Action cameras have become more common in the past few years, and for a good reason. Originally created by GoPro, many big brands have also jumped in the action camera space. As the action camera space grew, there came along a lot of cheap copycats. With multiple brands and tens of models to choose from, it has become difficult to Continue Reading
The post Best Action Cameras for Every Budget: Are Cheap Action Cameras Any Good? appeared first on Photodoto.
Have you ever dreamed of starting your own YouTube channel? In this video, we show you three different ways to plan and script your show.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get new episodes of DPReview TV every week.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
 |
Canon has released a firmware update (version 1.1.1) for its EOS R6 mirrorless camera that brings with it a number of improvements previously given to the EOS R5 via a version 1.1 firmware update late last month. Additionally, Canon has released a small bug-fix update for the EOS R5 as well.
Starting with more substantial improvements to the EOS R6, firmware version 1.1.1 claims to improve the total recording time on the EOS R6. No specific performance increase metrics are given beyond saying the limit has been ‘improved,’ but we plan to put it to the test to find out.
Other major fixes in the firmware include improved in-lens image stabilization when shooting ‘certain’ RF lenses during movie recording and improved connectivity during FTP transmission. Smaller fixes include improved support with the RF 100–500mm F4.5–7.1 L IS USM lens and a number of menu fixes. You can download firmware version 1.1.1 for the Canon EOS R6 below:
Firmware version 1.1.1 for the EOS R6
 |
Firmware version 1.1.1 for the EOS R5 is less substantial than the EOS R6 update, but is still worth mentioning and updating to if you’re an EOS R5 owner. The only changes include the same lens compatibility improvements for the RF 100–500mm F4.5–7.1 L IS USM lens as found in the EOS R6 firmware update. Specifically, Canon notes the following changes:
You can download firmware version 1.1.1 for the Canon EOS R5 below:
Firmware version 1.1.1 for the EOS R5
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
 |
The United States Library of Congress (LOC) is seeking COVID-19 pandemic-related images from photographers based in the United States, it has announced through the photo-sharing website Flickr. The LOC has teamed with Flickr to launch a new group dedicated to these images; anyone can add their images of pandemic life in the US to this group, which will be evaluated by Library curators. Some images will become part of permanent collections.
The opportunity to submit images is open to all photographers — both pro and amateur — located in the US or its territories, according to Flickr, which is home to the new ‘COVID-19 American Experiences’ group. Flickr users must join this group in order to submit their images for the LOC’s consideration.
Library curators will decide which images get added to the Flickr group photo pool and which go on to become preserved in permanent collections. Photographers seeking this distinction should assign a Creative Commons license to their images that will allow the LOC to display the photos on its website if selected, Flickr notes.
 |
Participants are allowed to submit up to five ‘graphic artworks’ or photographs for consideration. The curators are looking for content specifically related to the COVID-19 pandemic, with Flickr noting that photographers can submit ‘photos that depict your experiences of the pandemic’ on a variety of topics, including things like street scenes, panic buying, elder care and similar things.
The photos can also depict emotions in relation to the pandemic, such as sorrow, grief or joy. There are a couple of big requirements, however, including that the images must be appropriate for viewers of all ages and that they must meet Flickr’s ‘safe’ guidelines, which means ‘acceptable to a global, public audience.’
The LOC explains that its goal is to expand how much documentation it has on the current pandemic, doing so by tapping the wider public community spanning many more aspects and parts of the US than the photographers and artists already higher for special projects.
 |
As of September 10, the COVID-19 photo group has around 160 images featuring a variety of subjects, including pandemic-inspired graffiti, images of masks for sale, empty parks and restaurants, protesters, close theaters, people wearing masks, medical workers and more.
The Library of Congress is home to vast photo archives, including a large number of photos showing the last major pandemic to impact the world: the 1918 flu that claimed around 50 million lives. The public can view the Library of Congress photo archives on its digital collections website. The photos are joined by collections ranging from archived websites to old newspapers, audio recordings and maps.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
 |
| Image credits: Photos published with kind permission from Lensrentals. |
Following up on the Canon EOS R5 teardown, Lensrentals has published a follow-up piece investigating the heat emission of the Canon R5.
