Mobile Photography

The US Patent and Trademark Office confirmed this week that Apple was granted a patent for a “digital camera including refocusable imaging mode adaptor,” that would allow a user to snap a photo and then refocus the image after the fact. The patent also covers inclusion of such a system in portable devices, such as an iPhone or an iPad.

The patent describes a camera that can be configured to operate in both a lower-resolution mode that allows refocusing after image capture, as well as a high-resolution mode that doesn’t permit refocusing. The body of the camera contains an image mode adaptor to select the operating mode.

What makes this patent noteworthy is that it is for something that Steve Jobs himself was very specifically interested in, enough so to deem it instrumental to the reinvention of photography. That kind of personal attention from Jobs is sure to carry some weight, ensuring that Apple’s team gives it more than a cursory once-over.

At the end of last week, Canon Korea teased a new camera in an ad that showed what seemed to be a DSLR hidden behind a semi-see through sheet. Now, adding fuel to the fire (albeit a small fire) that the Korean branch of the company started, Canon Japan has released a teaser video about the same camera.

As teasers go, this one is a bit on the sad side. No deep message, no man in the Scottish highlands on a  "journey of self-discovery," just a pair of white lips wishing you a Merry Christmas. The title, however, does give something away.

The Canon Rebel DSLRs are known as the Kiss lineup in Japan, and so the video confirms this will be a new consumer-level DSLR (no $3,000 retro shooter from Canon..yet). The two main camera, and if you look at the photo at the top you'lll understand why.

Put together by dicahub, that image shows how the camera under the sheet in the original teaser perfectly fits the SL1's outline, with a few minor exceptions. Those exceptions could be the result of shooting angle, or hint at the fact that his is indeed a followup with some minor aesthetic tweaks.

You might not think there was much economic clout left in the Kodak brand, but apparently it still carries some weight in the courtroom. The one-time photography monolith recently won a $76 million judgement from Japanese electronics conglomerate Ricoh to settle a dispute over patent licenses and royalties.

Kodak alleged in the case that the licensing agreements it signed with Ricoh some years ago didn't cover products made under the Pentax brand, which Ricoh acquired in 2011. Kodak claimed it was owed back royalties dating from the Pentax sale.

While the two sides agreed to allow the case to go to trial this week in federal court for the Southern District of New York, they agreed to the monetary settlement before proceedings began. The jury ruled in favor of Kodak, but the settlement applies regardless of the verdict.

Because the dispute covers licensing agreements dating back to the early 2000s, the settlement funds will go directly to Kodak rather than the companies that bought out its patents as part of Chapter 11 bankruptcy liquidation.

The Nikon full-frame teaser campaign continues with yet another video of the solitary Nikon user making his way across Scotland -- discovering himself as we slowly discover the rumored camera, supposedly called the Nikon DF.

This is the third in the series of teaser videos (you can find the first and second at the above link), and even though it shows less of the camera in the shots of the man himself, it seems the company is revealing a little more of the camera at the end of each video.

The screenshot above, from part of the video, a second shot has been brightened by the folks over a Nikon Rumors to show as much of the camera as possible.

According to NR, we should expect three more 'Pure Photography' videos before the teaser campaign is over and we get to find out about the new camera for real. There are supposedly going to be a total of 5 teaser videos - one released every other day (stay tuned for number 4 on Wednesday) - and then on finla introduction video.

Nikon has also launched a dedicated 'Pure Photography' microsite where the videos are uploaded as they go up. You can keep up with the videos there or stick around PetaPixel and we'll be sure to keep you up to date as soon as new teasers go live. NR expects the official announcement to go live between the 4th and the 6th of November.

One day last summer the rapper Scroobius Pip went online to share one of his thoughts. He wrote it on his iPhone and then Instagrammed the screen. He said: “Instagram made beauty banal. I scroll past it by the hour barely cracking a smille."

I think what he was trying to get to was this: if it takes a great photographer to find beauty in the banal, millions of bad photographers, armed with iPhones and cheap editing software, have found the banal in the beautiful. Anyone who has spent a portion of their time on earth scrolling through Instagram (or Tumblr or Pinterest or any other photosharing platform) may have found themselves on the crest of a similar thought.

