The UltraCamX, a large Format Digital Aerial Camera, uses CCD technology, employing 7.2 micrometer pixels thus achieving an even larger image format at 14,430 x 9,420 pixels without sacrificing radiometric performance.

UltraScan 5000
A highly automated photogrammetric scanner designed and field-tested by photogrammetrists, producing digital images of un-compromising quality.

UltraMap Workflow Software System
A complete and integrated photogrammetric workflow for UltraCam images, with a flexible and scalable distributed system for managing and processing vast amounts of UltraCam data.

Microsoft Ultracam Home

Microsoft has launched WorldWide Telescope, a free application that enables users to navigate the universe and view celestial objects through the lenses of the world's best observatories

What is WWT?

The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.
Choose from a growing number of guided tours of the sky by astronomers and educators from some of the most famous observatories and planetariums in the country. Feel free at any time to pause the tour, explore on your own (with multiple information sources for objects at your fingertips), and rejoin the tour where you left off. Join Harvard Astronomer Alyssa Goodman on a journey showing how dust in the Milky Way Galaxy condenses into stars and planets. Take a tour with University of Chicago Cosmologist Mike Gladders two billion years into the past to see a gravitational lens bending the light from galaxies allowing you to see billions more years into the past.
WorldWide Telescope is created with the Microsoft® high performance Visual Experience Engine™ and allows seamless panning and zooming around the night sky, planets, and image environments. View the sky from multiple wavelenghts: See the x-ray view of the sky and zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then crossfade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago. Switch to the Hydrogen Alpha view to see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud structures lit up by the high energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way. These are just two of many different ways to reveal the hidden structures in the universe with the WorldWide Telescope. Seamlessly pan and zoom from aerial views of the Moon and selected planets, as well as see their precise positions in the sky from any location on Earth and any time in the past or future with the Microsoft Visual Experience Engine.
WWT is a single rich application portal that blends terabytes of images, information, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a seamless, immersive, rich media experience. Kids of all ages will feel empowered to explore and understand the universe with its simple and powerful user interface.
Microsoft Research is dedicating WorldWide Telescope to the memory of Jim Gray and is releasing WWT as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe like never before.

WorldWide Telescope

DNG Codec

From Adobe Labs

Welcome to the Adobe® DNG Codec release candidate on Adobe Labs. The DNG Codec provides a method for Windows Vista users to view DNG files in the Windows Explorer and Photo Gallery. The ‘release candidate’ label applied to this technology indicates that the codec includes all of the intended features and is well tested but will not be released as a finished product until the community is able to help ensure that a larger set of hardware and software configurations are used with the Codec.

For more information on the DNG format, please visit the DNG pages on Adobe.com

System Requirements

• Microsoft Windows Vista (This codec is not compatible with the Windows Vista 64-bit platform)

Download and Installation

1. Download the DNG Codec
2. Double click the downloaded dngcodec_r1_051208.msi file
3. Follow the on-screen installation instructions
4. The DNG Codec may require that you restart your computer before use

Release Notes

• Please provide feedback on your experience with the DNG Codec on the Adobe User to User forums
• The DNG Codec will move from a release candidate to a shipping version once sufficient feedback is received
• Additional information about the Windows Vista codec system can be found on the Microsoft web site

Retrieved from "http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Codec"

DNG Codec - Adobe Labs

Peachpit Press announced that The Digital Photography Book Vol. 1 by Scott Kelby is the best-selling book on digital photography ever, having sold over a quarter-million copies so far. Congratulations to Scott for the tremendous success of this volume.

What does it mean to say, "Find your photos?" Traditionally that meant literally just finding where particular photos reside on your computer (or a physical location back when film was king). But with new tools and advanced technology, finding your photos can mean finding not just the photos themselves, but finding the exact location where you took a photo. This, in turn, will make it even easier to search for the photos themselves later. Microsoft Pro Photo Tools, a free download available at the Microsoft Pro Photo Web site, enables you to apply location information to your photos so you can always know exactly where they were captured.

It gets even better though. Leveraging the power of Windows Live Local, Pro Photo Tools will then determine the location name information for the photos based on the GPS coordinates. This allows you to have more meaningful location information attached to your photos, which is especially helpful when you want to later search or images based on their specific location. Full article at the link below

Microsoft Pro Photo: Geotagging Goes Mainstream

'CSI' sleuths out Microsoft's latest technology

The Microsoft technology behind the scenes:

Photosynth. Stitches together a large collection of photos and turns them into 3-D images, viewable from any angle. Due out by year's end. Preview at labs.live.com/photosynth/default.html
HD View. Still in the labs, this imaging technology is kind of like Photosynth on steroids. research.microsoft.com/ivm/HDView/HDabout.htm
Microsoft Surface. Interactive tabletop computers recently made their commercial debut in some AT&T stores. Microsoft.com/surface
Orb motion-based controller in futuristic bedroom on Microsoft Home website uses OLED (organic light emitting display) technology to change the artwork, video clips and Web pages shown on the wall. Considered five to 10 years out.

Enlarge
By Randy Tepper, CBS

By Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY

A guidance counselor at a Manhattan prep school is murdered while the prom is taking place in the gymnasium.

Forensic scientists for the New York police attempt to recreate the crime scene by uploading hundreds of camera phone thumbnail photos snapped at the dance onto a computer.

STORY: Toddlers coming of digital age

The PC screen fills up in a concentric square pattern, revealing a wide shot of the gym at the center. Investigators can manipulate the images to show close-ups of the scene from every angle.

