Tag: Video

Remember those beautiful photos that were lost in the New York City blizzard? Well they found their way home

Back in January Todd Bieber (no relation) was skiing through Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, when he came across a roll of film in the snow. He had the pictures developed and started his search to find the owners of the lost film. He created a video that quickly went viral, and has been viewed by over 1.2 million people (Here is our orinal post).

Todd was interviewed by press from all around the world and got hundreds of emails from people trying to help find the owner. Todd started to give up hope that he would ever find the owner of the lost film.

But it turns out it was just a matter of time until his original video made its way to the owner, in Paris. True to his goal for the year (to have more adventure in his life) Todd and his girlfriend flew over and deliver the film in person. They also visited with people all across Europe who had helped him along the way.

The life of a Capitol Hill press photographer

A rare glimpse into the way press photographers cover the politicians of the United States Congress and the problems they face. Leading political photographers in Washington talk about the perills of the 24/7 news cycle and the increasingly sparce access.

The Well: Covering Capitol Hill from Chris Gregory.

A rare glimpse into the way press photographers cover the politicians of the United States Congress and the problems they face. Leading political photographers in Washington talk about the perills of the 24/7 news cycle and the increasingly sparse access.

Nikon D3100 autofocus movie sample (HD)

The rumored Nikon D3100 was announced last month, but has not yet been released. Slowly however, sample images, and videos, and hands on reviews are starting to trickle in. Here’s the first video I’ve seen recorded by the D3100, demonstrating use of the continuous autofocus.

I think the quiet ticking noise you’re hearing is the camera focusing the lens. The author comments that he has the camera in spot focus mode, so presumably its trying to focus on whatever is in the center of the frame, and you can see it have some trouble once in a while trying to find focus, or shifting focus from one subject to another. The autofocus looks similar to camcorders to me. Continuous autofocus is probably what you want if you just shooting casual video and don’t want to worry about focus. The video is shot using the new Nikon 55-300mm f/4.5 – f/5.6 lens. The video has a nice fairly shallow depth of field, which is probably created by shooting at a long focal length such as 200mm.

Nikon is now the first DSLR manufacturer to support continuous autofocus while shooting video, and I expect we’ll see others follow shortly. However, Panasonic’s mirrorless micro four-thirds cameras (such as the Lumix GF1) already support continuous autofocus while filming, as do the newly announced Sony translucent mirror cameras, the SLT-A33 and SLT-A55. In fact, you can explore all the interchangeable lens cameras that support continuous autofocus while filming at Snapsort. Sony’s SLT cameras are rather unique though. Unlike the rest of the competition that use slow contrast detection for focusing while recording movies the Sony SLT-A33 and A55 use phase detection focusing even while recording movies, which is the fast high quality focusing normally used by DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. The reason most camera’s don’t or can’t use phase detection during movies is that they have lifted their mirror up to let light into the sensor, which means the phase detection focusing system doesn’t receive any light. Sony gets around this with their translucent mirror, which lets both the sensor and the focusing system receive light at the same time. This means the Sony SLT cameras have the potential to have the best focusing systems for recording movies of any interchangeable lens camera.

Bye-Bye from Rory Jacobs on Vimeo.