Back in April, the Mars Perseverance rover shared a selfie that included the Ingenuity helicopter drone on the surface of the Red Planet. The space agency has now shared a video and detailed explanation of how that photo was taken, including the fact it is made up of 62 individual images.

NASA explains that the point of the selfie isn’t just to show off to folks back on Earth and perhaps inspire new generations of space enthusiasts, but actually is a way for the engineers to check wear and tear on the rover.

In the video clip above, the results of Perseverance’s robotic arm can be seen as it maneuvered to take the 62 images that compose the finished image. What it doesn’t capture is how much work went into making this first selfie happen. In a separate video below, Vandi Verma, Perseverance’s Chief Engineer for Robotic Operations, explains.

“The way you and I might take a selfie is by holding a camera up with our arm and taking a single image,” she says. “The way the rover takes a selfie is a little more complex than that.”

The rover uses its’ WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera that is positioned at the end of its robotic arm. The main purpose of this arm is to allow the rover to take close-up images of rocks for scientific analysis.

“Even with the arm fully extended, it can’t cover the entire rover in a single image,” Verma explains. “To capture the entire rover, we take multiple images and then stitch them together.”

The image below shows a computer simulation of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover taking its first selfie. The point of view of the rover’s WATSON camera is included to show how each of the 62 images were taken. Those photos were later sent to Earth and stitched together into the selfie.

The team tries to hold the camera in the same position for each shot, and to do so it actually may mean that the arm has to move quite a lot.

“It can take up to an hour of arm motion and imaging to take that entire selfie,” Verma says. “The reason you don’t see the robotic arm in the selfie is that it is moving in between the different image frames that we are taking and we include enough overlap between the images so that when we stitch them together, we don’t have to include the arm.”

In the video clip above where Verma explains how the photo was taken, she also notes that for the first time, a Mars rover also has a microphone equipped, which allows them to share the sound of the rover moving its arm and taking each frame.

“The thing that took the most attention was getting Ingenuity into the right place in the selfie,” said Mike Ravine, Advanced Projects Manager at MSSS. “Given how small it is, I thought we did a pretty good job.”

Once the photos were compiled and sent back to Earth, image processing engineers began their work. They had to clean up any blemishes caused by dust that had settled on the camera, assemble the images into frames with a mosaic and smooth out their seams with software, and finally warp the crops so that it looks more like a normal camera that the public is used to seeing.

While a selfie on Earth is made by a single person, the Perseverance’s selfie took an entire team of people and almost an entire week.

The International Portrait Photographer of the Year 2021 has announced its winners across multiple categories with top honors going to Australian photographer Forough Yavari for her incredible image titled “Solitude.”

The competition is in its debut year and follows a similar philosophy to the organization’s eight-year strong International Landscape Photographer of the Year Awards. The competition requires that all entries have been shot within the last year.

Editor’s Note: Warning, some images below may be considered NSFW.

“Our judging process has been developed over several decades of competition experience. Once the first round of judging is completed, we have a score for each entry out of 300, expressed as a percentage. We then take the top 10 scoring entries from each of the four categories and ask the judges to confirm their choice of 1st, 2nd and 3rd,” the competition writes, explaining how photos are judged. “When the initial score out of 100 is given, the judges are scoring against a standard of excellence, but when it comes to the final top 10, they are comparing the entries against each other and so this is an important part of a fair process. And finally, the four category winners are presented and the judges choose the overall International Portrait Photographer of the Year.”

Yavari — an already accomplished award-winning portrait and fine art photographer based in Brisbane, Australia — took multiple categories in this year’s competition which has a shared prize pool of $10,000. The overall first prize is $3000, each category’s first prize is awarded $1000 and each category’s second and third place received $500 and $250 respectively. There are therefore three winners in four categories: The Portrait Story, The Family Sitting, The Environmental Portrait, and The Character Study.

In addition to winning the top overall photo of the competition, “Solitude” also won “The Portrait Story” category, while Yavari also took second place in that category as well as second place in “The Character Study” category.

Below are all the other winning photos in each of the remaining categories.

Character Study

“A young Suri boy paints his face with white clay, surrounded by Suri women decorating their hands with bronze bracelets. Suri tribe in the Omo Valley. Ethiopia maintains important symbols of tribal identity, such as face and body painting. The shapes and colors convey a strong bond and meaning amongst them.”

“Referring to the speech “I Have a Dream”, a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the march on Washington for Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for an end to racism.”

Environmental Portraiture

“Workers appear to be wearing large golden wigs as they carry a heavy bundle of jute fiber. Their bodies are enveloped with the heavy natural fibers, with only their faces visible as they each carry around 50kg of jute on their shoulders.”

Family Sitting

“She is 25 years old, not yet married, and still guarded by her family. She is still waiting for her husband. A man in the Suri Tribe can only marry a girl when he has sixty cattle which are presented to the girl’s family as the price of marriage.”

“I took this picture when I was in Ethiopia to visit the Suri tribe who have lived in the Ethio-Sudan border area for many generations. This picture shows the whole family of their clan in their habitat.”

Portrait Story

The organization says that while there are the above winners, there are 101 total photos that the judges considered to be worthy of recognition. Those photos along with the above winners can be seen in a hard-cover book that has been printed by Momento Pro. A digital copy can be seen here and a published version will be available to order on the organization’s website.

Image credits: Header image by Forough Yavari. All photos individually credited and provided courtesy of The International Portrait Photographer of the Year 2021.

The photography website Feature Shoot is bringing the museum outside and giving photographers a chance to have their work posted on billboards in New York City as part of its Global Billboard Project, replacing commercial advertising with art.

Feature Shoot says that its Global Billboard Project is in its fifth year and aims to inspire thousands of people who are on their daily commutes with photos from both established and up-and-coming photographers. Rather than subject those commuters with the same advertisements hawking consumerism, Feature Shoot is replacing well-known billboards in high-value locations with art from international photographers.

