Who is the Photographer Behind Photos Shot by the Curiosity Rover on Mars?

We’ve written a number of posts regarding the NASA Curiosity rover’s photography on Mars, but have you ever wondered who it is that “presses the shutter”? If you have, you’re not alone.The Planetary Society recently received the question as well, and has published an official explanation from NASA:

It would be nice if the pictures took themselves. But it takes a village, it seems, to get a picture taken on Mars [...] for a single snap shot you might have the Geology Science Theme Group conceive and design it en masse; the PUL-1 plan it; the entire (on staff) Science Operations Working Group discuss it and include it in the daily plan, the PUL-2 actually write it, and the engineering uplink team review and approve it before the Ace hits the button to radiate it, with the sol’s command, bundle to the rover. That’s a group the size of a small village.

Camera operator Mark Lemmon also talks about how the team often goes to great lengths to nail lighting and composition. With so many resources drained into each photo, casual snapshots aren’t exactly Curiosity’s thing.
Who is the photographer behind Mars rover photos? Answer from Mark Lemmon [The Planetary Society]

ONE DAY ON EARTH: Frozen Camera: What a DSLR Looks Like When Shooting in a -25°C Environment

First-Ever Hyper-spectral Photo of Auroras

Auroras are quite popular as a photo subject these days, especially for time-lapse photography, but a team of researchers in Norway recently snapped pictures of one in a way that hasn’t been done before: with a hyperspectral camera. The special device can simultaneously capture multiple spectral bands of light. The composite photograph above was created by combining three such bands of light, with each one assigned a different RGB color.

Called the NORUSCA II, the camera was being tested earlier this year, but its findings and details were just published in the scientific journal Optics Express (the paper is titled “Hyper-Spectral All-Sky Imaging of Auroras”).
Ordinary cameras like the DSLRs used by night-sky photographers can be thought of as simple buckets — they collect all the light in the scene and spit out a single photograph based on what’s gathered. While they can make for gorgeous photographs of the natural phenomenon, they’re not as useful for scientists who need to look at specific bands of light within the aurora (you would need to use special filters to block out certain wavelengths).
The NORUSCA II can switch between 41 different optical bands in a matter of microseconds, allowing scientists to detect things in the atmosphere based on their “light fingerprint.”
See that photo at the top of this post? That was actually captured through a layer of clouds, meaning ordinary cameras wouldn’t have been able to “see” the aurora at that time.
Here are a couple of photos by photographer Njaal Gulbarndsen showing what auroras look like to normal cameras, and showing the researchers conducting their experiments:


We’ve written about hyperspectral cameras a couple of times in the past. Last year we shared about how you can turn a Canon 5D DSLR into a hyperspectral camera using off-the-shelf parts. Back in August, we also shared about how some scientists are using the special cameras to unlock mysteries in ancient documents.


Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/12/01/first-ever-hyperspectral-photo-of-auroras/#e0KksrDP9uCHgl0i.99 

Comparison: The Canon 6D Next to the 5D DSLR Lineup

Left to right: 5D III, 6D, 5D II

If you’ve been wondering how the Canon 6D compares to the 5D lineup in terms of size, control layout, and ergonomics, here’s a side-by-side comparison photo in which the 6D (center) is placed next to the new Canon 5D Mark III (left) and the older Canon 5D Mark II (right). The cameras are each ever-so-slightly different in their shapes, but the 6D is noticeably smaller than its pricier siblings. It’s more than 10% smaller in its dimensions, and is ~10% lighter than the 5D Mark II and ~20% lighter than the 5D Mark III. Here’s a larger version of the image.
(via LensRentals)

Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/11/30/comparison-the-canon-6d-next-to-the-5d-dslr-lineup/#MgoFYviBAD3UTvLU.99 

How to Quickly Resize Multiple Photos in Mac OS X Using a Terminal Command

If you use a Mac and regularly need to resize batches of photos, there’s actually a tool built into your operating system that lets you do just that without having to open any image editing program. It’s called “sips”, which stands for scriptable image processing system. It’s extremely easy to use, but you’ll need to know how to use Terminal to take advantage of it.

