The snapshot of an ant’s face, magnified five times under a microscope, was submitted to the 2022 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition by Lithuanian wildlife photographer Eugenijus Kavaliauskas. The competition celebrates the art of microscope photography, which allows people to capture details the human eye cannot see.
Kavaliauskas’ submission was one of the 57 selected “Images of Distinction.”
Kavaliauskas has won other photography awards for his snapshots of birds of prey, according to his portfolio.
Kavaliauskas told Insider he lives near a forest, which made it easy for him to catch an ant.
“But it’s boring to take a photo of an ant, running banally, on the ground,” Kavaliauskas said. And so he put the ant under a microscope, and took snapshots.
“I’m always looking for details, shadows, and unseen corners. The main goal of photography is to be a discoverer,” Kavaliauskas said. “I am fascinated by the Creator’s masterpieces and the opportunity to see God’s designs.”
In response to questions about what the ant looked like under the microscope, Kavaliauskas said “there are no horrors in nature.”
“When I first started with microphotography, I, too, thought all beetles looked a little like monsters,” he said. “But now, I’ve gotten used to it, and am surprised that there are so many interesting, beautiful, and unknown miracles under our feet.”
While striking, the image did not clinch the contest’s top prize. For his photo of the ant, Kavaliauskas won one Nikon item with a retail value of $35.
Japanese camera maker Nikon will withdraw from the single-lens reflex camera business and shift toward digital offerings amid intensifying competition from smartphone cameras, Nikkei has learned.
Nikon’s SLR cameras have been widely used by professional photographers for more than 60 years and have come to be seen as synonymous with the Japanese company.
It now plans to focus resources on mirrorless cameras, which have become mainstream products on the back of more advanced digital technologies.
Nikon’s cameras have been losing out to smartphones, which increasingly feature powerful cameras. Nikon aims to beat them by offering products with more unique features.
Since June 2020, when Nikon launched its flagship D6 SLR, no new SLR models have been released. The company has already stopped development of compact digital cameras.
From now on, Nikon intends to focus on digital mirrorless cameras, but production and distribution of existing SLR models will continue.
Nikon is the second largest SLR maker after Canon. An SLR camera uses a mirror to reflect an image the photographer sees through the viewfinder.
Nikon dates from 1917 and adopted the company name in 1946. It released its first SLR in 1959, and has long been held in high esteem by professional photographers and journalists. It made its name offering top quality alternatives to German makes such as Leica that once dominated the market.
By the late 1990s, Nikon had made the switch to digital SLRs. Last year, it sold more than 400,000 SLRs, competing head to head with global leader Canon. SLRs are also produced by Ricoh under the brand Pentax.
Mirrorless cameras have a different viewing system and use image sensors that convert light into electrical signals. Like SLRs, they can accept interchangeable lenses that offer much more range than the fixed focal lengths used in most smartphone cameras. A feature of Nikon cameras has been the F-mount introduced in 1959. It has always allowed photographers to use a wide range of old lenses on recent SLRs.
Shipments of mirrorless cameras overtook SLRs for the first time in 2020 with 2.93 million and 2.37 million units shipped respectively, according to Japan’s Camera & Imaging Products Association.
There has been an overall decline, however. The combined market peaked at 11.67 million cameras in 2017, but had fallen to 5.34 million by 2021.
The dramatic falloff has forced Nikon to focus on the segment that still has potential to grow. In 2021, the market for mirrorless cameras expanded 31% to 324.5 billion yen, even as that for SLR cameras dropped 6% to 91.2 billion yen.
Mirrorless cameras have powerful capabilities. Artificial intelligence provides facial and pupil recognition. They can also identify animals, vehicles and objects.
The Nikon Z9, released last year, can shoot 120 images per second — more than ten times faster that most SLRs without the wear and tear of a moving mirror. This makes them ideal for sports and wildlife photography. Mirrorless cameras are lighter, smaller and virtually silent.
Mirrorless cameras have also been coming down in price to below 100,000 yen ($730), which is less than comparable SLRs.
