Recent Science Articles

Deep Learning Algorithm Automatically Colorizes Photos

This is one of those sites you're going to want to try yourself. Take any black and white image, feed it to the algorithm, and watch as it spits out its best guess at a color version, which is often quite convincing.

Tiny1 Is the Astrophotography Camera for Everyone

Astrophotography is tough to master; it takes a lot of specialized equipment, careful post-processing, and a nocturnal lifestyle. Tiny1 aims to alleviate at least some of those issues (you'll still have to stay up late) and make astrophotography accessible for anyone interested in the genre.

How Snapchat Filters Work

If you're one of the hundreds of millions of people who uses Snapchat every day, you've probably played with its lenses that transform your face into all sorts of humorous, interesting, and horrifying things (trust me, I face-swapped with a clock once, and I looked like a Dali disaster). Making all that magic happen takes a lot of math and computing power, however, and the process is fascinating.

Beware the Golden Myth of Photography

As someone who has spent a life in mathematics, I see a lot of attempts to ascribe mathematical concepts to real-world ideas in an overly simplistic way. The media misinterpreting a single medical study and reporting that a glass of red wine is equivalent to an hour at the gym does not mean you should forget the treadmill and buy more Malbec. Weathermen in Kansas do not expect the flapping of butterfly wings to cause tornadoes. But in photography, there's one incessantly perpetuated myth that drives me crazy.

Learn About the Process of Tintype Photography

Tintypes continue to fascinate us. Despite the process being over 150 years old, its methodical, almost meditative procedure and striking results have kept it alive. It's also a fairly scientific process that involves a good bit of chemistry. Check out this video to learn more about the technical and practical aspects of the practice of shooting tintypes.

Suren Manvelyan: The Person Behind ‘Your Beautiful Eyes’ Extreme Macro Photography

I have known Suren Manvelyan for more than 10 years. When I first met him, I was a graphic designer who was fascinated by photography and he was a physics teacher at school who was looking for opportunities to grow as a photographer. We used to gather with our small Armenian photographer’s community each Friday to share experiences, discuss photography, and develop our skills. Years passed, a lot of the enthusiasts gave up and only a few stayed faithful to their art. Suren, on his behalf, not only grew to a professional photographer, but also didn’t give up on his other interests.

How to Photograph Air

Air is pretty unintrusive when it comes to photography, but what do you do when air is the thing you want to take pictures of? You turn to Schlieren photography.

Liftware Put a Gimbal in a Spoon

A gimbal is an important piece of technology that makes for some smooth video. It's the device that stabilizes the camera so you can get that cinematic look in your shot. It removes the vibration and shake. The gimbal's motors keep the camera level as the camera operator moves it. Drones use them, the DJI Ronin is basically a large gimbal, and the DJI Osmo is the latest handheld gimbal that DJI brought to market.

Trick Your Brain Into Seeing a Black and White Image in Color

Eyesight is a remarkable thing, but it's also imperfect, which is exactly what optical illusions seek to take advantage of. In this one, you'll be able to trick your eyes into seeing a black and white image in full color.

Capturing Light Itself: Photography at 1,000,000,000,000 FPS

Light moves fast — like really fast. 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum, to be exact. Capturing it might seem like a pipe dream, but one MIT professor has done it by doing something remarkable: creating a camera that shoots at 1 trillion frames per second.

Colorblindness and How One Company Is Helping to Fix It

One in twelve men suffer from color vision deficiency (CVD). It’s a guarantee that many of the people reading this suffer from it as well. There is now a company that offers a solution to color blindness.