In a world where many CG artists are aiming for photorealism, one very skilled photographer seems to be going the opposite way. These images look like something straight out of 3DS Max or Blender. They’re not, though. They’re actually very carefully designed photographs, created by Norwegian design duo Lars Marcus Vedeler and Theo Zamudio-Tveterås at their studio, Skrekkøgle. Looking at the final work is pretty surreal, and if nobody ever told you that they weren’t CG renders, you’d never be able to tell....

So, that title deserves some qualifiers. It doesn’t sound as good as the Shure SM7B, but almost as good? Yeah, sure, it’s pretty good, especially considering what it costs – and assuming you already own a 3D printer. It’s not a totally DIY project from scratch, more a modification of an existing microphone to put it into a new housing. A bit like modifying old film photography lenses with a new housing to turn them into cinema lenses – they’re not really cinema lenses, but they’re close....

We’ve already seen some AI software that can upsample low-res images. You know, CSI-style. Face Depixelizer is another AI-powered software, particularly focused on faces. It can take a pixelated, low-res photo and turn it into a realistic portrait. While the results are pretty impressive – the app doesn’t come without its quirks. Face Depixelizer relies on StyleGAN, the same technology that creates faces of people that don’t exist. It was made by Russian coder Denis Malimonov, who shared it on GitHub and Colab....

Inspired by one of the very first photographic lenses, The Lomography Daguerreotype Achromat 2.9/64 art lens was first launched in 2016 and has become a favorite among experimental photographers. To celebrate this unique lens, Lomography has announced a limited edition brass and gold-plated version for $549. It will start shipping in Asia by mid-June and end of June for customers in Europe and the United States. The Daguerreotype Achromat 2.9/64 isn’t an ordinary lens by any means....

Researchers at Technion Israel Institute of Technology have developed a new way of making lenses with a curable liquid polymer that allows for faster prototyping of new and custom optics. It’s designed primarily for applications such as corrective lenses, augmented and virtual reality, medical imaging and astronomy, but could potentially become a new manufacturing method (or at least allow faster development) of photographic lenses. According to a press release, the researchers began to develop the new method after realising that there were around 2....