Single-Serving Photo

Part One: Kites

Chris Benton is a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. He also straps his digital SLR onto a kite string and takes some of the most amazing aerial photographs I have ever seen. Chris combines a truly gifted eye for composition with a an engineer’s savvy for mechanical problem solving.

Using kites and remote-controlled camera rigs built by hand in his basement, Chris captures the world top-down, photographing everything from people and buildings to the patterns of nature. Watch this video from Make Magazine and be stunned!

Kite Aerial Photography on MAKE: television from make magazine on Vimeo.

Chris is quick to humbly share his experience and tips for aerial kite photography on his website (graciously hosted by Berkeley!)

I was blown away by the evolution of Chris’s camera rigs, which grew from fixed harnesses with rudimentary mechanical timers based on elastic bands, Silly Putty, and disposable cameras, to what he now uses, a remote-controlled, servo motor-driven, three-axis robot.

It’s definitely not commonplace for someone to possess both a grasp of electronic and mechanical engineering and a hawk-eye for artistic composition. Chris Benton has both.

Part Two: Cars

Aside from being an avid photographer, I admit to a streak of BMW fanboyism. When it comes to sports cars that are still solid daily drivers that make you feel like you’ve personally discovered the center of the universe and you’re sitting directly within it, nobody does it better than BMW.

To hype the release of their latest creation, the Z4 Roadster, BMW hired artist Robin Rhode to dip the Z4’s tires in multi-colored paints and drive it around like a fingerpainting on a warehouse scale. This was one of the most indulgent marketing campaigns I could think of.

I realize this isn’t strictly photography-related, but it is certainly art-related. If you feel gypped, go look at these photographs from the event

And here is a pretty cool video of how they put this thing together:

The next time you’re out shooting, or sitting around the house thinking about how next to use that studio space you set up in the basement, or the garage, or the attic… Think about breaking out of the box and doing something completely different. Robin Rhode did, and I think it came out pretty well.

Ritz Camera, while providing useful and satisfying services to some, has long been the target of my criticism. I find it laughable that free-minded individuals would pay Ritz’s extortionate prices for equipment and gain nothing but instant gratification from the ordeal. Their warranty leaves much to be desired, and though Ritz employees can sometimes be knowledgeable, there is definitely no guarantee of that.

Someone who would walk into a Ritz Camera (or their other brands, like Wolf Camera) and purchase a softbox made by some second-string manufacturer solely on the recommendation of an AP stringer who got the job at Ritz because the AP doesn’t even like them that much (no offense to AP stringers in general, here), is a fool. Plain and simple.

When the hardened, seasoned advice of a B&H sales associate is only a phone call away, and when that advice is backed by an enormous inventory of equipment available, usually immediately, from their warehouse, it seems a ridiculous proposition to even set foot into a Ritz Camera except in times of utter and complete desperation.

It surprises me to see customers milling about in Ritz without beads of near-boiling sweat rolling down their faces, because I can’t imagine a world where trusting my needs to a place like Ritz could be anything less than forced on me by dire circumstance.

That said, Ritz Camera has filed for Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy protection.

The reign of terror is almost at its end.

I don’t usually do these short news-breaking stories, but this one actually irked me. Rob Galbraith, notable photographer and outstpoken reviewer of photographic equipment and technique, published a story in his blog, Rob Galbraith: DPI, pitting the late-2008 unibody MacBook Pro 15” display against the displays of two similar laptops, the Dell Inspiron and the IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T60.

Conclusion? Despite Apple’s long-held position as a maker of laptops uniquely suited to field shooting, Galbraith says, “In ambient light environments which induce screen reflections, the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch’s glossy screen moves deep into the not acceptable category.”

Though it remains in the running for one of the more accurate displays among laptops, it fails to outshine the Inspiron or the ThinkPad in overall color accuracy or viewing angle flexibility, according to Galbraith’s hands-on analysis.

Of course nothing is totally black and white in the field of photography or even technology, so be sure to read his full review and peruse some of the responses on the Slashdot post.

My thorough and attentive friends in the B&H affiliate department have sent word that they now have limited stocks of 5D Mark IIs!

The message reads, “We’ve just received word that the Canon EOS 5D Mark II is available in limited stock. Simply “add to cart”; ignore initial “back-ordered” message.”

According to Mike’s post over at TOP, their stock seems to be fluctuating in and out.

The price is $2,699 and you can buy it right here

In a previous article, Shooting Modes Explained, I went into some of the details of the major shooting modes (aperture priority, shutter priority, manual) and the program modes (what Canon calls “PictureStyles” and Nikon calls “Digital Vari-Programs”).

All of that information is still very important, but I wanted to mention that a good fellow by the name of Adam Parker posted a comment there with a useful link to an article of his where he demonstrates the major shooting modes using… Gasp… Pictures!

You can read his article, Canon Shooting Modes – What Are the Differences? at that link. Bear in mind that it is a very Canon-centric article, and therefore I fully support it!

If you have a Nikon or one of those… Other cameras… This information may still apply, though the names of the modes will probably be different, or you may have more or fewer of them.