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Archive for April, 2019

Instagram is considering hiding the like counts on photos

20 Apr

Instagram boasts one billion active monthly users. One is its defining features is the ability to like posts. Recent studies indicate that addiction to social media, and the number of likes received on content, is akin to drug use. Instagram is currently working on a prototype design that will conceal the number of likes on posts. Likes will only be visible to the person who made the post.

This testing in design change was discovered by Jane Manchun Wong, a prominent reverse-engineering expert who has uncovered many of Instagram’s planned features before they were announced or launched. Wong spotted the tweaks in the Instagram Android code base and has generated the following screenshots:

The screenshots clearly display the adjustments in design as likes are not visible on the public interface. There is also a ‘View Likes’ button which lists the users who liked a specific post.

Wong says the test states that Instagram ‘want(s) your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get. During this test, only the person who shares a post will see the total number of likes it gets.’

Instagram claims it has not tested the feature. In a statement to The Verge, a spokesperson for the company said: ‘We’re not testing this at the moment, but exploring ways to reduce pressure on Instagram is something we’re always thinking about.’

Wong has also discovered testing for new stickers in Instagram’s Direct Messaging service.

Instagram has faced a series of challenges this year. Facebook recently revealed that millions, not tens of thousands, of Instagram users had their passwords stored in plaintext. The services co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, also parted ways last September over disagreements with Mark Zuckerberg on the app’s future.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Report: Canon is lowering profit forecast 20% due to shrinking camera sales

20 Apr

According to a report [partial paywall] from Nikkei Asian Review, Canon is planning to lower its profit forecasts for the 2019 fiscal year by 20 percent — amounting to approximately 50 billion yen — due to shrinking camera sales.

What’s to blame for this downturn? According to Nikkei, the digital camera and semiconductor markets are shrinking due to the increasing capabilities of smartphone cameras. Below is the full translated section of the report:

‘Canon will lower its forecast for the fiscal year ending December 2019. Consolidated operating profit (US GAAP), which indicates the mainstay of the business, is likely to decrease by 20% over the previous fiscal year to just over 270 billion yen. About 50 billion yen lower than the previous forecast. The shrinking of the digital camera market and the deterioration of the semiconductor market due to the functional improvement of smartphones (smartphones) will hit hard.’

This report echoes the drop in global camera sales reported by the Japanese Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) earlier this month.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Weekly Photography Challenge – Chimney

20 Apr

The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Chimney appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

This week’s photography challenge topic is the fabulous CHIMNEY!

Mahir Uysal

Your photos can be anything that includes a chimney. They can be color, black and white, moody or bright, landscape, architecture or industrial. You get the picture! Have fun, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Pierre Châtel-Innocenti

 

Some Inst-piration from some Instagrammers:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by In The Blink Of An Eye (@intheblinkofaneyeo) on

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Guy Davies (@guydaviesphotographer) on

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Maurice Robinson (@mauricearobinson) on

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Jonny Mendelsson (@jonnymendelsson) on

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by JHT (@memofromturner) on

 

 

Check out some of the articles below that give you tips on this week’s challenge.

Tips for Shooting a CHIMNEY

How to Tell Stories with Architecture Photography

9 Creative Architecture Photography Techniques for Amazing Photos!

How to Enhance your Black and White images with Infrared Photography

Urban Exploration Photography – Urbex

How to Create Powerful Silhouettes by Telling a Story

5 Tips for Better Winter Landscape Photography

 

Weekly Photography Challenge – CHIMNEY

Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see or if you’d prefer, upload them to your favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge.

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

You can also share your images in the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.

If you tag your photos on Flickr, Instagram, Twitter or other sites – tag them as #DPSchimney to help others find them. Linking back to this page might also help others know what you’re doing so that they can share in the fun.

The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Chimney appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.


