What if, suddenly the world go around, and people start to think that our camera should be capable of playing music, albeit from the memory card, or stream your iTunes from your iPods?

What if, suddenly, camera engineers finally figure out how to integrate a multi-touch full body display at the back of your camera and design a highly usable camera interface, just like your iPhones/iPod Touch, and — for god’s sake — reasonable enough to open the cookbook and let people develop apps on it — just like your iPhones/iPod Touch?

The problem is, the other side is doing such a great job at those, and have already accomplish all that, at the same time, slowly implementing highly useful camera technology and features into their cam… (oops, I mean) iPhones & iPod Touches.

That other side if of course none other than Mr. Steve Jobs & The Apple Design & Engineering team, and our side is none other than the obscure anonymous folks with no names and no faces to credit too.

In just a few months time after they first revealed their next generation, 5-megapixel, backlit sensor iPhone 4 camera system, they announced today that their next version of the iOS software 4.1 will include an HDR feature, directly built into their camera app.

Now, let’s savor this moment and allow us to think, what, in recent time that our dear Canon, Nikon, Leica, Olympus & many other imaging giants have done even so much as a built-in HDR feature? Let alone the multi-touch display thing, I’d settle for just an easy-to-use button layout & software operation interface. If they really think they can’t do it, they might as well consider making an iOS app and an iPhone/iPod Touch dock interface at the back of the camera and let us just enjoy taking pictures again.

Right now, my iPhone is practically a better camera than my EOS. I’d like to see it change.

Canon’s S90 & the G11 have attested to the image-quality-is-everything theory, and once again have reaffirm Canon’s commitment with their new gears, the S95, G12 and the next king to their 1Ds Kinghood, the Mark IV and the 1D Mark V.

Interestingly, “something hybrid” is expected to make some big splash at the September opening of the show; with the increasing interest in HD-DSLR filmmaking and innovation, I wouldn’t be surprised if movie recording will be a standard feature on every SLR just like how cameras are on your mobile phones.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if nothing interesting will come, though, it is only a camera, after all.

A walk down the memory lane with the help of some of the oldest surviving collections of daguerreotypes and the fine folks who have digitized and publish them for public.

First developed by French geniuses Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787 – 1851) and Joseph Nicéphorus Niépce (1765 – 1833). Little that they know, the Daguerreotype would spark an era of photographic artistry, as well as industry, as we know it today.

Series of portraits from the people of then Russian Empire. Sharp and well composed, but the slightly taller format would have made composition tricky; wonder what kind of camera it was shot on.

My first question to Bono’s publicist: “What are the chances I’ll get to photograph him without his sunglasses?” Her response: “Hmmm. Probably zero. No chance. I don’t see it happening.” So began my date with Bono.

(via LA Times Photography)

Follow focus is to Hollywood, for HD-DSLR is to filmmaking, Intuitfocus HF-IF1 is the 5D of HD-DSLR follow focusing:

The IF system can be used on all DSLR cameras with lenses from 14mm to 600mm, including shooting with Zeiss still or compact prime lenses. The IF system is easy to mount and is compatible with most lenses, and enables one to focus or to zoom precisely and quickly without any camera shake.

This thing about focusing will go away if camera makers solve the root problem. SLR cameras are designed to capture still photograph; our current focusing technology was based on a two-decade auto-focus problem, now that most DSLRs can also be used to shoot videos, a new auto-focus system is needed to solve this new problem.

Abstract: Detecting an object from the viewfinder, instead of snapping to a focused position, the system would identify movements, and from the distance, direction, speed and sets of moving patterns; calculate and predict a focusing point that would be maintained, and/or gradually shifted according to the position of the object and the camera’s film plane. Add to it, the existing image stabilizing technology, super-sensitive image sensor capable of high-ISO & wide dynamic range light capture — filmmaking will never be the same again.

