vikingpower writes "The winner of this year's World Press Photo award, Paul l Hanssen, is under fire for allegedly having photoshopped the winning picture. The Hacker Factor is detailing the reasons and technicalities for the accusations. ExtremeTech also runs an item about the possible faking. Upon questions by Australian news site news.com.au, Hanssen answers his photo is not a fake. The whole story, however, is based upon somewhat thin proof: three different times in the file's Adobe XMP block; this does not necessarily mean that more than one file was used in order to obtain a composite image." Update: 05/14 20:04 GMT by S : World Press Photo says the photo is genuine.

Ransak writes "As we hear more and more about dashboard cameras catching unplanned events, I've thought of equipping my vehicles with them just in case that 'one in a billion' moment happens. But given the level of overreach law enforcement has shown, I'd only consider one if I could be assured that the data was secure from prying eyes (e.g., a camera that writes to encrypted SD memory). Are there any solutions for the niche market of the paranoid photographer/videographer?"

Through some stroke of fortune, your friendly editor Timothy Lord is at Google I/O watching the keynote. We'll be updating the story live (below the fold) with his updates as they stream in. Starting things off, he reported a few features of Android Jelly Bean. First, graphics will be triple-buffered for extra smoothness; the graphics demo was reportedly impressive enough that the audience swooned. Text input has been improved with new dictionaries and a predictive keyboard that will learn better over time. Additionally, voice typing will now work offline. English will be initially supported, with Farsi, Thai, and Hindi support to follow. Hit the link below to see further updates, including details on the Nexus 7 tablet and the Nexus Q streaming device.

Mrs. Grundy writes "CGI software, even open-source software like Blender, continues to improve in quality, speed and ease-of-use. Photographer Mark Meyer wonders how long it will be before large segments of the photography industry are replaced by software and become the latest casualty to fall to outsourcing. Some imagery once the domain of photographers has already moved to CGI. Is any segment of the photography market safe? Will we soon accept digital renderings in places where we used to expect photographs?"

When someone offers you the once in a lifetime chance to see something as historic as the final Space Shuttle Flight: You go. As a child I assembled a puzzle of the Challenger illuminated by those bright xenon lights, and dreamt of space flight. And last week I went to see the last launch the world will ever see of a Space Shuttle. Atlantis. STS-135. What follows is the story of my brief stay at the Kennedy Space Center.

mattgoldey writes with this excerpt: "A federal appeals court in Philadelphia has reinstated a photographer's copyright lawsuit against a New Jersey radio station owner, after finding that a lower court came to the wrong decision on every issue in the case. Most significantly, the appeals court said that a photo credit printed in the gutter of a magazine qualifies as copyright management information (CMI) under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA prohibits the unauthorized removal of encryption technology or copyright management information from copyrighted works."

IamSmee writes "Russian Billionaire Roman Abramovich's 557 ft yacht, Eclipse, now boasts a paparrazi-foiling shield of laser beams. From the article: 'Infrared lasers detect the electronic light sensors in nearby cameras, known as charge-coupled devices. When the system detects such a device, it fires a focused beam of light at the camera, disrupting its ability to record a digital image. The beams can also be activated manually by security guards if they spot a photographer loitering.'"

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "What if the IWF notified site owners when it added their content to the UK's national 'child pornography' blacklist? Besides the blocking of the Virgin Killer cover art on Wikipedia, we don't know how many mistakes there might be on the IWF's list. But we would have a better idea, if content owners were notified of the IWF's determination and had the opportunity to challenge it publicly." Read on for Bennett's analysis.

An anonymous reader writes "Professional digital photographer and website publisher Rob Galbraith has performed both objective and subjective tests on laptop displays, finding that the late-2008 Macbook Pro glossy displays are 'deep into the not acceptable category' when used in ambient light environments. The Apple notebook came in dead last for color accuracy, and second to last in viewing angles (besting only the Dell Mini 9). He concludes: 'Macs are no longer at the top of the laptop display heap in our minds.'"

alphadogg writes "Barack Obama's election to US president has already brought a string of firsts, and on Wednesday there came another. The official presidential portrait was shot on a digital camera for the first time. The picture was taken by the White House's new official photographer, Pete Souza, and issued by The Office of the President Elect through its Web site. It was taken on Tuesday evening at 5:38 p.m. using a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, according to the metadata embedded in the image file."

MonsterMagnet writes "The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has affirmed (PDF) a ruling that a plain, unadorned wireframe model of a Toyota vehicle is not a creative expression protected under copyright law. The court analogized the wire-frame models to photographs: the owner of an object does not have a copyright in all images of the object, but a photographer may have a limited copyright over a particular image based on artistic choices such as costumery, lighting, posing, etc. Thus, the modelers could only copyright any 'incremental contribution' they made to Toyota's vehicles; in the case of plain models, there was nothing new to protect. This could be a two-edged sword — companies that produce goods may not be able to stop modelers from imaging those products, but modelers may not be able to prevent others from copying their work."