Simply put copies of all the photos you’d like to resize into a directory, navigate to that directory within Terminal, and run the command:

sips -Z PIXELS *.EXTENSION

Where PIXELS is the maximum number of pixels you’d like the width or height to be, and EXTENSION is the file type you’re working with (e.g. jpg, png, gif).
For example, if you’d like to shrink a large batch of JPEG images down to 620px in width/height, you would run the following command in Terminal (assuming the present working directory contains the files):

sips -Z 620 *.jpg

That’s it. The tool quickly resizes all the images in the directory down. Be aware that this overwrites the original files, so you’ll want to make sure you’re only doing this to copies of photos, not the originals themselves.
To save time, there’s way way to easily open up Terminal in the directory containing the photos you’d like to resize. It’s a right click option that you’ll need to enable: go to System Preferences->Keyboard->Keyboard Shortcuts->Services->Files and Folders and making sure New Terminal at Folder is checked.

Do this, and you’ll see an option for “New Terminal at Folder” when you right click the folder containing your images:

sips can do much more than the simple batch resizing outlined in this post. Check out the command’s manual for all the different functions and options you can use to edit photo files from the comfort of command line (e.g. cropping, editing the color profile, padding, flipping, rotating, etc…).
(via Lifehacker via MacLife)

Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/11/21/how-to-quickly-resize-multiple-photos-on-a-mac-using-a-terminal-command/#GbTRg1CVd0l0lRSq.99 

American Tintype: A Portrait of a Tintype Portrait Photographer

Documentary filmmaker and photography enthusiast Matt Morris recently noticed a magazine article about a tintype photographer named Harry Taylor based in his hometown of Wilmington, NC. Having recently gotten engaged, Morris and his fiancée decided to have Taylor shoot their engagement photos using the 150-year-old photo process. They ended up sitting for a 5-hour-portrait session, and Morris was stunned by the results.
A few months later, he decided to return to Taylors studio with two Canon 5Ds in tow and spent an afternoon documenting Harry’s work. The fantastic 4-minute documentary above is what resulted.

One of Morris’ favorite tintypes that resulted from the shoot

Here’s what Morris tells us about what attracted him to Taylor’s work:

I was smitten with the idea of getting tintypes made. I’ve got thousands upon thousands of RAW files and JPEGS, and just like most of your readers, almost none of them are printed. I’ve got files backed up, as well as published on various social media sites, so if something accidentally gets deleted, it’s no big deal.
A tintype is different. A tintype is a unique, physical, one-of-a-kind object. It doesn’t sit on your hard drive, and it’s not a negative that you can print as many copies as you want from. These are heirlooms, meant to be taken care of and passed down generations. Each one is filled with personal significance- we spent about 5 hours with Harry and wound up with 11 tintypes. If your head wanders a little too much during the 15 second exposure, you have to do it again. The process took about 20 minutes per photo. There are issues on Harry’s end as well- exposure times, chemical balances. Once you get it right, you’re thrilled. It really makes you appreciate how accessible photography is now, and also has made me take a little more time taking photos.

You can find more of Taylor’s work — both tintype and not — on his website here.

Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/11/13/american-tintype-a-portrait-of-an-tintype-portrait-photographer/#LzWWJYXu2VHDLUS0.99 

Photo Stacking Technique Makes Clouds Look Like Brush Strokes in the Sky

Stacking long-exposure photos of stars leads to some pretty neat photos and time-lapse videos, but what happens if you use a similar technique for clouds? That’s what photographer Matt Molloy does. His “photo stack” images of landscapes show clouds that look like smears and brush strokes across the sky.

Here’s what Molloy tells us about how the images are created:

To make these ‘photo stacks’, I first shoot a timelapse, taking a photo every 5 seconds or so. (Settings differ depending on the subject and lighting conditions). I then merge several photos into one image using Photoshop. I start with the first image from the timelapse as a normal photo and then blend the rest of them with the ‘lighten’ blending mode. This only adds things that are brighter than what was in the first photo, and so you can see things like the paths of stars as they move across the sky. (The movement of the stars is actually from the earth’s rotation).
I think it’s an interesting way to observe time. You can see a time frame of several hours in one image, something our eyes can’t do naturally.

You can find more of Malloy’s work over on Flickr and on 500px. He has an entire set devoted to images created with this photo stacking technique, including many photos of stars.

Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/11/10/stacked-photos-in-which-clouds-look-like-brush-strokes-across-the-sky/#46gjtE1H1LLzC8yf.99