The publication has already featured photographers’ works on three separate billboards this year and has one of them booked through September — a spot in Manhattan on 9th Avenue seen below — which is expected to generate over 600,000 views per week.

In recent years, amid the proliferation of digital platforms and COVID-related closures, the public has looked to engage with art in new creative ways. In creating The Global Billboard Project, Feature Shoot aims to make outstanding photography accessible to everyone through physical displays made for public enjoyment.

In its first three rounds this year, The Global Billboard Project has showcased the work of three photographers –Elisa Maenhout, Lindsey Rickert, and Selene Magnolia — in three other areas: two in New York — the Fashion District and across from the Lincoln Tunnel — and one in Sydney, Australia.

According to Feature Shoot, those photographers selected to be featured reach a much broader audience with coverage on television, radio, and social media beyond the scope of their normal reach. Maenhout’s billboard, for example, was covered widely and she even gave an interview on national television.

Feature Shoot says that for this round of the project it will crown four winners and each will have their work displayed on the New York billboard on 9th Avenue for five days.

To be considered for The Global Billboard Project, photographers can submit one image for just $15 for consideration, $25 for five images, or $35 for up to ten images. Entries close on July 20, 2021. Interested photographers can submit images on The Global Billboard Project website.

Image credits: Header image by Selene Magnolia. All photos used courtesy of Feature Shoot.

Western Digital, most well known for making many types of popular hard drives including the My Book line external devices, is advising users to disconnect any My Book Live storage devices from the internet as soon as possible and until further notice to prevent files from being deleted.

The My Book line of Hard Drives is a popular series of storage devices since they are very affordable options for users. Typically the external storage devices connect to computers via USB cables, but in the case of the My Book Live series, it uses an ethernet cable to connect to a local network where users can then remotely access their files and make configuration changes using the Western Digital cloud infrastructure. When it was first announced, Western Digital billed it as a “personal cloud.”

ARS Technica is reporting the problem was first brought to light from a thread on the WD support page where users have started to discover that the data stored on these drives is being inexplicably erased. Files are being mysteriously deleted and the drive itself is being “factory reset” with no action taken by the users themselves.

Western Digital is still investigating the issue, but the data loss appears to be the result of some “malicious software” and has issued a warning to users urging them disconnect the drives from the internet as soon as possible until the company can figure out how to protect the drives and prevent any further deletions.

I have a WD mybook live connected to my home LAN and worked fine for years. I have just found that somehow all the data on it is gone today, while the directories seems there but empty. Previously the 2T volume was almost full but now it shows full capacity.
The even strange thing is when I try to log into the control UI for diagnosis I was-only able to get to this landing page with an input box for “owner password”. I have tried the default password “admin” and also what I could set for it with no luck. There seems to be no change to retrieve or reset password on this landing page either.

Users are reporting that whether it was a factory reset, a hard deletion, or an apparent hack, everything stored on the affected devices has been completely wiped clean.

At the time of publication, there were no reports that any data was restored.

There is little additional information currently available about the issue, but the community of users is speculating that based on what Western Digital has stated, it appears the devices could have been “individually compromised” in a targeted attack.

Either way, users of these networked dives are advised to disconnect them as soon as possible to prevent any potential data loss.

Wristcam, an accessory strap with two built-in cameras, has announced expanded functionality through its new Wristcam Messenger app. Users can now send and receive live video with anyone with an iPhone, even if they don’t have a Wristcam or an Apple Watch.

The launch of the Messenger app makes it what the company calls “the first and only Apple Watch experience to offer live video communication.” In addition to the new app, Wristcam is also introducing a computer vision SDK for Apple Watch app developers.

Last year, Wristcam unveiled the $300 accessory and touted it as an easier way to more seamlessly take photos while on the go. While bulkier than a typical Apple Watch strap, it packs two Sony cameras: one is an 8-megapixel “world-facing” camera designed to take photos and videos of surroundings, and the other is a 2-megapixel self-facing camera made for taking video calls.

Below are a few 4K screen captures taken with the Wristcam and provided by the company:

At the time, both cameras were touted as supporting video streaming, but with the dedicated integration of a chat app, Wristcam clearly is looking to create a community of users in addition to those who would purchase its hardware.

The Wristcam App for Apple Watch allows video communication to be sent to anyone with an Apple device, and doesn’t require the use of the Wristcam nor an Apple Watch to use. Video chats that are sent can be viewed in real-time or later. The concept is a spin on popular apps like Marco Polo, but differentiates itself by keeping messages to a fixed, short length and deleting them once they are watched. Of course, the company also differentiates itself by focusing on and targeting users of its watch-strap-based camera.

For those with an Apple watch that has a cellular plan, the Wristcam allows video communication without an iPhone, which the company touts as a lighter, freer way of communicating while on the go. That air of simplicity is echoed in some design decisions, like the ability for Wristcam users to activate the app with Siri. Commands like “Hey Siri, snap a selfie/photo, start/stop video,” allow for what the company is billing as a “completely hands-free” capture and share experience and eliminate “friction points around camera capture and communication.”

In conversations with PetaPixel, Wristcam’s founder and developers strongly believe that the Apple Watch, once outfitted with its camera system, is the future of communication, and the launch of this messaging app is a core part of making that belief a reality.

The Wristcam Messenger app is free to download and separate from the original Wristcam app that is used to customize and set up the Wristcam. Wristcam istelf is now available from both Wristcam.com and Amazon for $300.

The Animal Friends Comedy Pet Photo Awards 2021 has announced a selection of its front runners to date, featuring pet photobombs, kisses, funny poses, derpy smiles, and more.

The humorous pet photo competition was created by Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam to celebrate the positive and vital role that pets can have in people’s lives. Not just that, the competition also aims to raise awareness about animal welfare and supports a different grassroots charity each year.

