a drone logistics company and the goal is to reduce the emissions of current mail delivery systems including ferries, aircraft and land-based delivery methods. The first routes chosen to receive the new service will include the Isles of Scilly, Shetland Isles, Orkney Islands and the Hebrides.

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Nikon’s F mount legacy takes one step closer to death as Nikon kills off another seven lenses

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The demise of Nikon’s DSLR product line, along with the F mount lens system that Nikon has been using for over 60 years, was pretty much inevitable with the company’s transition to mirrorless. We’ve seen them slowly kill off their DSLRs and a few of the F mount lenses, and now a few more appear to have been added to that list, according to the Nikon USA website.

Seven lenses have disappeared from the current model lens list on the Nikon USA website with product pages for those lenses indicating that “This product has been archived”. This is code for “Don’t bother, it’s been discontinued”. While they’re still available from some retailers, they probably won’t be available for much longer and once stocks run out, new ones are gone forever.

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Which of these images was made using CGI and which is a photograph? Can you tell the difference?

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One of the above images was created using a camera and modern commercial lighting with familiar retouching techniques using software such as Photoshop. The other image was rendered using CGI using software such as Blender. They are both top-notch product images, but can you tell which is which?

I won’t tell you the answer just yet (sorry, I know you’re just dying to find out!), however, the use of CGI in product photography is becoming ever more prevalent as technology improves, making the 3D rendering more photo-realistic, faster and subsequently cheaper than traditional commercial photography.

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Smart masking is coming to Luminar NEO

Despite the war still raging in Ukraine, folks at Skylum have been working hard to deliver updates to its latest image editing software, Luminar NEO. In the update 1.0.6, we get some bug fixes, an improved histogram, and to top it off: smart masking.

The latest Luminar NEO update comes with the long-anticipated Mask AI feature. As you can probably guess, it’s an AI-based feature designed to make masking easier and much faster than before.

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Google’s new skin tone scale could reduce AI’s racial bias

We’ve already seen some cases of AI being biased towards lighter skin tones. But Google wants to turn it around and it’s now using an alternative, more inclusive skin tone scale.

Teaming up with a Harvard professor, Google is using and open-sourcing the Monk Skin Tone (MST) Scale. It’s more inclusive than the current tech-industry standard, making various skin tones included in search results.

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Google introduces Immersive view to Maps giving you extra info for planning shoots

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Scouting locations for photoshoots used to be a time consuming and expensive affair. You often had to physically visit the place, or if you couldn’t, then you had to hire someone to act as a guide or location scout. While there’s still no substitute for actually visiting a place in advance, these days we have a lot more options at our fingertips.

Google has just announced the release of Immersive view. This could be incredibly useful for photographers who want to scout locations from the comfort of their home, or well, from anywhere to be honest.

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