News / Other News

Do we value cameras for their form, or their function? An exhibition in Philadelphia which features hundreds of camera sculptures made from a range of different materials aims to examine this question. 'Reach Ruin', which is showing at The Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia includes several sculptures of cameras created from carved stone, glass, chalk and sand. According to the artist, Daniel Arsham, as well as being a photographic tool, 'many of us that use photography have a relationship with the object. If you want, call it a fetish'. Click through for more information and images from the exhibition. (via Wired)

The Commons, Flickr's collection of public domain images, is five years old. To celebrate, Flickr has created galleries of the most viewed, 'favorited' and commented-upon images. The Commons was launched in 2008 with 1500 photos, in partnership with the US Library of Congress. Five years later, the collection boasts more than 250,000 images. Click through for more information, and links to the galleries of most popular images in the growing collection. 

The UK's biggest high-street camera retailer, Jessops, has gone into administration, putting 192 stores and 2,000 jobs at risk. The company's website is not accepting orders and administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers has said vouchers and returns would not be honoured at present. The company, that has been slow to respond to competition from internet retailers, was rescued in 2009 by HSBC, which bought into the company in return for writing off some of its debts. However, increasingly stringent credit terms imposed by suppliers (a common move when there is doubt surrounding the future of a company), and predictions of further falls in camera sales led to the administrators being called.

Just before Christmas we invited you, our readers, to tell us what you thought was the best camera of 2012. This year was one of the busiest that any of us can remember, and saw serious new products from all the major camera manufacturers. For those of us using and reviewing the cameras 2012 was a roller-coaster year of highs, lows, and the Pentax K-01. So which camera stood out for you? Click through for the results of our end-of-year readers poll.

Well, hasn't 2012 gone by quickly? We're nearly at the end of another year, and 2012 was one of the busiest that we can remember, as camera manufacturers regained some momentum after the worst of the economic downturn and various natural disasters. This year saw a lot of innovation and movement at the top of the ranges of biggest camera manufacturers, making it a fantastic year for photo enthusiasts and reviewers alike (even if we are completely exhausted at this point). So at the end of an incredibly busy year we want to know which cameras stood out for you. Click through for a link to our end-of-year poll. 

German photographer Markus Reugels has gained quite a bit of attention over the years for his stunning and colorful high-speed photographs of the shapes and forms created when liquid is dropped into water. If you've ever been curious as to what it takes to get images like these, Reugels talks briefly about the equipment and technique he's currently using and shares an image of his actual setup.

A patent filed by Nikon in Japan appears to revive the long-held dream of adding a digital sensor to an existing film SLR. The Japanese Engineering Accomplishment blog found the recently published patent that shows a mechanism for mounting and adjusting the position of a digital sensor on a rear door that could be used to replace the conventional film door. However, the patent only covers the mounting of the sensor relative to the film guides - it doesn't address any of the hurdles that have stood in the way of anyone realizing this long-discussed idea. (via PetaPixel)

Samsung and Time Out magazine have announced the ‘Share your Now’ contest. Participants can upload images they have captured of New York or London to a dedicated portal on the Time Out website. Each week, five entrants from each city will win a Samsung Galaxy Camera. When the nine-week competition closes on 4th March, Time Out will commission three winners from London, and three from New York, 'to share their take on their own city', using their Android OS-based camera. These final images will be featured on the front cover of region-specific Time Out magazines. The winners will also receive a free trip to the other city. A grand winner will be announced after readers vote for their favorite cover photo. The competition is open until 10 February 2013.

DxOMark has introduced a new metric of lens sharpness that it's calling the 'Perceptual MegaPixel'. This is designed to give a simple, easily-understandable indication of how a lens impacts on the resolution of the camera with which it's paired. The measurement is based on standard MTF (Modulation Transfer Function) testing, but also takes into account the sensitivity of the human visual system to detail. The data can be explored over at the DxOMark website.  

Nikon is celebrating the production of its 75 millionth Nikkor lens for its interchangeable lens cameras. The lineup currently consists of more than 80 kinds of lenses, including specialty Fisheye, Micro, and PC-E lenses for SLR cameras, as well as 1 Nikkor lenses for its Nikon 1 cameras. The lens series was introduced in 1959 with the launch of the Nikkor S Auto 5cm f/2.