This year, the competition is working in partnership with Animal Friends Insurance and will donate £10,000 ($13,900) to Animal Support Angels, which is an animal welfare charity that supports pets and pet owners by providing food, shelter, veterinary support, re-homing, and animal welfare care to relieve the suffering of animals.

Although the competition is still ongoing, since finalists are announced in October and winners in November, the organizers have shared the best photos so far in a bid to encourage more entries.

“We hope that by sharing a sneaky peek at these latest entries to the competition, we can raise a smile or two and maybe encourage more budding photographers (amateur or professional) to get involved and enter their funny pet photos and videos,” says Sullam.

Amanda Broome, Founder-Trustee of Animal Support Angels, revealed that thousands of animals across the United Kingdom have suffered throughout the last year. The donation from the competition will give organizations access to direct funding to where it’s needed the most.

Not to forget the light spirit and comedy the competition brings, “this competition is a celebration of all those wonderful furry, feathery, scaly and hoofed pals keeping us fit, sane and in good company, especially over the last 12 months.”

Here is a selection of some of the best entries so far:

The judging panel has invited new judges: last year’s winner, Elke Vogelsang, Amanda from Animal Support Angels, Dave and Finn, the magic dog act from Britain’s Got Talent, and Tia — Dave’s nine-year-old daughter.

From Animal Friends, the panel welcomes CEO Wes Pearson and his son Jack, aged 12, and Patricia Gardiner (CMO) and her daughter Megan, aged nine, animal lover Kate Humble, and Emma Milne, a veterinarian.

The judges will be going through entries to decide on the top 40 when the competition closes on August 15th, 2021.

For interested photographers who have caught their pets in humorous situations, the competition can be entered here. A small entry fee applies and the competition is open globally with the following categories: “dogs,” “cats,” “horses,” “all the other creatures,” “pets who look like their owners,” “junior,” and “video.”

Image credits: Header image by Lee Carpenter and all others individually credited. All photos provided courtesy of the Animal Friends Comedy Pet Photo Awards and used with permission.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has released its TRUST test, a free online training program to certify that pilots understand the rules of drone flight. It is required in order to fly a drone, even recreationally.

The Recreational UAS Safety Test, otherwise known as TRUST, applies to all drones that weigh more than 0.55 pounds and dictates that not only must they be registered through the FAA’s Drone Zone, but all pilots must also pass the TRUST test. Even those who just operate a drone “for fun or personal enjoyment” must take this test in order to legally fly in the United States.

The test is designed to provide education and testing for recreational flyers on important safety and regulatory information. The FAA says that even pilots who fly drones recreationally under the Exception for Recreational Flyers — which includes drone flights for educational purposes — must pass the test before they can legally fly.

Read more: Why the FAA’s Mandatory TRUST Drone Test Won’t Provide Any Safety

All pilots — even those who already possess a Part 107 certification — must complete the TRUST test and be able to show proof of passing to an agent of the FAA or law enforcement if prompted.

The FAA has listed the following entities as Approved Test Administrators for TRUST. The only way to take the TRUST test is to do so through any of the below organizations.

• The Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA)
• The Boy Scouts of America
• Chippewa Valley Technical College
• Community College of Allegheny County – West Hills Center
• Drone U
• Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU)
• HSU Educational Foundation
• Lake Area Technical College
• Pilot Institute
• Drone Launch Academy LLC
• Proctorio Incorporated
• Tactical Aviation
• CrossFlight Sky Solutions
• UAV Coach
• University of Arizona Global Campus
• Volatus Aerospace Corp

The FAA says that TRUST is divided into two sections: The first section provides prospective pilots with the information needed to pass the test. The second section is a series of multiple-choice questions. It is not possible to fail the test. If a question is answered incorrectly, information on why that was the incorrect answer will be provided, and the question will be asked again.

After the conclusion of the test, pilots will be provided with a certificate that never expires, however, if that certificate is lost, the test will have to be retaken to obtain a new one. The FAA says neither it nor the administrator of the test will maintain any personally identifiable information about the recreational flyer, so neither will be able to re-print or re-issue the certificate.

Image credits: Header photo by Bertrand Bouchez.

For the first time in 300 years, viewers can enjoy “The Night Watch” — the iconic painting by Rembrandt — in its entirety thanks to high-resolution photography and computer learning efforts.

The famous masterpiece is a 1642 painting by the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn and is currently displayed in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. The painting has been on display in numerous homes throughout the centuries prior.

One of the features the painting is celebrated for is its size, which measures 142.9 inches by 172 inches. However, in 1715 the canvas was trimmed by 23.6 inches from the left side, 9 inches from the top, 4.7 inches from the bottom, and 2.8 inches from the right. Not as an act of vandalism, the trim was performed so that the painting could fit between two doors at Amsterdam’s city hall, The Guardian reports.

This left parts of the painting missing, but with the combination of high-resolution photography of what remains as the original, computer models of the painter’s techniques that leverage artificial intelligence, and a current copy of the full painting by Gerrit Lunden — which is on display in London’s National Gallery — Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam was able to temporarily restore it.

This is not the first time the painting has undergone restoration. “The Night Watch” has suffered numerous attacks in the past: it was slashed first by a jobless shoemaker and former Navy chef and later by an unemployed school teacher. It was also sprayed with acid by an escaped psychiatric patient. As such, it has been the subject of numerous complex restoration measures.

As part of the latest restoration, the team used convolutional neural networks — a type of AI algorithm that helps computers understand images — which helped recreate what was lost pixel by pixel.

“As part of our renovation of The Night Watch, last year we took the most detailed photograph of the painting ever and we had a lot of information,” Taco Dibbits, director of the Rijksmuseum, says.

