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7 Surprising Photography Facts You Probably Didn’t Know

23 Jun

The post 7 Surprising Photography Facts You Probably Didn’t Know appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Megan Kennedy.

Photography has a long and fascinating history full of interesting facts and stories. Here are 7 photography facts that may surprise you.

Fact #1 – All in the name

We use terms like photography and camera all the time, but where do these words actually come from? Photography fact number one hearkens back to the origins of many of the words we use today.

photography facts language — f/7.1 1/40 ISO 500

The phrase photography actually originates from the Greek words photos and graphé. Photos translates as “light” and graphé means “a representation by means of lines” or “drawing”. When used in conjunction, the two words come together to mean “drawing with light”. The coining of the word “photography” is generally attributed to Sir John Herschel in 1839.

The word camera, on the other hand, comes from the Latin term camera obscura, which means “dark chamber.” The term was originally used to describe a means of projecting an external scene onto a flat surface in a dark room. Sound familiar? The camera, as we know it today, evolved from the camera obscura configuration.

7 Surprising Photography Facts You Probably Didn't Know

Fact #2 The Kodak Moment

And speaking of words, did you know the term Kodak is simply made-up? Founder George Eastman favored the letter K because he believed it was a “strong, incisive sort of letter.”

Using an anagram set, Eastman and his mother came up with the Kodak name. They used three principals in devising the phrase. The word needed to be short, easy to say, and unlike any other name or association.

Kodak, or rather the term Kodak Moment, later entered the common lexicon to describe occurrences that seemed ideal for a photograph.

photography facts letter k — Eastman believed the letter K was a visually strong letter

Fact #3 – The first selfie

Self-portraits are commonplace today. But what you may not know is that the photographic selfie itself dates way back to 1839.

Robert Cornelius, a lamp manufacturer with a keen knowledge of chemistry and metallurgy, took on the task of perfecting the daguerreotype alongside chemist Paul Beck Goddard.

In 1839, Cornelius decided to turn the camera on himself, sitting for around a 10-15 minute exposure. The resulting daguerreotype depicted an off-center rendering of Cornelius – the oldest known intentionally-created photographic self-portrait.

Fact #4 – One small step

There are many earth-bound photography facts out there. But there are plenty of interesting factoids sourced from outside our planet too.

Taken in December 1972, Blue Marble was made by the crew of Apollo 17 on their way to the Moon. The first photograph that depicts the entirety of our planet from space, the picture was taken approximately 18,000 miles (29,000 kilometers) from the surface of the Earth. The photograph subsequently became one of the most reproduced images in history.

Another interesting space-related photography fact is to do with the fate of many of the cameras that have accompanied astronauts to the Moon.

Hasselblad cameras have captured some of the most iconic images in history – including our first steps on the lunar surface. However, due to weight restrictions, not all the cameras that have embarked on Moon missions have made it back. Up to 12 Hasselblad cameras remain on our planet’s only natural satellite to this day.

Fact #5 – The first photo book

Number five on our list of photography facts is based around photobooks.

Photobooks have a rich history in photography, but Anna Atkins seems to be the one that started it all. Atkins, a British botanist, learned early photographic processes from Henry Fox Talbot. She is also one of history’s first female photographers.

photography facts macro dandelion puff — Some of the first examples of botanic photography were made by Anna Atkins. f/6.3 1/80 ISO 200

Atkins made a visual documentation of botanical specimens using the Cyanotype process. She then compiled her cyanotypes into the 1843 publication of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. Atkins produced three volumes of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions between 1843 and 1853. Today, only 17 copies of the book are known to exist.

Fact #6 – The most viewed photograph

Photographed by former National Geographic photographer Charles O’Rear in 1996, Bliss is an image of rolling green hills and a semi-clouded blue sky in Sonoma County, California. Microsoft bought the rights to the image in 2000. The company then used the image as the default computer wallpaper for the Windows XP operating system.

The success of Windows XP and corresponding marketing material has led to a general consensus that Bliss is the most viewed photograph of all time. Even O’Rear himself conceded that he would probably be best known for the image saying, “anybody now from age 15 on for the rest of their life will remember this photograph.”

Fact #7 – Camera eye

The camera lens and the eye have a lot in common – leading us to the last of our photography facts.

Aperture can be defined as the opening in a lens through which light passes. A camera lens can either permit or restrict the amount of light that reaches the camera sensor with the aperture blades.

In our eyes, the iris does the same job, relaxing and constricting muscles to regulate the amount of light entering the eye. When you move between bright and dark environments, the iris in your eyes expands or shrinks to alter the size of the pupil.

Interestingly, the human pupil can expand to around 7 mm. This equates to our eyes operating from around f/8.3 in very bright light to around f/2.1 in the dark.

Conclusion

From the first selfie to the eye’s aperture equivalent, there is an abundance of fun photography facts to know. Do you have a favorite photography fact? Feel free to share in the comments below!

The post 7 Surprising Photography Facts You Probably Didn’t Know appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Megan Kennedy.

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New York court rules website didn’t violate image copyright by embedding Instagram post

16 Apr

A Manhattan federal court has dismissed professional photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair’s copyright claim against digital media website Mashable, ruling that it did not violate her copyright by embedding one of her Instagram posts on its website. The legal issue arose in 2016 when Mashable published an article on female photographers whose work includes the topic of social justice, putting Sinclair at #9 on its list.

According to court documents, Mashable contacted Sinclair in March 2016 and offered to pay $ 50 to license one of her images for use in its article on female photographers. Sinclair declined the offer, so Mashable instead embedded an Instagram post of the image that Sinclair had published on her public Instagram account.

Fast-forward to January 2018 when, according to the court documents, Sinclair contacted Mashable and demanded that they remove the embedded post from the article on the grounds of copyright infringement. Mashable refused to remove the Instagram post and 10 days later, Sinclair filed a copyright lawsuit against the publication and its parent company Ziff Davis, LLC.

