Episode 458: Alice Austen, Snow Leopard, OS26

Show Notes

Welcome back to the show everyone Liam Douglas here with the Liam Photography Podcast. This is episode 458 for the week of June 12th, 2025. In today’s episode Alice Austen a Snow Leopard OS 26 and more.

Alice Austen

The home-turned-museum of Alice Austen, one of America’s earliest and most prolific female photographers, will receive thousands of her original images and negatives.

The Alice Austen House Museum (AAH) announced the repatriation of a near-complete archive of works by pioneering American photographer Alice Austen, famed for her intimate portraits of women’s lives in the Victorian era.

AAH, a historic house formerly known as Clear Comfort in Staten Island, was once the home and studio of Austen, and is now a museum and a member of the Historic House Trust.

When Austen was evicted from her home in 1945, she entrusted her collection of over 7,500 original prints and negatives to her longtime friend Loring McMillen at the Staten Island Historical Society, now known as Historic Richmond Town.

The collection, which represents the most comprehensive record of Austen’s life and work to date, is now being transferred from Historic Richmond Town to AAH. It includes more than 2,600 cellulose nitrate negatives, over 2,000 glass plate negatives, 1,500 photographic prints, and more than 300 additional items yet to be digitized.

As part of the initiative, a major collections project will launch in late 2025 to digitize and publish the entire archive online, expanding public access and inspiring new research into Austen’s life and legacy.

“The Alice Austen House is honored to partner with Historic Richmond Town in the deeply meaningful repatriation of Alice Austen’s glass plate negatives and printed photographs,” Victoria Munro, Executive Director of the Alice Austen House, says in a press release. “This transfer marks a pivotal moment — not only for our institution, but for the broader cultural landscape — at a time when LGBTQ+ communities face renewed threats of erasure.

“Museums must lead in preserving and amplifying these vital legacies, and we are proud to do so. As we celebrate our 40th year as a museum open to the public, welcoming Alice’s work back home is both historic and deeply moving.”

Austen was one of America’s earliest female photographers at a time when the art form was largely dominated by men. Born in 1866 into an affluent Staten Island family, Austen defied the restrictive conventions of the Victorian era by embracing a fiercely independent life and an uncompromising creative vision.

Introduced to photography at the age of ten by her uncle Oswald, Austen quickly developed a passion for the medium. Austen turned the second-floor closet of her home Clear Comfort into a darkroom after another uncle, a chemistry professor, showed her how to develop the glass plates she exposed.

Austen roamed around turn-of-the-century New York with a camera in hand and produced around 8,000 photographs in the course of her life. Many of her images captured immigrants, street vendors in the city as well as the inner lives and activities of Victorian women — offering a rare female perspective at the time.

Austen was independently wealthy for most of her life and has widely been considered an amateur photographer because she did not make her living from photography. However, she did copyright and publish some of her images — even being commissioned to take on paid photography assignments.

Austen lived for nearly 50 years with her partner Gertrude Tate, and is celebrated today as a trailblazer in LGBTQ+ history.

In 1945, Austen was forced to sell her home Clear Comfort after losing her savings in the Wall Street Crash and financially struggling throughout the Great Depression. She transferred her photographs to Staten Island Historical Society and moved into an apartment with Tate.

By 1949, the photographer’s arthritis became so severe that she became too difficult to care for. She was declared a pauper of the state and was moved to a poor house. In 1951, historian and former LIFE magazine writer Oliver Jensen discovered her photographs, which had been transferred to the Staten Island Historical Society. Jensen helped publish the photos in LIFE and other magazines, helping raise enough funds to transfer Austen to a private nursing home. His efforts not only brought her work to public attention but also led to the first exhibition of her photography.

In recent decades, Austen has been embraced as a key figure in early American photography and queer cultural history. Her former home, now the Alice Austen House Museum in Staten Island, is both a historic site and one of the few LGBTQ+ designated landmarks in New York City.

Snow Leopard

Photographer Inger Vandyke is a professional photographer of 25 years and has traveled to remote areas of the world capturing incredible photos. But her most famous image is one where you can’t even see the subject.

Vandyke’s photos of a snow leopard hunt were the first ever to be captured at close range. But the reason why the photos continue to go viral, as they did recently, is because it’s almost impossible to even spot the elusive big cat.

Captured in the mountains of Ladakh, India, while on an expedition with her company Wild Images Photo Tours, Vandyke tells PetaPixel that she and five guests had been tracking an “old male snow leopard” for a few days when a sighting was reported.

“We arrived just as he found a rock ledge to have an afternoon sleep,” Vandyke recalls. “It was a particularly cold day with clear skies and a wind chill of around -10C [14F]. Despite the freezing temperatures, I said that we should find a large rock to hide near so we could wait.”