“We did three types of algorithms: one to single out the perspective distortions and to correct those; the second to recognize the color scheme of the original and to project that on the pieces that are missing; and the third one is the brushstrokes — the technique that Rembrandt used. Then you get a computer reproduction that looks as much as possible as The Night Watch.”

After that, a canvas was printed in scale and attached to the original painting, where it will remain for three months so that the museum visitors can enjoy the original composition as the painter intended it.

Dibbits explains that the “newly augmented original” will be removed after three months because he doesn’t want to deceive the public and trick people into thinking that they are viewing the original in its entirety.

Instagram is now rolling out the ability to post photos from a desktop web browser. This is a huge milestone, as it’s the first time the popular photo-sharing service has officially allowed posting from outside of mobile devices.

The company has officially confirmed the move, saying that it’s a test that’s being rolled out to a subset of its users for now — Instagram has historically rolled out major features as well-publicized tests first before making them available to all users over the following weeks and months.

“We know that many people access Instagram from their computer,” a spokesperson tells Engadget. “To improve that experience, we’re now testing the ability to create a Feed post on Instagram with their desktop browser.”

Instagram’s plans to expand posting to desktop was previously spotted by developer Alessandro Paluzzi when it was still being internally tested by the company.

Starting this week, however, many users have begun sharing that they now see a new post create button on the desktop website and that they can now create posts using the new system.

If desktop posting has been enabled for your account, you’ll find a new “add” icon at the top of the site between the icons for Direct Messages and Explore.

Once you drag and drop a photo into the Create box (or select a file using the browse button), you’ll be given the chance to crop the photo and edit it prior to posting it.

Instagram previously opened up browser-based photo posting to mobile devices, but users figured out that desktop browsers could take advantage of the feature by pretending to be a mobile browser. With desktop posting officially rolling out, users will no longer need to turn to “spoofing” tactics to create their posts.

This latest move brings Instagram even closer to Facebook (it’s parent company) in design. Instagram changed its feed from chronological to algorithmic back in 2016, and it has now even started mixing “suggested posts” into users’ main feeds.

Desktop posting has long been a requested feature, however, so it was clearly only a matter of time before it was launched.

Canon has applied for a patent that would use an in-camera algorithm in tandem with the camera’s image stabilization system to intelligently determine the difference between blur caused by motion and blur caused by a moving subject, and correct it.

First spotted by Asobinet and reported by CanonWatch, the patent describes a way to suppress blur of a subject in a photo by using the image stabilization system in the camera (on sensor) and in the lens.

In the patent, Canon says that the problem is that blur correction in current cameras isn’t able to differentiate between “camera shake” and “subject shake” and correct for both at the same time. To get around this, Canon’s Subject Blur Correction would be able to correct for “subject shake” when a face is detected and “camera shake” when a face is not detected.

“‘Camera shake’ and ‘subject shake’ should be corrected depending on the intention of the user (target of interest) in the shooting scene,” the patent says. “For example, when the user pays attention to the background, it is desirable that the ‘camera shake,’ which is the shake of the entire screen, is corrected. On the other hand, when the user is paying attention to the main subject, it is desirable that the ‘subject shake’ is corrected. Therefore, it is necessary to appropriately control the shake correction target according to the user’s intention that changes with the shooting scene.”

The patent was originally applied for by Canon in September of 2020, but was published on June 24.

While technically this process does not fall into the pure definition of computational photography according to Wikipedia — that is to say, the process of using digital computation instead of the optical process — it does get close and more falls into expanded definitions of the term. For example, the idea of computational photography now expands into computer vision, graphics, and applied optics. Since the tech would need to use some kind of algorithm to intelligently determine how to use its stabilization system, it could be argued that Canon’s Subject Blur Correction is a type of computational photography.

To date, outside of some HDR and panoramic capabilities, full-size cameras have done very little as far as advancing image processing to the degree that is seen in mobile devices and have mostly relied on physical corrections in camera or in lenses to achieve quality results. It could be argued that the hesitancy from dedicated camera manufacturers to adopt computational photography techniques that have led to vast improvements to image quality on mobile devices is a detriment to the advancement of the medium overall, and Canon’s patent here shows what could be possible if camera makers begin to do so more readily.

A Rapid Ascent Drone, or RAD, is basically an electric rocket ship. For now, they can be used to make unusual drone light shows that can replace fireworks and provide unique light painting opportunities, but the creator of the concept believes they may be able to eventually replace rocket ships.

Rammaxx is a RAD manufacturer that built its concept by working with small, electric rapid ascent rockets for electronic fireworks shows. The company built its autonomous drones with the ability to work in “swarms” and create unusual visual spectacles thanks to their ability to ascend extremely quickly and stay at altitude long enough to play a light sequence before returning to base. Rammaxx says that the rapid ascent capability is achieved via powerful motors, a streamlined hull, and special guidance fins.

“Rammaxx can be configured to ascend quickly, and noisily, or to ascend more slowly and quietly,” the company explains. “The system can work with one rocket, or with a small swarm of them, creating unique and highly — via App — configurable light displays for any occasion.”

A Rammaxx RAD drone can recharge wirelessly on a dedicated launch pad that is connected to a bus system. Up to five launch pads can be connected together to create more complex aerial light displays.

The drones weigh a scant three ounces (90 grams) and can fly for one minute with full LED power that can project light at up to 3,000 lumens of brightness. While that might not seem very long, the drones can land and recharge in just 30 seconds before they are ready to fly again.

These rapid ascent drones can fly into the air at a blistering 80 miles per hour (150 kilometers per hour) in what Rammaxx calls “rapid and noisy ascent,” but are also capable of doing so slower and more quietly.

These RADs are different than traditional drones in a number of ways. While they are battery-powered, Rammaxx’s CEO and Co-Founder Dan Lubrich tells PetaPixel that, unlike other drones, these are optimized for vertical flight and the electric circuits in them are optimized for a short duration but very high power, rather than long duration and low power.