The lawsuit raised questions over Instagram’s Terms of Service, its right to grant sublicenses for images uploaded to its platform, and whether sharing and embedding public social media posts without permission or a direct image license constitutes copyright infringement.

Instagram states in its Terms of Use that while it does not claim ownership of a user’s images, they grant the company a license to use it when they upload the content to the platform. Instagram says that when a user uploads images to its website…

‘…you hereby grant to us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy and application settings). You can end this license anytime by deleting your content or account.’

Mashable argued that based on that Terms of Use, it had a valid sublicense from Instagram that allowed it to embed the image post on its website. The defendant argued, among other things, that:

‘…because Plaintiff uploaded the Photograph to Instagram and designated it as “public,” she agreed to allow Mashable, as Instagram’s sublicensee, to embed the Photograph in its website.’

Sinclair’s legal claim countered this, according to court documents, which cite multiple arguments, including a claim that because Mashable didn’t get a direct image license from the photographer, it shouldn’t have been able to get a sublicense for the content from Instagram. The court disagreed with that argument, however, with U.S. District Court Judge Kimba Wood noting:

‘Plaintiff’s right to grant a license directly to Mashable, and Instagram’s right, as Plaintiff’s licensee, to grant a sublicense to Mashable, operate independently. Mashable was within its rights to seek a sublicense from Instagram when Mashable failed to obtain a license directly from Plaintiff—just as Mashable would be within its rights to again seek a license from Plaintiff, perhaps at a higher price, if Plaintiff switched her Instagram account to “private” mode.’

As well, Sinclair had argued that it is ‘unfair’ that a platform like Instagram is able to force professional photographers to choose between keeping their accounts private or allowing the company to sublicense their publicly shared content because it is ‘one of the most popular public photo-sharing platforms in the world.’

Judge Wood acknowledges the nature of this issue, but ultimately states that:

‘Unquestionably, Instagram’s dominance of photograph- and video-sharing social media, coupled with the expansive transfer of rights that Instagram demands from its users, means that Plaintiff’s dilemma is a real one. But by posting the Photograph to her public Instagram account, Plaintiff made her choice. This Court cannot release her from the agreement she made.’

The copyright claim was ultimately dismissed, a conclusion that contrasts the ruling from a New York court in early 2018 on the case of an embedded tweet that featured an image of athlete Tom Brady.

In that case, the court found that embedding such tweets may constitute copyright infringement and the fact they were uploaded to a third-party server like Twitter didn’t change that. The basis of the latest ruling is different, however, focusing on the terms of use the photographer agreed to rather than the ‘server test’ used in the 2018 copyrighted tweet case.

Both of these legal claims follow a different legal case from 2007 in which the precedent was set for how the Internet of today operates: that a person or company who embeds content hosted by a third-party source like Facebook or Twitter are not in violation of copyright, but rather that the hosting company itself is liable.

DPReview contacted Mickey Osterreicher, NPPA’s general counsel, for comment. He had the following to say about this New York ruling:

‘I have not had an opportunity to review the court’s opinion and order in this case so I do not feel it appropriate for me to comment. I will repeat something that NPPA has stressed for many years – photographers read and understand the terms of service or the terms of use on each and every social media platform before agreeing to them or posting on those sites. They also must continue to vigilantly monitor those terms as they are frequently changed and updated.’

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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The a9 II is the camera Sony had to make – but they didn’t make it for you

06 Oct

A lot of things are set to happen in 2020. It’s a presidential election year here in the US (actually it’s a presidential election year in lots of countries), Japan is hoping to establish a moon base*, and the UK will definitely, very likely, maybe have left the EU by he time Jan 1 rolls around. My money is on the moon base being ready long before the current British government gets its act together but we’ll see.

In addition to the aforementioned lunar exploits, Japan is also gearing up for the 2020 Olympic Games, to be held next year in late summer, here on Earth. We’ve yet to find out which countries will go home with the most gold medals (although knowing how hot Japan gets in late July I don’t fancy Team GB’s chances) but we do know that every jump that is jumped, every leap that is leapt, every shot that is put (putted?) and every hamstring that is torn will be captured by banks of television and stills cameras.

For this reason, Olympic years are big years for the camera industry. Traditionally, Canon and Nikon maintain a huge presence at these kinds of events, complete with large support staff, professional service centers, and stockrooms chock-full of cameras and lenses ready to be put into action by professional photographers from all over the world. Typically, we also see both companies announcing major new professional cameras either early in an Olympic year, or late the year before. Beijing 2008 saw photographers shooting with the Nikon D3 and Canon EOS-1D III, at London 2012 it was the then-new D4 and the EOS-1D X, and so on.

When the a9 was released about two and a half years ago, it was clear that Sony had its sights set on professional users

Sony is still learning how to be a ‘pro’ stills camera brand, but the company is moving extremely quickly. Sony has invested a lot in recent years in professional support, and these days has a large Pro Service presence at many major sporting events. When the a9 was released about two and a half years ago, it was clear that Sony had its sights set on professional users, and the expansion of professional support since then (as well as the release of some seriously impressive telephoto lenses) is further evidence that its leadership is very serious indeed about joining Canon and Nikon on the sidelines.

The new a9 II is, in effect, Sony’s 2020 Olympic camera. Announced fairly quietly today, without the usual Sony fanfare, the a9 II is a camera that the average DPReview reader will probably neither need nor buy. And Sony knows it. The upgrades compared to the a9 (which will continue in the lineup) are, for the most part, targeted at a small segment of the professional photographer user base. And even more specifically, towards photographers that shoot major sporting events.

A ten times increase in data transfer speed over LAN, the addition of 5GHz wireless connectivity, and the option to wirelessly send files from the camera when it’s turned off are valuable features for those times when you’re running around trying to send huge numbers of files to a remote editing station, but very few people ever need to actually do that. Likewise the ability to save up to ten sets of FTP settings to an SD card, or add 60-second voice memos to photographs, which can then be converted to text and appended automatically to EXIF using an app. Very cool, but not essential for most use-cases.