Before digging into the investigation, it’s worth covering some basics. Electronics in cameras produce heat while operating and to ensure full, uninterrupted operation, heat must be controlled. You can remove heat from critical areas in a camera ‘by conduction (flowing through nearby materials), convection (circulating through gas or fluids), and radiation (which mostly occurs at high temperatures).’ Based on his experience tearing down the Canon EOS R5 with Aaron Closz, Roger Cicala knows that the R5 is tightly sealed, which is great for keeping water out of a camera but not ideal for releasing heat from inside the camera. This means that convection, circulating heat through air, ‘doesn’t play much of a role.’
Cicala avoids discussions about chip operating temperatures, the thermal flow of different substances in a camera, firmware cycles and the like, as they are not his area of expertise. Instead, he focuses on the basic issue of how heat generated by the operation of a fully assembled Canon R5 camera exits the camera. At some point, especially when doing an intensive task such as recording 8K video footage, the camera will overheat and the heat either needs a suitable exit path or the camera needs to shut down. You can learn more about different usage cases and how long the R5 can operate being shutting down by checking out our Canon R5/R6 overheating test.
Lensrentals’s initial testing methodology involves using a Canon R5 camera running version 1.0 firmware recording 8K video to a CFx card. The camera was then run until it reached a temperature cut off while the team used industrial thermometers to monitor the heat of the camera and see where heat was exiting the R5.
 |
With a lens attached, with all covers closed and with the LCD folded against the camera body, the R5 ran for 18 minutes on a table before getting a temperature warning. Lensrentals found that the hottest part of the camera was the back behind the LCD with a temperature of 43°C / 109°F. The thumb rest was slightly cooler at 40°C / 104°F and the bottom plate around the tripod socket 38°C / 100°F. The test was run again with the LCD moved to the open position and the camera was a few degrees cooler but was unable to record for a longer duration.
Next, Lensrentals ditched the thermometers in favor of a FLIR IR camera. Cicala has long suspected that the lightweight material used for camera chassis and shells aren’t good conductors of heat. With a removed R5 shell as the test subject, it turns out Cicala’s assumptions were right. He says, ‘The shell material doesn’t spread heat especially well…Obviously, it does pass heat out of the camera to some degree, but it sure doesn’t act as a heat sink or anything.’ Cicala continues, ‘Even exposed to air, it was over 10 minutes before [the shell] cooled down to room temperature. This kind of poses the question that if heat isn’t getting out of the shell very well, then how does the heat get out?’
With the FLIR IR camera, the team redid the original recording test, and lo and behold, the warm spot found by the thermometer is immediately evident in the FLIR IR image. Cicala overlaid an image from the R5 teardown and no surprise, the hot spot is located above the camera’s processor and SDRAM cards.
 |
| Cicala is careful to point out, ‘This is NOT an image with the back off. It’s an image of inside of the camera overlaid on the heat image to correlate location.’ Image credit: Lensrentals, 2020 |
The front of the camera showed a bit of warmth and the top of the camera remained quite cool. Cicala wondered if the heat from inside the camera might rise through the air inside and reach the top plate, but as the teardown showed, there’s very little empty space inside the R5. The viewfinder also acts to block some heat transfer.
When taking apart the Canon R5, Lensrentals noted that there’s a heat sink connected to the metal tripod plate. The FLIR IR image shows that the bottom of the camera does get quite warm. In the image below, captured at thermal cut-off, you can see the metal screws that go into the tripod plate heating up. The tripod socket itself, for some reason, remained quite cool.
 |
As the camera heats up to the point where it needs to shut off, heat is showing in the FLIR IR images in numerous places. The metal lugs for the camera strap get very hot, the front of the camera is now quite hot, especially around the lens mount area, and the area near the card slot door also heats up considerably. The hottest spot of the camera during testing proved to be the CFx slot itself, at nearly 48° C.
