Before camera manufacturers one-upped each other with the number of megapixels, they one-upped each other with the zoom range of their lenses. And before that, in the 1960s, the "speed" of the lens, its ability to gather light, was the big selling point.

Now, Leica Camera AG, a prestigious but small German maker of high-end cameras and lenses, is going for the speed crown again, making the world's "fastest" lens for still cameras.

This week, Leica said it has created a new version of its Noctilux lens with an aperture number of 0.95, which in the inverted math of optics means it gathers 11 percent more light than the old version, which had an aperture of 1.

•More here

Galveston County Daily news photographer Kevin Cox was detained for 45 minutes by authorities for photographing the scene of a Texas City, TX refinery spill. Cox, who refused to show his images to the authorities when asked, was photographing the scene from a public roadway. Though Cox had moved to a grassy unmarked field, owned by Marathon Oil, to take shots from a better vantage point, he vacated the field once he was asked to do so by Marathon security personnel. The rest of the story here:

»www.galvnews.com/story.lasso?ewc···228a0b7f

The maker of the popular photo-editing software Photoshop on Thursday launched a basic version available for free online.

Photoshop Express will be completely Web-based so consumers can use it with any type of computer, operating system and browser. And, once they register, users can get to their accounts from different computers.

• More here

(spotted by seagreen )

At dusk on New Year's Eve, Erika Gunderson got into a taxi in New York City and entered a digital-age mystery. Sitting on the back seat was a nice Canon digital camera.

The New York Civil Liberties Union is suing New York City on behalf of a Columbia University student after police handcuffed him for taking photographs near a subway station in Manhattan.

»today.reuters.com/news/articlene···HOTO.xml

»www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/11···36.html

Zenfolio releases new subscription service that allows photographers to create a customizable and fully functional Web store.

More information here - »www.zenfolio.com/

In one of my favorite national security/thriller movies, No Way Out, the Pentagon reconstructs a damaged photo negative to track down a man they think is a spy who murdered the Defense Secretary's mistress. The suspected killer -- who is in fact a naval officer assigned to the Pentagon -- must find the real killer as the digital image of him slowly comes into focus.

Now we have a real life example of this sort of photo reconstruction (although with a very different story surrounding it). Authorities have reconstructed a digitally altered picture of a man accused of being a sexual predator, prompting a worldwide manhunt code-named Vico. This is, as the Interpol news release puts it puts it, is "the first time the organization has made such an appeal."

»blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/d···-r.html

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center, have built a low-cost robotic device that enables any digital camera to produce breathtaking gigapixel (billions of pixels) panoramas, called GigaPans.

•More here

Joe O'Donnell's glowing legacy outlived him by less than a week. The man recalled by some as "The Presidential Photographer" with a knack for having a camera to his eye at just the right moment, became instead someone described as a fraud who hijacked some of the 20th century's most famous images and claimed them as his own.

more here

New York, NY August 24, 2007 – Adorama Camera’s AIRC (Adorama Imaging Resource Center), which has been providing photographers with free, helpful how-to features and buying advice since 2003, is embarking on a new venture: 100 in 100: 100 photography tips in 100 days, which will start on September 10, will provide one brief but practical photography tip every day through December 18.

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(July 18, 2007) - The National Football League has passed a new rule for the upcoming season that requires photographers at NFL games to wear red vests with Canon and Reebok logos on them, and the news is not being very well received by some editors and photography directors as word spreads through the journalism community.

•More here

John Szarkowski, the longtime director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and a dominant figure in the establishment of photography as an art form, has died. He was 81.

Szarkowski, who began his career as a photographer and returned to his camera in recent years, died Saturday in Pittsfield, Mass., said Peter MacGill of the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York. Szarkowski died of complications from a stroke he suffered in March.

•More here

City May Seek Permit and Insurance for Many Kinds of Public Photography

few selected quotes from news article:

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... Some tourists, amateur photographers, even would-be filmmakers hoping to make it big on YouTube could soon be forced to obtain a city permit and $1 million in liability insurance before taking pictures or filming on city property, including sidewalks.

"My modest contribution to all this is pass on a note from my friend Tom, a physicist and photographer, who points out that Safari 3 does something no other browser for Windows -- and only a few for Mac -- do: handle colors of high quality photographs correctly. He includes a pointer to a color management tutorial where you can see the effect for yourself."


• More here
• The Rob Galbraith article

Spotted by seagreen

Autodesk has announced the release of a new version of Maya Personal Learning Edition (PLE), the free version of its 3D modeling and rendering software. The new release is based on Maya Complete 8.5, and provides free access to many of the major features of Maya for students and others who want to learn how the software works. It’s available for Mac OS X and Windows XP.

•More here
•Direct link to Maya

When it comes to this competition, it works like this: As one of the judges, I choose the 10 photographs I like best. For round 1, that meant choosing 10 out of 491 photographs. In other words, for every 50 photos, I can only choose one. Words can’t describe quite how difficult that is: A lot of talent and creativity goes into competition entries, and a lot can be said about.

• More here

May 23, 1:24 PM (ET)
By MAY WONG

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Patrice Elmi hasn't touched her bulky 35 mm camera since last fall. The emerging visual artist from Los Angeles has discovered that all she needs is the diminutive gizmo she clips to her jeans and flips open to chat with friends.

Take a look at her photography - colorful abstracts of urban settings - and it's not immediately obvious that her equipment of choice is a cell phone camera.

More here: »apnews.myway.com//article/200705···G0.html
Patrice Elmi's "Visual Urban Abstracts" exhibit: »www.drkrm.com/urbanabstracts.html

Tipped by seagreen

By Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer
May 22, 2007

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK Aristotle took note of this celestial happening a couple of millenniums back. Ben Franklin bagged a sighting or two, as did Mark Twain.

Apple, Inc. announces the first ever Insomnia Photo Festival giving all student photographers in the US attending an accredited high school, college, or university a chance to win a 15" MacBook Pro, an 80GB iPod, and a copy of Aperture.

Pentax announced an update to the K10D, firmware v 1.20. The update adds Pentax Remote Assistance 3 functions to the camera allowing tethered remote shooting by computer control. The update can be found at »www.pentax.co.jp/english/support···_s.html

Further information here - »www.digitalcamerainfo.com/conten···v120.htm