As an everyday machine for taking photographs, the a9 II is almost – but not quite – identical to the a9. Inside you’ll find the same 24MP full-frame sensor, the same autofocus system, albeit improved, the same 3.7 million-dot OLED viewfinder and broadly the same core feature set.

There are a few useful refinements though, some of which are courtesy of the new Bionz X processor: autofocus speed and precision have been improved, likewise face detection, and EVF responsiveness. A new mechanical shutter with a rated lifespan of 500,000 cycles brings faster mechanical shutter shooting (now up to 10fps), and the a9 II benefits from the ergonomic tweaks and improved weather-sealing introduced in the a7R IV. Image stabilization performance has also been slightly increased, from 5EV in the a9 to 5.5EV, and battery life has increased by around 6% (CIPA).

The a9 II’s video feature set is virtually unchanged over the a9, and shares its limitations (for some reason there’s still no Log option), but Sony has added real-time tracking.

Thanks to a series of firmware updates, the a9 is as competitive now as it ever was

You know what I think, but what’s your opinion? Should you buy one? After all, even if you’re just an amateur sports photographer, the increase in continuous shooting rate in mechanical shutter mode might make a big difference (specifically if the venue/s you shoot in use LED lighting or advertising panels) and the beefed-up weather-sealing could be essential for some situations.

For most people reading this article though, I suspect that the additions in the a9 II will prove to be of little or no interest compared to the original a9 which has been on the market for more than two years. Thanks to a series of firmware updates, the a9 is as competitive now as it ever was, and with the a9 II now at the top of the lineup, the older model is likely to get more affordable over the next few months.

Meanwhile, Sony can get the a9 II into the hands of the people that really need it – the pro sports shooters gearing up for next summer’s major sporting events. On the moon, or wherever.

* Yes, I know the cited article is from almost a decade ago, and since then the target date for Japan’s lunar base has been pushed back by at least a few years, but I’ll level with you – I was looking for a quick way to set up a cheap Brexit gag.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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6 Great Lightroom Tricks You Probably Didn’t Know About

18 Jul

The post 6 Great Lightroom Tricks You Probably Didn’t Know About appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kav Dadfar.

Adobe Lightroom is an essential tool for any photographer. Whether you are a professional or amateur, Lightroom can make your workflow faster and more efficient. But there are also a whole host of editing tools available. Some of which you may not even know existed. So here are 6 great lightroom tricks that you probably didn’t know about.

Crop overlay options

Cropping your photos can sometimes mean the difference between a good photo and a great one. You can access the Lightroom crop tool by pressing R on your keyboard in the Develop module. Perhaps you already knew that, but what you may not have known is that when your cropping tool is open, you can change the overlay that shows on your image.

By pressing “O,” you will be able to get a whole host of different overlays on the image to help you crop effectively. Everything from the “Rule of Thirds” to the “Fibonacci Rule” can be accessed to help turn an okay photo into a great one.

Lights Off Mode

Sometimes when you are editing a photo, it is easy to get distracted by all of the side panels and options available. A great way to really see your photo is by looking at it in the “Lights Out” mode. By pressing the “L” key once on your keyboard, everything dims except your image. Pressing it one more time, you will see just the image on a black background without the distracting side panels. Press it a third time to make the side panels re-appear.

Great-Lightroom-Tricks-You-Probably-Didnt-Know-About-2

Full-Screen Mode

Another useful trick, especially when working on smaller screens such as laptops, is to view your image at full screen. Because of the screen size, naturally the actual photo you are working on looks pretty small on a laptop screen.

To get a better view hit “F” on your keyboard and you’ll get to see the image as big as possible on the screen.

To come out of full-screen mode press Esc on your keyboard.

Know if your image is clipped

One of the key elements of taking a photo or post-processing it is to ensure that your highlights and shadows are not overexposed or underexposed to the point where there is no detail in those areas. This is a term that is known as clipping.

It can be difficult to judge by eye if any areas of your photo suffer from this. Thankfully, Lightroom’s clever tool can make it much easier to see where this occurs.

Click the little triangles on the corners of your histogram, and if there are clipped areas in your photo, they will show in red for highlights and blue for shadows. You can then tweak the different sliders to correct these issues. You can also access the clipping highlights by pressing “J” whilst in the Develop module.

Great-Lightroom-Tricks-You-Probably-Didnt-Know-About-3

Please note that on older versions of Lightroom these sliders might be different.

Pick and organise

I have over 100,000 photos in my collection. They are for a variety of assignments and clients, and they need organizing in a way that makes it easy for me to access them. One of the most useful aspects of Lightroom is being able to organize and flag your photos effectively. The three easy ways to organize your photos are 1) flagging them (i.e., putting a flag on the ones you want to), 2) adding 1 to 5 stars, 3) color-coding them in red, yellow, green, blue and purple.

You can access these by using the following shortcuts:

“P” flags a photo (to unflag a photo press “U”). You can also reject a photo by pressing “X”
Add stars by using the relevant number key between 1 – 5 (press zero to remove stars)
Color code your image by pressing 6 – 9

How you use these ultimately depends on your workflow. However, for example, you may decide to utilize the colors like a traffic light system (i.e., Green for the ones that you love, yellow for the okay ones and red for rejects). Alternatively, you may simply star the ones you really like with 5 stars. The choice is yours.

Speed up your editing

Often whenever you are at a location, you will take multiple photos. Sometimes you may even take a set of photos from the same scene. When it comes to editing them, it wouldn’t be very efficient to edit each one individually as the light and conditions won’t change much in a few seconds. Lightroom has a couple of great options to help.

Whilst in the Develop module, if you click on the “Previous” button (at the bottom of the right-hand panel), Lightroom pastes the same settings as the last image you were on to the selected image.

If you select multiple images on the film strip in the Develop module, you’ll notice that the “Previous” button changes to “Sync.” Press this and whichever image is selected will be used as a basis to paste the adjustment from to all images you’ve selected.