With enhanced viewfinders and less lag, the quicker image processing helps photographers in fast-moving situations.
Mirrorless cameras already account for half the revenue from Nikon’s imaging products business, compared with about 30% for SLRs. In the year ending in March, sales of imaging products totaled 178.2 billion yen, or 33% of total group revenues.
Rival Canon also plans to follow Nikon and stop producing flagship SLR modelswithin a few years.
Some photographers on TikTok are trying an unconventional technique for unusual results: taking a rock to the front of their lenses, scratching the glass, and destroying them in the process.
Photographer Illumitati posted a video of her using a rock to mortally wound her Canon 50mm f/1.8 in response to a viral video made by Andres Videography where he appeared to do the same to his lens.
However, Andres didn’t actually scratch his lens; eagle-eyed viewers will notice that he was actually scratching a lens filter placed on his Sony 85mm.
But in Illumitati’s case, she actually takes a rock to the front element of her 50mm. Speaking to PetaPixel she explains what happened.
“I saw another person do it with a filter, and my intrusive thoughts told me to try it on the lens for real,” she says.
“This came up on my ‘for your page’ and as a photographer, I’d never cringed harder in my life,” Illumitati says in her TikTok video.
“But then I was so curious to see what a photo from that camera would look like I actually destroyed one of my lenses,” she continues. “Then I set it down and got ready to take a couple of portraits and to my surprise, it actually gave it this glow. I don’t recommend doing this to your lenses but hey, it’s kind of cool.”
When asked by PetaPixel, the portrait and fashion photographer seemed to have no regrets over the video.
“I really did scratch it, and the photos were actually not bad at all. The lens is really not great in the first place so I don’t think I’d use it,” she says.
It’s not the first time TikTok photographers have shown off unusual techniques. Last month PetaPixel featured a photographer who uses ripped pantyhose for a soft-focus effect, and a wedding photographer who asked couples to act like they’re drunk while shooting pictures.
Take professional headshots with a single light. In this video, Pye walks through the easiest, simplest one light set up for beautiful headshot portraits anywhere.
Ever wondered what aperture you should be using? In this video Sean Dalton breaks down exactly what aperture is, what it does, and how to choose the best aperture while you are out shooting.
Way before cell phone cameras, we took selfies with Polaroids. Marques Brownlee explores how the first Polaroid camera, the Polaroid SX-70, turned us all into amateur photographers and paved the way for our social media-obsessed culture. Fellow YouTube creator and model Karlie Kloss teams up with Marques to make photo filters the retro way — with bleach. And Peter Mckinnon stops by to play “Dope or Nope.”
Fujifilm has announced a new 50mm X-series lens with an unprecedented f/1.0 aperture. The XF 50mmF1.0 R WR is the world’s first f/1 autofocus lens for mirrorless cameras, according to Fujifilm, and marks the 35th X-series lens the company has produced. Its field of view is about 75mm-equivalent on Fujifilm’s APS-C sensors.
Fujifilm’s previous fastest lens was the 56mm f/1.2, which is the aperture that companies like Canon and Nikon also tend to top out at when designing autofocus lenses. While Canon did make an autofocus 50mm f/1.0 for its DSLRs at one point, it was discontinued decades ago. Nikon and Leica have made f/0.95 lenses before, but they only worked with manual focus. Large apertures allow the user to achieve shallower depth of field and shoot at faster shutter speeds or lower ISO settings.
Eastman Kodak will receive a federal loan of $765 million to help reduce reliance on other countries for ingredients in generic drugs, an agreement President Donald Trump hailed Tuesday as a breakthrough in bringing more pharmaceutical manufacturing to the United States.
Kodak Pharmaceuticals will make critical pharmaceutical ingredients that have been identified as essential but have lapsed into chronic national shortage, as defined by the Food and Drug Administration.
The government loan will help support startup costs needed to repurpose and expand Kodak’s existing facilities in Rochester, New York, and St. Paul, Minnesota.
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