photography

PopSci Photo Contest

We have a winner! Get a taste of fame and glory for yourself and enter PopSci.com's photo contest for a chance to see your work featured on the site. Next theme: Need for Speed

Another awesome set of entries to the PopSci photo contest. Thanks to everyone who entered and congrats to this week's winner for the theme "Technology We Love": Phillip Evans (via our Flickr pool).

For all of you photogs, another contest is in the works. After the jump, get the low down. And as always, happy shooting!

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Digital Underwater Camera Mask

Shoot video underwater, with no hands

Thirty-five millimeter film is dead. Everyone over the age of nine now owns a three-megapixel digital camera with a 10X optical zoom. Parents upgrading to telescopic lenses are passing down their relics to kids who can’t aim and have never loaded a roll of film. In the digital revolution, the disposable camera was merely an innocent bystander (along with Polaroid). But at dive shops and drug stores, the single-use underwater film camera has survived as the practical option for honeymoon photography and pool party documentation. With the recent launch of the 5.0-megapixel Digital Underwater Camera Mask from Liquid Image ($99; a 3.1-megapixel version costs $79), the end is near. To see how potent the gadget could be, I spent an afternoon underwater attempting to document a most difficult subject matter: two kids under the age of seven.

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Hit Us With Your Best Shot

The winner of last week's contest, a gallery of our top picks, plus entry info for the next

The Winning Entry: Sea Nettle Jellyfish:  Piper vonSederholm

Thanks to all who entered the first PopSci photo contest. You certainly didn't make the job of picking a winner easy, but after much deliberation we chose Piper vonSederholm's beautiful shot of a Sea Nettle jellyfish.

The first contest was such a hit, we're rolling out another. This week's theme: The Man-Made World. Drop your best shots into the pool. Full rules (and more info about Piper's photo), after the jump.

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Looking for a Few Good Photos

Getty Images will turn to Flickr to round out their stock library

Shutterbugs, if you're a Flickr user, you have a reason to be snap-happy. Getty Images, a leading stock photo agency, teamed up with Yahoo this week so that it can buy photos from Flickr's 2 billion picture database. Don't go breaking out the champagne just yet, though. Since Getty will be handpicking the photos personally, users will have to wait to be contacted to discuss contributor contracts. If chosen, the Flickr image will have a special link to the Getty page. And while price has not been specified, they will likely be commensurate with current Getty rates.

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The Tech Behind the Phoenix Mars Lander's Onboard Cameras

A 3-D stereoscopic imager and a robotic arm camera with an LED flash make up Phoenix's Red Planet gear bag

Say Cheese, Martians!: The Phoenix Lander's main camera can capture 3-D stereoscopic images.  NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

For the past two weeks, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has been broadcasting a wealth of incredible images from its landing site in the Martian arctic. I've been refreshing the mission's raw photo stream obsessively—no little green men yet, just gorgeous panoramas and detailed closeups of the most foreign of all foreign lands. Being a bit of a camera geek, I was quite curious as to what kind of hardware was behind the action, and naturally, Phoenix has some pretty sweet gear on board to make it all possible.

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Super-Slo-Mo Fun With the Casio EX-F1 at the Beijing Zoo

Filming your very own Planet Earth knockoff is easy with one of the most innovative cameras we've seen in a long while

Our own Theodore Gray (the man behind Gray Matter's mad science) is currently in China, and he's taken the opportunity to put his new Casio EX-F1 high-speed camera to excellent use at the Beijing Zoo. And when we say excellent we mean the majestic hawk at the Beijing zoo defecating and flapping its wings at 300 frames per second kind of excellent. And if that's not enough, he's got a dolphin leaping from beneath the water and a sparrow taking flight to boot.

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Old Cam, New Tricks

Unlock your Canon digital camera's hidden features by replacing its firmware with a hacked version

CHDK Firmware: Displaying the alternate main menu.  Luis Bruno
Camera makers love the incremental update: selling a new model with just enough enhancements that you'll be tempted to trade up. But if you own one of several Canon point-and-shoots, you can get new features, such as shooting in high-quality RAW format, measuring accurate exposures via a live histogram, and even running simple applications like games or a calendar, without having to pay for an upgrade. All you need to do is replace your firmware, the computer code embedded in the camera's memory that serves as its operating system.

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How It Works: The Thinnest Camera

Here´s how pocket-size digital cameras pull off a huge feat: turning six million bits of light into a photo in barely a second

Specs: Casio EX S600BE

What: Thinnest 6-megapixel camera available


Size: 2.32 in. (h) x 3.54 in. (w) x 0.63 in. (d)


Weight: 4 ounces

Cost: $400

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Behind the Images

PopSci's staff photographer talks about some his favorite shots

Leaning from a low-flying helicopter to shoot a fast-moving military boat. Zooming in on a tiny bee equipped with a radio transmitter. Feeling the heat while snapping a car explosion just meters away. These are a few of the adventurous scenarios John B. Carnett has found himself in while on assignment for Popular Science.

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Canon Powershot SD550 Digital Elph

The Best Pocket Shooter

Never mind the business-card size of Canon's SD550 -check out its stunning images. The SD550 sports a powerful processor, borrowed from Canon's digital SLRs, that shoots quicker, processes images faster, and reproduces truer colors than ever before. Add in a 2.5-inch LCD, and it's the ideal go-everywhere camera.7.1MP; 2.2 x 3.5 x 1.1 inches; f2.8â€4.9 3x optical zoom (37mmâ€111mm, 35mm equivalent); 60fps video; $500

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