Once you have clicked on “Sync,” you’ll get a pop up where you can select which settings you want to add. This is a great option when, for example, you shot a scene in burst mode where all the conditions are similar from one photo to the next. You can always make further adjustments to a photo if needed.

Great-Lightroom-Tricks-You-Probably-Didnt-Know-About-4

Conclusion

These are just some of the simple yet effective editing tools that you may not have known about in Lightroom. There is so much more Lightroom can do. If you learn how to use it, it will become an invaluable software in your workflow.

Don’t forget to let us know your great Lightroom tricks below.

The post 6 Great Lightroom Tricks You Probably Didn’t Know About appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kav Dadfar.

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Judge rules RNC didn’t violate photographer’s copyright with unauthorized image use

20 Mar

This is Erika Peterman’s photograph the RNC took from Rob Quist’s Facebook page and altered to use on a derogatory mailer. Used with permission.

In May 2017, photographer Erika Peterman filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Republican National Committee (RNC), alleging the organization had used one of her images for a political mailer without permission. The image features Rob Quist, a Democratic congressional candidate who had run against GOP candidate Greg Gianforte in Montana.

Peterman’s image, which was licensed to the Quist campaign, was used by the RNC without permission as part of a mailer that mocked the politician. In response to the lawsuit, the RNC claimed its mailer represented fair use of the copyrighted image, and Montana judge Dana L. Christensen has sided with that argument.

A photo of the mailer that was sent out to Montana residents by the RNC that used Erika Peterman’s photograph without permission. Used (here) with permission.

According to Lexology, the court dismissed Peterman’s case, finding that the RNC had ‘transformed’ the photo adequately enough to claim fair use. Only small visual alterations were made to the image, such as cropping it to fit the mailer, and those edits alone weren’t sufficient for it to be considered transformative.

However, the court found that the image’s use on a mailer that criticized Quist had transformed the work, stating that the image’s inclusion as an element in this critical media qualified as fair use. The court said:

The mailer uses Quist’s musicianship to criticize his candidacy, subverting the purpose and function of the Work. With the addition of the treble clefs and text throughout, the mailer attempts to create an association between Quist’s musical background and liberal political views… In this context, the image takes on a new meaning.

In addition, the court claimed that the RNC’s use hadn’t impacted Peterman’s ability to profit from the image and that Peterman’s had published the image to Twitter and Facebook. By publishing the image on social media, the court stated, ‘it must be assumed that the MDP, Quist Campaign, and Peterman herself would have welcomed reposts, [etc.] by other pro-Quist social media users.’

Ultimately, the federal judge found the RNC’s unauthorized use of the copyrighted image to be ‘moderately transformative and wholly noncommercial [sic],’ stating that ‘the court determines that the undisputed facts establish that the RNC is entitled to judgement as a matter of law.”

DPReview spoke with Peterman via email and she shared the following response regarding the ruling:

I think equating political criticism to transformative use is pretty far-reaching. This decision gives any political party (or PAC) the freedom to use artistic or creative photos of political candidates for political criticism under the auspices of fair use. This impacts me greatly because I do a lot of political photography and work hard to create compelling, creative photos for the candidates I work with. And, like any photographer or artist, I also want to share my work. However, if I know that my photos can be used for “political criticism” without my permission, it creates a major dilemma for me.

And no, I’m not appealing. Not because I don’t think the decision is wrong, because I do. However, even if my decision were reversed and remanded back to the district court for a trial on whether the RNC’s use of my photo was “transformative”, I would again be in front of the same judge and the outcome would probably be the same. Additionally, I would most likely have to pay the RNC’s costs and possibly their attorney fees. That’s thousands and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars I don’t have.

Last, the judge’s comments about my sharing the photo on Twitter are incorrect. I posted a different photo of Rob Quist on Twitter, but not the one that was the subject of the lawsuit.

DPReview has contact both the RNC and Peterman for comment. this article will be updated accordingly when and if a response is given.

Update (March 19, 2019): This article has been updated with a quote from Erika Peterman

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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No, Flickr didn’t hand your photos over to corporations for machine learning

16 Mar

A screenshot of illustrated portraits shared on IBM’s Diversity in Faces dataset website.

Earlier this week, Flickr started taking heat across the web after it was specifically mentioned in a report from NBC News that took a deep dive into the ‘dirty little secret’ of using Creative Commons images to help train facial recognition algorithms.

The report mentioned multiple datasets used to help companies train machine learning algorithms to better comprehend diversity in facial recognition programs, but one dataset in particular was emphasized and elaborated on: IBM’s ‘Diversity in Faces’ set that was derived and iterated upon from more than 100 million Creative Common images gathered by Yahoo and released for research purposes back in 2014.

Almost immediately, users around the web started raining down critical comments. Others, such as Flickr’s own Don MacAskill, chimed in as well to help clarify the situation.

The issue isn’t that Flickr is handing over your photos for free to corporations looking to train their artificial intelligence algorithms. It’s that users are sharing their photos under various Creative Commons licenses without fully comprehending what those licenses entail

After the dust settled from the initial publishing of the report and the subsequent commentary across social media, one thing became clear: the issue isn’t that Flickr is handing over your photos for free to corporations looking to train their artificial intelligence algorithms. It’s that users are sharing their photos under various Creative Commons licenses without fully comprehending what all those licenses entail, a concern Flickr specifically referenced just recently in their announcement to save all Creative Commons photos on its servers.

After all, IBM didn’t sneakily pull private photos off of Flickr to use and Flickr didn’t just hand over millions of protected photos, despite the overtone NBC News’ article might give off. The photos IBM used to build up its database were the same photos any one of us can find when searching for public, Creative Commons photos on Flickr.

