Interesting legal arguments here. Recently a British wildlife photographer had his camera taken from him, or left a camera where it would be taken from him, by a wild black macaque monkey. The monkey took some amazing self-portraits of itself inadvertently, and one particular shot has been making the rounds of the news media and the press. The shot of the monkey baring his teeth at the lens is a fantastic photo if you haven’t seen it yet. Plus black macaques are weird-looking monkeys!
But that also brings up an interesting question. Can the photographer claim copyright on the photo? Some people have argued that he can’t, because he didn’t take the photo - the monkey did. And monkeys can’t claim copyright.
I don’t really see how it’s different from, say, a photographer sticking a camera on a tripod with an infrared sensor, and taking a photo of a passing animal. Sure, the animal triggered the shot, but the photographer is still the photographer. I suppose the difference here is that the monkey physically pressed the button, it’s not clear if the human photographer had any intentionality about the monkey portraits, and monkeys are seen as closer to human sentience than, say, a sparrow or a mushroom.
Canadian author Margaret Atwood has some interesting thoughts on the topic of publishing in the age of the Internet. As one of the 90% of authors who does not subsist on publishing income, I find it a particularly interesting talk.
Those daffy, laffy clowns. 
NYT slideshow of declassified US military photographs of above-ground atomic bomb testing. The high-speed stuff, taken by an uncredited Harold Edgerton, is particularly spooky.
The slideshow includes audio commentary by cameraman George Yoshitake, one of the few men who worked in the field alive today. (many of his colleagues have succumbed to radiation-induced illnesses)
I hope you enjoyed hearing them as much as I did giving them! Vancouver was a challenge, since I had to reschedule my post-volcano trip for May, and that put me right on the Victoria Day weekend when everybody was out, you know, camping and stuff. But London and Seattle had awesome turnouts.
Thanks to the Regent Street Apple Store (London), Chapters Granville and Broadway (Vancouver), and Ravenna Third Place Books (Seattle).
It’s so easy to think about the nasty hidden costs of our computers and cameras. All the junk that gets swept under the carpet.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8528066.stm
The new CompactFlash spec was published today. Future cards will have a theoretical ceiling of a completely bonkers 144 petabytes, up from the current 137 GB.
http://www.compactflash.org/pr/100222cf5prs.pdf
And it was only a few years ago that you’d see CompactFlash cards with 256 MB of capacity and stuff.
EDIT: Okay. I’ve got enough info, and it appears that the breakpoint was between the 400D and 450D, and the 30D and 40D. (in other words, consumer bodies before the 450D won’t fire TTL flash units at all, and the same goes for midrange bodies before the 40D)
Thanks!
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I’m trying to compile a list of which digital EOS bodies will fire TTL only (E or EZ) flash units at full power, and which won’t fire them at all.
It appears that the digital 1 series units will fire TTL flash units at full power, whereas earlier digital consumer bodies don’t fire them at all. However, at some point it seems Canon enabled full-power firing on consumer bodies.
So. If you’ve got a digital EOS body and a TTL-only flash unit (ie: any flash unit that’s NOT an EX model), could you tell me if the camera will fire the flash unit in TTL mode? The flash unit mustn’t be in manual mode, since all EOS bodies will fire Speedlites in manual mode. It’s important to mention what camera model and Speedlite model you’re using.
Please post a comment or use the feedback form.
Thanks in advance!