Okay, that sounds like crazy sci-fi sensation, but remember a few decades ago when auto-focus, auto-exposure, hypersonic-wave focusing motor, were nothing but a dream? As many optimists would say, everything is possible as long as we can imagine it.

Postscript: Now that we’re talking sci-fi, has someone devised a non-linear digital image sensor that has “memory”? A sensor that not capture a single linear moment of image, but record a non-linear memory of the light itself? This would result in a truly RAW state so that the photography can be done entirely post-capture — think of a darkroom enlarger but with multiple negative films with infinite combinations of ƒ stops.

It would completely ruin the beauty of photography, but it’s no crime to image, no?

Lovely portrait by Béa de Géa of Sting. Check out her website for more portrait goodies.

(the article’s nice too, by the way.)

update: link to video & behind-the-scenes gallery added.

Bali, the quintessence of a rich spiritual & cultural community is empirically known throughout her history as the land where people come as tourists, but often leaving as artists. Some of the world’s most well known painters, musicians, photographers — artists — have spent time and at some point of their lives, lived on the island. There’s that quality about Bali that attracts souls of any kind.

John Stanmeyer, a member of the VII photo agency spent five years living there, during which, through the lens of his holga, he captured the enchanting life & spirits of the island’s living, breathing & invisible souls, and produced this exciting new title:

Spirits are everywhere in Bali. Trees, temples, mountains, stones, water appear sacred to the Balinese, all serving as a hand reaching out and into the otherworld of ancestors and gods and the maelstrom of good and evil. [...] This body of work stresses the historicity of spiritual life of Bali, consisting of deeply layered imagery that is witnessed, understood and explained in full by few, yet practiced by millions.

The book will come in regular & special limited edition (pricing to be announced) and the first edition is currently wrapping up production in Jakarta where an exclusive behind-the-scene gallery has been published, also up is a short video feature on VII Multimedia.

Good news for landscape & architecture photographer. Out this month for just $2000.

Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 2/28: The Expert for Half-light

The breaking dawn is a special time for photographers. When the early-morning sun reluctantly chases away the still-glistening dew on the trees, this delicate transition between night and day creates moments of calm and anticipation. But without a tripod at hand, these shots will only succeed with a lens that can handle intense light.

Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 2/35: A New Lens Takes Center Stage

A squirrel nimbly scampers along a moss-covered tree trunk. It has made a promising discovery amongst the fallen leaves of an oak tree. A deer emerges from the half darkness of the woods. A photographer documents the winter preparations of various woodland creatures. This requires a versatile, high-speed, easy to configure lens that produces razor-sharp images of the details and the entire scenery.

Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 2,8/21: Perfect Lighting For Dramatic Perspectives

Dusk is falling in Manhattan, and a swarm of commuters on their way home is hurriedly crossing the street toward Grand Central Station. Behind them, the skyscrapers reflect the golden light of the setting sun. To capture this unique atmosphere, photographers need a fast wide-angle lens.

I could do this all day, so let’s wrap it up before I get sued, but allow me to share this final classic bit 120 Years of Lenses from Carl Zeiss:

They’ve been to space; they’re Hollywood favorites; and they’ve been the constant companions of demanding photographers around the globe for 120 years.

The release lists Nicole Balle of Camera and Cine Lenses as the editorial contact, it may, or may not be that someone is working with her, whoever it is — thank you and kudos for making the press releases human again.

She is an angel descending to earth sharing the divinity of beauty. TED picked it up, and here’s what she has to say about her work:

I’m very interested in wonder, in design as an impetus to inquiring. To say I wonder is to say I question, I ask. And to experience wonder is to experience awe. [...] But I really believe that a fully operating, rich society needs these seeds coming from all directions and all disciplines in order to keep the gears of inspiration and imagination flowing and cycling and growing. So that’s why I do what I do, and why I spend so much time and effort on it, and why I work in the commercial, public sphere, as opposed to the isolated, private sphere of fine art. Because I want as many people as possible to see my work, notice it, be drawn into it, and be able to take something from it. And I actually really feel that it’s worthwhile to spend my valuable and limited time on this earth in this way. And I thank you for allowing me to show it to you.