After upgrading the R5 to firmware version 1.1, recording times before cut-off increased, but so did the operating temperatures of the camera. Of interest here is that the I/O ports connected to the main PCB itself got ‘quite hot,’ but the ports attached to the sub-board didn’t seem to heat up much at all. The image sensor itself also quite hot, nearly 50° C. An anonymous friend of Lensrentals read the internal temperature from a raw image captured during the temperature testing. That image showed an internal temperature of 61° C, which is hotter than the CFx card slot, meaning that somewhere inside the camera is hotter than the hottest temperature Lensrentals measured during testing.
 |
After testing, Lensrentals has a few interesting conclusions. Heat does not leave the R5 very well, and it seems to exit primarily via metal parts of the camera body. Further, the camera is hotter inside than at its hottest exit points. Cicala writes, ‘If [the R5] doesn’t get heat out very well, it certainly can’t be expected to cool down quickly after it turns off from overheating. Cooling the outside of the camera should help a bit, but it’s not going to be very efficient.’
There are some steps you can take to possibly help the camera stay cooler, such as leaving the LCD opened away from the back of the camera, opening the HDMI port cover (remember, this port is attached directly to the main board), and saving to SD cards when possible, which is of course not possible when recording 8K video. However, Cicala doubts that these steps will make a significant difference. Perhaps more effective steps would be to remove the lens, open the shutter and open the memory card doors will help. These aren’t steps you necessarily should have to take in order to use a camera the way you want to.
More enterprising individuals may opt to try minor modifications. Cicala says, ‘Some people intend to do more aggressive things to extend recording time. It would certainly be possible, with some minor modifications, to connect the metal heat sink plates to the outside world. You might do so by just exposing the bottom tripod plate and attaching a sink to that. Of course, you lose weather sealing, but it would be simple to try.’
Maybe removing the weather sealing and opening parts of the camera would help, but to really fix the overheating issue, someone will have to figure out a way to improve heat transfer from inside the camera, as there appears to be a thermal bottleneck deep within the R5. Cicala provides a humorous image as to what a ‘redneck 8K video camera’ might look like after modifications.
 |
For many more images and to read Cicala’s full speculation about whether the Canon R5 can be ‘fixed’ and whether it even needs fixing in Canon’s eyes, read the full article on the Lensrentals blog.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
If you’re like many photographers, the first thing you do upon taking a brand-new camera out of its package is to set aside the included software download info (or, with older cameras, the CD or DVD), opting instead for a third-party option like Adobe’s Camera Raw or Lightroom. But is that a smart move in our newly-normal, more cost-conscious world, or could you get by just as well with your camera’s bundled software?
 |
| Canon Digital Photo Professional version 4.12’s user interface. |
That’s a question we’ve wanted to answer for a while now, and one which I’ll discuss in a new series of articles comparing the user interfaces, performance and image quality of the manufacturer’s apps with those of their much-vaunted Adobe rival. In the interests of keeping things to a readable length, I’m limiting myself only to image editing, and won’t address features like image management, tethering or printing.
In this article, I’m comparing Adobe Camera Raw 12.4 alongside Adobe Bridge 10.1.1 versus Canon Digital Photo Professional 4.12.60.0, all of which are their current versions. My computer is a 2018-vintage Dell XPS 15 9570 laptop running Windows 10 version 1909.
To ensure neither Adobe nor Canon had any advantage out of the gate, I’ve aimed to reproduce, as closely as possible, the look of already-processed images from our galleries, without any prior knowledge as to the recipes behind them. I’ve chosen images from the EOS R for use in this comparison, for reasons we’ll come to in a moment.
 |
| Adobe Camera Raw version 12.4’s user interface. |
To avoid getting too far into the weeds, sharpness and noise reduction were left at their defaults, while lens corrections were enabled for both apps with the exception of distortion correction, so as to make for easier comparison to our reference shots from the gallery.
Images processed in ACR were saved at JPEG quality 11, just as used in our galleries. For DPP, I saved at JPEG quality 8, producing near-identical file sizes.
Of course, the most immediately obvious differences between ACR and DPP are their camera support and pricetag. You already paid for DPP when you bought your Canon DSLR, so it’s effectively free. While it only supports Raws shot by the company’s own cameras, you can expect full Raw support for almost every Canon camera to be available more or less immediately upon release.
By contrast, ACR comes with a recurring subscription fee. While it supports a vast range of cameras from many manufacturers – even a couple of older Canon models that DPP no longer recognizes – that support can take some time to arrive after the release of new cameras. It’s also sometimes more limited than that in first-party software. For example, Adobe doesn’t yet offer ‘camera matching’ profiles for any Canon camera released since September 2018. (That’s why I selected the EOS R for my comparisons here.)
