Popular Photography Magazine

This incredibly huge lens is the Perkin Elmer 36-inch f/4.0 Aerial Camera Lens, and is up for sale on eBay for a mere $5,000 — though shipping it wont' be cheap. At 35-inches long and with a 12-inch diameter lens, it's a 200 lbs monstrosity, designed for use by governmental aerial photography. According to the listing, this lens was used by the U-2 SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, and others of this type were used in the Samos satellite system.

CES 2012 let us see the internal organs of a bunch of hardware, but all of it pails in price when compared to the behemoth that is the Red Epic-X. The folks at Wireless Goodness managed to get their hands on the FCC teardown shots of the high-end camera, and its been doing the rounds ever since.

As any photographer knows, no matter how advanced the camera, auto focus has its flaws, especially compared to the human eye. That’s because most autofocus mechanisms use contrast levels to determine how in or out of focus an image is, which takes time and battery power and relies on the assumption that best contrast equals best focus.

In a news release today, Kodak announced that it is filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a move that will hopefully give it some time to restructure and sell of its substantial intellectual assets.