Beyond a typical aerial light display, the RADs can also allow for light painting if exposure is set for at least five seconds. The shapes can be programmed into the app the company says that it is working on showing how to do this in upcoming tutorial videos. But in short, Lubrich says a user can draw on the screen to show the pattern and that shape can be uploaded to the drone and it will fly that path accordingly.

“Once launched, the pilot is out of the loop, so they can focus on taking pictures, or just enjoying the show. We are working on putting together a more detailed video that focuses more on the light show aspect of the system,” Lubrich says.

Lubrich has greater ambitions for its technology beyond light shows and tells PetaPixel that he believes RAD technology can assist in space exploration.

He says that the large size of a first-stage rocket is the main reason that space flight is so expensive, dangerous, and environmentally unfriendly. To address this, the Rammaxx RAD concept is a large powerful drone based on the design of the current light painting RADs. Early projections show that it should be able to accelerate with a rocket to around 300 miles per hour (500 kilometers per hour) up to an altitude of around 15,000 feet (5,000 meters).

“The important aspect for space flight isn’t so much the altitude gained — although that also helps a little bit — but rather the speed gained during the ascent,” he explains. “So, much less rocket fuel is needed to get off the ground and up to a few hundred miles per hour. That allows for smaller, cheaper, safer, and cleaner space rockets.”

“When flying as a swarm with a rocket in tow, we envision the drones to act as one super drone, rather than a true swarm, meaning the flight controllers of the drones link together creating one large drone with many rotors out of lots of small ones,” Lubrich says. “This is so that the flight is 100 percent precise.”

If the drones were independent, even if they were connected to each other via the rocket, there could be small differences in the way that they fly, which could create problems due to them being physically connected, Lubrich explains. Instead, there would be one designated master drone in the swarm that would — when all of them are linked together — control all the drones and turn the swarm into one large super drone, all controlled by the same master flight controller.

“Once the rocket has launched and the physical link between drones is broken, the software link is broken too and the rapid ascent drones independently descend back to the launch pad, staying out of each other’s way as they do so,” Lubrich says.

Lubrich and Rammaxx envision a future where these RADs would allow for much smaller ground to space rockets where the current first stage of space flight could be nearly completely eliminated. The space flight-enabled RADs would feature eight rotors with 300 horsepower each for a total of a 2,400 horsepower drone that is capable of carrying 13,000 pounds of payload 15,000 feet in 90 seconds. The RAD’s four-minute battery life would give it plenty of time to safely return to Earth afterward.

Ramaxx has already completed a few small-scale tests of the concept as seen in the photos below.

What is now just a neat way to provide a firework alternative and a different light painting experience could be a revolutionary shift in how humans approach space flight. Thanks to successful small-scale tests, Lubrich believes it is only a matter of time.

Image credits: All photos courtesy of Rammaxx and used with permission.

GoPro has announced Open GoPro, a new open API initiative that allows third-party developers to integrate the HERO9 Black action camera into their projects.

“Do you love to develop, tinker, or hack?” GoPro writes on the new API site. “Open GoPro is an easy-to-access, limited-support software platform for developers to tailor their HERO9 Black cameras to fit their needs or build it into their product through a wireless connection (BLE or Wi-Fi).”

Developers tapping into the Open GoPro API — no application or approval is necessary to use it — will be able to have their code access the camera features that include wireless connectivity, camera command and control, camera status, camera preview, and SD card review and transfer.

A number of companies have already begun using Open GoPro to have their products play nicely with the HERO9 Black. Amazfit smartwatches now allow wearers to wirelessly control the camera with the watch’s touch display. Centurion Boats has integrated camera control functionality into their boat’s helm control screen. Pixellot has built camera control and content transfer features into its sport broadcasting mobile platform.

Sena has built GoPro voice control into its headsets designed for motorcycle riding and other high-wind applications.

With the launch of this new API, GoPro is hoping that many more companies and developers will follow these brands’ footsteps to create a new ecosystem of gadgets and apps that are closely integrated with GoPro cameras.

Open GoPro is available now and compatible with HERO9 Black cameras that have been updated to the new v1.6 firmware that was released in conjunction with Open GoPro. The firmware also brings improved camera power on/off speed/consistency, improved Quik app connectivity, improved touch screen sensitivity, and improved reliability when using “The Remote.”

To help familiarize developers with the new API, the Open GoPro site also includes code samples in Python, C, Swift, and BASH.

Leica has announced the M10-R Black Paint edition in what the Leica Store Miami is calling a “limited run.” The camera is functionally identical to a standard M-10R, but the colorway is a first for any M10-generation camera, standard or otherwise.

The original M10-R was announced in July of 2020 and features a 40-megapixel color sensor. At the time, Leica said that the M10-R would deliver significantly reduced image noise as well as a wider dynamic range than the original M10 and would perform closer to what one would expect from the M10 Monocrhom but with the added benefit of color. At launch, it was listed for $8,995.

With this new edition of the M10-R, Leica has employed a high-gloss black paint finish that hasn’t been seen at all in the M10 line, as Leica has opted to use more of a matte black and chrome finish. This new edition not only brings a classy, shiny black to the camera, but it also does away with Leica’s iconic red dot. Leica describes it as an homage to the Leica MP film camera, and the shutter release button has been trimmed out in polished silver chrome and the shutter speed and ISO dials on the top of the camera have received a “classic and easy-to-grip” cross-knurled machining on the sides.

According to Leica Store Miami’s Red Dot Forum, this particular paint finish will age differently than the standard M10.

“The more matte black chrome is electrochemically bonded with the underlying nickel-plated brass, but black paint is applied on top of the bare brass top and bottom plates,” Red Dot Forum writes. “So where the black chrome takes on a slight silvering in high-use areas, the painted finish will wear over time, exposing the brass underneath and demonstrating a lovely and sought-after patina.”