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Wundershine’s Reframe is designed for easy image-swapping and app-controlled curation

19 Apr

Back in 2015 Dutch start-up Wundershine announced the Makerframe, a wooden picture frame that could print your images with a built-in inkless thermal printer and swap them out using a built-in framing mechanism. Old prints were stored inside the frame for “re-framing” at a later stage. System control and image curation were performed via a mobile app and a web interface was in planning as well.

Unfortunately the Makerframe never made it to market. The company says that since the initial announcement it has learned that “for most consumers simplicity, affordability and easy refresh are more important than instant refresh.”

This is why only a simpler version of the Makerframe, the Reframe, has now been launched and made available for purchase. The Reframe system consists of wall-mounted, wooden picture frames with a slide-in and clamping mechanism. Compatible prints can be ordered via a mobile app and are delivered by mail.

The frame comes with a hidden slot at the bottom for easy image-swapping and Wundershine says your photos are delivered to your home in the shape of “gallery quality prints on heavy card stock.”

The mobile app lets you curate an image queue from multiple cloud services and order new prints. The Reframe is available now in solid natural oak and walnut and white and black for 79 Euros ($ 89). A pack of three will set you back 199 Euros ($ 223). All frame purchases include a voucher for a photo pack. Head over to the Wundershine website for more information.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Review of the Nikon Z6 Mirrorless Camera [video]

19 Apr

The post Review of the Nikon Z6 Mirrorless Camera appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

In this review of the Nikon Z6 mirrorless camera, Tony and Chelsea Northrup test out this camera in different scenarios to see how it performs.

It has a few issues that you may want to know about, but are they serious enough to steer away from this camera?

Photography

  • Ergonomically, it feels good to hold.
  • Autofocus is an issue. While shooting wildlife, the camera hunted for focus and caused many missed shots. Even during a portrait shoot, the Z6 sometimes narrowly missed focus. As a result, they had to over-shoot to ensure they got at least one shot in focus.
  • Autofocus also failed in backlit scenarios, so manual focus was used.
  • The camera advertises shooting at 11 frames per second, but when shooting moving objects such as birds, you will need to drop that down to around 5 frames per second.
  • Because the sensor doesn’t close when changing lenses, there is more possibility of getting dust on the sensor (an issue with mirroless cameras in general).
  • There are no native lenses for the Z mount so you need an adapter.
  • White balance is the worst they have seen in any camera, and it had to be set manually.
  • Exposure compensation had to be constantly adjusted to get the right exposure. The camera would often underexposure backlit portraits – often by a number of stops.

If you are a photographer, you may be better off buying a used Nikon D750 with the same lenses, with no need for an adapter. You’ll get the same image quality, without the focusing issues, plus two card slots.

Video

  • When using video, rolling shutter is prevalent.
  • The image stabilization isn’t good when shooting video, so often needed to be switched off. It was jarring when walking, which is problematic due to the native lenses not having image stabilization either.
  • Focusing points go all the way to the edge of the frame.
  • While the Z6 doesn’t have eye detection focus, Nikon has promised it in a future Firmware upgrade.
  • While the Z6 has the best video autofocusing of any Nikon camera, they are still way behind other competitors.
  • The video looks great when shooting in low-light scenarios. So much so that it outperforms it’s competitors in this area, including the Canon EOS R, Nikon Z7, Nikon D850, and Sony A7R III. This makes it one of the best low-light video performance cameras ever made.
  • Auto White balance can be very problematic and often required setting it manually.
  • No flip screen for filming yourself.

If you already own the Nikon D750 or D850, you already have the best Nikon cameras, so save your money and stick to those.

If you must go mirrorless, perhaps try competitor brands such as Sony and Fuji.

 

You may also find the following articles helpful:

  • The New Panasonic Lumix S1 and S1R – Could these Full-frame Mirrorless Cameras be Cameras of the Year?
  • Why We Have Such a Love-Hate Relationship with Mirrorless Cameras
  • Gear Review: The Lumix G9 Mirrorless Camera
  • The 19 Most Popular Compact System and Mirrorless Cameras with Our Readers
  • Which Crop Sensor Sony a6000 Series Camera Should You Buy?

