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We are new to apple/macs, and our Lightroom software has gone a bit glitchy. Apparently I have the dreaded beach ball spiral of death or something like that. When we try to edit photos we get this beach ball spiral symbol in our software window. It almost acts like it needs reinstalling but some blogs I've read said that does not work. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Explanation: Fix your camera to a tripod and you can record graceful trails traced by the stars as planet Earth rotates on its axis. If the tripod is set up at ESO's La Silla Observatory, high in the Atacama desert of Chile, your star trails would look something like this. Spanning about 4 hours on the night of January 24, the image is actually a composite of 250 consecutive 1-minute exposures, looking toward the north. The North Celestial Pole, at the center of the star trail arcs, is just below the horizon in this southern hemisphere perspective. In the foreground,...

Nikon has unveiled a new superzoom compact camera called the P510 that offers a ridiculous 42x optical zoom — the highest zoom ratio ever seen in such a camera. In 35mm terms, the lens goes from a 24mm on the wide-angle side to a 1000mm on the telephoto end. The 16.1MP camera also boasts a 3-inch LCD screen, 1080p video recording, GPS, 5fps continuous shooting, and ISO 3200. It’ll hit store shelves later this month with a price tag of $430.

I've done a bit of looking for a camera for my 12yo son, with little success. Hopefully some more knowledgeable FReepers can give me some good advice. I want a camera that he can use to actually learn about photography, not just use to take pictures. I'd like a camera that has the capabilities to manually set shutter speed and aperture, not just one with a lot of snazzy automatic features. Actually, I'm afraid all those features will just get in the way. At the same time, I'm not looking to spend more than a couple hundred dollars. I have...

Eastman Kodak Co., a vanguard name in photography, finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Thursday following falling sales and rising speculation about its ability to stay afloat. The long-anticipated announcement came after weeks of early eulogies about the faded glory of the former trailblazer, once an American mainstay with products such Kodachrome photographic film and Instamatic cameras. But printed photos seem well on their way to becoming a hipster curiosity as digital technologies -- which originated at Kodak decades ago -- now dominate on smartphones and, to a shrinking degree, cameras. The company, which was also exposed to heavy foreign...

A few summers ago I took some time to drive out to the old home place where I grew up during the 50’s and 60’s. Lots of memories accompany me with every visit so each trip is a “grounding” of sorts. I think we all need that from time to time, or at least I do. On one particular trip in early summer I noticed a small critter scurrying through the parched grass a short distance away and after closer inspection I recognized a little Mexican ground squirrel quite busy looking for some grub to store in his burrow. Being...

On Wednesday, Jan. 18, astronomers, physicists and scientists from related fields will convene in Tucson, Ariz. from across the world to discuss an endeavor that only a few years ago would have been regarded as nothing less than outrageous. The conference is organized by Dimitrios Psaltis, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, and Daniel Marrone, an assistant professor of astronomy at Steward Observatory. "Nobody has ever taken a picture of a black hole," Psaltis said. "We are going to do just that." "Even five years ago, such a proposal would not have seemed credible,"...

The news that Eastman Kodak is preparing to file for bankruptcy, after being the leading photographic company in the world for more than a hundred years, truly marks the end of an era. The skills required to use the cameras and chemicals required by the photography of the mid-19th century were far beyond those of most people — until a man named George Eastman created a company called Kodak, which made cameras that ordinary people could use. It was Kodak's humble and affordable box Brownie that put photography on the map for millions of people, who just wanted to...

It just occured to me that although I've been enjoying this site for a long time I've never passed on the link.This site has owners manuals for many older cameras and flashes.It's free to download but the site is supported by donations, so kick in a couple of bucks.If you've ever tried to hunt down an old manual the value of this collection is obvious.SUPPORT FREE REPUBLIC BEFORE YOU SEND MONEY TO ANYONE!!!

Photography related ads from 1880 into the 1990s.

