Tag Archives: photography

How the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year was faked with Photoshop

Posted on by

Basically, as far as we can surmise, Hansen took a series of photos — and then later, realizing that his most dramatically situated photo was too dark and shadowy, decided to splice a bunch of images together and apply a liberal amount of dodging (brightening) to the shadowy regions. For what it’s worth, Hansen claims that the light in the alley was natural — and to be fair, sometimes magical lighting does occur. I think most of you will agree, though, that the photo simply feels fake — there’s just something about the lighting that sets off a warning alarm in your brain. As for why World Press Photo didn’t forensically analyze the photo using freely available, advanced, accurate analysis tools such as FourMatch or FotoForensics… who knows.

via ExtremeTech » How the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year was faked with Photoshop.

The British ‘Atlantis’ is mapped in detail

Posted on by

The camera uses high frequency sound and acoustic lenses to refract sound waves and create film footage without light. The technology is usually reserved for creating a fly-by of sunken ships, but it has now picked up the wreckage of the former trading hub in astonishing detail. In addition, old naval navigation charts helped in the tracking and mapping of where the former coastline stood.

via The British ‘Atlantis’ is mapped in detail | Ars Technica.

Meanwhile in Brazil, the discovery of a large lump of granite rock 1,500km (932 miles) off the coast of Rio de Janeiro has led to claims that the real Atlantis has been discovered.

Panasonic’s Developed a Simple Sensor Tweak That Vastly Improves Low Light Photography

Posted on by

What’s particularly neat about this new approach is that it can be used with any kind of sensor without modification; CMOS, CCD, or BSI. And the filters can be produced using the same materials and manufacturing processes in place today. Which means we’ll probably be seeing this technology implemented on cameras sooner rather than later. [DigInfo TV]

via Panasonic’s Developed a Simple Sensor Tweak That Vastly Improves Low Light Photography.

Understanding Camera Optics & Smartphone Camera Trends, A Presentation by Brian Klug

Posted on by

For readers here I think this is a great primer for what the state of things looks like if you’re not paying super close attention to smartphone cameras, and also the imaging chain at a high level on a mobile device.

Some figures are from of the incredibly useful (never leaves my side in book form or PDF form) Field Guide to Geometrical Optics by John Greivenkamp, a few other are my own or from OmniVision or Wikipedia. I’ve put the slides into a gallery and gone through them pretty much individually, but if you want the PDF version, you can find it here.

via AnandTech – Understanding Camera Optics & Smartphone Camera Trends, A Presentation by Brian Klug.

Google Images New Layout How This Impacts Photographers And Webmasters

Posted on by

This updated functionality completely removes the source website from the display, encouraging the user to download the image directly from the search results. To add fuel to the fire, a prominent button “Show original image” (read as “Download now”) is also being displayed alongside the enhanced preview. The percentage of visits to the website that actually has the rights to display and offer the subject images drops at a staggering rate as people are able to and, in fact, are implicitly encouraged to begin downloading the image directly from Google Images rather than visiting the subject site.

via Google Images New Layout How This Impacts Photographers And Webmasters – Stock Photography Blog.

I still don’t see how simply downloading an image which mean possibly seeing once and then into the bit bucket really matters.  The photo is not being used in a commercial manner except for perhaps by google.  There has to be some kind of compromise that doesn’t impact usability.

How Lytro is Shifting Our Perspective on Photography

Posted on by

What’s amazing is how quickly the technology is evolving. There’s no second-generation Lytro yet though it’s safe to assume the Mountain View, CA-based company is working on one. But because light field photography is mostly about computation, not optics or electronics, Lytro can make its existing camera more powerful simply by upgrading the software used to process light-field images.

via How Lytro is Shifting Our Perspective on Photography | Xconomy.

Atomic bond types discernible in single-molecule images

Posted on by

The new work opens up the prospect of studying imperfections in the “wonder material” graphene or plotting where electrons go during chemical reactions.

The images are published in Science.

via BBC News – Atomic bond types discernible in single-molecule images.

They are carried out at a scale so small that room temperature induces wigglings of the AFM’s constituent molecules that would blur the images, so the apparatus is kept at a cool -268C.

While some improvements have been made since that first image of pentacene, lead author of the Science study, Leo Gross, told BBC News that the new work was mostly down to a choice of subject.

Flat lens offers a perfect image

Posted on by

Operating at telecom wavelengths (i.e., the range commonly used in fiber-optic communications), the new device is completely scalable, from near-infrared to terahertz wavelengths, and simple to manufacture. The results have been published online in the journal Nano Letters.

via Flat lens offers a perfect image — Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“In the future we can potentially replace all the bulk components in the majority of optical systems with just flat surfaces,” says lead author Francesco Aieta, a visiting graduate student from the Università Politecnica delle Marche in Italy. “It certainly captures the imagination.”

 

Russian satellite’s 121-megapixel image of Earth is most detailed yet

Posted on by

There’s been a long history of NASA-provided “Blue Marble” images of Earth, but now we’re getting a different perspective thanks to photos taken by the Elektro-L No.1 Russian weather satellite. Unlike NASA’s pictures, this satellite produces 121-megapixel images that capture the Earth in one shot instead of a collection of pictures from multiple flybys stitched together. The result is the highest-resolution single picture of Earth yet. The image certainly looks different than what we’re used to seeing, and that’s because the sensor aboard the weather satellite combines data from three visible and one infrared wavelengths of light, a method that turns vegetation into the rust color that dominates the shot.

via Russian satellite’s 121-megapixel image of Earth is most detailed yet | The Verge.