Overall, DPP’s user interface feels more dated than that of ACR, and occasionally more obtuse and frustrating. Both applications support modern features like 4K displays, touch-screens and pen control, although I did notice a few minor glitches in DPP’s 4K support.
But where Adobe’s controls are grouped together in clearly-named, collapsible sections within a single panel, DPP’s span no less than nine different tabs, each identified only by a small icon. And many of DPP’s sliders for contrast, tone, saturation etc. jump in large steps, unlike ACR’s which move smoothly and precisely when dragged. For finer-grained adjustments, you must either type in values directly or click tiny arrow buttons.
And the locations of DPP’s controls aren’t always logical, nor are their names always intuitive. For example, even if you’ve tweaked multiple images at once, the large Save button at the top of the screen won’t process them together. Instead, you have to find a Batch Process command hidden within the File menu.
But the biggest difference between ACR and DPP, operationally speaking, is in their performance. Compared to its Adobe rival, Canon’s app feels glacially slow to use.
When you move sliders in ACR, the preview image updates in real time to show your change before you’ve even released the mouse button, even when using a 4K display. But DPP’s previews frequently take anywhere from a couple of seconds to 10 seconds or more to update after releasing the mouse button. Worse still, the preview often updates in multiple passes, initially showing results that, misleadingly, differ significantly from the final pass.
Things are no better when it comes to final output performance, either. Processing all six comparison images for this article in ACR took just 16 seconds, start to finish. DPP required longer than that to process a single image, making it 6-7 times slower than its Adobe rival. Processing all six images in DPP took a full 108 seconds – and that’s even with it configured to take advantage of my graphics processor, which it wasn’t by default.
The settings chosen for a given image do impact on performance somewhat, but they don’t come close to explaining DPP’s modest performance. Even with all six images reverted to out-of-camera settings and with all lens corrections disabled, DPP still needed 81 seconds to complete its work.
Although most of their basic controls are broadly similar, ACR offers a few extra tools that DPP lacks. Both applications give you a one-click auto control to get basic settings in the ballpark, plus slider control over brightness, contrast, shadows, highlights, saturation and tone. But ACR adds sliders for vibrance, texture, clarity, dehazing and blacks/whites.
I particularly missed these last two, and while DPP’s dynamic range control helps make up for their absence, I found it less intuitive to use. Even with it, I had to resort to finely tweaking curves to try to hold onto the brightest highlights and deepest shadows, using the keyboard arrows to more finely position the points than I could with a mouse or touchpad.
ACR’s one-click auto control tended to hold onto highlights and open up shadows much better than did DPP. But in return, Canon’s auto control yielded more realistic colors, although it sometimes felt too muted in foliage. Adobe’s results, meanwhile, tended decidedly towards the contrasty and garish, especially in foliage and skin tones.
At default settings, DPP tended to control noise a little better than did ACR, although that advantage came at the expense of the finest image detail. In fact, even with its noise reduction sliders zeroed out completely, DPP showed similarly low levels of noise to ACR with both luminance / color noise reduction sliders set at around level 25-30.
But you really have to pixel-peep to notice these subtle differences. The effects of lens correction were much more noticeable, and both applications did a great job of automatically taming lens defects like chromatic aberration and vignetting.
Overall, I felt that neither ACR or DPP had a huge edge over the other in terms of basic editing. However, I found ACR quite a bit easier to work with, and spent several times as long working to get similarly-pleasing results from DPP.
Although it’s capable of images just as good as those from ACR with a little effort, I personally found DPP’s interface and performance issues quite off-putting. If you’re on a shoestring budget, it could make sense as an alternative to paying the Adobe tax every month, freeing up cash for other gear at the expense of some convenience. But if you can afford it, I recommend spending the extra on Camera Raw for a much faster, more intuitive editing experience.
| Pros | Cons |
|
|
| Pros | Cons |
|
|
Editor’s note: We’re aiming to have more of these comparisons between manufacturer software and third-party alternatives in the coming weeks. Either through our feedback form or in the comments below, let us know what you want to see us test to make these articles more valuable for you. Thanks!
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
The post Shooting Stock Photography: Getting the Most Out of a Single Subject appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Charlie Moss.
Most photographers who experiment with shooting stock photography quickly become disillusioned. They struggle to see a return on their time and financial investment. Even worse, they turn to fellow photographers for advice and are often told that the stock photography market is dead.