An amateur astronomer has captured a breathtaking image of the sun, tracking its progress between the summer and winter solstices using a pinhole camera made from and old tin tea caddy. Professor Greg Parker set the camera up in his garden and exposed the film from longest day to shortest day to get the maximum spread of the sun's path. Over six months the 57-year-old captured the black and white image using an observatory he built at the end of his garden, in the New Forest. The professor of electronics at Southampton University set the camera up on June 21...

Scary and breathtaking HD Video Terrific Photography This is the closest to "3-D" seen on a computer screen.

The photographs of celebrities and models in fashion advertisements and magazines are routinely buffed with a helping of digital polish. The retouching can be slight — colors brightened, a stray hair put in place, a pimple healed. Or it can be drastic — shedding 10 or 20 pounds, adding a few inches in height and erasing all wrinkles and blemishes, done using Adobe’s Photoshop software, the photo retoucher’s magic wand. “Fix one thing, then another and pretty soon you end up with Barbie,” said Hany Farid, a professor of computer science and a digital forensics expert at Dartmouth. And that...

He's the master filmmaker whose intensity and attention to detail are unmatched in Hollywood. Stanley Kubrick's directing credits include Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. Steven Spielberg once said: 'Nobody could shoot a picture better in history.'

Ben Canales has astounding skills as a night photographer, capturing the child-like wonder and awe of our world as we stare up at the stars. When he was younger, he lived in an urban area where a starry night means maybe seeing a maximum of 20 stars. Now he lives on the West Coast “nearby some very dark, much less light-polluted night skies. It’s been a thrill and a treasured experience to look up and see a literal field of diamonds in the stars above.” Besides photographing the stars for personal enjoyment, Ben does it for us so we can...

Stripes of like greys and green compose this photo. The grey of the sky, water and sidewalk are broken up by the horizontal stripes of kelly green grass. To use artistic terms, you could say the photograph by Andreas Gursky is minimalist, understated, carries mournful notes. But can you guess how much this photo sold for at Christie’s auction house? Even if you aimed high and said $1 million, you’d be shooting too low. Try $4.3 million. According to Wired, this set a new record at Christie’s for most expensive photo. The previous record holder was Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled #96”...

The War and Beauty Contrast of Afghanistan That You Don’t See in the News. I found these photos of Afghanistan at a photography site I belong to. Some of them are really quite spectacular.

Astonishing unseen photographs of the aftermath of the Titanic disaster have emerged after 99 years. The black and white pictures show an iceberg at the site of the tragedy - and may even be the one that sunk the luxury liner. Another image shows two lifeboats packed full of survivors rowing for safety following the 1912 disaster in which 1,517 people died. Survivors from the Titanic are pictured here rowing towards rescue ship the Carpathia in what appear to be relatively calm seas Danger ahead: Taken from a rescue vessel, this photograph shows an iceberg in the distance - perhaps...

My work is done. Those words were some of the last penned by George Eastman. He included them in his suicide note. They mark an ignoble end to a noble life, the leave taking of a truly great man. The same words could now be said for the company he left behind. My work is done. For all intents and purposes, the Eastman Kodak Company is through. It has been mismanaged financially, technologically and competitively. For 20 years, its leaders have foolishly spent down the patrimony of a century’s prosperity. One of America’s bedrock brands is about to disappear, the...

One hundred and fifty-two images representing 92 different NNL sites across 31 states were submitted to the 8th Annual NNL Photo Contest. A National Park Service-wide vote took place in mid-August and we are pleased to announce the top 13 winning photographs. The three winning photos and the 10 Honorable Mentions will be featured in the 2012 NNL calendar, specially designed to commemorate the NNL Program’s 50th Anniversary. “These stunning photographs not only highlight the beauty of these spectacular places, but the longevity of the National Park Service’s relationship with partners for resource conservation,” said National Park Service Director Jonathan...

Finding could lead to new photodetectors or energy-harvesting devices.Graphene, an exotic form of carbon consisting of sheets a single atom thick, exhibits a novel reaction to light, MIT researchers have found: Sparked by light’s energy, the material can produce electric current in unusual ways. The finding could lead to improvements in photodetectors and night-vision systems, and possibly to a new approach to generating electricity from sunlight. This current-generating effect had been observed before, but researchers had incorrectly assumed it was due to a photovoltaic effect, says Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, an assistant professor of physics at MIT and senior author of a...

