Photo news - W/E 28th July

[Kym]

http://petapixel.com/2013/07/21/chec...pollo-mission/

The title sort of gives it away, but did you know that there is an online archive that contains high-resolution film scans from every Apollo mission? The gallery contains all of the incredible photos taken during each of the missions — from Apollo 1 all the way through Apollo 17 — with some 1,000+ photos from Apollo 11 alone.
The archive, officially the Apollo Image Gallery, was put together by the Project Apollo Archive by scanning photographs provided by the NASA History Office, Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center.
Since all of these images were taken by NASA astronauts in the course of duty, they’re all Public Domain and free for you to browse through, download, share and use to your heart’s content.

[Kym]

http://petapixel.com/2013/07/19/cont...s-birth-photo/

An Australian photographer has succeeded in having her work reinstated to a prominent exhibit, after authorities initially pulled the graphic image of a baby seconds after birth for being “too confronting.”

Adelaide photographer Victoria Berekmeri specializes in documenting a child’s arrival into the world, from maternity through the first few weeks as a newborn.

[Kym]

http://www.sansmirror.com/newsviews/...rong-with.html

"Thank you for your inquiry regarding the EF-M 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM lens. Unfortunately, this specific lens will not be sold or serviced by Canon USA."
That's the response in the Canon support forum to shooters in the US, where mirrorless camera sales are low (compared to Asia, for example). But it simply opens up the chicken-and-egg debate that the camera companies continually seem to not understand. And before people question the authenticity of that forum response, I'll just point out that I've gotten similar feedback from Canon dealers: they can't order the product in the US.
All of which makes me wonder why the EOS M was even sold in the US. If I were a dealer, I'd demand that Canon take back any inventory of the product I had obtained, because effectively Canon is saying "we're selling a 'system camera' that you can't actually make into a system." Game over: opponent shot itself in the chest instead of the foot like the others.
I'll repeat something I've written many times: marketing is about perception. To sell a user something, they have to perceive the value in purchasing it. Canon's actions here reduced the perceived value of an EOS M system almost to zero (the only lens other than the kit lenses to be offered isn't available).

Worse still, Canon's actions seem to indicate that they don't think that the EOS M has any opportunity of taking sales from their DSLRs. Meanwhile, m4/3 bodies and NEX bodies do just that, though at modest levels here in the US. Canon's actions further suggest that they now consider the EOS M a "regional" option, which in today's global world has less actual value than a "global" option. (Why? Because people don't stay put. Note the "not serviced in US" aspect of their statement. What happens when you move to the US from Canada? Or get reassigned from overseas by your company to the US? Granted, there won't be large numbers of people that get caught by that—especially since Canon isn't selling many EOS M's in the first place ;~)—but this policy represents just another of those "frictions" I talk about. Every friction you add to the user's mind means it gets tougher to sell them in the first place. This is one of the biggest frictions I've seen a camera company perpetuate though: the EOS M isn't really a system camera, even though it may look like one.

[Kym]

http://freeyork.org/photography/10-m...s-in-the-world

Sometimes photographers amaze us with their art, the ability to uniquely reflect the world around us and get a look at it from a different angle. And sometimes doing something completely disgusting or normal so that it is impossible to understand why the work is recognised as a masterpiece. Anyway, these photos were sold for millions of dollars.

[Kym]

http://petapixel.com/2013/07/10/phot...dding-clients/

How not to run a wedding photography business: Take deposits from clients, don’t show up for the weddings and skip town before the law catches on. That was the strategy employed by Ramon Rodriguez, a Louisville, Kentucky photographer who remains in jail after bilking prospective clients out of $27,000.

Apparently Rodriguez did run a legitimate business for a while, with assistants, cameras, lighting and the works. A still-extant description on a wedding-planning site describes him as: “Ramon Rodriguez Photographer, offers the very best in wedding photojournalism and traditional photography. His photography is unique, fun and elegant. Excellent quality and good prices, very easy to work with. has a package for every budget.”
Rodriguez’s work habits became increasingly erratic after a 2005 DUI conviction, however. until he disappeared altogether in 2009, skipping out on numerous assignments. Turns out he was in Canada, where he hid out for three years until his conscience got the best of him.

[Kym]

http://petapixel.com/2013/07/13/phot...catch-on-fire/

Photographer Gets So Close to Lava That His Shoes and Tripod Catch on Fire

Back in May, we featured the volcano photos of photographer Miles Morgan, a guy who gets so hot to lava that he’s had his shoes and tripod melt. If you didn’t believe that shoe melting fact then, check out the crazy photo above: it shows photographer Kawika Singson with his shoes and tripod in flames due to the intense heat of lava.

Singson is an extreme hiker and landscape photographer based in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. Over the years, he has photographed in countless locations all over the Big Island, often in locations that the general public would find very difficult to get to. He “has taken many risks to capture just the right shot to share with the rest of the world,” he says.

The photograph above was shot last week on July 4th, 2013. When we asked Singson about the location, he wouldn’t reveal anything aside from the fact that it was in Hawaii. “I don’t like giving out my locations,” he said. “It’s a secret. Plus, I don’t want people to go there and get hurt.”

The photo appears to show Singson braving the heat to shoot a photograph, but he was simply posing for a one-of-a-kind portrait. “I thought it would be pretty cool to take a lava pic with my shoes and tripod on fire,” he writes.

It may look too crazy to be true, but Singson insists that it’s a genuine photograph: “That’s real lava real flames and it was really hot! I could stand the heat only for a few seconds.”

[Kym]

http://www.filmbodies.com/newsviews/...some-more.html

I'm not sure it's been announced externally yet, but an internal Fujifilm bulletin from Fujifilm North America Corporation tells of several more films no longer being produced:

• Provia 400X (Fujifilm recommends Provia 100F as a replacement)
• Neopan 400 (Fujifilm recommends Neopan 100 Acros as a replacement)
• Velvia 100F in long roll form (special order; Fujifilm recommends Velvia 100 in long roll as a replacement)

As usual, the culprit behind the discontinuation is listed as "decreases in world-wide global [sic] demand."The Kodak and Fujifilm choices are now down to 20. (For those that get upset every time I mention a number associated with those two companies, at the moment Ilford seems to be stable, so don't get paranoid and think I'm writing that there are only 20 types of film available on the market. My point has been, and remains, that the two companies that dominated film production are slowly whittling their offerings to the point where we're near bare bones. In this round, we lost two ISO 400 films, leaving only negative film with higher ISO in the Fujifilm lineup, and no color slide film with an ISO greater than 100.

[Kym]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/20447...ce-fixing.html

Panasonic and its subsidiary Sanyo have agreed to plead guilty to price fixing conspiracies involving laptop battery cells and automotive parts. They will pay a total of $56.5 million in criminal fines, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said.
Sanyo agreed to pay $10.7 million for the battery cells conspiracy and Panasonic will pay $45.8 million for its role in the automotive parts conspiracy, the DoJ said in a news release on Thursday.
LG Chem, a manufacturer of rechargeable batteries, has also agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $1.056 million criminal fine for price fixing involving battery cells, the DoJ said. Sanyo and LG Chem were involved in a battery cell conspiracy from about April 2007 until about September 2008, it said.
“The guilty pleas against Sanyo and LG Chem are the first in the department’s ongoing investigation into anticompetitive conduct in the cylindrical lithium-ion battery cell industry,” it said. Both companies conspired to fix the prices of battery cells sold worldwide for use in notebook computer battery packs, it added.