Rob Galbraith is pointing out an issue announced on the Lightroom Journal; a bug in the way Lightroom 3.4 and Camera Raw 6.4 handle JPEGs with unusually large blocks of private camera data, that will corrupt the JPEG.  The only camera currently identified as building a JPEG that can trigger the bug is the HP Photosmart R607.

The fine folks over at PetaPixel are reminding us that today marks the 150the anniversary of the first color photograph, taken by Scottish physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell and photographer Thomas Sutton — inventor of the SLR camera. Their first color photograph was of a colored ribbon.

Updated May 18, 2011 @ 8:41 AM – Originally I left the word “color” out of the first sentence.  Fixed it.  That’ll teach me not to proofread at least twice.

I didn’t know Hurlbut had a rental division.  However, in a blog post by Kevin Anderson, Hurlbut’s Rental Manager, talks about some of the Chaos his gear goes through and what their “Movie Maker” HDSLR kit loos like, including a 5D, a 7D, a full set of Leica glass, mattebox, tripod, batteries, EVF… this list is pretty extensive. Oh, and if you’re interested, heres the link to their rentals page.

PetaPixel is pointing us at an interesting article by photographer Lawrence Kim called “Photography and the American Dream”, were he takes a look at the economics of being a pro photographer, and sees it as the worst possible career choice if your goal is primarily to build wealth.  It worth a read.

Chipworks is a company that famously tears apart higher-end consumer goods to have a peek a what makes them tick.  Their Teardown of the Nikon D7000 revealed a Sony Image sensor, a Toshiba processor (well, microcontroller), 1 GB of onboard RAM, and of course the Nikon EXPEED image processor.  For those of you wondering why two processors are necessary, the Toshiba processor is responsible for dislpaying images on the LCD, making the camera do things when all the buttons, knobs, and switches are used, monitoring the battery, etc.  The EXPEED processor would be responsible for controlling the sensor itself, interpreting the raw bits coming off that sensor, and doing something intelligent with them before handing them off to the Toshiba to be written to the memory card.

via Rob Galbraith

P.S.  Sorry about the “#pocketwizard” twitter tag.  My browser thought it knew what I was going to type for tags, and I wasn’t paying enough attention to it :-)

I saw brief mention of this thing quite some time ago, but apparently now it’s been rolled into a real product line.  It’s an inflatable studio-on-the-go.  As little as 40″x15″ when folded up, it blows up in to a room that’s 20 feet long by 15 feet wide and 13 feet tall.  Air is supplied by an industrial fan that is supposedly very quiet.  The maker’s FAQ also mentions that the surfaces are not matte, but not reflective enough to cause issue, just make sure you bring a backdrop with stands as well as your blow-up studio.

I must confess that I’m more than a little skeptical.  I have a hard time seeing any respectable photographer telling his or her client that they’re going to be bringing a studio in the form of a huge blow-up room.   It doesn’t help that most of the photos of the product itself are badly photoshopped and that the only quotes the maker has are from generic tech pundits and not professional photographers.

Then again, I’d love to be wrong.  Here’s to hoping this thing is awesome.

via Rob Galbraith

Phase One has made some waves lately, making bold steps to become a major force in the world of medium format photography.  Today that trend continues as they announce a new 80 Megapixel back, due out in April.  The new back has a dynamic range of 12.5 f-stops, and has a 16 bit color depth.  The LCD on the back is “mutitouch” capable, to help you pan and zoom around an image as well as use the back’s menus, and the back has a new USB 3 connection, as well as firewire 8 for tethering and offloading your data.  It looks like the new back will fit a range of Phase One, Mamiya, and Hasselblad cameras, as well as the Contax 645.  Check out the datasheet for more info.

The UK’s “Guardian” newspaper has a cool little video about one guy’s quest to document photographic darkrooms.  He sees them as giving way to newer technology, and wants to see them given some attention before they’re gone.

After World War II, The United States Atomic Energy Commission contracted with defense contractor Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier to photograph atomic bombs as they exploded. EG&G built a camera with a shutter that had no moving parts called a Rapatronic Camera.  The shutter was actuated using a magnetic field and was based on the Kerr effect. They could get shutter times down to about 3 microseconds, or millionths of a second.  There’s a cool little video on the landing page.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a larger version of the video.

via Hack A Day

PetaPixel has an awesome link to a YouTube video showing photographer Harry Taylor going the process of shooting an Ambrotype. An Ambrotype is like a tintype, but uses glass as the substrate.  Watch Harry take a clean sheet of glass, make it light-sensitive, put it into a century-old view camera, take an 8 second exposure, and develop the positive right there.  Check out more of Harry’s Work here.

Rob Galbraith is reporting that shipments of the much-waited-upon radio triggers for Nikon from Pocket Wizard are on the way to US Dealers, beginning today.

At CES, Polaroid and Chase Jarvis announced a collaboration in which Jarvis will create and curate artistic content, presumably using Polaroid’s just-announced “grey label” product line, which includes an instant mobile printer, digital camera and camera glasses.  Jarvis will also be advising Polaroid on “product endeavors”.

Personally, I would have been much more excited if Chase had announced a collaboration with The Impossible Project.

We’ve all been hearing a lot about the demise of Kodachrome lately.   One New York reporter began thinking about how it’s likely that digital photography helped bring about the end of the line for Kodachrome (and other film stocks, really), and decided to try and find someone that helped usher in the era we find ourselves in now.  She found David Lewis, an electrical engineer that worked at Kodak to develop the digital camera and the CCD sensor, and asked what he thought.

A new online service called  GuruShots allows you to inexpensively hire a professional to critique your photos.  Simply sign up, upload the photos you’d like critiqued, choose which professional photographer you’d like to hire to critique your work, and fill in a few details about the photos you’re submitting. Your first critique is free, each additional is reasonably priced, and there are price breaks for multiples.  The critique you get back is nicely broken down into categories like lighting, impression, subject, etc., and contains useful notes from the pro explaining the scores they’ve given and any suggestions they may have for improvement.

This service launched in response to its founders’ frustration in finding meaningful critiques of their own photography via online discussion boards, especially when you have no way of determining what sort of experience the person giving the critique has when using those forums.

Today professional photographer Scott Bourne posted an article about the nitty gritty of his backup solution, and also mentions why he’s stepped away from using the often-vaunted products from Drobo.  One of the best things about this particular write up is that it presents an easy solution for a photographer that doesnt have enterprise-class server hardware and dedicated IT personnel.  As much as we love Chase Jarvis’ work and his famous end-to-end workflow video, his backup solutions are really out of reach for most professionals that like doing everything themselves.