Cameras

Wacom — the same company that brings Photoshop artists and big spenders products like the 24HD Touch — announced today that it is making an addition to its more whimsical line of Bamboo products. Dubbed Bamboo Loop, the new iOS (and soon Android) app puts photo sharing and SMS together to create a more fun and engaging messaging experience. This isn’t Wacom’s first foray into the iOS app market. The company’s Bamboo Paper app is a relatively well-received notebook app for iPad users. But this is the first time Wacom has put its connection to photography to use in this way, and the app has already garnered some positive attention from the tech media.’s Here’s a short ad that shows you what Bamboo Loop is all about: The app is fairly straight forward: once users download the app for free off the iTunes store, they will be able to take pictures, add graphics and write messages on them using “a variety of styles and realistic inking tools.” They then send their creation, now known as a Loop card, to any number of friends. Once the photo recipient has seen your message, they can either create their own, or “loop” the card back after they’ve added their own flair — all they have to do is literally swipe it back to you. Both sender and recipient will also have the opportunity to share their Loop card on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram. It’s worth noting that, just like the Bamboo Paper app, only the bare essentials are free. In-app purchases round out the product, with styles such as Vintage, Art Paper, Pattern and Candy all costing you an extra $2 per. Still, if you and your friends wanna give the new photo messaging app a go, head over to the Bamboo Loop site for more info or pick up the app in the iTunes store here. Android users, on the other hand, can head here and put down their Email to receive a notification as soon as the app makes it to the Google Play store. (via Engadget)

Sometimes it’s the simplest ideas that end up leaving an impression on people and inspiring them. Case in point: Astana, Kazakhstan-based photographer Timur Zhansultanov has created a project he’s called “In My Own Eyes“, which features pictures of himself from — well — his own eyes in the past two-or-so years. It’s a creative set, featuring images of him skateboarding, eating, working, and much more. According to Zhansultanov, he originally wanted to shoot many more of these images, but it became annoying over time. He apparently has many more ideas that he’ll eventually follow up on, according to a short description on his gallery page. It’s unclear what Zhansultanov’s method was for capturing these images, though according to EXIF data data for several of the images we looked up, he’s using a Canon 550D (better known as the T2i in the United States), which is certainly a bulky camera to have strapped to one’s head. His images are shot at a 10mm focal length, and given he’s shooting with the 550D’s crop factor of 1.6x, this works out to be 16mm, which very reasonably reflects the field of view for a pair of human eyes. For more of Timur Zhansultanov’s work, take a look at his website. (via Design You Trust and Behance) Image credit: Photographs by Timur Zhansultanov

At last week's I/O developer conference Google announced a number of upgrades to the photo section of its Google+ social network, including features such as 'Auto-Highlight', 'Auto-Enhance' and 'Auto'-Awesome'. To make the same experience available on its mobile platform the search giant has released an upgraded Google+ app for Android. Click through to Connect to find out more.

Windows 8, released to the wild last October, seems stuck in a no-win situation. On the one hand, it is not catching on with Android- and iOS-loving consumers turned off by the Windows 8 tile-based interface and the Windows App Store, which by Android and Apple standards, is anemic and disorganized. And these days, consumer technology is frequently a precursor to enterprise technology as shown by the BYOD (bring your own device) phenomenon. On the other hand, the situation for Windows 8 isn't any better in the enterprise. IT decision-makers interviewed for a new Forrester report don't see the Windows 8 experience as an improvement over the stable and well-liked Windows 7, mostly due to confusing behavior between applications running in the "Metro" touch interface and those running in the traditional desktop mode. In the report, entitled "IT Will Skip Windows 8 as the Enterprise Standard," IT professionals reveal that a top concern about Windows 8 is the "potential for significant user training and support and the need for application redesign to take advantage of the new Windows 8 interface." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lindsay Adler and Erik Valind, both working professionals and educators, have written a beginner’s guide to photographic lighting with an unusual conceit at its core. By structuring a book around a list of common challenges - what they call the 'top ten worst situations' - they've created a digestible, useful 'lighting 101' guide. In this short review, Adam Koplan takes a look at their book 'Shooting in Sh**ty Light: The Top Ten Worst Photography Lighting Situations and How to Conquer Them'.

Colorful and unusual patterns pictures are what photographer Erno-Erik Raitanen calls self-portraits. The pictures, which Raitanen says are more like photograms, involve no camera, some photographic film, and bacteria. The series, called Bacteriograms, is a display of Raitanen’s own body bacteria cultivated on the gelatin surface of film negatives, much like bacteria is grown in Petri dishes in a laboratory setting. “I have gathered the bacteria samples from my own body,” he says. “The bacteria consumed the film surface producing photographic images that are entirely created by a chance. I have been removed from the process but, at the same time, the images are a product of my body; self-portraits.” According to Raitanen, the Bacteriograms do not show the bacteria themselves, but rather show traces of bacterial activity. “These images are just a piece of degraded and therefore deconstructed film, which reveals the components that create the illusion we perceive as a reflection of the reality in the photographic image,” he says. “With this work I want to raise questions about representation and reality; the nature and the place of [the] photographic medium in contemporary society.” For more of Erno-Erik’s work, check out his website. (via Photojojo) Image credits: Images by Erno-Erik Raitanen and used with permission