A similarly colored rare black painted Leica IIIg with an Elmarit 90mm f/2.8 recently sold at auction for $484,400.

The M10-R Black Paint is supposedly available in limited quantities, but Leica did not specify how limited in its announcement. In a bit of an unusual turn, the Black Paint edition isn’t markedly more expensive than the original M10-R, and will only cost $300 more than the standard — $9,295.

Instagram is reportedly testing a feature with a “small number” of users where its “suggested posts” feature will expand beyond just when you’ve reached the end of your feed and will be mixed throughout a browsing experience, possibly coming ahead of posts from those users follow.

In a confirmation to The Verge, Instagram says that reception to the “suggested posts” feature was so positive that the company decided to try and mix those suggestions in with the average viewing experience, sometimes ahead of photos and videos from people a user explicitly follows.

Additionally, Instagram is testing new controls that will allow users to add a specific topic of interest for suggested posts as well as the ability to “snooze” the recommendations for 30 days or hide them from a feed entirely. “Suggested posts” is a feature that Instagram added last year, but prior to this small test was only ever seen after a user saw everything from all people they followed that was shared.

This shift would make Instagram theoretically function similarly to how YouTube manages its “home” page, which highlights content that is a mix of videos made by those a user is subscribed to as well as videos that YouTube’s algorithm thinks are of interest. YouTube leans so heavily on this analytics-forward approach that subscriptions have fallen in importance over the years.

If Instagram were to adopt placing suggested posts for all users, it may have a dramatic impact on how the social network functions. Instagram has a vested interest in keeping users on the platform for as long as possible, and keep them coming back. As such, the social network should not necessarily need to put as much value on showing a user content from people they follow as opposed to delivering photos and videos that keep them engaged. As YouTube has shown, just because a person subscribes to a Channel doesn’t mean that the user necessarily wants to see all content that Channel produces.

That’s the theory, anyway, and it might have ramifications in the long term for content creators who rely on Instagram to reach an audience, especially if suggested posts become more popular and show higher engagement than that of specifically followed accounts.

Algorithm-focused approaches have generally superseded ones that focus on giving users complete control over what they see. Facebook and Instagram both ditched a timeline-based approach years ago, and Twitter defaults users to the “Home” view instead of “Latest Tweets” which uses an algorithm to determine the most interesting content. At least in Twitter’s case, switching back to Latest Tweets is an option.

Instagram did not specify how many people its “suggested posts” test would affect nor how long it intended to test the feature.

Panasonic has announced a firmware update program for its line of Lumix S full-frame cameras that includes the S1, S1R, and S5. Even though the S1 was announced over two years ago, the company will update it to capture 5.9K video at up to 30 frames per second in 12-bit RAW.

The age of a camera doesn’t seem to affect how Panasonic views if it should provide major support to it, as these updates add significant performance enhancements that could very easily be argued should be reserved for a next-generation camera body. While some of these updates are only available to those who paid for additional video enhancements at launch, this level of support so long after release is still worthy of praise.

The S1, S1R, and S5 will all receive major enhancements when the firmware becomes available on July 12.

For those who purchased the Upgrade Software Key DMW-SFU2 — an optional $200 video-focused upgrade that is currently included with new purchases of the camera — the Panasonic S1 will gain RAW video output over HDMI to a Blackmagic Video Assist 12G HDR and will be recorded as Blackmagic RAW. It will be able to record in full-frame 5.9K (5888×3312) at up to 30 frames per second in 16:9 aspect ratio. In a cropped APS-C mode, the S1 will be able to shoot in 4K (4128×2176) at up to 60 frames per second in 17:9 aspect ratio, and 3.5K at up to 50 frames per second in anamorphic.

The Panasonic S5 will get those same RAW recording capabilities, but without needing to have purchased any software upgrades like is the case on the S1. In both cases, 5.9K, 4K, and Anamorphic (4:3) 3.5K 12-bit RAW video data can be output over HDMI to a Blackmagic Video Assist 12G HDR to be recorded as Blackmagic RAW.

This means that Panasonic’s now $1,700 full-frame camera will be able to shoot in 5.9K 12-bit RAW for no extra cost, which rivals the performance of the significantly more expensive S1H.

Panasonic will also be adding L.ClassicNeo and L.Monochrome S as photo styles to both the S1 and S1R.

Additionally, Panasonic announced the Lumix HLG Photo for Adobe Photoshop, which is a plug-in software that will allow any hybrid log gamma (HLG) photo (which is a type of HDR image) shot by any Lumix S camera to be read and edited with Adobe Photoshop. After that, Panasonic says that it is possible to view those HLG photos back as HDR photos on an HLF-corresponding monitor of an HDMI connection with a Lumix S Series camera.

Previously, Panasonic HLG photos would cease to be HLG once brought into an application like Photoshop for editing, and the only way to enjoy the wider color gamut was to view them straight out of the camera. While viewing HLG photos is still complicated, at least now there will be a way to edit them without losing the HDR nature of HLG.

The firmware updates and HLG Photo plugin for Photoshop will be available from Panasonic starting on July 12.

NVIDIA has announced Canvas, an app that is available as a free beta that it says brings real-time painting tools to anyone with an NVIDIA RTX GPU. It uses artificial intelligence to make rudimentary sketches or doodles into photorealistic scenes.

Canvas is part of NVIDIA Studio, which is a program that provides artists and creators with both hardware and software tools to assist in bringing creative visions to life. Canvas appears to be the consumer-facing version of the app that NVIDIA showcased in 2019, but what is shown here is far more advanced than what was teased back then.

In Canvas, users can start sketching simple shapes and lines using a palette of 15 tools such as mountains, clouds, grass, or weather effects and the artificial intelligence model will turn those into a photorealistic scene in real-time.

