Results tagged “photography” from Photoethnography.com Blog

I've been following the development of the micro four-thirds system a little, just because of how nice it would be to take DSLR quality photos in a point-and-shoot size frame, but here is another option — a DSLR size APS-C sensor in a point-and-shoot size frame. So pretty. PopPhoto.com has a review here as well as some sample pictures.

You'll never believe where this beautiful picture came from — it was compiled and extracted from some dirty shaky hazy video. Gizmodo says it is from a technique developed by Microsoft where they "can take a small percentage of these 900 images—80 in this case—and combine their sharpest, most detailed parts." The write up also has a great example of a panorama they created from similar quality video.

Alright, so maybe I am a little obsessed with time lapse photos. But still, I think this is pretty cool. It's a cheap but not so cheap ($139.95 on Amazon) waterproof camera that you stick in the ground and leave to gather time lapse photos. Seems there would be a number of uses for something like this, and they do have a sample video of someone using it to make a video out of some people putting up a Habitat for Humanity house.

Via Cool Tools.

Tumblr has a very interesting camera breakdown, with the Apple Photo Booth built in webcam and picture taking program taking the first slot, and entry level Canon DSLRs rounding out the top.

Via Crunch Gear.

Gizmodo's latest Shooting Challenge was on slow shutter shots, and they had some amazing results.

74 Mesmerizing Slow Shutter Shots

Honesty: I never, in my wildest dreams, expected your slow shutter photography to be this crazy-awesome. But 74 of you turned in some humbling shots for this week's Shooting Challenge.

It certainly helps to have such a beautiful view. Alas, I do not have an iPhone 3GS, which some say should have been called the iPhone 3GV, for video.

Via Gizmodo.

Related: Time Lapse Photography with CHDK.

This is just a collection of photography related things that caught my eye over the past few weeks.

Jewelry made from "discarded camera components." (Via @Bllix.)

A huge lens, especially with no tripod.

Jens Tønnesen asks, "Too much photoshop?" (Via @Shashwati.)

I don't know if I ever linked to Prof. Steven Fedorowicz's Visual Anthropology of Japan Blog, but just in case I haven't:

http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/

Steven has a very nice section on the Ethics of Visual Anthropology in Japan -- especially intended for his students.

As Borat would say, "Verrrryy niiiice!"

I recently installed CHDK on my Canon A590IS, which allows me to take time lapse photos.

CHDK is a piece of software that provides additional functionality to Canon digital cameras. I have explained it to others as "jailbreaking" my camera, as some have done with their iPhones.

It is admittedly a little complicated to install CHDK onto the camera. The hard part is that you first have to use a hex editor to change the boot sector of the SD card to make it bootable. Once that is done you just copy the CHDK software over to the card, switch it to the locked position, put the card in the camera, and go.

One other caveat is that CHDK works best with FAT16 formatted media, which puts a 2GB limit on the amount of memory that is able to be used. For this reason I bought an extra 2GB card to put the CHDK software on instead of the 4GB card I already had.

Once you have the CHDK loaded there are various scripts that you can run. One script, the Ultra Intervalometer, allows you to specify how many photographs to take at what interval. This is the script I used.

The video you see above is from a set of pictures that were taken from 11:38 p.m. to 12:06 a.m. on New Year's Eve 2008. Make of it what you will. ( ^ _ ^ )

I used the "open image sequence" option in QuickTime Pro to make the video, then uploaded it to my Flickr account (which plays on iPhones).

Just a heads up on a New York Times article about the Panasonic DMC-G1, which is the result of an attempt "to put the photographic quality of an S.L.R. into a compact body."

Pro Quality Without Reflex Lens

Most people -- about 92 percent of us -- buy little pocket cameras that take so-so photos. Only about 8 percent buy those big, black, heavy S.L.R. (single-lens reflex) cameras that take magazine-worthy photos.

It's not that people don't want better pictures. It's just that they're not willing to hang an anvil around their necks to get them.

Next month, however, Panasonic will offer the first camera in a new format called Micro Four Thirds. Its mission: to put the photographic quality of an S.L.R. into a compact body. If it works, then these cameras will surely earn adjectives like "revolutionary," "important" and "popular."