Time magazine has published its Top 10 photos of 2012. As part of its end-of-year series including the 'most surprising pictures of the year' and the 'Top 10 Photographic Magazine Covers', this set includes the images that moved the team the most in 2012. "They all deliver a strong emotional impact — whether they show a child mourning his father who was killed by a sniper in Syria; a heartbreaking scene in a Gaza City morgue  or a haunting landscape of New Jersey coastline after Hurricane Sandy" says Kira Pollack, Time's Director of Photography. Click through to see what they chose.

Manipulation of photographs is nothing new. For as long as cameras have existed, photographers have staged, retouched and combined images and passed them off as 'real'. Sometimes for artistic purposes, sometimes for fun, but sometimes for more nefarious purposes. The BBC has published a fascinating article on its international 'Future' site exploring the power that faked photographs have over us, and draws some alarming conclusions about our memories, and how easily they too can be manipulated. Click through for more information and a link to the full article. 

Flickr has updated its web interface and released an updated version of its iOS app as it tries to reassert its relevance in a post-Instagram landscape. The refresh of the web interface sees the navigation bar at the top of the site get slimmer, to devote more page space to photos. The 'Explore' page has also been redesigned - taking on the full-width, large tiled design used in the 'My Contacts' page. Flickr has also updated its famously poor iOS app, adding processing filters and better discovery tools.

Carl Zeiss has announced its annual photo contest for images shot with one of its lenses. Any Zeiss lens is considered valid, from Nokia smartphones through Sony compacts, such as the RX100, to the company's high-end interchangeable lenses. This year's theme is 'The moment that knows no limits' and first prize is one of the company's manual focus SLR and rangefinder lenses, with a variety of other Zeiss-branded prizes for runners-up. The contest runs on Flickr until January 15th.

Leica has announced the Oskar Barnack Award 2013 international photo competition will open for entries from January 15th, with a first prize worth €15,000 (~ $19,400). The 2013 winner will receive a Leica M digital rangefinder and lens in addition to a €5000 (~ $6500) cash prize. To enter, participants need to submit a portfolio of up to twelve images expressing 'the interaction between man and the environment.' In addition, the Newcomer award, open to photographers under 25 years of age, offers a Leica rangefinder camera and lens as the prize. Submissions are open until 1st March 2013.

Financial news service Bloomberg is reporting Apple and Google are working together to purchase some of Kodak's imaging patents. The companies are said to be working together - lending more weight to reports in the Wall Street Journal from back in August. The story suggests the two companies, along with the groups of smaller companies with whom they'd been preparing bids, will offer more than $500m for the patents. Such a figure would give Kodak access to $830m of external funding that is dependent on the value of the patent deal.

The Atlantic's excellent 'In Focus' photo blog has published the third and final part of its 2012 Year in Photos. The three-part series includes 135 images from around the world, covering a great breadth of events and subjects. As you'd expect of such a review, there are some occasionally graphic images that some readers may find disturbing but there are also some astonishing photos giving a surprising views of other countries and cultures.

Steve McCurry, the award-winning photographer responsible for the iconic 'Afghan Girl' portrait for National Geographic, has given an interview about his work and why, despite his fame, he maintains a blog of his latest images. In the interview, on the official Wordpress blog, McCurry explains how photography as a career has changed over the course of the past few decades, and the vital role now played by the Internet. Click through for extracts and a link to the full interview at blog.wordpress.com, and to Steve's own blog. 

A New York tabloid newspaper has caused controversy by publishing an image of a man about to be killed by a subway train on its front cover, along with a dramatic headline. The image shows a subway train bearing down on a man who'd been pushed into its path. The paper's handling of the story has been widely criticized and it raises a range of issues over the actions of all the parties involved. Journalism school The Poynter Institute has an interesting summary, separating the different aspects about a controversy that brings a lot of difficult questions about photojournalism and news reporting. What do you think?

'It nearly killed me' says Olympus CEO-turned-whistleblower Michael Woodford of writing about his dramatic exit from the Japanese company following his 2011 exposure of massive corporate mismanagement. In an interview with Amateur Photographer Magazine, Woodford describes the strain on his personal life, and the process of writing a book about the experience with lawyers poring over every word. He also tells of his intention to give to charity much of the £10M he was awarded for unfair dismissal. Click through for extracts from the interview (from Amateur Photographer).