 

The post Review of the Nikon Z6 Mirrorless Camera appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.


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Facebook now says ‘millions of Instagram users’ had their passwords stored in plaintext

19 Apr

Last month, Facebook shared a blog post detailing how passwords of Instagram, Facebook and Facebook Lite users were stored in plaintext on its servers. At the time, Facebook said only ‘tens of thousands of Instagram users’ were affected. Now, Facebook has updated the post to say ‘millions of Instagram users’ had their passwords stored in plaintext on its servers.

Facebook claims ‘these stored passwords were not internally abused or improperly accessed’ and says it will notify the users with exposed passwords. Krebs on Security reports more than 20,000 Facebook employees had access to the plaintext passwords, some of which date as far back as 2012.

Regardless of whether or not you’ve been notified by Facebook of a breach, it would be a good idea to change your Facebook and Instagram passwords as well as the passwords on any other login that shares those passwords.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Nikon Z 24-70mm F2.8 S sample gallery

19 Apr

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Nikon’s new Z 24-70mm F2.8 S promises a substantial size and weight reduction compared to its F-mount predecessor and a boost in optical quality. We recently received a final copy of Nikon’s latest pro-grade standard zoom and wasted no time taking it out for some shooting.

Over the course of three days we took the Z 24-70mm F2.8 S for a rainy walk around Portland, a cloudy hike up Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge, and a sunny stroll around Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. Take a look at our gallery of converted Raw files to see how the new lens performed.

Check out our gallery of real-world samples from the Nikon Z 24-70mm F2.8 S

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Choosing a camera Part 2: is a bigger sensor better?

19 Apr

When looking at pixel size, we saw that there’s little difference between having a few large pixels and having lots of small ones, once you consider the whole image. This is because sensors have the opportunity to capture the same amount of light per-whole-image, regardless of how many pixels they have.

However, when looking for a new camera, there often is a way of getting more light and therefore better image quality: a larger sensor. This is because, at the same exposure settings, a large sensor is given the same amount of light per unit area, but has a greater sensor area capturing this light.

Key takeaways:

  • Two cameras* with the same exposure receive the same light per square mm, and larger sensors have more square mm.
  • Every object in your scene will be projected onto more square mm of the larger sensor if those two hypothetical cameras have the same field of view.
  • This means every object is described with more photons of light, which gives the potential for a cleaner image.
  • Differences in sensor performance mean one camera may over- or under-perform expectations but these differences are usually smaller than the differences made by changing formats.

The effect of sensor size:

In this instance we’re comparing the Nikon D810 and the Nikon D7000, which have the same sized pixels but different sized sensors. The D810 has a full-frame sensor that’s around 2.3x larger than the APS-C chip in the D7000.

ISO 1600
D810 whole frame
[Raw File]		 D7000
[Raw File]		 D810 (resized: 16MP)
[Raw File]
ISO 3200
D810 whole frame
[Raw File]		 D7000
[Raw File]		 D810 (resized: 16MP)
[Raw File]
ISO 6400
D810 whole frame
[Raw File]		 D7000
[Raw File]		 D810 (resized: 16MP)
[Raw File]
ISO 12800
D810 whole frame
[Raw File]		 D7000
[Raw File]		 D810 (resized: 16MP)
[Raw File]

As you might expect, the two cameras look similarly noisy at the pixel level because they received the same amount of light per square mm and each pixel is the same number of square mm.

But when you downscale the D810’s images (as you would if you wanted to view or print at the same size), the benefit of its bigger sensor starts to appear.

Compare the D810’s output to the D7000 image from one ISO setting lower and you’ll see they look very similar, but with the D810 still a fraction ahead. This is consistent with the 1.2EV difference that the sensor size difference would lead you to expect.