Don MacAskill, SmugMug Chief Executive and head of Flickr, shared his take on the situation in a conversation with Olivia Solon, the author of the NBC News article, explaining that no ‘scraping’ of Flickr images was done, as the photos were opt-in Creative Commons licensed photos. Below was MacAskill’s first response, but the entire thread is worth the read.

Photos were not “scraped … from @Flickr”. IBM is very clear that their dataset was not “scraped” but originates from opt-in @CreativeCommons licensed photos supplied in the @Flickr public research dataset. Factually incorrect. Your article needs corrections. /cc @NBCNews

— Don MacAskill (@DonMacAskill) March 12, 2019

Ryan Merkley, CEO of Creative Commons, even chimed in on the conversation with an official response on Creative Common’s blog. In it, Merkley addresses the concerns of Flickr users and went so far as to contact IBM ‘to understand their use of the images, and to share the concerns of our community.’

In it, Merkley writes (emphasis ours):

While we do not have all the facts regarding the IBM dataset, we are aware that fair use allows all types of content to be used freely, and that all types of content are collected and used every day to train and develop AI. CC licenses were designed to address a specific constraint, which they do very well: unlocking restrictive copyright. But copyright is not a good tool to protect individual privacy, to address research ethics in AI development, or to regulate the use of surveillance tools employed online. Those issues rightly belong in the public policy space, and good solutions will consider both the law and the community norms of CC licenses and content shared online in general.

The overarching theme that stands out amongst this ongoing debate is that it’s not always clear to users, especially those who aren’t as engrained in the online world of photography, what Creative Commons licenses cover and fair use actually is. Flickr doesn’t shy away from explanations and links out at various stages throughout the upload process and in its FAQ, but even the Creative Commons website lacks clear definition — something it’s already addressing with new FAQ pages that it will continue to update.

“Copyright is not a good tool to protect individual privacy, to address research ethics in AI development, or to regulate the use of surveillance tools employed online.”

Ultimately, the current copyright system that’s intended to prevent other people profiting from creative works, wasn’t necessarily designed to protect your images from this type of use. Those images don’t end up in devices, nor is anyone directly profiting from your creations, so existing rules don’t necessarily offer any protection, whatever rights you assert. The cost of your camera or smartphone getting that bit smarter might just be that your photos are the ones being used to train it.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Kodak didn’t get into cryptocurrency and bitcoin mining, “Kodak” did

12 Jan

Kodak’s CES announcements tell an interesting tale of the power of brands, and what happens to those brands when you start licensing them to other companies.

A lot of people still have positive associations with the Kodak brand and its iconic logos, but it’s worth clearing something up, especially in light of all the cryptocurrency madness that Kodak unleashed at CES: not everything with the Kodak name on it has much connection to a bunch of clever people in Rochester New York.

The parent company, Eastman Kodak, left the consumer photography business in 2012 following court-overseen ‘Chapter 11’ restructuring. Its remaining consumer photo businesses were sold to Kodak Alaris, which continues to sell photo film and printing kiosks.

So it’s worth keeping your fond memories of that company at arms length when you read about its apparent embrace of the blockchain.

The “Kodak” KashMiner, yours to rent for just $ 3,400 and a two year contract.

At CES this year ‘Kodak’ announced both blockchain-based IP protection and cryptocurrency projects, and a scheme that apparently lets you buy a Bitcoin-mining farm for them. However, the KodakOne project appears to be as much a rebranding of an existing project called RYDE as it does a “partnership between Kodak and [RYDE owner] Wenn Media”. Meanwhile, the Kodak KashMiner scheme, which lets you rent the hardware to mine the more famous Bitcoin cryptocurrency appears to be entirely separate: essentially an unconventional investment scheme using industry-standard hardware with the Kodak logo stuck on the side so that there’s something to show at CES.

Essentially, these look a lot like Kodak licensing its name to other companies in much the same way as the current holders of the Polaroid, Rollei and Vivitar names accept fees to let those names get emblazoned on, well, pretty much anything.

Eastman Kodak still makes film, but it appears to have only two customers: Hollywood and Kodak Alaris.

The Kodak PixPro Orbit360 4K VR camera, by JK Imaging

Then, of course, there are the cameras. You can still buy ‘Kodak’ cameras: JK Imaging, a California-based company, sells cameras under the Kodak brand. Interestingly, JK Imaging shares and address with General Imaging, which licensed the General Electric brand for its photo products.

Given the way that even the largest names in photography regularly use third-party ‘OEM’ manufacturers to produce some of their models, it’s senseless to try and draw a line between ‘real’ Kodak and licensees of the brand name. That the red and yellow logo doesn’t necessarily tie anything back to your fuzzy memories of Kodachrome, or brilliant developments such as the Bayer color filter.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Throwback Thursday: Five camera accessories you probably didn’t need

27 Jan

Five camera accessories you probably didn’t need

Plenty of useful camera accessories come on to the market every year – but among them are some real duds. So let’s take a look back at some of the worst offenders, shall we? The first product that comes to mind, at least around here, is the Sony Party-shot.

The Party-shot, introduced in 2009, was actually pretty clever. You popped on a compatible camera (originally the Cyber-shot DSC-WX1 and TX1) and off it went. The ‘personal photographer’ could rotate 360° and tilt up or down 24°, and would use the camera’s Face and Smile Detection features to follow subjects and take a photo at the right moment. It even used the Rule of Thirds for proper composition! The Party-shot was portable, making it the thing to talk about at parties (no pun intended).

Oh, and be sure to watch this:

Five camera accessories you probably didn’t need

No more waving your arms or calling out your childrens’ names to get them to look at the camera, thanks to the Look Lock by Tether Tools. It’s a simple enough gadget: it’s a smartphone holder on an articulating arm that attaches to your camera’s hot shoe. What you put on the screen is up to you. It can be videos, photos or, God forbid, clowns.

To give credit where it’s due, Samsung produced several DualView cameras that had an LCD panel on its front plate to essentially do the same thing. And it did have a clown mode.