It used to take time and money to take photos and there was no guarantee any of your 24-roll would come out of Snappy Snaps looking any good. Now any old munter can capture their holiday/cocktail/body part and process it to the point that it is halfway flattering and makes their life look like some sort of 24/7 Urban Outfitters shoot.

As a result, stuff that used to seem quite fresh — even Cara Delevingne’s face, or the view from the Shard, or the fish tacos at Rita’s — is now a bit, like, meh. We have all become jaded aesthetes, sitting in our Pinterest palazzos like Gilbert Osmond in A Portrait of a Lady, curating our collections of pretty things but deriving little joy from them. There are only so many Nashville sunsets, only so many X-Pro II Negronis, only so many Hefe upskirts you can look at before your brain is like, you know what? No.

In fact, according to a recent study by Brigham Young — apparently a university in Utah as opposed to a guy whose parents didn’t know how to spell “Brian” — when it comes to the ubiquitous food snaps, Instagram actually kills your appetite.

Last week, we reported the news that Android developer Josh Brown had discovered some juicy tidbits within the Google camera API: namely, that RAW capabilities and a few other features were in the works. That was just an interpretation of code, but now, it looks like Google has come out to confirm some of what Brown found.

The announcement was made by way of a CNET article in which Google spokeswoman Gina Scigliano confirmed that both RAW image capture and burst mode are already supported in Android's code, and will soon make their way to an upcoming API.

"Android's latest camera HAL [hardware abstraction layer] and framework supports raw and burst-mode photography," Scigliano said. "We will expose a developer API [application programing interface] in a future release to expose more of the HAL functionality."

Burst mode is actually already used in the Nexus 5 when taking HDR photos, but the release of an API would allow all developers to take advantage of both features and design more competitive photography apps that really take advantage of the camera hardware built into phones like the aforementioned Nexus, which left reviewers unimpressed when it was released.

Helsinki-based Scoopshot announced today that it has raised $3.9 million in a Series A round of funding to continue growing its crowdsourced photography business globally. The company uses its growing army of 350,000 users to quickly get on-demand news photography for more than 60 publishers, including News Corp and the California Newspaper Publishers Association. Organizations such as Greenpeace also use the services to capture breaking events, as do brands like Nokia.

Scoopshot allows media and companies to crowdsource mobile photos in minutes, setting geolocation boundaries to indicate which photos they're interested in.

"In three years, Scoopshot has already become the clear market leader in crowdsourced images for brands and publishers," Chris Barchak, a partner at Conor Venture Partners, one of the Scoopshot's investors, said in a statement. "Its on-demand service completely changes how we think about digital image sales, combining the afforable cost of stock photography with the specificity of commissioned work."

The deal follows a $1.2 million seed round just three months ago by the world’s top-selling stock photographer, Yuri Arcurs.

“This … will strengthen our position as a market leader in on-demand mobile photography” said Petri Rahja, CEO and founder of Scoopshot. “Expanding our sales and marketing teams and establishing an expanded presence in the US will allow us to revolutionize the photo industry with our on-demand model.”

Cool gadgets: The Pelican Imaging camera isn’t striving for mega pixels; this is a cool gadget set to change the face of digital photography.

The Pelican Imaging camera could be the revolution that smartphone photography has been waiting for. Why? It uses a system of 16 lenses to capture a large number of pictures simultaneously and then stitches them all together to form one single image.

The resultant photograph is far more flexible than the traditional digital one. You can, for example, refocus a picture taken with the Pelican camera after it has been shot.

It sounds unbelievable, but it works. Say you neglected to focus on a particular person - a Pelican picture would let you change this at a later date. You could even move obects from the background to the foreground, without any loss of definition.

Pelican is so compact that it doesn't require any big or bulky technology. The high-quality imaging processor is simply built in to your standard smartphone at manufacture, making the Pelican unique when it comes to the quality/size ratio.

