Author: Nicolai Grossman

2 new Canon tilt/shift lenses

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Canon launched two new tilt/shift lenses today:

TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II

A superb refinement to a true Canon classic, the new TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II offers enhanced functionality and image quality in its most popular tilt-shift focal length. Designed with UD glass to minimize and compensate for chromatic aberrations and specially coated aspherical elements for the highest possible glare-free image quality, this tilt-shift lens features an angle of view of 74°. New TS revolving lets users freely combine tilting and shifting within the range of +/- 90° in the direction of movement. It has an enhanced range of movement of up to +/- 8.5°, a revolving construction for both portrait and landscape shooting modes, locking, ergonomically designed and easily operated tilt and shift knobs, uses a circular aperture for beautiful out-of-focus areas, and is constructed using only lead-free glass and has an SWC lens coating that controls ghosting and flare to a far greater degree than earlier coating technologies.

TS-E 17mm f/4L

The widest tilt-shift lens in Canon’s lineup, the new TS-E 17mm f/4L lens expands shooting possibilities exponentially on EOS Digital cameras. Designed with UD glass to minimize and compensate for chromatic aberrations, with specially coated aspherical elements for the highest possible glare-free image quality, this tilt-shift lens offers an angle of view of 93°. New TS revolving lets users freely combine tilting and shifting within the range of +/- 90° in the direction of movement. The lens also has an improved tilt & shift knob with an enhanced range of movement of up to +/- 6.5° and revolving lenses for better operability, it uses a circular aperture for beautiful out-of-focus areas and has an SWC lens coating to control ghosting and flare to a far greater degree than with earlier coating technologies.

Photographing police in the UK may now be a crime

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From today, anyone taking a photograph of a police officer could be deemed to have committed a criminal offence.

That is because of a new law – Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act – which has come into force.

It permits the arrest of anyone found “eliciting, publishing or communicating information” relating to members of the armed forces, intelligence services and police officers, which is “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.

That means anyone taking a picture of one of those people could face a fine or a prison sentence of up to 10 years, if a link to terrorism is proved.

The law has angered photographers, both professional and amateur, who fear it could exacerbate the harassment they already sometimes face.

Continue reading at BBC News

 

Via the GRINZ newsletter, whose editor had this to say:

I have two words for this: Rodney King. So the police in that situation could have arrested the photographer (videographer) and destroyed the evidence, and been well within their rights to do so…if it had been illegal to photograph police, what record would even EXIST of the Springbok Tour? Hmmm…worth considering. I’m certainly not saying police are out to get us all – just that documentary photography / photojournalism should be unfettered.

Right on.

2009 F295 Symposium registration now open

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Organizer Tom Persinger says:

Registration for the 2009 F295 Symposium is now open to the public! The 2009 F295 Symposium Exploring 21st Century Photography takes place in Pittsburgh PA USA on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University (with workshops at Pittsburgh Filmmakers) May 28-31, 2009

Visit the registration page to sign up for the symposium* and all workshops!

Here’s a summary of speakers who will be delivering their talks on Friday May 29 (and the titles of their talks):

Elizabeth Opalenik
Possibilities in Mordançage

Jarosław Klupś
To Freeze a Reflection

Martha Madigan
Solar Printing for a Lifetime

Michelle Bates
Through a Plastic Lens

Dan Estabrook
Some Notes on the Art of Failure

Robb Kendrick
The Tintype and Beyond

Mark Osterman
Artifacts

Photographer Ben Long will be giving a free pre-symposium public address on Wednesday May 27 entitled Technology, Perception, and Photography and we’ll be announcing our special Thursday night speaker soon!

If you’re a subscribing member of F295 remember to select the special, discounted members only registration rate. This price is just for members and only available for a short time! If you’re not a member and wish to join to take advantage of the discounted rate visit our membership page.

The current registration rates are for early registration only. Soon they’ll increase to the regular rate. Sign up early to get a great rate and reserve your seat!

Sign up today! Don’t miss your chance to take some of the other great workshops and your opportunity to attend the most exciting photographic event of 2009!

If you have interest in one of the workshops I suggest registering ASAP. F295 members were able to register over the weekend and as a result Jerry Spagnoli’s & Jill Enfield’s workshops are already sold out! (we may add a 2nd Daguerreotype workshop, and if so F295 members will find out first!) Here’s what we have remaining:

Workshops Saturday May 30
The Fugitive Shadow w/ France Scully and Mark Osterman
Lens-Building and Optical Effects (2 days) w/ Alan Greene
Working in the Cultural Landscape w/ Craig Barber
Printing with Gum Bichromate (2 days) w/ Scott McMahon
Toying with Plastic Cameras w/Michelle Bates

Workshops Sunday May 31
Non-Destructive Image Editing with Photoshop w/ Ben Long
Lens-Building and Optical Effects (2 days) w/ Alan Greene
Photography Walk-About w/ Tom Persinger and others!
Printing with Gum Bichromate (2 days) w/ Scott McMahon

Complete information on the website: www.f295.org/symposium2009

*Symposium registration does not include workshops. You must register and pay for each workshop individually. They may all be purchased together using our online shopping cart.