But that isn’t the case. There is still a market for stock photography.
However, to create a revenue stream from shooting stock photography, you need to work smarter. That way, you’ll have a more significant library of images with less investment, and you’ll be able to build a revenue stream from your images much quicker.
Stock photography is where a photographer takes images that they’ve already shot and makes them available to businesses for licensing.
In return for a fee, the client can use the pictures in their book or on their website. It usually works out cheaper for the client to use a stock photograph than to commission a photographer to go out and shoot a similar image.
The images are usually managed by an agency, who handles all of the marketing and administration.
This is the first question that photographers often ask me when they find out I’ve been shooting stock photography for over a decade. I am a relative beginner in the world of stock photography, but I can tell you that, in my experience, it is very worth exploring the stock photography market.
Canon 350D | Canon EF 55-200mm f/4.5-5.6 | 50mm | 1/125 sec | f/8.0 | ISO 200 | Strobe Lighting
Anyone thinking about shooting stock photography needs to understand that it is a long game to play. You shouldn’t expect instantaneous results. It may take a couple of years to start seeing regular sales that you can predict in your business plan.
But don’t let that put you off. Time spent on photographing and submitting images to stock libraries is an investment in your future income.
There have always been photographers dedicated to shooting stock photographs. However, many photographers have made a good side income by submitting images that came from other shoots or jobs.
Fujifilm X-T20 | Fujifilm XF 35mm f/1.4 R | 35mm | 1/350 sec | f/2.0 | ISO 200 | Window Light
In doing this, photographers have made their images work harder for them by pulling double-duty. The photographer has been paid for their time to shoot the initial photographs. But then they may also get paid for the images again when they are licensed from the photographer’s stock agency.
If you are shooting images specifically for your stock library, then you need to make sure you optimize the way you shoot. Getting a wide variety of photographs from a single subject is the key to quickly seeing regular payments with minimal investment.
If you have purchased a prop to photograph for your stock photography library, then it makes sense to get maximum return on your investment.
This advice will also work for hiring models or visiting particular locations; just take the general principles and apply them to your subject.
I often shoot stock photography images alongside fine art images. By using the same subject with different props and compositions, you can shoot a wide variety of pictures in a short space of time.
Understand what each stock photography agency that you submit to is looking for. If you shoot a variety of images in different styles, you can then send them to various agencies.
In a food photography shoot, it is quite possible to shoot for a wide range of stock photography agencies during the same session. You could shoot a shot for a cafe to market themselves with on social media. You could also shoot an image for a food magazine or recipe book. You could perhaps shoot a fiction book cover, an educational textbook image, and some creative images for bloggers to use.
Above are some of the images from a shoot I did with a single subject. I made sure to shoot with both light and dark backgrounds, as well as both modern and more rustic backgrounds. Image buyers want to purchase photographs that will fit with the feel of their brand. The more options that you can give them, the better.
Don’t forget to shoot in both landscape and portrait format for your stock images. You never know where your image will end up. While a fiction book cover will almost always need a vertical image, a magazine or a blog could use either vertical or horizontal images depending on the page layout.
Another tip is to shoot images that have space for text to be added later. Think about a magazine front cover. It has room at the top to put the name of the magazine. But it also has plain or out-of-focus areas on the side to write the headlines. Browse through magazines and books to understand more about the kinds of images that get purchased and published.
As I often say: Just start somewhere.
Research the kinds of images that different stock photography libraries are interested in. Agencies will usually have blog posts on their sites listing the pictures that they’re looking for. And then get shooting.
If you’re shooting stock images of small objects, then try creating some different backgrounds so that you can easily change them out while shooting.
That way, you can create multiple styles of photographs in the same session. If you’re shooting models, then scout out locations that have a number of different backdrop styles within a few minutes of each other.
But what you really need to do is shoot images and get them placed with stock photography agencies. If your images aren’t out there and in front of the eyes of potential clients, then you won’t sell any at all! You can refine your workflow later.
Have you had much success with shooting stock photography? Let us know how you’ve got on in the comments!