Read on for some of the most interesting comments and exchanges on a handful of yesterday's Slashdot posts (on the age of the Universe, virtual desktops in OS X, trick photography on the Reuters wire, and AOL's latest privacy gaffe) in today's Backslash summary.

EagleEyez asks: "Packages like Subversion and CVS are great for code and version control for programmers and developers, but what about for design and creative teams? I'm trying to help my company streamline part of the creative process, but haven't seen a software package that does version control, check-in/out, e-mail notifications, etc. that is specifically tailored toward images and basic HTML content. Full fledged document management tools might work, but they seem a bit much and tend to focus more on office docs. Does anyone have any recommendations?" There are a few projects moving in this direction, they just may not be as usable as some would like. More detail in the full article.

whawk640 writes "I came across this book via the author's website www.camerahacker.com. I was interested in making a pinhole lens at the time so I picked up the book. Disclaimer: I'm NOT a hacker by nature. I only did a hack on a lens cover. Most of the hacks in here are for those with a better relationship with screwdrivers, drills and soldering irons than I have. I don't think this book was intended for me, so keep that in mind when reading my review." Read the rest of Daniel's review.

Duizendstra asks: "I've been asked to explore the digital storage possibilities for a professional photographer. One of the characteristics is the rapid growth of the amount, and size of pictures. At the moment, one photo session produces about 2 GB of raw data. He has an Apple - Power Mac G5, and he currently uses DVD as his storage medium. However, he has lost quite a few photos because of DVDs that can't be read anymore. I would like to know if any Slashdot readers have any experience in creating a solution for such a problem? Any help/idea(s) would be greatly appreciated!"

jsalbre writes "I do a lot of digital video work, and my wife is a professional photographer. With raw DV from the video camera using up 11GB/hr, and raw images from the digital SLR using 7MB I'm quickly using up a lot of space. I currently back up all my important files each night from one harddrive to another, but I now have over 200GB of irreplaceable data (more than just DV and photos, but those make up the largest chunk) and I'm having to exclude the "less important" irreplaceable files as my backups have started failing. Several people have suggested backing up vital unchanging files to DVD (video, images,) and continue backing up frequently accessed files to harddrive, but with recent studies showing that optical media doesn't last very long I don't want to come back in a few years and find that all my backups are useless. Not to mention that some of my DV files are larger than even a dual-layer DVD, and it would be near impossible to automate backup to DVD. How do other Slashdotters back up their important data? I'd appreciate distinction between methods for frequently accessed files and for infrequently accessed files. Any suggestions will be highly appreciated!"

thesun asks: "I'm a freelance writer and photographer and I'm wondering what Pro Photographers have done in regards to color matching and scanning under Linux, especially when going from slides to digital. I just can't get anything close to a good image when I scan a slide. They're blurry and the colors are so off that doing anything with my thousands of slides is proving to be prohibitively time-consuming. Are other Pros (or talented amateurs) having similar problems? Are there solutions out there I haven't found? (Sorry, I can't dump thousands into a piece of hardware---I'm looking for a way to make the most of my Epson Perfection 2400 with transparency adapter)."

avi33 writes "Wired has an article on the short list of photographers seeking to capture a shot of the analemma - the sun's figure-eight-shaped declination in the sky over the course of a year. Only a handful of people are known to have done this, and of course the obstacles are many: maintaining the equipment and its positioning, the finicky nature of film, the weather, and the photographer's persistence. Is it just me, or is this crying out for digital automation? Mount a cam to a hardpoint, have it snap a shot every x hours, and overlay them? Why I bet some of you could do this with a perl script in an afternoon. There's a shortage of photos from outside the northern hemisphere, so get busy."

Shook asks: "Today, my fiancee and I talked to a wedding photographer known for being technologically savvy. (He uses fully digital equipment, the couple can make changes to the album online before printing, relatives can order prints of specific pictures online). I knew going into this that professional photographers generally retain the copyright to the images and all requests for reprints must go through the photographer. During our consultation, I asked him if it would be an option to obtain the copyright from him and get CDs of the original high-resolution images. He said that he has never sold a copyright, was not sure what he would want to charge, but he said it would 'be expensive.' In the end, the photographer is too expensive for our budget ($2000-$4500), so I didn't discuss it further. With the ongoing extension of copyright time limits, when does it even expire? What if my grandchildren want copies of my pictures? Do they need to track down his corporate (or actual) descendant and get permission? In addition, there is the classic issue, what if I can't find him in 20 years?"

Darren writes "With the 'Rise of the Digital Camera' I suspect we will also see the 'Rise of the Dodgy Digital Photo'. As digital cameras get in the hands of more and more snap happy photographers there will be more and more average images cluttering the PC's of the world. Already there must be millions of self portraits taken at arms length (complete with double chins), countless pictures of Aunt Mildred (cut off at the knees) and just as many out of focus shots of everyday objects in the living rooms of new digital camera owners too lazy to move from the couch. Its time to learn how to take good digital images before its too late! Digital Photography Composition Tips aims to teach the world a few basic guidelines for improving digital photographer's skills everywhere."