She call herself a Graphic Artist, but she’s mostly a thinker, philosopher & philanthropist playing the roles of a poet, a writer, a designer, a painter, an artist and more precisely an agent of inspiration.

It’s one of the best talk on TED I’ve seen just yet, download the high-res MP4; and have a look at her website for her wide-range of mediums & multi-discipline of practice she is able to create from.

I never realized how much I enjoy Richard Avedon’s work after I revisit my old DVD, Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light. Further reading leads me to this exquisite feature & commentary by curators Carol Squiers and Vince Aletti for the New York Times.

The entire cut is about 6:00 min long, if you’re in a hurry, here are some bits that I found to be awakening.

On feelings:

Avedon was always looking for another way to show how women thought and how women felt, and that meant it they aren’t necessarily always just feeling beautiful, they might be insecure, but they might be also very very happy. Avedon really made the laughing woman a real subject in fashion.

On ‘color’:

There were not supposed to be any people of color in Harper’s Bazaar magazine, for Avedon, people of color were part of the spectrum that were normal natural to him, In his quest for beauties — that were not just your average American beauty — he looked at women who were of different ethnic background, one of the first ones he came up with was China Machado a woman of Portuguese and Chinese ancestry. He actually had to threaten to quit Harper’s Bazaar in order to get them to use China Machado in the pages of the magazine. This particular fight only escalated when he decided he wanted to use a black model whose name is Donyale Luna.

On being true to his vision:

Avedon always seem to be slightly ahead of his time in terms of whatever the social and cultural thinking was of the time. He always seemed to be pushing pushing the envelope and getting himself into trouble but because he was who he was, he could threaten and they would bend to his will.

More about his vision, Vince Aletti added:

I think what he did best was compress the movement that he had on the street, the kind of attitude of excitement and exuberance that he captured with models out in the world was able to put that into the studio and capture that for the page. [...] Avedon was always very much a person of his time, so he was really attuned to the energy and exuberance of the 60s, and the radicalism that was there as well and wanted to kind of translate that into the work as well, if only by encouraging his models to let go, to really spread across the page, or to really be excited and convey that sense of excitement out to the world.

What I noticed in the last couple of years is that fashion pages on the magazines today no longer has so much weight in its content — weak concepts, repetitive looks and most destructive — albeit the most unapparent — is the personification of the fashion, and the objectification of the person behind it. Feelings & expressions are kept at the bare minimum — making them almost irrelevant at times, and at the same time turning the fashion products into biblical objects.

Perhaps this is one of those period in history books where we are at the turning point where consumerism is the new world order (or religion, on this matter). One can only hope that this is just — well — fashion at its best.

I can’t even imagine the pain and suffering Aisha must have gone through, but her willingness for her story to be told to the world is a courageous and extremely noble act. Jodi Bieber tells more about the photoshoot for TIME’s cover story.

Shanghai Expo’s Landscape & Major Architecture. First part of the Expo 2010 series.

Client: blitzmegaplex
Art Direction: Santi Rivai

This, practically would make your iPhone, iPad, or any LCD screens your truly digital negative. Aditya Mandayam:

For the past few years I made prints like this: shoot-develop-scan film, print digitally. The Laptopogram is an inverse. [...] Laptopograms are images made by pressing photosensitive paper onto a laptop screen and flashing an image in a manner not unlike contact printing or photograms. [...] ‘Laptopogram’ is a misnomer – I reckon they can be made with pretty much any monitor. Perhaps ‘Luminous Screen Emulsion Transfers’ is a better. 

Brilliantly authentic. Excuse me, I got some dusting to do.

(Via Photojojo)

Clever captures, brilliant editing at Boston.com’s The Big Picture.