Release dates for Pelican products are still to be confirmed - as is the price - but it hopes to be in action by next year. Rumors suggest that Nokia might be the first brand to take advantage of its groundbreaking work.

The above video, titled "How not to be a photographer at a gig," has gotten a ton of attention over the past few days as it has made the rounds online. It shows concert photographer Aelle Luca at a small gig really going at it with the flash and bothering (at the very least) the person who recorded and posted the video.

As you might imagine, the comments section for this video on YouTube quickly turned into a troll-fest of insults and negativity directed at Lucà. But as it turns out, this is exactly what the band wanted and asked for… and his photos turned out pretty darn well.

To be fair, nobody here was entirely in the right. It’s easy, as photo people, to side unanimously with the photographer in the situation — especially after the sheer amount of flack the poor guy took once this video went viral. However, the first band did have to ask him to stop, and according the guy who took the video he was doing this “the WHOLE night.”

Since the technique was first pioneered around 200 years ago, photography has developed to a state where it is almost unrecognizable.

Cybernetic Implants:

Taking wearable technology one step further is Canadian Rob Spence. The one-eyed filmmaker decided to ditch his prosthetic eye for a video caemra in 2009, allowing the world to see what he sees. It's not difficult for a newspaper like The Sun to imagine that there's a company offering this service to the general public, as they reported recently. The only problem with The Sun's piece is that there isn't.

3-Sweep

This software allows you to manipulate flat objects in a picture, rotate them, resize them, and add to them, as if they were 3D modeled. It's effectively the big brother of Photoshop's magnestic lasso. The software fills in the blanks for you. Researchers at a Tel Aviv university have combined humans’ natural perception with complex computer algorithms to make a piece of software that is apparently easy for users of any skill level to pick up. It hurts my brain just to think about it. Just when you thought Photoshop couldn’t be improved, this allows for a whole new wave of image editing techniques. You probably won’t have to wait long to get your hands on this either. It’ll make its debut at SISGRAPH Asia in November, and with any luck, the source code should be released soon after.

    We're just days away from the start of the PhotoPlus Expo in New York, an annual tradeshow that's rare in catering not just to those manufacturing and reporting on all the latest photo gear, but also to the photographers who'll be using it. 

According to Photo District News -- the folks behind PhotoPlus -- this weekend's show is expected to attract no less than 24,000 professional photographers. Not only will they be taking an early opportunity to get hands-on with the latest cameras and photo products, they'll also be seeking out new techniques to improve their photography.

Exhibitors like Japanese lens manufacturer Sigma provide loads of tips and tricks on the show floor in excellent tutorial sessions with experienced photographers and models. That's great if you can get to the show -- but what if you're not able to attend this year?

Well, it's Sigma to the rescue again, thanks to a new addition for PhotoPlus 2013: a live webcast of their tutorial sessions, straight from the show floor! Throughout all three days of the PhotoPlus Expo, you'll be able to watch Sigma's tutorials live and in their entirity, from the comfort of your computer or smart device.

To make things even easier, we're embedding Sigma's webcast here. Simply bookmark this news item, and you can come straight back to it for the live sessions, which start at 11AM Eastern time on Thursday!

It’s not uncommon for cameras to look similar in this day and age. Even the Sony A7 and A7r, which haven’t even been released yet, are being described as “OM-D-like” by rumor sites. But at what point does “similarity” cross the line to “infringement.”

Well, if you need an example, just take a look at Polaroid’s iM1836, because Nikon is filing a lawsuit against the company and camera manufacturer Sakar International over just that.

Considering that both times we’ve covered the iM1836 — when it was first announced and when we got our mitts on it at CES — we felt the need to point out how ridiculously similar it looked to Nikon’s 1-series ILCs, we shouldn’t be surprised that Nikon is suing Polaroid for infringement.

According to a press release, Nikon “negotiated amicably” with Sakar behind the scenes to try and solve this problem outside of court, but the manufacturer would have none of it, and so the Japanese company has been forced to get litigious.

“Nikon makes a great effort to create designs that can be differentiated from other companies’ products,” explains the press release, “as well as to strongly deter the imitation of its designs.”