Size differences outweigh performance differences

If shot from the same position, using a lens with the same angle-of-view, every object in the scene will be captured by a greater area on a bigger sensor, so with the same exposure a larger sensor will have more photons shone on it to describe the scene. As such it will tend to look cleaner if you view them at the same size.

There will be some differences in how well each sensor design can turn these photons into a digital signal (even though most modern sensors are excellent), but there are fairly large gaps between most popular sensor sizes, and these size differences tend to be greater than the differences made by sensor performance.

Now this might sound like bigger is always better. But it’s not that simple…

Click here to read Part 3:
The trade-offs of sensor size

*Assuming you’re shooting the same thing ie. both cameras are in the same position and shooting with the same framing.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Kandao uses AI to convert 30fps 360-degree video into super-slow-motion footage

19 Apr

Kandao, the makers of professional-grade 360-degree cameras and the Kandao Raw+ image stacking tool for Raw files has launched another potentially very useful software feature. AI Slow-motion is designed to convert 360-degree video footage that has been recorded at a regular 30 frames per second into 300 fps super-slow-motion clips.

The software uses artificial intelligence and machine learning methods to predict and generate intermediate frames for a smooth and detailed slow-motion output from existing 360/VR footage.

The company says that compared to optical flow or interpolation methods that are used in other applications, the AI-generated footage offers more accurate frame interpolation as well as fewer jagged edges and other artifacts. The software also requires less powerful hardware than comparable systems.

The feature will first be implemented into the Kandao QooCam Studio and Kandao Studio applications, allowing for an up to 10x slow-motion effect. For example, 360-degree video originally captured at 8k 30fps can be converted into 8K 240fps slow-motion or 4k 60fps video into 4K 480fps footage, by selecting a factor of eight during the 360 stitching workflow in the software software.

The bad news is that, although the algorithm behind the feature can work with any existing videos, in a first step the technology will only work with video from Kandao cameras. However, the company says it will make AI slow motion available for other cameras in the future, which is good news for 360-degree videographers who would like to work with super-slow-motion without splashing out on ultra-powerful hardware.

Kandao camera users can now download Qoocam Studio with AI slow motion free of charge on the Kandao website. Kandao Studio V3.0 with AI slow-motion will available on 23rd April.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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World Press Photo disinvited photographer after reports of ‘inappropriate behavior’

19 Apr

For the first time in its history, the World Press Photo Foundation disinvited a photographer from its awards ceremony. The organization announced its decision to withdraw photojournalist Andrew Quilty’s invitation following allegations of ‘inappropriate behavior,’ according to the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR).

According to CJR, World Press Photo Foundation managing director Lars Boering confirmed Quilty was disinvited from the awards ceremony held in Amsterdam earlier this month after the foundation received ‘reports of inappropriate behavior’ made against the photographer. Details about the allegations haven’t been made public, however.

Boering shared a statement with CJR, which states, in part:

Our protocol is that when we learn from reliable sources that someone associated with us has allegedly engaged in inappropriate behavior we take action. Because of our protocol, we called him on 2 April to say he was not welcome at our Awards Show and Festival. We cancelled his invitation to the Awards Show, the Festival, and his flight and accommodation.

Quilty still received his award, with Boering explaining that the foundation’s current rules did not provide a basis for revoking the award. However, World Press Photo plans to review its rules ahead of the 2020 contest, Boering said.

In response to the foundation’s decision, Quilty said in a statement provided to CJR via his lawyer:

No allegations of inappropriate behavior have been made known to me. As a supporter of my female colleagues and the #MeToo movement, I would frankly and openly address any concerns about my conduct, if raised.

Quilty is known for his work in Afghanistan; his images have appeared in a number of notable publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, and National Geographic. Quilty was previously awarded a George Polk Award, six Walkley Awards, a Sony World Photography award, and more, according to his website.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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