The old, staged wedding photos are fading out as couples find that nothing is as refreshing as reality It seems that there is no place on earth that Stephan Rauch and his team will not go to in pursuit of the perfect wedding photo. Rauch calls Vienna home, but he and his team have hauled their camera gear on five continents, and his company's website says that "to complete the list, Stephan is working on an assignment in Antarctica". In July, Rauch, 37, flew to Beijing for a wedding, and then flew back to Europe to take pictures of another...

Extraordinary colour photographs reveal 1940s life in the Big Apple in all its glory Photos by Indiana snapper Charles Weever Cushman in 1941 and 1942 Expensive colour Kodachrome was used to take impressive collection Many buildings have since been demolished but some of them still stand It’s been 70 years since an Indiana photographer visited New York City and returned home with an amazing collection of holiday snaps. But Charles Weever Cushman’s pictures are even more impressive today, as they were taken on pricey colour Kodachrome and look far more recent than they actually are. He went around the city...

Beginning in June of 1940, the North African Campaign took place over the course of three years, as Axis and Allied forces pushed each other back and forth across the desert in a series of attacks and counterattacks. Libya had been an Italian colony for several decades and British forces had been in neighboring Egypt since 1882. When Italy declared war on the Allied Nations in 1940, the two armies began skirmishing almost immediately. An Italian invasion of Egypt in September of 1940 was followed by a December counterattack where British and Indian forces captured some 130,000 Italians. Hitler's response...

I'm ready for my claws-up: Photographer's incredible portraits of models who bear all Jill Greenberg, like every other professional photographer, knows that models can be hard to handle - with their diva-like demands and hissy fits. And, with the models she works with especially, getting them at the wrong time of day is literally like dealing with a bear with a sore head. Greenberg's studio portraits feature animal celebrities, including many who have appeared in Hollywood films and commercials, at their most cute - and frightening.

As digital photography grows, an analogue company, Lomography, is growing interest in its range of striking and unusual cameras. When a pair of Austrian students found an old Russian camera, the Lomo Kompakt Automat, in the early 1990s, they were surprised and delighted by the unpredictable images it produced. The saturated colours and slightly blurry photos had a distinctive look. The pair travelled to Saint Petersberg in Russia to sign a worldwide distribution deal with the manufacturer. The Lomography movement grew quickly, with users all over the world returning to analogue ways just as digital photography was growing in popularity....

A politician who emailed a woman nude photos of himself that were posted on a GOP activist's website has resigned and said he will consider all legal options to have the pictures taken down. New Jersey democrat Louis Magazzu, 53, admitted sending the photos to the woman he said he had been corresponding with online for several years. In an email statement, the Cumberland County freeholder apologised to family, friends and constituents but indicated that he thought he was being set up.

Three months ago, photographer Tim Hetherington was killed by Gaddafi’s forces in Libya. These are his final images. Nine days after Tim Hetherington was killed, I received an email from him. It was sent on April 20, the day he died, but for whatever reason, spent a week in digital purgatory. I read it at 2 a.m. on a Friday morning, still feeling numb and confused by his death. “Hey man, just checking in,” he wrote. “Crazy day today. Full on city fight. It’s an incredible story . . . and hardly anyone here.” In some strange way I felt that Tim was still...

From the look on these divers' pained faces, it would be easy to think they had just belly-flopped into the water. But their eye-rolling grimaces, which range from the outright hilarious to the frankly frightening, were a common sight at the FINA World Championships in Shanghai, China. As the athletes leapt off the springboard, these amazing photos show their fierce level of concentration on getting every move right - even if it did mean gurning all the way to the bottom.

After my grandparents died, we gathered my grandpa's belongings including thousands of slides he took throughout the years. I have been going through the process of getting these slides converted into digital format. I was surprised by the wonderful gems I found among them and how far they go--some go back to the late 1930's! Color pictures of my mother as a new-born baby, color photos of college football games, color photos of local farmers sitting on their tractors, photos inside the local malt shop. Clearly color photography existed way back in the 1940's and before. My grandpa was far...