This episode of the CBS crime drama CSI: NY, scheduled to run Wednesday night, is fiction. But the technology at its core, Microsoft's Photosynth software, is real. It analyzes scores of images for similarities and stitches them into a three-dimensional reconstruction.

'CSI' sleuths out Microsoft's latest technology - USATODAY.com

I don't know the source of these photos so cannot apply any credits, but thought they were worth a post. 

Microsoft Surface: consumer version in 2011?

Microsoft Surface is a tabletop computer that’s controlled by physical touch instead of a mouse or keyboard. Image: Microsoft

Microsoft’s tabletop computer could appear in homes in three years or less, the executive in charge of its development said this week.

Since unveiling the Microsoft Surface product last year, the company has gotten plenty of feedback from businesses and enthusiasts who want to get their hands on the technology, said Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Specialized Devices and Applications business. And Gibbons said he feels confident that the touch-based computer could be affordable enough for consumers in three years or less. “In the three-year time window, we absolutely see how to get there,” Gibbons said. “If we can beat that, we’ll try to beat that.”

FORTUNE: Big Tech Microsoft Surface: consumer version in 2011?

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/index.html

8. Use of Your Content.

Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

I haven’t tried it yet but I thought the group mind find this interesting.

No, it’s not a Photoshop replacement, but it is a remarkably well designed basic photo-editing and sharing application.

No layers here, no fancy pants masking. But for 95% of your photos, it offers pretty much all you need to fix ‘em up, and it does it with style.

Whether adjusting exposure, white balance, or hue, touching up blemishes, or distorting your image, Photoshop Express provides an easy slider and thumbnails to give you an instant preview of your image at various settings.

So what does it cost? It’s free

http://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html

The 75th Anniversary of NIKKOR Lenses

Tokyo – Nikon Corporation is pleased to announce the 75th anniversary of NIKKOR camera lenses, since the first lens was introduced in 1933. To commemorate this anniversary, we are renewing our commitment to provide NIKKOR lenses that feature advanced functions and superior optical performance. And at the same time, we will introduce several activities to further improve awareness of the NIKKOR brand.

Nikon | News : The 75th Anniversary of NIKKOR Lenses

Time to chuck out your DSLR, here's a blast from the past. Corbis are offering pinhole cameras available to download for free from their website and build yourself, in classic Blue Peter style.

Stock photography, footage, rights: Corbis ReadyCam

"What you see on these pages is not about a particular place, people, time or cause. It’s not about one type of picture or another. It’s not about sportsmen or fashion models or war or politics or the news of the day.
It’s about being a photographer."

Joe McNally: The Moment it Clicks

Photo industry braces for another revolution 

Think of it as digital photography 2.0.

In the last decade, photography has been transformed by one revolution, the near-total replacement of analog film cameras by digital image sensors. Now researchers and companies are starting to stretch their wings by taking advantage of what a computer can do with sensor data either within the camera or on a full-fledged PC.

Some elements of this new era, which researchers often call computational photography, are refinements of existing technology. For example, some cameras can wait to take the photo only when subjects are smiling and not blinking, in effect placing the shutter release button in the hands of the subjects rather than the photographer.

But more dramatic changes could shift the definition of a camera more dramatically. One major area of research, for example, uses computational processing to create a 3D representation of a scene rather than just the two dimensions of traditional photography.

For the full article follow the link below

Photo industry braces for another revolution | Underexposed - CNET News.com

So the Sigma 200-500mm f/2.8 APO EX DG Ultra-Telephoto Zoom Lens for has been released. As much as I like wildlife photography lugging a 15kg lens around along with £16,000 price tag doesn't appeal, so here are couple of other uses

I bought this coffee thermos, and I’m not happy

Are the rockets included?

For full specs click here

When you use  BigSnapSearch.com for all your everyday searches you will also see two cards at the top of the page – if the cards match you win, simple. What’s even more amazing is that you can win a prize an hour, 24 hours a day for 8 weeks. Of course you can search as much as you like to improve your chances of winning

After viewing the video below, your next stop is Strobist "Lighting 101"

Video from http://www.pduncan.com/

Special Report: How to Photograph the Lunar Eclipse

Weather permitting, on Wednesday February 20, 2008 in the U.S., (Thursday, February 21 in the rest of the world) a total eclipse of

 

the Moon will be visible in most of North America, all of South America as well as Western Europe and portions of North Africa. This is an exciting event for astronomers and it can provide great picture opportunities to photographers as well. Photographing the moon is relatively easy compared to other celestial bodies, because it's relatively close to the earth.

The tips that follow will show you how to photograph the moon under normal circumstances, or under eclipse conditions.

We'll start with how to photograph the full moon itself, and then give you specific tips for photographing a lunar eclipse. Hopefully the weather will cooperate as the next total lunar eclipse is not until December 2010. Fortunately, there will be several partial eclipses before that, the next one is on August 16, 2008.

Click the link below for full detials

New York Institute of Photography - Special Report: How to Photograph the Lunar Eclipse

What is the Worldwide Pinhole Photography day?

This is an international event created to promote and celebrate the art of pinhole photography.

When is the Worldwide Pinhole Photography day?

The next Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day is on Sunday, April 27, 2008.

To find out how you can become a part of WPPD,  How to Participate.

How to Make your camera on the Support page.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

 
I have blogged before about Windows Movie Maker, but here's a great tutorial from ephotozine on how to create a slide show with Windows Movie Maker.....

Windows XP and Windows Vista comes with a program called Windows Movie Maker that most photographers may not have realised could be a useful tool. Peter Bargh shows you how it can be used as great tool for creating fun slide shows.

Creating a slide show with Windows Movie Maker