Five camera accessories you probably didn’t need

Back in 2007 SanDisk released special ‘Ducati’ edition memory cards as well as a USB stick. This wasn’t just an unusual marketing scheme: at the time these ‘turbo-charged’ cards were also significantly faster than SanDisk’s other offerings at the time. They were also pricey, with that 8GB CF card going for $ 315 and the 4GB SD card priced at $ 130. That snazzy 4GB USB stick was $ 125.

In case you’re wondering about that SD card, it’s what SanDisk called ‘SD Plus’. The card could split open, exposing a hidden USB connector, so you could plug the card right into your PC. Not surprisingly these cards broke quite easily, and the ‘Plus’ designation now means ‘above average’ in SanDisk’s lineup.

Like many things, the partnership between SanDisk and Ducati didn’t last long, which is why I still treasure the 8GB SanDisk Extreme Ducati Edition CF card that I hide in my desk.

Five camera accessories you probably didn’t need

Back in the late 1990s transferring photos from camera to computer was a pain in the butt. You had to hook up a serial cable and those big 1.3 Megapixel files chugged along at a whopping 115kb/sec. Then a company called SmartDisk said ‘why not make a device that lets you put that SmartMedia card into your floppy drive!’ And so the FlashPath adapter was born.

The concept was pretty simple. Just pop two watch batteries into it, put the SmartMedia card into the side and insert it into your PC’s floppy drive (remember those?). That assumes that you’ve installed the proper drivers for Windows 95/98 or Mac OS, of course. The FlashPath wasn’t blazing fast, but by our estimates it was about double the speed of a serial cable, so it did save time. Not long after the FlashPath arrived, Sony did the same thing for its Memory Stick format. And not long after that, floppy drives started to disappear from PCs, starting with the iMac.

Five camera accessories you probably didn’t need

There have been plenty of accessory lenses for iPhones, but none is more ridiculous than the Turtleback iPhone SLR jacket. This $ 249 accessory, introduced in 2012, let you attach a Nikon F or Canon EF lens to the front of your iPhone 4. To make that happen you had to first attach a case to the phone and screw on an depth-of-field adapter ring, and then you could attach the lens of your choice. It goes without saying that using the SLR jacket required two hands, otherwise something terrible would happen to your iPhone.

We tested the SLR jacket at the time and it earned 2/5 stars, due mainly to do the fact that the iPhone is actually taking a photo of the focusing screen in the depth-of-field adapter, so you see the pattern of the screen and lots of dust. To its credit, Turtleback did offer an app which automatically flipped the image (since there’s no mirror, the image is upside-down) and calibrates the iPhone’s camera to maximize image quality.

Did we miss your most favorite, least useful camera accessory? Let us know in the comments.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Photokina 2016 highlights: What we saw (and what we didn’t)

29 Sep

Photokina 2016: What we got, what we wanted

The anticipation and excitement of Photokina makes it a lot like the camera nerd’s Christmas. And not unlike Christmas, you don’t always get exactly what you want. Sure, we got plenty of shiny toys like the Fujifilm GFX 50S, and things we weren’t expecting like the YI M1, but a few things on our wish lists didn’t turn up.

Read on as DPR staff offer their own personal takes on the show as a whole, what they were pleasantly surprised by and what they’re still wishing for.

Dale: Innovation, big and small

To me, the really interesting products at Photokina 2016 were of the large and small sensor variety. Fujifilm’s new medium-format system is particularly exciting. If you had asked me a few years ago about the future of medium-format, I would have been pessimistic. Now we have two new medium-format systems (Fujifilm’s and Hasselblad’s X1D) in just a few months, and both should be reasonably approachable for most photographers thanks to their (relatively) compact size and similarity to existing mirrorless camera systems.

At the other end of the spectrum we saw great innovation in the Micro Four Thirds space, starting with the Olympus E-M1 Mark II. It wins the ‘How much performance can you cram into a small camera and not blow it up?’ award. It’s a performance tour de force. We also got our first glimpse of the Panasonic GH5. Panasonic has long been on the cutting edge when it comes to video; the GH4 is still a class leading camera over two years into its life cycle. The GH5 looks poised to pick up where the GH4 left off, with 4K/60p capability, 4:2:2 10-bit 4K video, 6K photo mode, and an optional hot-shoe mounted I/O unit for pro-level audio.

But wait, there’s more! As if that weren’t enough, there’s also the YI M1. We know from our initial testing that the M1 has room to grow, but what’s really exciting is that we have a new manufacturer entering the market, and one that is joining a strong Micro Four Thirds ecosystem of products. Plus, the YI’s smartphone style user interface may be the best thing out there to entice mobile phone users to migrate back in the direction of a dedicated camera.

What did I miss at Photokina? While everyone was standing around the Fujifilm booth, mouths agape and drooling on the GFX 50S, I kept wishing for an updated X100 series camera with a 24MP X-trans sensor, Acros film simulation, and maybe even a new lens. #stillwaiting

Dale Baskin

Dan: What’s the big DL?

Dear Nikon, your Photokina presence was disappointing. Yes I know, you launched the D5 and D500 earlier this year (in time for the summer Olympics), so I guess you deserve some sort of break. But to think that the only product launches you had at the world’s biggest photography trade show were an action camera and a lifestyle/POV camera is pretty lame. Of course it would be one thing if the KeyMission 170 was ground-breaking in any way. It’s not. Sure its a competitive: 4k-capable, waterproof without a case, but in the presence of the GoPro HERO5 and Sony X3000 (which offers optically-stabilized 4K), the KeyMission 170 is just another 4K-capable action cam.

Which brings me back to my initial point, what’s the big DL? I am of course referring to the the Nikon DL line of premium compacts, announced around CP+ time in late February and than quietly delayed. Do they exist (or are they delayed indefinitely)? I saw plastic mock-ups back in January (and my colleagues again saw real mock-ups in Japan). I know the DL’s are available for pre-order (though no date is indicated as to when they’ll ship). Simply put, all I wanted from Photokina from Nikon was an announcement/some sort of concrete proof that DL’s will be in consumers’ hands before the year ends. I did not get that. All I got were some stinkin’ action cams.