What looks like a sketch made in Microsoft Paint is transformed into a lifelike scene instantly and with jaw-dropping quality.

“The tool allows artists to use style filters, changing a generated image to adopt the style of a particular painter,” NVIDIA explains. “NVIDIA Canvas isn’t just stitching together pieces of other images, or cutting and pasting textures, but creating brand new images, just like an artist would.”

The algorithm is aided by the tools palette in Canvas so that it understands what the artist is intending to show, but the results are still extremely impressive. NVIDIA says that the creative applications of the tool are “endless” and that it can help artists ideate faster than before, which is normally a far more time-consuming task.

“It can also bring time savings to a range of creators and designers,” NVIDIA explains. “Consider an art director on a time crunch who needs to refine the hero product in an ad campaign. A landscape will complete the shot. Using NVIDIA Canvas, the director is only a few clicks from generating several beautifully rendered images. In a matter of moments, the tool provides multiple options for the client to review, saving precious time before finalizing the featured product.”

Canvas uses a form of artificial intelligence called “generative adversarial networks,” or GAN. It is the same technology that NVIDIA has used in previous AI algorithms, like its tool that can create photorealistic faces. GANs consist of a generator and a discriminator that work together. A generator aims to convert material maps into images, and the discriminator understands certain aspects of what is generated. For example, the discriminator knows that water has reflections, and can tell the generator to create a representation of that.

“To deliver realistic portraits for artists, the GAN has been trained on an NVIDIA DGX system using over 5 million images,” NVIDIA says.

The Canvas beta can be downloaded for free now, and NVIDIA is soliciting feedback on its forums.

Microsoft’s cloud storage solution OneDrive has been expanded to offer basic photo editing features like crop, rotation, and exposure.

The new feature launches today and allows OneDrive users to edit images straight from their OneDrive storage folders. Announced on the Microsoft OneDrive Blog, this new feature means users can crop, rotate, flip, and make light and color adjustments to images. Microsoft stipulates that this feature will not work on RAW files and is only supported on JPEGs and PNGs.

The crop function can be used as a manual crop or with specific ratios that fit the standard sizes of commonly used social media apps. The rotate and flip allows not only basic 90-degree rotation but also incremental to ensure precision if the image requires just a slight alteration.

Light adjustments feature basic functions, like brightness, exposure, contrast, highlights, and shadows, while color can be modified with saturation, warmth, and tint sliders. Once finished, users can also preview the before and after by tapping and holding the cursor on the image.

Microsoft explains that the edited photo can be saved either as a new file or it can overwrite the original. However, if users accidentally choose to overwrite, the action can be reversed with the use of version history.

These editing features have been introduced to OneDrive for Web and OneDrive for Android but the company expects to bring them to OneDrive for iOS later this year. The editing features are available for OneDrive personal accounts, with OneDrive for work and school accounts to follow later this summer.

An additional feature introduced in this update includes Chromecast compatibility, which allows users to cast their images and videos to their TV. To do this, users have to connect their phone to a Chromecast-enabled device, open the OneDrive for Android app, and tap on the upper right corner of the OneDrive home tab.

To better organize stored photos — which may be saved from various sources, such as text messages, social media, screenshots, and more — the company reports it is set to introduce a new setting that creates folders based on the upload source.

This feature will automatically add images from each corresponding source to their respective folders. Users will also be able to organize and group images by date. Microsoft expects to ship its feature within the next two months on OneDrive for Android.

However, users can already access file filter options that show images from particular folders. This new option can be found in the top right of the Photos tab on OneDrive for Android and the photos area on OneDrive for Web.

These updates are a part of series of new enhancements that the company is set to deliver over the next year. Microsoft also points out that the company still remains committed to securing users’ privacy and doesn’t scan any photos, files, or personal content to target ads to users nor does it share data without permission.

Electronics manufacturers in Taiwan including Canon and Foxconn supplier Innolux have been accused of “locking up” migrant workers amidst the COVID-19 outbreak taking place in the country.

The Financial Times reports that according to internal documents and staff communications that it has seen, multiple electronics manufacturers — including Canon — have responded to the outbreak by forbidding migrant workers from leaving the dormitories where they live except to go to work and banning them from speaking to one another.

Taiwan is responsible for the manufacturing of chips, servers, laptops, and other electronics for several international brands and has seen a boom in its economy over the last year as work from home orders have seen demand for such products skyrocket. In order to meet the increased demand, Taiwan has brought in a huge number of migrant workers — 713,000 as of April of 2021 — mainly from the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. The Financial Times reports that this influx of workers now accounts for 8 percent of the total Taiwanese workforce and more than 60 percent of those migrants are working in factories to produce electronics components.

As part of their work agreement with migrants, employers are legally required to provide them housing accommodations and food, but reportedly mostly outsource those services to brokers and companies who try and keep costs as low as possible and will sometimes cram up to 12 people into a room together.

While the need for the migrant workers was clearly high, discrimination against them is reportedly systemic and the COVID-19 outbreak has only made that worse. In an attempt to prevent the further spread of the disease, Taiwanese health authorities have ordered companies to take certain steps, such as preventing workers from clustering together while on the job.

But the Financial Times reports that companies are going well beyond those rules and are imposing harsh restrictions on workers. Some employers — who were not specifically named by the publication — have been accused of scaring migrants with threats that if they were to die from COVID-19, their bodies would be immediately cremated, their families would not be able to see them, and the family’s finances would be immediately cut off.

Specifically, Canon is accused of telling its workers to never leave the dormitory except to go to and from work, and banned them from speaking to one another.

When reached for comment by Financial Times, Canon admitted that its rules may have been too strict.

“We cannot deny that the content and expression we used were excessive in some parts as a result of focusing too much on the safety of employees and the community,” Canon said in a statement to the publication. “In response to questions raised from within and outside the company, we have revised the content on June 18 in accordance with government advisory.”