See you in Pittsburgh!
Tom

Filmtagger: free tagging software for film scans

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Filmtagger screen shot

The description for Sverrir Valgeirsson‘s free Filmtagger software says it all:

Filmtagger is an application for those of us that still like to shoot film but use the computer to manage our photo collection.

Filmtagger makes it easy to embed EXIF, XMP or IPTC information in the scanned images about camera used, film, ISO, lens, date and other tags.

The program will scan the selected catalog and set the appropriate tags in all jpg or tif images it can find (a backup file will be created).

Download Filmtagger for Mac & Windows

JPG magazine shuts down

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JPG, a crowd-sourced photography magazine, is shutting down on Monday, 5 Jan, 2008 2009. Here’s their good-bye email (thanks to Jonathan Block for the heads up):

Today is a particularly sad day for all of us at JPG and 8020 Media.

We’ve spent the last few months trying to make the business behind JPG sustain itself, and we’ve reached the end of the line. We all deeply believe in everything JPG represents, but we just weren’t able to raise the money needed to keep JPG alive in these extraordinary economic times. We sought out buyers, spoke with numerous potential investors, and pitched several last-ditch creative efforts, all without success. As a result, jpgmag.com will shut down on Monday, January 5, 2009.

The one thing we’ve been the most proud of: your amazing talent. We feel honored and humbled to have been able to share jpgmag.com with such a dynamic, warm, and wonderful community of nearly 200,000 photographers. The photography on the website and in the magazine was adored by many, leaving no doubt that this community created work of the highest caliber. The kindness, generosity, and support shared among members made it a community in the truest sense of the word, and one that we have loved being a part of for these past two years.

We wish we could have found a way to leave the site running for the benefit of the amazing folks who have made JPG what it is, and we have spent sleepless nights trying to figure something out, all to no avail. Some things you may want to do before the site closes:

– Download the PDFs of back issues, outtakes, and photo challenge selections. We’ll always have the memories! www.jpgmag.com/downloads/archives.html – Make note of your favorite photographers. You may want to flip through your favorites list and jot down names and URLs of some of the people you’d like to stay in touch with. You may even want to cut and paste your contacts page into a personal record.

– Catch up with your fellow members. Our roots are in this humble flickr forum and we recommend going back to find fellow members, discuss the situation, or participate in another great photo community. www.flickr.com/groups/jpgmag/ – Keep in touch. This has always been much more than just a job to each of us, and we’ll miss you guys! We’ll be checking the account jpgletters@gmail.com in our free time going forward. We can’t promise to reply to every email (since we’ll be busy tuning up our resumes) but we’d love to hear from you.

– Stay posted. Although the magazine is ceasing publication, we’ll be updating you on what’s happening with your subscription early next week.

We’re soggy-eyed messes, but it is what it is. At that, JPGers, we bid you goodbye, and good luck in 2009 and the future.

Laura Brunow Miner
Editor in Chief

How to link to Blurb books

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If you offer books for sale through on-demand printer Blurb, you have to fiddle with the link before you post it.

The normal thing to do is to copy the address in the location bar of your browser and just paste it. Unfortunately, if you do this while looking at your own book on Blurb, you get a link to view your book in your account. Instead of seeing your book, others are prompted to log into Blurb, and then can’t see it because they’re not you.

The link you get while you’re looking at your book will look something like this:

    http://www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/394207#store-price

(Go ahead and click it, you’ll see the problem.)

To make a publicly accessible link, take the number out of the link from your account and glue it onto the end of this:

    http://www.blurb.com/books/

So for the link above, you’d have:

    http://www.blurb.com/books/394207

Now anyone can see the book (in this case, Erik Chevalier‘s Quartu Sant’Elena social club). Yay!

Francesco Capponi’s “Abracadabra” tophat pinhole camera

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Check out Francesco Capponi‘s latest homebrew madness, a curved-plane top hat pinhole camera. You can see pictures of, and photographs made with, the Abracadabra in this set on Flickr.

Capponi has also made pinhole cameras out of a pine nut, a birdhouse, origami, and a tree. Nice hacking!

 

Related: Weird pinhole camera roundup here on Photon Detector, Thomas Hudson Reeve’s origami/paper pinhole cameras