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Photography From The Future: Anti Photography Glasses

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It is one thing to have your photo taken in public. It is a whole different thing to have multiple photos of you taken in public, tagged and stored in a way that enables search. Think facebook image tagging crossed with images streaming from ATM machines, street cameras and security cams. Sounds scary right?

According to Professor Isao Echizen from Tokyo’s National Institute of Informatics there are ways to avoid constant tagging of your face. One such way is to constantly tilt your head. Another less pain inducing option is to use a pair of glasses designed by Prof. Echizen specially designed to disable face recognition.[Read More…]

Giving An Old Nikkormat A New Life As A Sony NEX-5N

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Photo.net user Brendan Taylor could not settle the cognitive dissonance between his love for vintage cameras and his love for digital photography. The only resolution to this upcoming madness was to meshup two cameras a Nikon Nikkormat EL and a Sony NEX 5N.

This allowed Brendan to keep the vintage look of the Nikkormat while getting access to the advanced features of digital photography, including the NEX’s touch screen.[Read More…]

How To Build a Portable DIY Travel Jib / Shoulder Rig

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A few days ago we shared a quick sneak peak at the RotoRig – A light weight jib that resembles Light Craft’s trapezist, Zolinger’s ZP1800 and DSLR devices MK4. It’s the kind of jib (or crane) that lets you do amazing Hollywood style sweeping shots. But, in some aspects it is even better. If you are a solo shooter and have to carry your gear alone, the RotoRig saves you from having to carry multiple rigs. It doubles as a video shoulder rig and triples as a hand held jib. We also shared a shot flick shot entirely with the rig in its three positions, and the fact that it can so easily transforms really makes me sad that they did not have a movie autobot back in the days.

The response has been overwhelming and basically everyone said the same thing? How do you build one? In fact, Amazon’s stock of the monopods was nuked.

Well, Chad Bredahl is not the guy to keep you waiting and he put up a video showing how the rig was built. He also shared a complete parts list (as noted below). So everyone who grabbed the monopods off Amazon before the price went up can go ahead and complete the build. For the rest of you, Walmart has them for $9.99.[Read More…]

Shooting Underwater Has To Be Creative Both Artistically And Technically

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A while back photographer Benjamin Von Wong was invited to the Underwater Realm set to take a group portrait of the actors and crew.

If you cringe at the thought of taking a big group shot, you would probably cry with the added difficultly of managing everything underwater (while being videographed by Erwan Cloarec) I was really unaware of all the added challenges of shooting underwater.

From water safety personal, through using weights to speed up descent to weighting down the wigs so they don’t float. It seems that everything we know as photographer has to be relearned for underwater.

The video and Ben’s post provide an interesting look into that world, as well as to some of the unique features of shooting underwater, like the inability to use radio slaves (which can be solved with optical wires), the “natural” depth of field that water provides and what’s it’s like working in the water in general. The BTS and more photos after the jump.[Read More…]

A Clever DIY Alarm For your Camera Bag

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If you ever took a camera bag to a restaurant, coffee shop or anywhere that makes you put it on the floor, you know that can be really be a peace killer. And you are constantly worried that someone might snatch it.

You try placing the bag under the seat / have one of the straps loop around the chair legs and put it in your lap. Not really convenient.

Youtue user Kipkay came up with a clever $2.5 hack that may not protect your bag, but will definitely let you know if someone is trying to pick it up.

The system is based on a $2 impact alarm (the kind that alerts on broken windows) with an added $0.5 tilt switch. Once the device is turned on any tilt, such as a bag grab, will trigger the alarm. (As with everything, there are commercial options for this, but they are not nearly as cool)

Now here is the clever part (back in my programming days we used to call those “features”). The alarm has not off switch. Once it goes on it can only be turned off by drowning it, smashing it or…applying a magnet to the tilt switch, which is not that trivial if you just picked up this bag and started running. Where would you even get a magnet.

[$2 Alarm Protects Your Stuff!! via Photojojo | PetaPixel][Read More…]

Understanding Metering, Part Two: What To Use, When By Ming Thein

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This is part two of Ming Thein‘s series on Understanding Metering.

In part one we examined why metering is important, and how the basics of how meters work. In today’s article, I’lltake a closer look at the different types of metering, how they differ, and under what situations they should be deployed.

A sample viewfinder – in this case, a rough representation of the Nikon D2H/ D2X finder.

With that background out of the way, let’s look at how the various metering options work, and what typical situations they might best be deployed under. Cameras typically have three options, or some variation upon that. Within these options, it’s also usually possible to fine tune various aspects of the meter’s operation. I’m going to leave out handheld meter operation since this is something that’s almost never encountered today. An important point to note is that all meters can be fooled by situations of uniform luminance, so don’t trust the readout blindly. Remember, meters function by averaging the entire evaluated area out to middle gray; this means if your evaluated area is meant to be black or white, you’re going to need to add or subtract some exposure compensation. For predominantly light/ white scenes, you need to add; for dark scenes, subtract. This holds true for every one of the different metering methods detailed below.[Read More…]

The Three Rules Of Creating Great Bokeh

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Bokeh, as you must know by now if you are a regular reader is a Japanese word that means blur. In photography the quality of Bokeh usually means how creamy is the out of focus area in the photograph.

Sometimes tough, Bokeh refers to the highlighted circles that we see in nightscape photos. Those out of focus street lights and car lights that turn into beautiful blurry discs.

The folks at The Slanted Lens did a great Bokeh oriented shoot in Times square. But… before that they did their almost scientific analysis run down on what creates a good highlight Bokeh from specular lights, comparing different focal lengths, and camera-to-subject-to-background variations.[Read More…]

Use Lego To Keep Your Lens Cap Safe

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If someone made a survey and checked to see what is the one piece of equipment you loose most, I am willing to place dollars for pennies that the answer would be lens caps. Those things just keep getting lost. I guess this why you have so many lens cap holders solutions out there.

Here is a nice idea by Flickr user RawSniper1 that uses nothing but 2 pieces of Lego, has a really shallow footprint and will save your cap.

It is probably one of those super simple ideas that make you smack your head and say how come I did not think about it before.

You would need a drill, some glue and a bit of wire to make this, but it is totally worth it if just for the innovation of using Lego in your process.

P.S. if you want something a bit more fancy, you can check Benny Johansson’s lens cap holder which is probably the cutest lens cap holder in the world.

[Lego Gear on Flickr][Read More…]

Pictures Of Water Drops Doing Their Thing

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If you ever thought that water drops are polite beings, just waiting for us to set up a strobe and take their picture, you could not be more in error.

It is true that usually they play nice and cooperate, but every once in a while they show their true nature to tell us, “Hey! we have feelings too!”

Photographer Corrie White has been taking plenty of water drop photographs over the years and between the regular awesome photos she found a few where the drops were just doing their thing.

More pictures and a description from Corrie after the jump[Read More…]

A Portable DIY Travel Jib / Shoulder Rig

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When I get asked what’s the first thing an HD shooter should get to boost production value, I usually say a slider. But things are changing and light weight jibs are starting to emerge and take the spot of the first thing you may wanna buy for added production value.

DSLR devices makes the MK4 for about $350 and Zolinger makes the coveted ZP1800 for $750. Both would be a good start in the jib world. Chad Bredahl made a DIY jib – The RotoRig – that is not only travel friendly, but also doubles as a shoulder rig and a hand held jib. (which used with the IS-enabled 18-55 Canon kit lens is way more stable that what I would have thought possible).

To make his point Chad made a short movie made entirely with jib/shoulder rig shots using the RotoRig.[Read More…]

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