Utah Park Ranger Steven Powers marked the 4th of July by pulling a woman over for driving too slowly, then yanking her out of her car and slapping on cuffs when the woman insisted on filming the stop with her phone. Unfortunately for Powers, that woman happened to be Celia Sullivan, "a longtime Photography is Not a Crime reader," according to the site's proprietor, Carlos Miller. Sullivan is also 50 years old, a mother of two, and about as non-threatening a person as any cop could hope to interact with while miles away from backup. While Powers apparently thought Sullivan...

Here are some pictures my brother snapped in Estabrook Woods* in Concord Massachusetts in May. He did it freehand with a 2005-ish stock digital camera. From Wikipedia; *"The Estabrook Woods is a wild tract of more than 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) of woodland, hills, ledge, and swamp two miles (3 km) north of the Town of Concord.[1] It is the largest contiguous and undeveloped woodland within thirty miles of Boston"

The KEH blog isn't widely known but if you are interested in photography it's an interesting and informative place to visit.KEH is one of the largest outlets of photo gear and extremely reliable.I don't have any stake in KEH, it is just one of the businesses I can recommend without reservation.

The latest Internet sensation is Lytro, the high-tech camera start-up with $50 million in venture capital financing that promises to launch a "picture revolution" by upending everything that we know about taking pictures. In other words, with this camera, you shoot first, focus later. And when you take the time to focus, your photo turns into an amazing work of 3D art with crisp, high-definition details. Lytro calls them living pictures, and claims that this movement from 2D to 3D photos is just as revolutionary as the movement from film to digital. Continued...

Ran across this Web Site: http://vintageaerial.com/

It was a scene that perhaps wouldn't have made the final cut of King Kong. This lowland gorilla shares a moment of quiet reflection with a tiny mallard duckling, who seems fairly nonplussed about being in the presence of one of nature's most powerful beasts. The heart-warming image is among Nature's Best Photography Magazine's wildlife photograph winners for 2010. A stunning image of a frolicking bear in the woods and a dramatic scene of a hummingbird facing down a deadly viper were also among the winners of the competition, which received more than 25,000 entries. The awards began with simple...

On my last thrift shop expedition I found this Pentax K1000. It is probably from about 1976.It was clean, the shutter worked fine but the meter was dead.When I got home and opened it up I found that a leaky battery had dissolved the lead from the battery box.The battery box contact is stainless steel and the wire had been crimped in place. It wasn't possible to open the crimp, it's too small to work with.There is a product made for repairing the defroster grids on car windows, it's a conductive paint product. I used it to repair the wire...

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — The Maryland Transit Administration says more training may be called for after three MTA officers detained a man for taking pictures at a light rail station. Pat Warren has more on the incident. According to the ACLU, this isn’t the first time MTA Police have overstepped their bounds. In a YouTube posting, Christopher Fussell left the camera rolling when he was confronted by three MTA officers for taking pictures at the Baltimore Cultural Light Rail Station. “It is my understanding that I am free to take pictures as long as it’s not for commercial purposes but for...

After hours waiting beside an African river, Arnaud Germain thought he finally had the perfect shot of his favourite bird. But as the wildlife photographer trained his lens on the colourful kingfisher, he got a rather different snap than he was expecting. All of a sudden, a crocodile and a hippo burst from the tranquil waters straight in front of him, locking jaws in ferocious battle. Arnaud desperately tried to refocus his camera on the river monsters as they fought on the banks of the Shire River, in the Liwonde National Park, Malawi. After hours waiting beside an African river,...

For many people, a camping trip is enough to get them sweating before they've even put up a tent pole. But for these daredevil explorers, scaling cliffs and pitching tents at the height of more than 300 double decker buses is just a normal day at the office. Hanging precariously in tents off a 4,000ft shear cliff face, these climbers are chasing the most dangerous big wall climbs ever attempted. As these stunning images show, the climbs can last for weeks and the explorers must set up tents on the edge of monstrous cliff faces to grab some much needed...

