photography

Underexposed blog: Links of the day

Helicon Focus software -- Combines multiple photos at different focus points into a single image with everything in focus. Somehow. More computational photography. A detailed review of Nikon D3 -- Very long review of the Nikon D3, favorable overall. Details include praise for GPS compatibility (UTC timestamps!), demerits for live view during macro shooting, and grumblings about long night exposures and weak infrared and ultraviolet performance. Creativepro.com -- Review: Canon PowerShot G9 -- A favorable review, but it says: "What I find frustrating is that there could be a G9-like camera with lower noise, if it didn't … Read more

PicMarker watermarks, keeps your photos safe from evildoers

The correct attribution for online photos is a touchy subject. People like to snazz up all sorts of things with photos they find on the Internet, and hunting down who owns the picture isn't always the easiest thing if it's been passed around without the proper credit. In December of last year, the video "Here Comes Another Bubble" caused a stir when video creators The Richter Scales were found using other people's photos without any kind of attribution whatsoever. The snafu sparked an online debate about digital media rights, and the fallout was substantial. The … Read more

Microsoft adapts Outlook for photographers

Microsoft has released a free Outlook plug-in to help photographers remember which equipment to bring to photo shoots they've scheduled with the calendar and contacts software.

The free plug-in, called Pro Photo Shoot, lets photographers create a list of their photographic equipment and then use a check-box list to pick what's needed for a particular appointment. Outlook produces a sorted list.

The software can be downloaded for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007.

The software is part of Microsoft's gradual effort to appeal more to photography enthusiasts, an audience that historically has been one of Apple's most … Read more

Q&A: Going to the mat for photo copyrights

It wasn't Lane Hartwell's first heated exchange over a photo copyright issue, but a tussle involving a witty YouTube video probably was the one with the highest profile for the professional photographer.

Last week, a not-for-profit San Francisco singing group called the Richter Scales posted a Web 2.0-mocking video, Here Comes Another Bubble, set to the tune of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire. One of the many photos that flashed by in the video was one Hartwell took of Valleywag's Owen Thomas.

The problem: Although Hartwell had posted the image publicly at … Read more

The 'here comes another bubble' brouhaha

I've held off posting about the whole Lane Hartwell, Richter Scales, "Here Comes Another Bubble" brouhaha. I've done so, in no small part, because my own feelings on the topic are...complicated.

On the one hand, I generally favor people sharing their creative output to the degree that it's economically feasible to do so. Our culture is richer and more interesting for the widespread tearing down of walled gardens.

Just to be clear, I'm not advocating some parodic version of free culture in which any content that can be grabbed should be grabbed and … Read more

Closing the circle on the Sony ad and "Timing Is Everything"

A few weeks back, I posted about Sony using a 1965 John Dominis photograph to illustrate how "Timing Is Everything." Given that the picture in question could hardly have been taken with a Sony digital camera (which wouldn't exist for decades), I thought it a poor choice to illustrate the technical prowess of Sony's latest digital SLR.

After I wrote the original post, I noticed something else when I was studying the original photograph and the one in the ad; they weren't quite the same. I thought it a slightly amusing oddity but not much … Read more

Underexposed blog: Links of the day

Here's some of the backlog from a virus-induced hiatus that knocked me out for a couple days.

PhotoAcute Studio. Leading super-resolution technology for better photos. PhotoAcute's product description: "It increases image resolution, removes noise without losing image details, corrects image geometry and chromatic aberrations and expands the dynamic range." PhotoAcute Review. Uwe Steinmuller's testing of super-resolution software that combines multiple images into one. Lightroom Journal: Lightroom 1.3.1 and Camera Raw 4.3.1. Lightroom update fixes Nikon D100 and Olympus E-3 compatibility problems, tweaks SKD's FTP export module. New Lightroom Galleries--O'Reilly Digital Media Blog. … Read more

China moon photo--real but faked

A controversy over last week's photo of the lunar surface, allegedly from China's lunar spacecraft Chang'e, appears to be resolved. It's real, but it isn't. An expert says the photo's resolution shows that it is of recent origin. However, for some inexplicable reason, someone on Earth edited the photo and moved a crater to a different location.

Read the full story at MSNBC.com.

More Commercial Creative Commons conundrums

A few days back, I posted about the difficulty of distinguishing commercial from noncommercial usage with respect to the Creative Commons license.

There's an ongoing legal case that concerns another aspect of Creative Commons commerciality. As Josh Wolf describes the original story:

On April 21, 2007, during a church camp, Chang's counselor snapped a photo of her and uploaded it to his Flickr account. He published the photo under a CC-BY-2.0 license, which allows for commercial use of the photo without obtaining permission from the copyright owner.

In less than two months, the photo had been cropped … Read more