Watch the iPhone 4S Shoot Video Almost as Well as a $3000 DSLR (Updated: More Amazingness)

From: http://gizmodo.com/

iPhone 4S / Canon 5d MKII Side by Side Comparison from Robino Films on Vimeo.

We know the iPhone 4S is a killer still camera—perhaps its greatest selling point—but how about video? Do the new guts and 1080p bump make a big difference? Yes. A giant yes. See just how amazing for yourself.
This perfectly-synced test, which used a special bit of rigging to align both the 4S and a Canon EOS 5D Mark II to capture the exact same scene, says way more than any Apple marketing verbiage can. With the 5D's settings matched as closely as possible to the 4S, the two—at least on Vimeo—look nearly indistinguishable. Yes, if you look closely, the 5D wins. It's got greater detail, depth of field, doesn't suffer from the iPhone's jarring rolling shutter problems, and of course has a giant panoply of manual settings any phone lacks. But the point remains: Apple's created a handset camera that can shoot pro-grade (albeit limited) video. And for a small, small fraction of the price. [Robino Films via PetaPixel, Thanks Matt!]

Update: For the doubters, more proof that the 4S is capable of shooting some incredible video. This time, from professional film editor Benjamin Dowie.

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A video shot on the iPhone 4S from Benjamin Dowie on Vimeo.

Landscape Photography That Define Brilliance

From: http://www.viralblender.com/

To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment. Earlier, we shared a collection of some of the most amazing landscape shots and it was loved and liked by everyone. Presenting part two of that series (landscape/nature photography), hopefully you’ll like these as well.

Silent Morning by Andre Arment

Cherry Trees by Matjaz Cater

Fresh Start by Dough Roane

Rising Shadow by Karsten Wrobel

Season Change by John Parminter

Two Autumns by Mikhail Trakhtenberg

Loch Linnhe by John Parminter

The beauty of Spring by Lazy Vlad

Path to Wonder by Dan Ballard Photography

Sunrise by Matjaz Cater

Los Cuernos del Paine by Ian Plant

Mid Summer by Raymó

Curtains In The Fog by Miles Morgan

On The Field's Appeal by Pawel Kucharski

Painting Of Nature by Hardibudi

With Ash From The Volcano by Raymó

Autumn Sunrise by Gary McParland

Atomic Cloud by Hendrik Tio

Warm Morning by Marius Grozea

6AM by Artur Magdziarz

Hot Air Balloons by Martin Sojka

Shocking Bondi by Timothy Poulton

Forever Dreaming by Marc Adamus

Follow The Flow by PhotoNook

The View by Photonook

Forever by Dorin Bofan

Volcano Down by Karsten Wrobel

A Day on The Top of Mount Titlis by Evan Pratama Ludirdja

Morning Road by Indra Supriadi

Born In Krakatau by Nico Fredia

Watching People Skydive in Slow Motion Is Absolutely Mesmerizing

Experience Human Flight from Betty Wants In on Vimeo.

melbourneskydivecentre.com.au/​

Shot on a GoPro

Produced: Betty Wants In
Music: "She is" - Salieri Music Inc

The Aurora, as You've Never Seen It Before : HD Video

http://vimeo.com/21294655

The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.I spent a week capturing one of the biggest aurora borealis shows in recent years.

Shot in and around Kirkenes and Pas National Park bordering Russia, at 70 degree north and 30 degrees east. Temperatures around -25 Celsius. Good fun.

Available in Digital Cinema 4k.

Like my Facebook Page for updates facebook.com/​TSOPhotography
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Press/licensing/projects contact: terjes@gmail.com

Thanks to my Sponsors:
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dynamicperception.com

Music is Gladiator soundtrack "Now we are free"

Tropical Island Infinite Photo

From: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/

Infinite Photographs

Click on an image and dive into a mosaic of hundreds of pictures of marine and terrestrial species found on the South Pacific island of Mo‘orea.

Photographs courtesy the Biocode Project and National Geographic contributing photographer David Liittschwager.

INSANELY awesome solar eclipse picture

From: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/

Earlier today Europe, Asia, and Africa got to see a nice partial solar eclipse as the Moon passed in front of the Sun, blocking as much as 85% of the solar surface. The extraordinarily talented astrophotographer Thierry Legault traveled from his native France to the Sultanate of Oman to take pictures of the eclipse. Why there, of all places? Heh heh heh. It’ll be more clear when you see this ridiculously awesome picture he took:

Holy solar transits! Click to embiggen, which you really really should do.

Can you see why he traveled so far to get this shot? The silhouette of the Moon taking a dark bite out of the Sun is obvious enough, as are some interesting sunspots on the Sun’s face… but wait a sec… that one spot isn’t a spot at all, it’s the International Space Station! This was a double eclipse!


That’s why Thierry sojourned to Oman; due to the geometry of the ISS orbit, it was from there that he had the best chance of getting a picture of the station as it passed in front of the Sun during the relatively brief duration of the actual solar eclipse. But talk about brief; the ISS was in front of the Sun for less than second, so not only did he have one chance at getting this spectacular once-in-a-lifetime shot, but he had only a fraction of a second to snap it!

To give you an overall idea of what you’re seeing here: the Sun is 147 million kilometers away (less than usual because this eclipse happened, coincidentally, very close to perihelion, when Earth was closest to the Sun). The Moon is 390,000 kilometers away. The Sun is about 400 times bigger than the Moon, but also about 400 times farther away, making them look about the same size in the sky. If you’re still having a hard time picturing the scale, take a look at the dark sunspot in the lower right of the big picture: it’s about twice the size of the Earth!
The space station, on the other hand, is 100 meters across (the size of a football field) and orbits about 350 km (210 miles) above the Earth’s surface. So the Moon was very roughly 1000 times farther away than the ISS when this picture was taken, and the Sun 400,000 times more distant. Yet all three lined up just right to make this extraordinary photograph possible.

