The D300s was mounted to the front of the hang glider and fitted with a 10.5mm fisheye lens. A custom hardwired trigger and release mechanism was used to fire both video and stills.

Of course, the $1800 D300s now has some serious semi-pro competition from the $1900 Canon 7D. And the 7D is an 18-megapixel, 1080p video beast. Click through the links above for our in-depth primers. [YouTube via CrunchGear]

Also: Waking Up On Mars: Australia's Bizarre Dust Storm

To reach far beyond typical high speed photography (keep in mind, we're talking over 41,000 times the speed of traditional film), the footage was captured using dual Shimadzu HPV-1 cameras shooting at a scant 312x260 resolution. Regardless, the black and white tonal detail is still more than good enough to astound.

For a special treat, load the clip around 7:30 in to watch what happens when a hollow point bullet strikes what looks like cement. The bullet's clinical deconstruction...I don't even know what to say, other than I have an inkling why those bad boys are illegal no idea why those bad boys aren't illegal (sorry, I get all my bullet knowledge from 80s movies). [Kurzzeit]

DSLR Remote is a remote control for Canon cameras. Connecting to a laptop over Wi-Fi, the software can obviously take shots at will, but it can also control settings including shutter speed, aperture and white balance. Plus, and this is the neatest feature, the iPhone can stream the camera's Live View feed (if applicable to the DSLR) for a realtime look at what's in the frame.

DSLR Remote will be in the App Store soon for an introductory price of $10 (it'll jump to $20 soon). There's also a Lite version if you just want the capability to snap photos. For a full list of compatible camera, visit onOne. [onOne via Gadget Lab]

The LumoPro Hot Shoe Universal Translator comes with a male hotshoe that connects to the camera, and a female that connects to the flash. In the middle, the little cube has a PC socket—to trigger it—and a 3.5mm mini-jack socket to connect to additional flashes to blind your object with light. [Product Page via Wired]

That's what wildlife photographers Anup and Manoj Shah did in the heart of Masai Mara—a natural park in southern Kenya—for six months: Disguise their digital cameras with elephant dung and grass to take these intimate, peeping Tom views on the life of twenty lions.

The rest of the mechanism was almost as low tech as the elephant dung used as camouflage: An infrared beam that, when broken, fired up two digital cameras. It seems simple, but according to them the important part was not the technology itself. The key here was anticipating the movement of the lions as they roamed Masai Mara in order to prepare the photo traps. As their work shows, they succeeded in both the technology and strategy parts, proving that technology—any technology—works at its best thanks to the intelligence of the people who use it.

You will be able to enjoy their amazing work in a new book coming in 2011 called The Lions of Mara. Yes, books. Those things made out of paper. [Daily Mail]

In our original post, we speculated that using a gun stock for shooting a camera seemed like a good way for a photographer to get shot. And we wondered how common these stocks could be. Duran wrote back with a short, informed response, but I was able to twist his arm into telling us a bit more.

Pointing a long lens mounted on a stock is indeed a recipe for getting shot if you're not careful. In fact in training at Fort McCoy, Wi., I was "shot" by Soldiers on practice missions.

I was not where they expected me to be... i.e. mixed in with the opposition who happened to be shooting at them at the time. Thus, I was "shot" at with blanks during the training even though I was in uniform. They *saw* what they assumed was a rifle in an area where bad guys were shooting at them..

This, of course, is why we train. Even as military media, we need to train in realistic conditions. It was a learning event for both myself and the Soldiers in training.

At Kajaki Dam in Afghanistan, I was there to get some on the ground coverage for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Afghan National Army. The Afghan National Army troops there are "spot on" as the Brits say and the dam has great strategic importance. There are lots of bad guys.
I took my Bushhawk stock along for the ride out to Kajaki. The stock is of limited use as in remote regions such as this, the local population has never seen a DSLR so they limited trust when you're pointing a long lens at them. In operations where we were going patrols or at night with night vision I'd use it a lot. However, when going where the bad guys are, there is little worry as I was with some of the best Soldiers in the world.

Okay, so why risk losing your life. Good question. Lemme see if I can figure it out.

Ok. It is an extremely stable platform to shoot pictures with (i.e. that's why rifles are designed that way). It is very natural and comfortable which results in good images. When using long lenses, holding the camera steady is damn important.

Plus, you can sling the camera stock while walking. This is very important when trying to keep up with Soldiers that are in *much* better shape than you (lost 20 pounds during the tour). Although I'm a Reservist, there's only one standard... so I have the keep up with Olympic-grade athletes when on Active duty.

Monopods work very well but are a pain in the ass when on the move. You have to open them, then close them when you're going to roll out. Which happens unexpectedly at times :)

Handholding with two hands is about the only way and how most of the world gets it done. I would not advise *any* media in a war zone to use a stock. In my case, I'm a member of the armed forces and I'm with the guys with the guns. We used to joke about it in that the Taliban would wonder if we bought some some secret weapon since we were the only Americans at Kajaki. Either way, the bad guys would shoot at me anyway on any patrols with little regard if I had a camera or a rifle.

