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Sure, a picture is worth a thousand words. But what happens if you miss the picture?
You know the ones we mean — those once-in-a-lifetime photos that got away. Because you left your camera at home. Or, if you’re like us, you left the darn thing on manual and got a nice […]

	This Photojojo made possible by…

Sure, a picture is worth a thousand words. But what happens if you miss the picture?

You know the ones we mean — those once-in-a-lifetime photos that got away. Because you left your camera at home. Or, if you’re like us, you left the darn thing on manual and got a nice solid black jpeg for your troubles.

When Michael David Murphy missed the perfect photo opp while in Ethiopia, he turned the moment into a vivid account of the photograph that wasn’t. Unphotographable was born.

The site catalogues “exceptional mistakes” — photographs that didn’t happen but whose stories he must tell anyway.

They’re the most real, perfect photographs you’ll never see.

Unphotographable[via Kottke]

p.s. Many thanks to squarespace for sponsoring the next few Photojojo newsletters. Squarespace takes the work out of building beautiful, ad-free portfolios for professional photographers.

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Over a year after Leica rolled out its action plan to address those buggy M8s fresh off the factory floor, the digicam company is announcing yet another upgrade path, but this time it’s not on the house. Apparently, M8 owners that fall deeply in love with their shooter can get their name on a “waiting list,” and once their number is called, they get the privilege of shipping their device to Germany where a number of tweaks can be made. Reportedly, each M8 is suitable for upgrading, and aside from getting sent back with a fresh two-year warranty, it can also be fitted with a scratch-resistant LCD monitor cover (um, riveting?) and a new “electronically-controlled metal-blade slotted shutter that offers less noise and vibration.” Unfortunately, these changes will supposedly set one back €1,200 ($1,775), but alas, Leica suggests that said payment will make the M8 a “lifetime investment.” Right, just like that $9,000 desktop you procured in 1996.

Another colorful point-and-shoot, you say? Yes, but with a difference: General Imaging’s E-1050 uses Geotate’s clever approach to geotagging your photos. Add that to a 10-megapixel sensor, 5x zoom, electronic image stabilization and face detection and red eye removal that’s in vogue this year, and you’ve got an interesting little package. Unfortunately, the unit was tethered by its HDMI port to a TV, so we couldn’t play around with the unit and give away our location, so we’ll have to wait and see if geotagging is enough of a checkmark to differentiate this little digicam.

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Step on down into Nikon’s booth with us. Lots of goodies on display here, but what really struck us was how much the central section of the booth was taken up by (gasp!) photos. Seriously, it had a bit of a gallery feel, except with way more people. But we’re here to get our geek on, so it’s over to the gear counters we go! The stripped-down D3 body was nice, and Nikon showed off one in cross section as well, just so you don’t have to cut your own in half.

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Here’s twin brother to Pentax’s K20D DSLR, the Samsung GX-20. It looks like a nice bit of kit, and we’re really curious to see if any differences between the two as a result of Samsung doing its own thing with the JPEG processing. If you’ve been watching either this model or the K20D, you know the specs: 14.6-megapixel CMOS, live view LCD and ISO that you can crank up to 3200. Note the Pentax KAF mount, so you can put Pentax glass on this body; and there are some nice lenses in the Pentax stable to be sure. Also, Samsung was showing off their extended grip with wireless capability.

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The highlight of an otherwise lackluster PMA 2008 came not from Nikon, Canon, or any of the other big name companies, but rather General Imaging: GE’s new camera division announced that it will release one of the world’s first point-and-shoots with embedded GPS. Well, to say that the E1050 has true GPS would not be totally accurate — but the very features it lacks are what make it possible to incorporate geotagging capabilities in the first place. You see, this model only contains a GPS radio courtesy of New Zealand-based Rakon, but no baseband chip to process the data in order to create a “fix”; rather, an NXP Semiconductor spinoff called Geotate provides server-connected software that does the heavy-duty calculations once photos have been transferred over. This results in almost no hit to battery life or endless waits for a solid fix.

It works like this: every time the shutter is triggered, the camera’s memory card briefly captures the raw data from the GPS radio, associating it with each photo. Then, once the pictures have been imported into Geotate’s proprietary client, auxiliary location data is downloaded from a central server, which is then synthesized with the camera data using local resources to establish actual coordinates. What’s more, the Geotate software hooks in to Wikipedia as well as the popular mapping and photo-sharing services, giving you real-world information about your shots while also allowing you to map them out and upload to Flickr, Picasa, and friends.

Geotate tells us that besides the E1010, we can also expect to see the platform incorporated into future cams designed by Taiwanese OEM Altek, with such a reference design pictured in the gallery below, along with one for a geotagging peripheral that snaps into a DSLR hotshoe. In the longer term, Geotate hopes to embed its low-cost solution (all that’s needed is a small radio and some flash memory) in all sorts of products, from PCs to sneakers to soda bottles. And that’s where the name of the company comes from: Geotate stands for “GEOgraphic noTATion,” with the ultimate goal being the creation of an ecosystem in which we search not by “what,” but by “where.”

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We’ve harshed on GE’s cameras before, but the company showed up at PMA with a new model called the E1050 (pictured) that’s actually pretty slick. The 10 megapixel shooter features a 5x optical zoom, HD-res video mode, HDMI out, a 3-inch touchscreen, and an integrated GPS radio that syncs up with your computer to automatically geotag your shots. All for just $249 — even if thing takes just average pictures, that’s quite a bargain. We’ll have a hands-on soon, and read on for specs on the rest of GE’s 2008 lineup, all of which include face and blink detection.

Continue reading GE unveils the geotagging 10 megapixel E1050, eight other new cams

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of excitement when Pentax releases new cameras in its Optio range — do you people only love them for theirDSLRs? — but nonetheless, we gave them the same hands-on treatment that everyone else gets. Below you’ll find the new S12, E50, and M50 in all their seemingly-unpopular glory, despite the fact that they seemed like fairly stylish, solidly-built products to us. Still with us? Great, we’ve got a lot of multi-colored point-and-shoot action in store for you.

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Sony fans, the fun’s not over yet. Besides going hands-on with that pair of new 300-series alpha DSLRs and that alphabet soup of H, S, and T series cams, we also managed to take a look at all four new W series Cyber-shots. Differing mostly in resolution and optical zoom, the 10.1 megapixel DSC-W170, 8.1 megapixel DSC-W150 and DSC-W130, and 7.2 megapixel DSC-W120 all feature the company’s “smile shutter” technology, which we found to work pretty well at recognizing our grins during a demo. Look for these to start shipping in March and April, for between $200 and $300.

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