Timescapes is a company that shoots beautiful timelapse footage and licenses it to other production companies. Their latest reel, which was shot entirely on a Canon 5D Mark II, has some incredible moving images that depict stars and other celestial bodies as they move across the California sky. The shots come from the well-photographed White Mountains and Yosemite National Park. Personally, I enjoy the footage of the satellite dishes. Combined with the music in the video, they almost look like they could be pieces of a music box. But, the real stars are, well, the stars. Watch the new video above or take the jump to see an older video with more amazing images.

You can also check out the Timescapes official site

To get the shot, sometimes you do crazy things. Like clinging to a wall of ice in the dark, wielding a 2-million-candlepower spotlight. Then doing it over endlessly until you get it right.

That’s what sports shooter Dave Black did to make this incredible image. With no prior ice-climbing experience, he spent four long nights perched on the edge of an ice gorge in Ouray, CO, as world-class climbers Chris Alstrin and Mike Anderson repeatedly ascended for his camera.

Even crazier, he used a creative but unpredictable photo technique no one else uses for sports. He calls it “light painting.”

This involves holding the camera’s shutter open for a long exposure while sweeping light by hand across the subject.

Black, whose photos have appeared in magazines such as National Geographic and Sports Illustrated, lightpaints to very different effect. (See more at www. daveblackphotography.com.)

Before shooting, he and the climbers scouted the area for a dramatic ice formation with suitable routes, making a few daytime ascents to learn the terrain. Then he placed his tripod-mounted Nikon D200 and 17–55mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens, with a PocketWizard MultiMAX Transceiver radio trigger, across the gorge from his subject. He usually shoots in manual exposure mode, but since his camera would be inaccessible, he used aperture-priority auto (set to f/8 at ISO 200), letting the meter determine shutter speed. He dialed exposure compensation down by –2 EV to preserve the feeling of darkness. And he set white balance to 3000K for the color of the spotlight.

Outfitted with crampons, climbing ropes, and a harness, Black went out on the rim and swept the light of a rechargeable Brinkmann Q-Beam Max Million II across the scene below. He shot whenever a climber stopped to study the route ahead. Thanks to the ice’s reflectivity and the spotlight’s power, this exposure lasted just 13 sec. “It might take many attempts to get the lighting right—enough, but not too much, light applied to the scene in an interesting way. Don’t give up after one or two,” Black says. “Start small and work your way up to big subjects like this one. Practice, then practice some more.”

The Micro Four Thirds parade marches on as Olympus has just unleashed the details about the follow up to the E-P1 we like so much. The camera body itself hasn't seen much of an upgrade. It boasts the same 12.3-megapixel Live MOS sensor as its predecessor and those hoping for a built-in flash are bound to be a little disappointed. But, each E-P2 will come standard with an articulating VF-2 electronic viewfinder to occupy the hot shoe. It works in conjunction with an "accessory port" that's new to the E-P2. While it opens up new possibilities for this camera, it also means that E-P1 users hoping to grab the viewfinder as a standalone will be out of luck. The accessory port can also be used for an external microphone using an EMA-1 Microphone adapter.

Two different kits will be available starting in February. Choose from an ED 14-42mm f3.5/5.6 Zuiko Digital Zoom Lens or a 17mm f2.8 Zuiko lens. Both will cost $1099 including the electric viewfinder. Get more pictures and the rest of the crucial specs after the jump.

--HDMI control using a TV remote when camera is connected to an HDTV
--VF-2 viewfinder provides 1.15x maginification, rotates 90-degrees
--New C-AF Target Registration locks onto a subject and tracks it as it moves through the frame
--iEnhance mode intensifies colors
--Bigger than the E-P1, but ever so slightly: 4.74"(W) x 2.75" (H) x 1.37" (D)
--Body weight of 11.1 ounces
--Image stablization in the body
--12.3-megapixel Live MOS image sensor
--TruePic V Image Processing promises lower noise levels at ISO 6400
--3-inch LCD with 230,000 pixels. Viewing angle of 176-degrees
--Uncompressed CD-quality 16 bit/44.1kHz Linear PCM stereo recording capability
--19 scene-select modes
--Internal Digital Level Sensor that detects the camera's pitch and roll and indicates it on the control panel

Question: I need a remote shutter release for my Sony Alpha 300. The only models listed on the Sony website are the RM-L1AM, which seems compatible only with the A100, and the RM-S1AM, which doesn’t list any compatibility. Help! Billy Haake Charlotte, NC

Answer: Get either model. The A300 will accept both of those wired remotes. The difference is the length of the cable—3 meters (9.8 feet) versus 1 meter (3.3 feet), respectively. With a higher-end Alpha, though, you’d get much greater flexibility. With the A700 and A900, Sony includes a cool wireless remote in the box. (Are you listening, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, and Pentax?)

