Jumping Spiders’ Eyes May Inspire New Camera Technologies
In a paper published in Science this week, Japanese researchers reported on a discovery that jumping spiders use a method for gauging distance called “image defocus”, which no other living organism is known to use. Rather than use focusing and stereoscopic vision like humans or head-wobbling motion parallax like birds, the spiders have two green-detecting...
Sharpening De-Mystified
We all want absolutely tack-sharp photos. We all know that sharpness begins with the shot itself – there is no saving a blurry photo in post-production. We are somewhat familiar with sharpening techniques in Lightroom or Photoshop, but what is the best way to apply sharpening for landscapes? Portraits? Cars? Street scenes? When is the...
Monthly Photo Challenge – December
The Monthly Challenge for December is bokeh. There is one thing about this challenge that make it a little more than just bokeh. For this challenge the bokeh must be of either light or snow as shown in the images included with the article. What Bokeh is: Bokeh is the out of focus portion of...
Fiddle with Focus to Add Some Bokeh to Long Exposure Night Shots
Claus Thiim captured this beautiful image of fireworks showing both in-focus and out-of-focus burst of light. The trick is to capture most of the photograph while focused on the fireworks, and then throw the lens out of focus shortly before the shutter closes. On a slightly related note, check out this crazy video of an...
Coming to a Camera Near You: Autofocus As Fast as the Human Eye
Contrast detection is one of the two main techniques used in camera autofocus systems. Although focusing speeds continue to improve, the method uses an inefficient “guess and check” method of figuring out a subject’s distance — it doesn’t initially know whether to move focus backward or forward. UT Austin vision researcher Johannes Burge wondered why...
Think You Don’t Need to Focus? Think Again.
Been tons of chatter online about the Lytro camera the last few weeks. In case you’ve been living under a rock or too busy to notice, then you’ll be happy to know that the new Lytro camera allows you to select focus AFTER you shoot the photograph. AMAZING technology developed at Stanford by Ren Ng....
ARCHRIG Slashes the Price of their Follow Focus Rig for DSLR’s
We found ArchRig just the other day and since we’d never seen them before and they’re having a sale, we thought we’d better pass the news on to you in case you’re interested. Oh, if you want to jump straight to Amazon to buy one (and get free shipping) – buy now An ArchRig demo...
DIY Pulling Focus
Michael The Mentor came up with a fairly ingenious idea for pulling focus using only three simple arrow post-it notes. Attach a post-it to the center of your lens. Find the two fields you are planning to focus on. Then place a post-it where your lens ends up for both fields. When you’re shooting all...
Shoot first, focus later! Are “focus free” cameras in your future?
There’s a buzz going around the web since yesterday about Lytro (a new camera brand that was announced just Tuesday) which features the functionality of selectively changing the focus of your image after it is taken and you can change the focus any time you want. You will also be able to share the photos...
the Canon EOS 5D Mark II is a piece of s*it
Not my words but those of Karel Donk who’s not been a fan of the Canon EOS 5D Mark II (reviews) since just about day one. Here’s a bit of his latest controversial post… [source: 5DMk2blog] Snips from Karel Donk By now you’re probably thinking I’m being too hard on this camera and I understand...
DSLR Solutions announces a simple inexpensive DSLR follow focus
DSLR Solutions announces a simple inexpensive DSLR follow focus – a planet5D exclusive first look at this new HDSLR follow focus unit from dslrsolutions.net. We talked with Aric Spence yesterday and this could very well be a great product for those not wanting to buy a rails system to mount a follow focus. It has...
What it Looks Like to Focus a Rangefinder Camera
If you’ve never used a rangefinder camera before, this video provides a visual look at how focusing works (a Leica M2 is used). Basically you’re given a second (smaller) image of the scene, and your goal is turn the focus ring until the two images match up for the subject you’d like to have in...