The announcement of the PhaseOne IQ2 series introduced a clear functionality based stratification of the IQ line up of digital backs. The PhaseOne IQ280 still reigns supreme providing the highest resolution single capture of the bunch. The bigger and more interesting changes however, are within the IQ260 “series” of backs. Now there are two different versions of a 60MP full-frame medium format digital sensor; both of these two versions offer their own vastly different “skill sets” for different types of photography. Firstly, the IQ260 version introduces exposure times of up to one hour (the same as on the oft lauded P45+) in a 60MP variant housed within the superior chassis of the IQ series. This development could be said to be somewhat expected since there had to be an eventual successor to the P45+ and although it took a while, early results show that it was worth the wait. The other more curious version of the IQ260 is the new PhaseOne IQ260 Achromatic housing a fully monochromatic full-frame medium format sensor. It is, with a bit of irony, worth noting that imaging which started as grains silver-nitrate yielding black and white images has progressed through color films, back to black and white digital (a la early cameras), through color digital and is now seeing a resurgence in interest in digital black and white imaging. We have certainly come full circle seeing within the last year the Leica M9 Monochrome, Red Epic-M Monochrome, and now the IQ260 Achromatic. The first “modern” digital back of note for monochromatic imaging was the PhaseOne Achromatic+ (based on a 39MP chip) produced for Bear Images. PhaseOne now brings a far more versatile offering to the table for all fields from photographic to scientific — the new IQ260 Achromatic can and will have some far reaching implications. However, none of this is the purpose of this article. This article, is in fact (as the name suggests) about color. This may seem to be a peculiar subject to be discussing with regards to a monochromatic sensor like that housed in the PhaseOne IQ260, but in fact it is a subject which this camera can open up some new possibilities in. Monochromatic sensor harken back to B&W film in that they allow for the use of colored filters in front of the lens and sensor to achieve varying effects both stylistically and technically with their varying filtration. Early color images were created by taking black and white images filtered through Red, Green, and Blue filters. In this form, the process desired to create a perfect still image in color and was achievable with subjects who were capable of standing still for a long enough time for all three filters to be utilized. A difficult task, to say the least. Other examples show what happens when the subject moves and causes the 3 images to be mis-aligned when combined, in these images the differing colors of the filters will show through as colored “ghosts” around areas where there is movement in the image between frames or filters. Robert S. Harris invented a device called the “Harris Shutter” for Kodak. This video shows a some-what simplified version of this device: This gave rise to the “Harris Shutter Effect” which has been popularized through facsimile’s of the process which digital cameras and Photoshop have allowed us to make. To truly complete this process, images must be taken with the varying color filters in front of a black and white emulsion or sensor and then processed for the desired effect. I mention the Harris Shutter Effect because it is exhibited in the image above, and the images that we will be looking at further and discussing. There is a download link bottom of this article which contains the RAW PhaseOne IQ260 Achromatic IIQ files, labeled as to which filter was used with them. This images are my property and for personal use only and may not be used in print or online for any other purpose. When you look at the channels of any RGB color image, you will

B&H has the Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM Pancake lens for $149 (reg. $199) now through June 29, 2013. I love this little lens and think it’s a great addition to any Canon DSLR; however, it’s particularly pleasant on APS-C cameras with its 64mm equivalent field of view. Check it out here at B&H Photo. Copyright/DMCA Notice: The RSS entry was originally published on Photography Bay and is protected by copyright laws. It is unlawful to (a) edit, modify, alter, or create derivative works of the text, content or links supplied by Photography Bay, (b) use any robot, spider, scraper, other device or manual process to monitor or copy any content from the Photography Bay RSS feed, (c) sell, retransmit or commercially exploit the Photography Bay RSS feed, headlines or content in any manner except as expressly permitted in writing by authorized representatives of Photography Bay, (d) incorporate advertising into or the placement of advertising associated with or targeted towards the Photography Bay RSS feed or (e) use the Photography Bay RSS feed for any unlawful purpose or in violation of the rights of others. RSSID#794326 Related posts: Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM Pancake Lens In Stock Canon Rebel T4i and EF 40mm f/2.8 Pancake Lens Inbound Canon 60D w/ 18-135mm IS Lens for $829 – Deal Alert

Yahoo! has announced its plans to acquire popular photo blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion in a move that has many photographers who use the service worried. In an announcement on her own Tumblr page, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer said "we promise not to screw it up," and in a nod to Tumblr's particular style, accompanied the post with an animated GIF. Yahoo! seems to be acknowledging that Tumblr is a very different property with a different user-base than Yahoo! on its own has. In that Tumblr post, Mayer said: "Tumblr is... (read more)

What is it about GoPro cameras that make them so appetizing to wild animals? In February, we showed you this crazy clip of a lion munching on a GoPro mounted on a miniature robotic tank. Now, here's a Grizzly trying to make a snack out of naturalist and wildlife documentarian Brad Josephs' GoPro, which he had set up on the Alaska Peninsula to get footage for the BBC's Great Bear Stakeout. "I had a young bear actually chew on the camera," Josephs says about the below clip. "Amazingly there was no damage to the camera!" The... (read more)