Dan Bracaglia

Sam: Where are all the (cheap) mirrorless lenses?

This year was a vintage year for expensive new equipment at Photokina – very, very expensive equipment.

For example, the flagship Olympus body now costs nearly $ 2,000. They also made a fancy new 25mm F1.2 that costs over $ 1,000. There’s plenty of fuss over the new Fujifilm, which should be ‘less than ten grand.’ We finally got the long-awaited Sigma 85mm F1.4 Art, which has become the most expensive prime of the Art lineup. But what about the little guy? What about enthusiasts who can’t afford a lens that costs more than a thousand bucks?

Well, for the cash-strapped consumer, not much happened this time around… we got a couple refreshed models, the Nikon D3400 and the Olympus E-PL8, but neither of those brought any significant improvements to either camera, or that market segment. I guess as a consolation prize the Nikon has a new silently focusing kit lens…

There was the Yi M1, but fiddling with our pre-production sample left me with no praise and a thousand snarky comments. They’ve got some scrambling to do if they’re going to make that autofocus remotely usable before shipping.

We did see some less pricey things from Canon, like the new 70-300mm F4.5-5.6 IS II USM, with the super quick Nano USM tech inside. They also showed us their brand-new mirrorless camera. I like the new Canon M5, although it’s not necessarily priced to be an entry level bargain. Plus, much like the rest of the APS-C mirrorless world (except Fuji), we’re just left wanting more lenses.

That’s what I was hoping we’d see more of this Photokina: mirrorless lenses. Now that there’s a desirable mirrorless Canon, I can think of two systems that are in desperate need of good, affordable primes. I was hoping to see Sigma’s excellent DN line of primes expand to fill this gap, but we didn’t see anything at the show.

At least the Micro Four Thirds continues to grow both on the high end and low end of things. While we did get two very expensive new lenses from Olympus, we also got a very good little 30mm macro lens that was built with cost and quality in mind — a mix that seems to favor the latter too much and forgets the former more often than not.

Sam Spencer

Chris: Where’s my D810 update?

Photokina was well, a bit interesting this year. Olympus and Fujifilm both made huge announcements with respect to flagship cameras that they are developing, but I was honestly a bit disappointed by the announcements from Nikon and Sony. There have been rumors flying for some time now about replacements for Nikon’s D810 and in Sony’s case the a7R II. There was even some talk of the release of a long fabled Sony mirrorless flagship, which fans of rumor sites are calling the a9. Instead, Nikon released their Keymission series of action cams and Sony released the SLT-a99 II.

The announcement of the a99 II was a bit unexpected, but I wasn’t completely surprised that Sony decided to revitalize the a-mount with an updated version of the a99. The action-cams from Nikon on the other hand, were a bit of shock, not so much from the perspective that Nikon wanted in on the action-cam market, but more so that they ended up being Nikon’s only major announcement at Photokina.

In a year when Canon announced the 5D Mk IV only a few months ago, Fujifilm announced the GFX 50S and Olympus announced the development of the E-M1 II, it was a bit surprising that Nikon didn’t deliver a brand new or even an updated version of a full-frame camera. Sure, they recently released the D5, but it’s an expensive, niche product. Perhaps a D820 was planned but stymied by the knock-on effects of the earthquake in Japan earlier this year?

Regardless, I’m really hoping that we won’t have to wait until the next Photokina to see a brand new or even an updated camera from Nikon or Sony to replace the aging D810 and a7R II, respectively, but I’m not holding my breath.

Chris Williams

Allison: Long live instant photography

It was a good Photokina for tech innovations, but it was also a good year for lo-fi photography: thanks to Fujifilm and Leica, instant photography enjoyed a moment at the show. Fujifilm introduced monochrome film for its mini Instax format in addition to plans for a square format camera and film, and Leica introduced their own instant camera – well, sort of. Heck, we even got an updated Polaroid instant camera.

Okay, so the Sofort may only be a re-badged Instax Mini 90, but it does mean that Leica is sitting up and taking notice of Fujifilm’s success with instant film, which has been pretty darn successful. And when brands with as much recognition and clout as Leica get interested in a medium, I can’t help but feel better about its chances. If selling a re-badged camera and film helps keep the momentum going for Instax then I’m all for it. Just pass me some of that monochrome film when you find it – I don’t care if it says Fujifilm or Leica on the package.

Allison Johnson

Carey: A big show for lenses

If there’s one thing I think everyone is missing about Photokina this year, it’s the Olympus M.Zuiko 12-100mm F4 Pro stabilized lens. Okay, everyone is aware that the lens was announced, but no one seems to be talking about the main thing I would use it for – run and gun video capture.

You see, that’s how I spent most of my Photokina experience (and how I spend a good deal of time at any trade show or conference). When I’m hopping from meeting to meeting and booth to booth, hauling around extra gear – like a tripod – definitely gets in the way. So having 6.5 stops of combined stabilization with the E-M1 Mark II is a godsend, and honestly, the extra depth of field offered by the smaller sensor size will be more help than hindrance. Shooting at F4 on the full-frame setup we use can be handy for isolating a subject, sure, but it does mean it’s easier to miss focus if you’re not careful. Finally, when you combine all of this with truly excellent 4K video capture, you have a pretty formidable package (even if I’m going to shoot in 1080p most of the time anyway to save on editing time).

The only problem? Olympus’ swap from a tilting screen to a fully-articulating one. When you flip the screen out to the side to use the camera from a low or high angle, it interferes with the side ports for headphones and a microphone. Sure, I could get better quality audio by running a separate device, but as a one-man crew, I’m always looking to simplify.