A new class of software could solve some of the confidentiality concerns that ethnographers encounter when taking photos of participants -- an issue that I recently pondered.

I conducted a brief stint of fieldwork in Tokyo over the summer and wanted to take photos of my participants using their keitai (cell phones) and/or pasocon (personal computers). One of the issues I "faced," however, was maintaining their confidentiality while taking pictures that were also aesthetically pleasing. This meant that I gravitated towards taking pictures of them while wearing a mask (in a subtle nod to Mishima's Confessions of a Mask) instead of blurring their faces out.

However, there is an interesting and exciting piece of software that can swap out the faces that appear in photographs. The impetus behind the software is to protect the privacy of individuals that are captured in public photographs, such as those that appear on Google Street View.

Unfortunately, it doesn't exist commercially, yet, but it does present an interesting solution to a problem as such.

(Via Boing Boing.)

There's a more positive review of the Leica M8 by photojournalist Bruno Stevens:

Not withstanding all its technical qualities, the best point of the M8 is that it is a true M Leica. The ability to shoot discreetly in a crowd, to be inconspicuous on a street, and finally to point a small innocent-looking camera in the face of the people you photograph instead of a big black brick, the ability to see 'over' the frames of your pictures in the clear viewfinder, the incredibly small size and weight of a system such as described above (just ONE spare lens for four focal lengths) makes the M8 an absolute winner in my view.

Read more: http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0709/camera-corner-the-leica-m8-on-assignment.html

The difference I think is that Stevens mostly worked in B&W which mitigates the most serious flaws that Kamber raised.

Photojournalist Michael Kamber gives the Leica M8 a realworld fieldtest in Iraq. His conclusions are pretty negative:

The Leica M3 of the 1950’s was an instant success, not because Leica held to quaint design and outdated technology (i.e. the M8’s removable bottom plate) in a misplaced effort to attract classicists, but because they used new technology to build a camera that was on the cutting edge of its time. The M8, in contrast, is years behind other cameras—a photojournalist’s tool that cannot white balance, consistently expose a picture or deliver reasonable low-light performance--and one which has poorly designed controls.

As I said earlier, I do not write this because I dislike Leica, quite the opposite. I have used their cameras for 23 years and invested tens of thousands of dollars in their products. When working in war zones, however, my first rule is to eradicate all the uncertainties from my kit. There are enough uncertainties when the shooting starts. The M8 introduces numerous uncertainties into the photography equation. For a working photojournalist in a combat situation, I would judge the Leica M8 to be unusable.

Read rest of article: http://web.mac.com/kamberm/Leica_M8_Field_Test,_Iraq/Page_1.html

I recently wrote a short article for the Anthropology News titled: A Case against Giving Informants Cameras and Coming Back Weeks Later (. Vol. 49, No. 2: 20). Here is a snippet to whet your appetite:

A Case Against Giving Informants Cameras and Coming Back Weeks Later
By Karen Nakamura (Yale U)

Giving informants cameras and asking them to take photographs of their environment is a growing trend in anthropology. The resulting photos are later displayed, analyzed or exhibited as examples of a particularly internal, private or emic view of the world. Students love this technique, which is inexpensive and initially appears to be risk-free, with all of the hallmarks of reflexive anthropology. If not done carefully, however, it can be problematic both ethically and methodologically.

.....

For those who choose to do photoethnographic work that involves providing informants with cameras or video equipment, it is essential to first critically examine the ethical and methodological implications of a project. The anthropologist must consider both the potential harms and benefits that a project might pose for an informant. Possible ways to address these concerns include giving informants high quality photographic equipment (to keep) as well as technical training, so that in the future they can use their new tools and skills for their own purposes, to address their own needs. Informants working for an anthropologists (i.e. completing assigned tasks) should be paid as field assistants. Prior to using an image an anthropologist should receive permission to do so from both the photographer and any people that appear in the photograph. Finally, photography should supplement, not replace, long-term fieldwork–it is time and labor intensive, but ultimately necessary for interpreting and contextualizing visual images from the field.

You can read the rest at the full text PDF.

Comments, criticism, and feedback on this article are more than welcome -- either here or by e-mail.