Got a question? E-mail us at PopPhoto@bonniercorp.com. Also, visit the Tech Support forum at forums.popphoto.com.

Question: I visited the Outer Banks in North Carolina last spring, and while clamming with my friends I saw a perfect view of the shoreline. But the water was 3 feet deep, and getting the shot required a tripod. When I return next year, I want to be prepared. Can you suggest some type of waterproofing gadget for my tripod’s legs? Chaddie Crumm Via E-mail

Answer: We know of no product that can waterproof those legs, but you could try wrapping each leg in plastic garbage bags, or simply use an inexpensive, disposable tripod. But if you plan to plunge in often, there’s a tripod kit specifically made for surfside: the Gitzo Ocean Traveler ($1,125, street). Its carbon-fiber legs use waterproof locks of corrosion resistant stainless steel. The kit includes an unusual ballhead that can be quickly disassembled and cleaned before salt water, sand, and other corrosive agents can attack.

-- Popular Photography Staff

Got a question? E-mail us at PopPhoto@bonniercorp.com. Also, visit the Tech Support forum at forums.popphoto.com.

The Nikon vs. Canon debate has raged on for years, each side winning over its fair share of die-hard fans. But, Manny Williams went far out of his way to show his allegiance to the big N. He now has a rather large tattoo of his D3X forever etched into his own forearm. It's nice to see someone using their fanboyism for the sake of art, rather than using it to fuel caps-lock-laden internet arguments. Manny is a professional photographer and has been for quite some time, so there's a good chance his boss (if he has one) will be fine with his new ink.

Question: I don’t print many photos—I enjoy them primarily on my computer and plasma television. I believe my computer monitor supports only sRGB. I know Adobe RGB shows a wider color range than sRGB, but if I shoot in Adobe RGB will it look better on my monitor? What color space should I shoot in?
-- Eric Schurr Via e-mail

Answer: Although the latest TVs and monitors can display more colors than the sRGB color space can hold, the default for most of your devices will most likely be sRBG. Color spaces that have a wider gamut (such as Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB) are useful when you’re editing and printing; sRGB is useful when you can’t color manage (e.g., in e-mail and on your TV). Our advice? Shoot RAW + JPEG, and set your JPEGs for sRGB. That way you’ll have JPEGs to display and share immediately, but the RAW images will keep color depth for those times when you decide you want to print.

-- Popular Photography Staff

If you have been waiting for Canon to unleash an update at the top of their DSLR line-up, you might want to get that credit card ready. As the name would suggest, this $4,999 body is a follow up to the 1D Mark III, to which it's almost physically identical. Inside, however, lives a completely new 16.1-megapixel APS-H CMOS sensor. The pixels are actually smaller than they were on the Mark III (5.7 microns down from 7.2), but Canon claims to have actually reduced noise levels. We're certainly glad to hear it, because the expanded ISO range goes from 50 all the way up to the 102,400 mark hit last week by Nikon's D3S.

Look quickly at this photo and you see a frog perched on something. Look closer, and you realize: It’s a human finger. The pose startlingly reveals the incredibly tiny size of the frog, Eleutherodactylus Iberia, believed to be the smallest frog on the planet. The out-of-focus background, in the Cuchillas del Toa Biosphere Reserve in Cuba, looks almost like a painted backdrop.

National Geographic shooter Steve Winter (www.stevewinterphoto.com) had tried many conventional shots—the frog on a leaf, for example—but wasn’t satisfied with them. So he tried posing the frog on the finger of a park ranger. “He worked the situation hard for such a little frog,” laughs an assistant. “That was the last situation he tried, and it was the one that worked.”

Hoboken, NJ-based Winter exposed Fujichrome Velvia 50 for 1/200 sec at f/22 in a handheld Canon EOS-1V and 16–35mm f/2.8L Canon EF lens with an extension tube. A Lumedyne strobe with fiber optic cable lit the frog.

-- Dan Richards (From the October 2009 Issue of Popular Photography)

A huge part of photography is being able to select moments in time and capture them. Not just the visual aspects, but the true essence of a moment. But, it's no secret that the rise of digital photography has brought on a wave of "shoot first, decide later" shooters, the pinnacle of which seems to be this little, square camera from the UK. Originally designed to help Alzheimer's patients, the ViconRevue is worn around your neck and takes pictures at standard intervals ranging from 30 seconds and up. It also has sensors that tell the camera when a person is in front of it or it has entered new surroundings, so it can capture potentially important events. Up to 30,000 of the images are stored on 1 GB of internal memory. Having seen those numbers, you can certainly guess at the quality of the images. Samples at NewScientist.com suggest that they're lo-res, soft-focus affairs with tons of barrel distortion and chromatic aberration for miles. But, we're still very early in the life cycle.