The post Shooting Stock Photography: Getting the Most Out of a Single Subject appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Charlie Moss.
 |
Winners and finalists were announced for the latest annual Nature inFocus Photography Awards. Due to the pandemic, the festival was cancelled and selections were shared via a live announcement on YouTube. More than 1,600 photographers submitted roughly 14,000 images from around the world.
A 5-member jury, including nature photographer Dhritiman Mukherjee, picked winners and finalists. Yashpal Rathore won for his image depicting a bad frozen against an urban landscape in Bangalore, India. A Special Jury Award was given, for the very first time, to Magnus Lundgren as 3 of his photographs were selected – 2 are featured in this slideshow.
The Nature inFocus Photography Awards aims to recognize photographers whose work helps preserve our natural history and raise awareness around conservation. A full gallery can be viewed here.
 |
Location: Bangalore, India
Artist Statement: A Greater Short-nosed Fruit Bat drops out of a Singapore Cherry tree on the walkway of a busy street in the capital city of Karnataka. The headlamp streak of a speeding vehicle, the neon lights of business hoardings – the long-exposure shot perfectly captures the dynamism of city life.
The ever-growing city has seen these nocturnal winged mammals adapt to the chaos of the urban environment. Though vilified by much of the human population, bats play a vital role in our ecosystem as seed dispersers and pest-controllers. The photographer used a laser trigger and low-powered flashlights to freeze the bat in its flight.
 |
Location: Manas National Park, Assam
Artist Statement: Occasionally, nature surprises us with moments so dramatic and beautiful, like right out of a fairytale. Caught in the warm embrace of a posse of fireflies, a family of wild elephants huddles together under the night sky, mirroring the asterism of Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka of Orion above.
 |
Location: Vadodara, Gujarat
Artist Statement: Rosy Starlings perch on the edge of a parapet like substitute players on the bench, waiting to join in the action. The long exposure shot captures the frenzy of the murmuration above, hundreds of starlings swooping across the sky in intricately coordinated patterns.
 |
Location: Qatif, Saudi Arabia
Artist Statement: The Red Palm Weevil is a species of snout beetle, recognised by its distinctive long snout and geniculate antennae. First reported on coconut trees in Southeast Asia, they have since gained a foothold on date palms in several Middle Eastern countries and have spread to Africa and Europe through the movement of infected planting material.
 |
Location: Cooch Behar, West Bengal
Artist Statement: Pre-monsoon storms known as ‘Kalboishakhi’ in Bengali bring the first rains after months of the dry season. The skies open up with thunder and lightning, announcing the arrival of the mating season for amphibians. This single exposure image of a Fejervarya sp. was made by shifting focus initially from the frog and then on to the clouds.
 |
Location: Balayan Bay, Luzon, Philippines
Artist Statement: The Brown Paper Nautilus is an argonaut, a free-swimming octopus of open ocean habitats. A species that is widely distributed in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, the Brown Paper Nautilus is known to cling to objects floating on the surface of the sea, including other argonauts. Here a female nautilus is seen surfing on a free-floating medusa.
Though the relationship is not fully understood yet, the nautilus is believed to use its host as a food source and as a defensive weapon. When the nautilus was photographed, it used the medusa as an active form of protection by turning it towards the camera, which it presumably perceived as a potential predator.
 |
Location: Jhalana Forest, Jaipur
About this Photo: On a hot day in the forests of Jhalana, with temperatures touching 45ºC, the photographer waited under the shade of a tree near a man-made waterhole. His patience was rewarded when a leopard slid down the rocks like melted wax and strolled towards the waterhole.
His camera zoomed in on the spotted, ochre and black coat as he watched the gorgeous feline drink its fill. Suddenly, the scene turned electric as a Striped Hyena made an appearance, unaware of the presence of the cat. Expecting the hyena to quickly slink away, the photographer was surprised to watch it go on the offensive and chase the leopard up a tree. The hyena then drank its fill and moved away.
 |
Location: Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya
Artist Statement: A Southern Ground-hornbill, the largest hornbill species on Earth, feeds its young one. Found in grasslands, woodlands and open savannas of southern Africa, they are recognizable by their jet black feathers and the bright red throat wattle in males. Juveniles instead have yellow patches on the face and throat. Pollution, logging and agricultural expansion which often destroy nesting habitats are the primary threats for this species.
