• Link (via Hacked Gadgets)

It works like this: if you use Flickr, go to the sixth page of your photostream and pick the sixth picture there, then post it to your blog.

Here’s mine:

This was taken while having dim sum for breakfast, the morning of my brother’s wedding on July 7, 2007. That’s my brother on the left.

Some people might be offended or upset by these images but this isn’t my intentions I just want it to be thought provoking and enlightening, and for people to talk about the past and to never forget, because we need to learn from past events other wise we will keep repeating history.

Update: linked to original source

• Link (via Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection)
• Link to original source

• Link
• There is also a Qtpfsgui Flickr group where you can find example images and the tone mapping parameters that were used.

Related:

• HDR photos with the GIMP
• Modern HDR photography, a how-to or Saturday morning relaxation

By taking a shorter exposure or closing the aperture, the camera will underexpose. This means that the dark parts of the scene will silhouette and the light parts will be recorded well. Taking a longer exposure or opening the aperture, the camera will overexpose, meaning the light parts of the scene will wash out to white, but the shadows of the scene (that were black in the underexposed photo) will come out well. Composite HDR refers to a range of techniques to take the best parts of both of these photos and combine them in a photo that captures more of the range of light levels in the scene.

• Link
• Once you understand the basics, you can use the exposure-blend GIMP plugin to automate the process. (Use this version for GIMP 2.3 and later).
• For some examples of good HDR images, check out the TTHDR (True Tone High Dynamic Range) group, or the Quality HDR group, on Flickr

Related:

• Modern HDR photography, a how-to or Saturday morning relaxation

• Link (via Strobist)

The good thing about this hack is that you load it off your of memory card every time you turn your camera on (in some cases you can also enable auto-loading) so the original firmware of the camera is not touched, making this a fairly safe hack.

Q. What does the HDK firmware do?

A. After loading of HDK firmware you can get the following functionality:

• Shooting in RAW
• Live histogram (RGB, blended, luminance and for each RGB channel)
• Zebra mode (blinking highlights and shadows)
• DOF-calculator
• Battery indicator
• Scripts execution (exposure/focus/… bracketing, intervalometer and more)
• File browser
• Text reader
• Calendar
• Some fun tools and games

• CHDK FAQ
• Shooting to RAW with Canon PowerShot (DIGIC II – based only)
• (via hack a day)

PhotoWipe is a revolutionary image processing tool that magically removes unwanted objects from your photos. Just paint over them in black, and click go! Uncovers hidden details in your photos. Sit back and watch as cage bars disappear from the zoo, and your old girlfriend or boyfriend fades away. It removes wrinkles, or it can remove entire facial features.

• Link (via Freewaregenius)

• Link
• Thomas Hawk’s photos on Flickr
• Thomas Hawk’s photos on Zooomr
• I’d also recommend checking out Thomas’ blog.

Note: you need to pass a Genuine Windows Validation check to access the download.

• Link (via Lifehacker)

It’s a little easier to see the images of the camera lens in this photo. Look at the three Cantor sets formed by the number of reflections of the camera lens on the three spheres. Math in action!

• Link
• Photoset on flickr

• Sydney Matrix locations set on Flickr (via Digg)

During the early days of atomic bomb experiments in the 1940s, nuclear weapons scientists had some difficulty studying the growth of nuclear fireballs in test detonations. These fireballs expanded so rapidly that even the best cameras of that time were unable to capture anything more than a blurry, over-exposed frame for the first several seconds of the explosion.

Before long a professor of electrical engineering from MIT named Harold Eugene “Doc” Edgerton invented the rapatronic camera, a device capable of capturing images from the fleeting instant directly following a nuclear explosion. These single-use cameras were able to snap a photo one ten-millionth of a second after detonation from about seven miles away, with an exposure time of as little as ten nanoseconds. At that instant, a typical fireball had already reached about 100 feet in diameter, with temperatures three times hotter than the surface of the sun.

• Link

• Link (via reddit)

Today’s digital cameras match or slightly exceed the performance of silver halide film. Computer graphics has achieved the goal of photorealism. Now the goal is to go beyond simply matching paper and silver halide – to create display technologies which can present any visual stimuli our eyes are capable of seeing.

One area of rapid development is in dynamic range. A new crop of technologies using High Dynamic Range imaging (HDR or HDRI) aim to extend the dynamic range of digital imaging technologies way beyond traditional media.

• Link (via reddit)

First and foremost your camera has NOTHING to do with making great photos. You have to master technique of course, but that’s just a burden to get out of the way to free yourself to tackle the really hard part of the art. The hard part is actually saying something with your images. This is art and it’s abstract and therefore difficult for many people to grasp. It’s easy and lazy to think a camera makes the photos and to blame bad photos on a camera. When you get better you’ll realize you would have been better off to pay more attention to your images and less to your camera.

• Link (via Digg)

• Link (via Lifehacker)
• This site has another version of the camera, as well as a little bit of the history behind these paper cameras.

Every original digital picture is overlaid by a weak noise-like pattern of pixel-to-pixel non-uniformity. Although these patterns are invisible to the human eye, the unique reference pattern or “fingerprint” of any camera can be electronically extracted by analyzing a number of images taken by a single camera. Fridrich’s lab analyzed 2,700 pictures taken by nine digital cameras and with 100 percent accuracy linked individual images with the camera that took them.

• Link (via MetaFilter)

• Link