Thierry has taken some of the most amazing pictures of the station passing in front of the Sun and Moon I’ve ever seen — his shot of the ISS and the Moon shortly before last week’s lunar eclipse was beautiful — but this one really stands out. It took an extraordinary amount of planning, scheduling, travel, and plain old good thinking to make this picture happen. Congratulations to him for getting it, and I thank him for sending it to me!

[More eclipse pictures can be found linked from Stuart's Astronomy Blog as well as on the BBC's Sky at Night Flickr pool of pictures.]

Working iPhone 4 slips out, produces camera samples

iPhone 4 reaches Czech early for impressions

The iPhone 4 has landed in the hands of a Czech who has managed a test of the phone and its camera, including HD video. Swenak explained that the phone feels good in the hand, isn't prone to slipping, and is relatively fast both in wide use and in getting a GPS lock-on. His only misgivings expressed to Jablíčkář are around the plastic frame between the metal and the glass, which he believed could get minor scratches over time.

The phone's thinner profile is much easier to fit in a pocket, Swenak added.

In testing the camera, still photos appear to have the quality of a typical point-and-shoot camera, though with relatively little visible noise or fringing artifacts. Video at 720p is sharp at its native size and has audio quality similar to an iPhone's with a comparatively quiet scene.

By Electronista Staff

Giant Redwood, in full for the first time

i.imgur.com — Nick Nichols, the “Indiana Jones of Photography," produced the first-ever high-definition, seamless composite photo of an entire redwood. It’s 300 feet tall and between 1,500 and 2,000 years old. The photo was created with 84 very high-resolution images, taken at approximately 3-foot intervals from a vertical dolly rigged parallel to the tree.

Click here for this fantastic image: Giant Redwood, in full for the first time (PIC)

The photographer is Nick Nichols and the photos were in the Oct 2009 National Geographic. Here is an article one it (it took 3 weeks just to build the rigging):
http://www.savetheredwoods.org/redwoodtransect/nic ...

and video:
http://techblips.dailyradar.com/video/redwoods-the ...

...and if you want to buy a 6-foot print for $200 :P
http://gallery.pictopia.com/natgeo/photo/8389209/

How The Space Station Sees Earth [pics]

How The Space Station Sees Earth [pics]

The ISS gets its own HD video tour

by Matt Burns

Sit back, relax, and enjoy this extensive HD video tour of International Space Station. You better enjoy the ISS while you can. There’s a good chance it’s going to crash into Planet Earth within the next couple of years because of budget issues unless the ESA can save it.

Stunning Aerial Views of Grand Canyon National Park

Grand Canyon

by Aerial Filmworks

More

Aerial Filmworks is working with the Grand Canyon National Park to film the national park using the Cineflex V14HD. The gyro-stabilized aerial system uses an integrated Sony CineAlta HDC1500 and all footage was recorded 1080/23.98p at 4:4:4 to a Sony SRW1 deck on HDCAM SR tape stock. 

Digital capture with an AJA Kona3 card to a MacPro 8 core with 17Gb RAM, and edited with Final Cut Pro.

The Cineflex was nose-mounted on a Bell 206B3 Jet Ranger helicopter. Permissions required about 8 months of paperwork and permits, along with daily updates to local air traffic control on flight days. The pilot needed to be specifically approved for the operation by the FAA and Department of Interior. We mapped reference points to the GPS and input sensitive condor nesting areas that we needed to avoid.

The Aerial Filmworks team believes in doing our part to maintain a carbon neutral planet. Through a "White Badge" partnership with TerraPass, we purchase carbon offsets for every hour of flight time that our Cineflex equipment is on a helicopter.

NIN fans collaborate on massive free DVD/Blu-ray

From: http://www.nin.com
posted by  rob

Our 2008 Lights In The Sky tour was an ambitious multimedia production on a scale well beyond anything we'd ever attempted before. Everyone involved was extremely proud of how it came together, and we were devastated when, for a variety of reasons, we were unable to capture it professionally for a theatrical or commercial release. As a "plan B" of sorts, early last year we released a massive 405gb free download of raw HD footage captured at three different shows during the tour. The idea was to get the footage out in the wild and see what our notoriously enterprising fans could do with it. There were no rules. No strings attached. This was a gift, and an experiment, and for the past year we've watched it come to life in more ways than we could have ever imagined.

Fans have edited thousands of videos from the footage, assembled their own DVDs and live albums, even held theatrical screenings of their creations. And now, the ambitious and well-organized group known as This One Is On Us have released their massive, highly-anticipated creation, Another Version of the Truth: The Gift.

For 12 months, a core team of dozens of fans and a network of thousands spanning the entire globe pooled their efforts to create this professional-quality 1080p 5.1 concert film, and have released it in every format from Blu-ray and DVD to iPod and YouTube. It combines footage from all three shows and includes DVD menus, bonus footage, a PDF booklet, and more. That something of this scale was produced entirely by fans, on their own time, purely for the sake of giving something back to the community, is absolutely unprecedented. You can read all about the project and find all the download links here, or watch it immediately on YouTube here. Theatrical screenings are already being organized, you can find more info about those here.

This is yet another example of a devoted fanbase and a policy of openness combining to fill in blanks left by old media barriers. The entire NIN camp is absolutely thrilled that treating our fans with respect and nurturing their creativity has led to such an overwhelming outpour of incredible content, and that we now have such a high quality souvenir from our most ambitious tour ever. Or, as Trent simply put it, "Nine Inch Nails fans kick ass."