 |
Location: Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh
Artist Statement: Fishermen surround the lifeless body of a Mobula Ray at a fish landing site in Kakinada as they determine its value in thousands of rupees. The winner of the auction will then prepare the fish and trade it illegally to Southeast Asian countries for high-profit margins. The gill rakers of the Mobula Ray is believed to hold medicinal properties.
 |
Location: Balayan Bay, Luzon, Philippines
Artist Statement: A male paper nautilus rides a piece of plastic in the pelagic zone. In the ocean, plastic debris injures and kills fish, seabirds and marine mammals. Marine plastic pollution has impacted at least 267 species worldwide, including 86% of all sea turtle species, 44% of all seabird species and 43% of all marine mammal species.
 |
Location: Corbett Tiger Reserve, Uttarakhand
Artist Statement: A majestic tusker walking head-on towards the photographer showers himself in dust sprayed from his trunk. Elephants dust bathe to keep their skin healthy and to keep parasites at bay. It also helps them to cool down their bodies.
 |
Location: Jaipur, Rajasthan
Artist Statement: A large population of Rhesus Macaques rules the Aravalli landscape, which is also home to the renowned Galtaji temple. Though these monkeys create a lot of nuisance, they are treated respectfully by the devotees who visit the temple to worship the monkey god, Hanuman. Photographed here is a female Rhesus Macaque sitting in front of the glorious temple edifice.
 |
Location: Indian Ocean, Maldives
Artist Statement: A breaching Spinner Dolphin casts a striking silhouette against the light reflecting off the deep blue ocean from the setting sun. Breaching is a very common activity among cetaceans, and though there are a number of hypotheses, scientists still really don’t know why they do it.
Second Runner-up, Wildscape & Animals in Habitat: ‘Cinderella Of The Ghats’ by Mandar Ghumare
Location: Coorg, Karnataka
Artist Statement: A terrestrial snail endemic to the Western Ghats, Indrella ampulla is the only species in the monotypic genus, Indrella. The species is polymorphic – the visible soft parts of the snail show great colour diversity, ranging from pale yellow to red like in this particular individual. The wide frame showcases the evergreen forests of the Western Ghats which it calls home.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
 |
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have captured 3,200MP images, the largest photos ever captured in a single shot. The camera, an array that contains 189 individual image sensors, will become the future camera of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. The camera will be used to help shed light on some of the most intriguing mysteries of the universe, including dark matter and dark energy.
The 189 image sensors are charge-coupled devices (CCD) and each capture a 16MP image. To build the image sensor array, nine CCDs and supporting electronics were assembled into square units, called science rafts, by the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and then shipped to SLAC. Then the team at SLAC inserted 21 of these square units into a grid to hold them in place.
The completion of the image sensor array and focal plane earlier this year took six months and proved to be a difficult task. In order to maximize the imaging area of the array, the gaps between individual image sensors are less than five human hairs wide. If the sensors touch each other during the process, they could easily break. Damaging a sensor or raft would be costly, as the rafts cost up to $ 3M USD a piece. SLAC mechanical engineer Hannah Pollek said of the assembly process, ‘The combination of high stakes and tight tolerances made this project very challenging. But with a versatile team we pretty much nailed it.’
The focal plane features impressive specifications beyond even the 3.2 billion total pixels. The pixels themselves are about 10 microns wide and the focal plane itself has been constructed to exacting standards. The focal plane is nearly perfectly flat, varying by ‘no more than a tenth of the width of a human hair’ across its more than two feet of width. The optics through which light will reach the image sensor array is designed to allow the sensors to identify objects 100 million times dimmer than what the human eye can see. This is equivalent to being able to see a lit candle from thousands of miles away.
The images produced by the 3,200MP camera are so large that you would need nearly 400 4K UHD televisions to display a single image at its full size. The resolving power of the camera would allow you to spot a golf ball from about 15 miles away.
As mentioned, the camera will be installed at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. Once it has been installed, it will capture panoramic images of the southern sky every few nights for 10 years.
 |
| ‘The complete focal plane of the future LSST Camera is more than 2 feet wide and contains 189 individual sensors that will produce 3,200-megapixel images. Crews at SLAC have now taken the first images with it. Explore them in full resolution using the links at the bottom of the press release. (Jacqueline Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)’ Image and caption credit: SLAC |
Steven Ritz, project scientists for the LSST Camera at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said, ‘These specifications are just astounding. These unique features will enable the Rubin Observatory’s ambitious science program.’ Over the course of a decade, the camera will capture images of about 20 billion galaxies. Ritz continues, ‘These data will improve our knowledge of how galaxies have evolved over time and will let us test our models of dark matter and dark energy more deeply and precisely than ever.’