The other standouts for me? The Sigma 85mm F1.4 Art looks amazing, but it’s huge. The Nikon 105mm F1.4 also looks amazing, and it’s also huge. The Olympus 25mm F1.2 Pro offers great results, but for the system, it is – no surprise – huge. One of the reasons I love my old Nikon AF-D lenses is their relatively compact size, which goes a fair way towards offsetting the relative bulk of a full-frame DSLR. Canon’s got a pretty neat package with the EOS M5 and the EF-M 22mm F2, but come on – let’s have some more! Bring on the pancake lenses!

Carey Rose

Richard: The element of surprise

The thing I liked most about Photokina was the surprise of the first day. Between the Sony a99 II, Fujifilm’s medium-format camera and Olympus’s E-M1 Mark II, there were a range of interesting products that hadn’t already been leaked, discussed then criticized to death before the show.

This gave the whole show a bit of a buzz that I felt it had lacked in recent years. Canon is probably kicking itself for launching the EOS M5 so far in advance.

In terms of the cameras themselves, it’s the M5 and Panasonic’s LX10/LX15 that I found most interesting. The flagship cameras are all well and good and give a great insight into what’s going to be possible, but they’re not the cameras that many people will get an opportunity to use. By contrast, I suspect both the Canon and the little Panasonic will find their ways into a lot of people’s hands.

The appeal of the M5 isn’t immediately apparent from the spec sheet but is the moment you pick it up and try to use it. The LX10 is almost the opposite, based on my experience so far: the touchscreen works well but the dials are oddly set up, so it’s the specifications of the lens and video capability, along with the price that keep it interesting.

Sadly, Nikon’s continued silence on the DLs was deafening. With the arrival of the LX15 and FZ2000/FZ2500, whenever they do finally surface it may only be the wide-angle 18-50 model that isn’t entering an overcrowded market.

That said, there were plenty of products (Sigma 12-24mm, Fujifilm GFX 50S, Hasselblad X1D 50c…) that it’ll be great to get a chance to test and use. The photo industry may not be in the best of health, but Photokina showed there are a lot of people working hard to produce exciting products.

Richard Butler

Jeff: Flagships and Superzooms

It was hard to top the big announcements from Photokina 2014, which saw the announcements of the Nikon D750, Canon EOS 7D II and Samsung NX1, but the 2016 show may have done it. This year’s show has, in my opinion, at least eight blockbuster announcements, from the medium format Fujifilm GFX 50S to the Sony a99 II to the Panasonic GH5. And that’s not including some very exciting new lenses. Two cameras that I didn’t just mention that stood out to me were the long-awaited Olympus E-M1 Mark II and Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-FZ2500/FZ2000.

The E-M1 II isn’t something that’s only excited those who’ve already bought into the Micro Four Thirds system. As a Canon EOS 5D III owner I find the size and design of the E-M1 II as well as the MFT system’s still-growing selection of lenses (hello, 12-100 F4) quite appealing. The built-in image stabilizer already offers 5.5 stops of shake reduction (and can pull off another stop with select lenses) and the AF system sounds impressive based on reports from my colleagues. Oh, and the high bit rate (236Mbps) 4K video doesn’t hurt either.

Speaking of 4K, another camera that impressed me is Panasonic’s FZ2500 (read our preview). While stills-related updates are fairly minor compared to the FZ1000, the 2500’s longer lens, built-in variable ND filter and larger EVF are most welcome. The FZ2500 continues to use Panasonic’s frankly awesome DFD focus system. Video is where it’s at, though, with DCI *and* UHD 4K capture at up to 100Mbps, 120 fps Full HD recording and an insane amount of tools (there are even SMPTE color bars.) The lens can zoom super slowly and the camera’s LCD made it really easy to rack focus. Something that irked me is Panasonic’s $ 99 charge for V-Log L support – come on guys, it’s a $ 1200 camera!

Jeff Keller

Barney: Delays and surprises

Photokina is the most important event in the photographic calendar, and as such it’s the show where we tend to see major announcements from the biggest manufacturers. This year, a large spanner was thrown into the works by the Kyushu earthquake, which hit Japan in spring and badly disrupted Sony’s sensor manufacturing plant.

This is a problem not only for Sony, because Sony supplies imaging chips to virtually every camera maker. The Kyushu earthquake is the reason why Fujifilm, Olympus, Sony and Panasonic had to be content with only announcing the ‘development’ of new flagship cameras at Photokina, and may also be a contributing reason for the continued no-show of Nikon’s DL-series compact cameras (originally announced back in February). Maybe Nikon had originally planned a replacement for the D750, D820 or D610 at Photokina. Maybe Sony had planned to show off a successor to the a7 II – we don’t know.

Although we’ve yet to see a ‘final’ sample, my standout camera of this year’s Photokina is Fujifilm’s GFX 50S. If the 50S turns out being as good as it looks, and if it really does come in at ‘well under $ 10,000’ with a 63mm prime, I suspect that they could be backordered for quite some time.

At the other end of the spectrum is the 4K-capable Olympus OM-D E-M1 II. Small, light (relatively speaking) and blazingly fast, Olympus has pulled out all of the stops with its new Micro Four Thirds flagship. Sony’s new a99 II came as a bit of a surprise, but also offers a range of attractive high-speed stills and video modes, and full-frame 4K video capture.

Meanwhile, although we don’t have all the details yet, Panasonic’s GH5 raises the video bar even further with the ability to capture 6K footage.

Despite the less-than-ideal circumstances, this year’s Photokina actually ended up being pretty exciting, and I’m really looking forward to some of these ‘development announcements’ turning into shipping products in the coming months. Thanks for reading!

Barnaby Britton

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‘Ansel made photographs, he didn’t take them’: Jeanne Adams interview

27 Aug

Ansel Adams’ name is synonymous with landscape photography, but a new interview with Adams’ daughter-in-law Jeanne reveals more about a lesser known side of his work. The long-time CEO of the Ansel Adams Gallery talks with Advancing Your Photography’s Marc Silber, discussing the legendary photographer’s portraiture and architectural imagery, and shares some stories of Adams’ interactions with his workshop participants.

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