My main thing was not to make the local population feel threatened...
I have to say that there is something inherently fun about shooting a camera like a rifle. It is really more fun than I should admit. I found myself grinning every time I used the darn thing.

I guess there's just something obsessive with me and rifle stocks for cameras. I actually designed one in drafting class in high-school but it wasn't until this last tour that I ponied up the cheese to buy one. It's just a lot of fun.

- Jeff Duran

or Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Duran one weekend a month, two weeks a year (unless called to go to far away places and meet new people... and take their picture).

A special thanks to Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Duran for writing in and sharing his experiences. You can see more of his photos here and here.

The ad was created for Toshiba's new low-definition to high-definition upscaling tech built into its LCD TVs, DVD machines and laptops. But it's amazing all by itself: whereas the Wachowski-brothers' technique used static images in Bullet-Time, this new style uses looped video clips, digitally compiled together for the final result. Apparently the 200-cam 14-meter diameter filming rig used "the highest number of moving image cameras ever used in a film sequence" and took three days to just focus up and align. All 200 cameras were triggered by a single remote, and it took four weeks to process the image data. Four weeks! The $4.7million ad's showing in Europe currently. [Toshiba]

Jesús Diaz: Jason, I can imagine the difficulty of taking such amazing shots from an helicopter at night... What camera and lenses did you use to catch this?
Jason Hawkes: I use quite a few different cameras. I started out shooting night aerials using film about six years ago. For my day aerial shoots I often shoot using a Hasselblad, but at night it is just not suitable because of the noise over 200 ISO.

JD: So what about now?
JH: For night shoots I now shoot using Nikons and Canons. Obviously I only work digitally. I sometimes shoot tethered directly to a Mac to look through the images as I take them, and my cameras are also directly attached to a GPS, which adds latitude and longitude information directly into the Metatdata. So together with the mount, there is quite a lot of equipment around the camera.

JD: What mounts do you use?
JH: I use two separate gyro stabilizing mounts, mounted together into one larger mount to get the stability you need for really crisp images.

JD: What are the typical settings you use (ISO, aperture, etc)?
JH: Previously with film I could only go to 400 sometimes 800 ISO but with the very latest crop of cameras you can easily shoot at 1600 with good results.

JD: What was the biggest technical challenge?
JH: I have specialized in aerial photography from helicopters for 19 years so am used to the other difficulties, i.e. cramped and very noisy condition. You fly with the door of the helicopter open wearing a headset to direct the pilot. In daylight without a mount you have to shoot at 1000 sec because of the vibration caused by the rotor blades, so having to shoot at very low shutter speeds at night it takes quite a while to change your habits in order to correctly use the gyro. Flying over cities you need a twin engined helicopter that costs £1100 ( GBP ) per hour, so its a very expensive technique to perfect.

JD: How many photos do you take to come to one of those amazing shots?
JH: At night I shoot around 500 images per hour and about 90% come out okay.

Visit Jason's web site for more examples of his stunning work. His Britain from Above series is simply spectacular. [Jason Hawkes]

In this image alone I can count 23 cameras. I can see loads of Canon L-Series EF and Nikkor AF-S 500mm super telephoto lenses—each around $5,800 a pop—, a few 400mm, 600mm, 700mm, 800mm here and there. Let's assume a conservative average of $6,000 per telephoto lense. That's $138,000 total just on lenses. Most of them are probably using the biggest and baddest Canon and Nikon cameras, so we can assume an average $5,000 price tag per camera, which brings the grand total to about a quarter of a million dollars.

Now, there are 1,100 accredited photographers at the Beijing Olympics, which we can assume will have more than just one set of lenses and, at least, one secondary camera, just in case the first one breaks or they want to have two different set of lenses ready to shoot at any time. A good low-estimate per photographer would be $20,000 minimum, which brings the grand total to $22 million in professional digital photography equipment at the Olympics. [Stern via Dark Roasted Blend]

XR stands for extended range, given the wider color palette and finer gradations it can show. Other benefits include in-camera imaging processing support and, supposedly, better compression. Besides losing its Windows-y name (in a former life, it was Windows Media Photo) it's dropping proprietary control by Microsoft to become as neutral as JPEG is now. Though support's already built-in to Windows Vista, it'll take a year to get standardized, at which point large-scale adoption will probably start picking up steam. [Cnet via Electronista]

Besides giving you great buying advice, Goldfayn delivers boatloads of tips showing you how to bring those photos out of the musky dusty corners of your hard disk (or shoebox) and out into the open for all to see.

So if you're one of the few who hasn't jumped into the digital photography fray yet, or if you're just starting out and are looking for some cogent advice on how to accelerate your techno-proficiency, it's a good read. Check out my full review after the jump. – Charlie White

Full book review: Going Digital by Alex Goldfayn [Consumer Electronics Net]

Going Digital at Amazon