At the time of publication, no Taiwanese government agency had spoken up against the treatment of migrant workers.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.

Lexar has announced that it is actively developing on the thus far unused SD Express specification to create SD memory cards that use PCI Express (PCIe 4.0) and will more than triple the speeds of current UHS-II cards, but it’s not clear who these cards will work for.

Lexar says that it is actively developing both regular SD Express as well as microSD Express memory cards. Its SD Express cards will have a capacity of up to 512 gigabytes while its microSD Express will cap out at 256 gigabytes.

Lexar SD Express and microSD Express memory cards will feature write speeds of up to 410MB/s and read speeds of up to 824MB/s, respectfully. Lexar is currently working with manufacturers of relevant host devices as part of its early development.

The SD Express specification is not new but was developed by the SD association several years ago in response to the Compact Flash organization’s CFexpress specification. The idea would allow for the format to theoretically reach greater capacities and much faster speeds all while maintaining the same current SD card format with the promise of backward compatibility.

While this sounds great, the SD Express specification has not been actively developed for a reason — it’s not perfect. In 2019, PetaPixel spoke with ProGrade Digital’s Wes Brewer who explained that there were many hidden drawbacks with the SD Express specification. For starters, SD Express cards would technically be backwards compatible, but only to UHS-I speeds.

“You can put it in there, and it’ll work, but it’ll only work as a UHS-I card,” Brewer said. “So if the camera requires full SD UHS-II performance, it won’t work right. It won’t work as well as it’s supposed to like an SD UHS-II card would work.”

At the time, Brewer noted that no camera manufacturer was interested in the SD Express format and none were making any cameras that would work with it. To date, that has not changed and it’s unclear who Lexar’s cards would be for.

What’s more, those looking to keep the SD form factor have already found a solution: CFexpress type A. Sony’s latest cameras accept both standard UHS-II SD cards and CFexpress Type A cards in the same card slot. Back in 2019, Brewer predicted this.

In 2020, the specification was updated and allowed for transfer speeds for up to 3,983 megabytes per second, a huge leap in performance. It wasn’t clear though if the backward compatibility issue had been solved nor if any camera or device manufacturer was even interested in supporting cards made with the specification.

Even if all the issues with SD Express were solved by the new specification and camera makers decide to support them, SD Express is a long way from challenging CFexpress. The read and write speeds promised on Lexar’s coming SD Express cards may be up to three times better than UHS-II SD cards, but they are still well below current CFexpress speeds. Current Type B cards typically reach read speeds of 1,700 MB/s and surpass 1,400 MB/s write speeds thanks to their two lanes of PCIe. Type A cards are slower due to their single-lane design, but still promise 800 MB/s read speeds and 700 MB/s write speeds. While SD Express appears to be competitive on read speeds, Lexar’s SD Express cards will only reach about half the write speed performance.

Lexar appears undeterred, however. The company plans to launch its new line of SD Express cards in 2022, but it is not clear what devices will support them or how much they will cost. That last note will be the most important, as SD Express may only be able to compete by undercutting the currently astronomical price of CFexpress.

EarthCam, which recently made waves when it took the largest photo ever captured of New York City, has launched two additional high-resolution timelapse camera rigs that use a Sony Alpha 7R Mark IV at their core.

Following the launch of the EarthCam GigapixelCam X80 in May, the company has announced two more high-resolution timelapse camera rigs: a wide-angle 61 MegapixelCam and the 61 MegapixelCam Robotic, which adds a precision 360-degree pan and tilt base.

The non-robotic wide-angle camera features a Sony 20mm f/1.8 prime lens mounted to the Alpha 7R Mark IV to offer wide, high-resolution files. The robotic version uses the Sony 25-70mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS lens and is not user-customizable as it has been optimized and tested specifically to work with this lens.

EarthCam may use the Sony camera system at its core and therefore the image quality is well documented, but thanks to the Sony Camera Remote SDK, the company is able to build significant functionality around the camera. The EarthCam enclosure protects from the elements and comes equipped with what the company bills as a “maintenance-free” wiper, battery, and data backup. The camera can be controlled remotely and tasked with documenting ongoing progress or specific milestones.

Most of EarthCam’s clients are commercial or industrial, but because of the advanced software features, the system has several creative applications as well. EarthCam doesn’t publish how much each of its systems costs, but says that its rentals start at $680 per month for the new systems.

Both of the new 61-megapixel systems use an industrial solid-state embedded Linux OS platform with an ARM9 CPU and 64-gigabytes of onboard backup storage. It can be connected via either ethernet or a wireless 4G or 5G connection and powered by a standard wall outlet or outfitted with solar if it is placed in an area where traditional power is not available. EarthCam also provides custom software that can be used to monitor and adjust the camera from a computer or mobile device.

Earlier this month, EarthCam published a video that shows the kinds of projects that can be made with its products and why high-resolution is of particular value. Beyond timelapses like the one below, EarthCam rigs outfitted with a robotic base (like the 61 MegapixelCam Robotic) can also produce extremely high-resolution gigapixel images by stitching together a large number of photos.

These camera rigs can also be used for live streaming, which EarthCam demonstrates with a camera that is currently live over Times Square in New York and is broadcasting in 4K.

While as mentioned EarthCam doesn’t publish exact pricing, it does say that these new models are “mid-priced” and are designed to make it easier for small or midsize businesses to afford in addition to the aforementioned rentals the company makes available.

Long-term timelapse production is a niche art, but it’s still highly valuable for commercial photography businesses. While EarthCam is clearly designed for larger-scale productions, its Work Zone Cam Pro is comparable to popular affordable options like photoSentinel, with prices that start under $3,000.

Update 6/23: EarthCam specified rental pricing for its new cameras as well as a subsidiary company that offers similar products at a lower price.