Richard Steinheimer, a master of railroad photography whose poetic images documented a half-century of trains and the landscape of the American West, has died. He was 81. Steinheimer died May 4 at his Sacramento home of Alzheimer's disease, said his wife, Shirley Burman. RELATED Photos: Richard Steinheimer, 1929-2011 "He was certainly one of the greats," said John Gruber, founder and president of the Center for Railroad Photography and Art in Madison, Wis. "He did very unusual and creative work and inspired a lot of other photographers." From the early 1950s until he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2000, Steinheimer was...

Running through life at a frantic pace, living in the 'now', we often remain ignorant of those natural phenomena that take place over longer time scales (especially with the majority of our lives now also spent indoors). "The wheels of the cosmos turn too slowly for humans to watch", says José Francisco Salgado in the trailer to his upcoming feature Sidereal Motion. "Until now." With the advent of digital cameras, the art of time-lapse photography has risen to new heights. Through the lens of these artists we can see what the world might look like to a consciousness that perceives...

I'm looking for a digital camera with no delay between shutter click and capture. Most have a 1-2 second delay. My grand daughter is into acrobatics and my daughter wants to take good pictures. Any help is welcome.

Amateur Photographer Shoots Largest Ever True Color Photo of the Night Sky Crack Two on Saturday, May 07, 2011 What you see above is the largest true-color photograph of the night sky ever created, shot by 28-year-old amateur astrophotographer Nick Risinger using six astronomical cameras. It’s not just the view of the sky from one location, but is instead a 360-panoramic view of the sky taken by trekking 60,000 miles across the western United States and South Africa starting in March 2010. The final image is composed of 37,000 separate photographs.Check out the massive zoomable high-definition version of the photo...

GRAND RAPIDS, MI (Catholic Online) - How do you take a picture of something invisible?   It may seem a ludicrous question, but it needs to be asked when establishing photography policies for sacramental celebrations.   Baptisms, Confirmations, first Communions, weddings and ordinations are always golden photo opportunities. They are transformative events to be rightfully treasured in memory. There are many moments throughout the course of these special days that offer families and friends the chance to take pictures. The crucial question is whether it is appropriate to do so during the actual reception of a sacrament.   Policies vary...

I spent about 3 hours at the flower and garden show, got tired long before I covered everything. The exhibits were spread out over at least 4 or 5 acres, and there were more displays in the main conference room. They were running gardening clinics in another room.It's a charity event sponsored by the garden clubs.The turnout was impressive and it's still got another day to run.Y'all keep the noise down, I'm gonna take a nap!

Still Going That Extra Smile: The Baby Seen Grinning In The Womb SOPHIE BORLAND 10th April 2011 It's hardly surprising that baby Joseph Henry keeps smiling – he’s been doing it since long before he was born. As the Daily Mail revealed in October, Joseph wore an unmistakable grin in a scan taken when his mother was only 17 weeks pregnant. [Pics in URL] And as this delightful picture of him at almost three months old shows, practice makes perfect. Happy chappie: Joseph at almost three months - and still smiling His parents Sam and Louise say he is very...

Tonight (Monday night) we’ll be talking to Oleg Volk, a professional photographer whose speciality is portraits of… weapons. Volk, a 2nd Amendment advocate, joins us on (click-->)  The Andrea Shea King Show at 9 p.m. ET.Volk is a freelance creative advertising director and advertising photographer. Most of his clients are manufacturing companies, including Ultimak, Kel-tec, Advanced Armament, Cavalry Arms, Dark Horse Arms and many others. Besides commercial work, he writes and provides images to Concealed Carry Magazine, Canadian Firearms Journal, Guns and Rods and several Harris Publications titles. In his spare time, Oleg designs pro-RKBA posters. David Codrea of Examiner.com says: “Oleg is very generous about...

Is anyone taking pictures of the supermoon tonight? Since I'm at work it's impossible for me...maybe later. In the meantime here's a pic of the supermoon I grabbed from a live webcam at the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden. Not too much time left before it's out of the picture. There is also a live stream at the website.