Back to the Future: What Makes Polaroids Cool at The Atlantic.
Why Polaroid Was the Apple of Its Time at Wired.
Polaroid’s Instant Karma at Fortune/CNN Money.

An English court has ruled that in favor of a commercial poster company that argued that a photo that showed a similar (but different) scene taken by a different person in a different place nevertheless infringed the copyright of a poster.

While it seems likely that the person making the second image was directly copying the “cut-out” concept of the first (by making the bus red in an otherwise monochrome image), this ruling could get really messy. Check out the post here: Insane Eglish Copyright Ruling Creates Ownership of Idea in Photo Composition.

We need reasonable copyright protection for photographers, artists, authors and other content creators, but if individual cases are adjudicated poorly it will simply provide more fodder for those wishing to weaken copyright laws.

As a photographer I value my copyrights, but I surely do not support this type of trolling abuse of an otherwise important method of protecting content creators. It’s actions such as these which may ultimately bring about changes in laws which weaken protection for artists, designers, writers, musicians, photographers and other makers of creative content. This kind of misuse of copyright law should not be rewarded and the actions should be penalized.

Mim’s post is here: Post a Copyrighted Picture, Face a $150,000 Lawsuit

If there is good to come from this, perhaps some exposure to this sort of thing will get people to think before posting others’ images without permission and attribution. Still, I’ll be happy to see this “business model” practiced by copyright trolls FAIL.

(To those following the RSS feeds from both of my blogs: sorry for the cross-post. The topic fits in both places, though are seen by different people.)

Toy Thailand from joerg on Vimeo.

This video is especially fun for me because much of it was shot in the area around where I spend quite a lot of time in Bangkok. There are scenes from others areas in Thailand as well, including Phuket and Tonsai.

[via: Newley Purnell]

Here’s a link to the site. You can grab the RSS feed on the home page there.

I suspect that it will be aired again. It’s worth a look. It can be ordered on Amazon as a DVD as well. 

The Phase One P65+ 60MP back, widely regarded as the pinnacle of medium format digital capture, is known to put high demands on lens optical quality. So this new 80MP back should be an interesting challenge for lens makers. We, as photographers, must wrestle the balance between sensor resolution and our lenses’ abilities to resolve detail. Whether we’re upgrading from a Canon 5D or a Phase One P25+ (large pixel sensors), once we move to a higher resolution sensor (with smaller sensels or pixel sizes) we must consider whether our current selection of lenses can deliver the additional resolution. In other words, we need to know which is the limiting factor: the sensor or the lens. An obvious destination for this new back is use with a technical camera (or view camera), with digital view camera lenses from Rodendstock and Schneider.

View the specs of the Leaf back here: Leaf Aptus-II 12 80MP Back. And here at DPreview.

It’s an unfortunate element of assembling a good camera kit these days, but I think that in some cases users are too quick to blame image weakness on camera gear (see almost any photography forum). Sure the gear plays a huge role in image quality, but not more than user skills during capture, post-processing and printing. Of course we don’t want our gear to be the weak link. Roger’s article highlights some good points to consider when buying gear.

Peter’s website can be found here. I especially like the “Parisians” portfolio set.