Before the focal plane can be used within the Rubin Observatory’s program, it needs to be rigorously tested. This includes capture images of a variety of objects, including a head of Romanesco broccoli. In order to operate normally, the sensors must be cooled to negative 150° Fahrenheit. Without a fully assembled camera, the team at SLAC used a 150-micron pinhole to project images onto the focal plane.
 |
| ‘Taking the first 3,200-megapixel images was an important first test for the focal plane. To do so without a fully assembled camera, the SLAC team used a 150-micron pinhole to project images onto the focal plane. Left: Schematic of a pinhole projector that projects images of a Romanesco’s detailed texture onto the focal plane. Right: SLAC’s Yousuke Utsumi and Aaron Roodman remove the pinhole projector from the cryostat assembly after projecting the first images onto the focal plane. (Greg Stewart/Jacqueline Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)’ Image and caption credit: SLAC |
SLAC’s Aaron Roodman is the scientist responsible for building and testing the LSST Camera. Of the successful test images, he says, ‘Taking these images is a major accomplishment. With the tight specifications, we really pushed the limits of what’s possible to take advantage of every square millimeter of the focal plane and maximize the science we can do with it.’
Despite the successful tests, there is much more work to do. Over the next few months, the team will insert the cryostat used to reduce the temperature of the image sensors along with the focal plane into the camera body and add lenses, including the world’s largest optical lens. The team will then affix a shutter and a filter exchange system so that the camera can be used to capture the night sky in different colors. The team anticipates the SUV-sized camera to be ready for final testing in mid-2021 before it begins its final journey to Chile.
 |
| ‘Over the next few months, the LSST Camera team will integrate the remaining camera components, including the lenses, a shutter and a filter exchange system. By mid-2021, the SUV-sized camera will be ready for final testing. (Chris Smith/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)’ Image and caption credit: SLAC |
JoAnne Hewett, chief research officer at SLAC and associate lab director for fundamental physics, says, ‘Nearing completion of the camera is very exciting…It’s a milestone that brings us a big step closer to exploring fundamental questions about the universe in ways we haven’t been able to before.’
As one would expect, we are unable to display 3,200MP images here on the site. However, SLAC has five full-size images taken with the focal plane of the LSST camera which you can view at the links below:
• Head of Romanesco broccoli
• Photo of the Flammarion engraving
• Photo of Vera Rubin, courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science, where Vera Rubin spent her career as a scientist
• Collage of LSST Camera team photos
• Collage of logos of institutions involved in the LSST Camera project
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Professional smartphone video capture app, FiLMiC Pro, has received a new update that adds the ability to stream a clean HDMI output to external livestreaming and recording solutions.
 |
FiLMiC Pro version 6.12 supports a clean HDMI output over compatible HDMI adapters or over Wi-Fi using AirPlay (limited to iOS devices). You can even use multiple smartphones at once running FiLMic Pro to create a multi-cam setup that can be controlled by a livestreaming program such as OBS Studio or a hardware solution such as an ATEM Mini from Blackmagic Design. When paired with the FiLMiC Remote app (Android, iOS), it’s also possible to control each of the cameras wirelessly for more fine-tuned control.
 |
| A screenshot from the above tutorial showing how you can use FiLMiC Pro to turn your smartphone into a webcam with the help of an USB HDMI input adapter. |
In addition to livestreaming and recording options, this functionality also means you can use your smartphone as a webcam when paired with an HDMI input device, such as an Elgato CamLink 4K. Output resolutions are limited by the devices being used, but in general, Lightning-based iOS devices are capable of 1080/60p output, USB-C iOS devices are capable of 4K/60p and select Samsung devices can max out at 4K DCI 60p.
 |
FiLMiC Pro is available for both Android and iOS devices for $ 15. The update is free for existing users. If you want to find out more about FiLMiC Pro, head over to FiLMiC’s comprehensive support page.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
You must be logged in to post a comment.