Vancouver 2010
Nate and 
helloheather and I have been having fun in the evenings watching the Olympics coverage.
I was catching up on my RSS feeds and came across this "Big Picture" post from Boston.com
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/02/vancouver_2010_part_1_of_2.html
Absolutely stunning images.
Into The Night
Check out this great time-lapsed video of Chicago along Lake Shore Drive.
Into the Night from kris.wm on Vimeo.
Progressive Scan CCD readout
I make no secret of my disgust of my cell phone's built in camera. It's really bad.
But because it's bad means it can sometimes be very interesting. For example:
Notice how everything is leaning one direction, in particular the road sign? This image does not represent reality. Everything I photographed was perfectly straight. But because we were in a car moving at a very fast rate, the digital camera produced this image.
Why?
The digital camera starts reading data from the sensor by rows of columns: from upper-left to lower-right.
So, as we moved from right to left in the frame, the first thing the camera recorded was the sky above the barn and the last thing it recorded was the grass and the base of the sign. But by the time it got to reading that information, we had moved forward just a little bit.
This is a pretty pedestrian example of slow progressive scan. For something a bit more interesting, take a look at this photo on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=8798593&size=m
The image comes courtesy of a blog entry on a similar type of photographic distortion due to focal-plane shutters. Worth a read.
Konica Minolta to end its camera business
2006 is shaping up to be a year of tremendous change in the world of photography. First, Nikon announces they are going to abandon all film cameras except two and now this:
http://konicaminolta.com/releases/2006/0119_03_01.html
Konica Minolta is going to completely withdraw from all aspects of photography, both film /and/ digital. A large portion of their camera and photography related assets will be transfered to Sony.
This is quite shocking, given the length of time Minolta has been involved in the photography business. It's also a good sign of how tight the photography market really is today.
Sony, on the other hand, is going to be entering into the Digital SLR market. Since July 2005, KM and Sony were jointly developing a DSLR based around the Minolta lens mount found on their Maxxum line and now Sony is going to go it alone. I must wonder though, how likely it will be that Sony sticks with the KM mount. I can certainly see them abandoning it in favor of an in-house development, which would leave KM DSLR users hanging. But that's just speculation on my part. Sony will likely be a strong force in the DSLR market which will hopefully motivate Canon and Nikon to further innovation.
Strange times ahead for sure.
edit/update:
In other news, Canon has sold its 30 millionth EF lens.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0601/06011902canonef.asp