“From years of work in the mountains, I knew that predators are mostly active around dusk and since we had arrived at approximately 2 PM, I realized that this might be our only snow leopard sighting for the day,” she continues. “So I thought we should sit down and see if this old cat would do something later.”

As the temperatures continued to plunge and the Sun was passing behind the mountain, a group of blue sheep walked into the valley — the main prey of the snow leopard on Ladakh.

“I wondered if the arrival of these animals might spur the old leopard into action. They did. When he sensed them nearby he woke from his slumber and slowly crept down a scree slope to see if he could hunt them. Realizing there was nowhere to hide, he went back uphill and then down a neighbouring scree slope which was separated from the original one by a rocky crag. It was there he found a successful place to hide and that’s when I took the photo.”

That was six years ago. Vandyke says the photo went viral online and is likely her most famous image.

“Even now when I look at it, I wonder how many leopards we might have walked past in the mountains before we finally saw this one. They hide themselves so well in the mountains of Ladakh!” She adds.

“I still find it heartwarming that it gets an occasional revival through social media and the press. The photo is like the ultimate ‘Where’s Waldo’ wildlife image with some people able to spot the leopard and many that are unable to do so.”

Vandyke continues to lead photo tours as director and head photographer of Wild Images Photo Tours. More of her work can be found on her Instagram.

Leopards are famously hard to spot, Hemant Dabi took a photo of an incredibly well-camouflaged leopard, also in India, a few years ago.

Apple OS26

So this past Monday Apple kicked off their annual World Wide Developer’s Conference at the Steve Jobs theater on their campus in Cupertino, CA.

One of the biggest announcements that Time Cook and the team revealed is that starting this fall ALL of Apple’s Operating Systems will be streamlined in their naming conventions. They are moving to a two digit year naming convention so starting this fall iOS will be iOS26, iPadOS will be iPadOS26, AppleTVOS will be AppleTVOS26, Apple Watch will be watchOS26, Vision Pro will be visionOS26 and so on.

One of the major revamps that Apple revealed is what they call Liquid Glass so that more of the Operating Systems menus and indicators will be more transparent and out of the way. They also are adding a glassy look to the icons which looks impressive and elegant. And specific to the iPhone but possibly being added to iPadOS as well is that the Operating System will not now you know when you need to clean your camera lenses on your device:

The quietly introduced Lens Cleaning Hint is a highly useful feature in iOS 26 that detects dirt or smudges on the camera lens of an iPad or iPhone and notifies the user to wipe it before taking a photo.

Although the exact method behind this feature is not yet confirmed, Aaron Perris, a researcher for MacRumors, posted a screenshot of what the Lens Cleaning Hint looks like in the settings app for iOS 26. When an iPhone or iPad user selects to turn this feature on, Apple says it: “Displays a suggestion when the camera lens should be cleaned to improve image quality.”

Presumably, the Lens Cleaning Hint identifies lens grime automatically just before a picture is taken. This reminder can help prevent blurry or low-quality photos caused by fingerprints, dust, or other debris on the lens. While a small detail, it can make a noticeable difference in image quality and could become a highly practical iOS 26 feature for iPhone and iPad photographers.

Other new features that Apple briefly showed in a slide at WWDC 2025 on Monday include “Events in Photos,” which presumably means iOS 26 will add support for events in the Photos app. There are also “Photo previews,” indicating that Messages will gain the ability to show image previews on the iPhone. Apple also unveiled “Relevant video thumbnails in search results.” Based on this description, search results in Photos may now include specific parts of a video that are relevant to the search term.

Z8 Firmware

Nikon has announced firmware version 3.00 for its Nikon Z8 full-frame mirrorless camera. The major firmware update introduces new support for pixel-shift shooting, enhanced Picture Control functionality, and significantly improved autofocus performance. Nikon says the firmware update makes the Z8 faster, more flexible, and an even more powerful high-resolution camera.

The Nikon Z8’s improved pixel-shift shooting can now be used in combination with focus-shift shooting or AE bracketing settings. With the firmware 3.00 update, the Z8 is now the first full-frame mirrorless camera on the market to offer these settings without the need for external accessories, promising a simplified pixel-shift workflow that can better leverage the Z8’s high-resolution image sensor. Being able to combine focus shift and pixel-shift shooting could prove to be a boon for macro photographers, enabling them to not only take higher-resolution photos but also capture the images they need to create a focus-stacked photo with an expanded depth of field.

Pixel-shift itself was added to the Z8 in the 2.00 firmware update in February 2024. It allows users to combine multiple, slightly shifted images to create up to a 180-megapixel final photo. It requires the use of Nikon NX software on a computer to create the final composite.

When used in conjunction with AE bracketing, users can more accurately capture pixel-shift shots of subjects with high contrast while preventing moiré artifacts that are more likely to occur when photographing continuous patterns. Essentially, users can capture pixel-shift data across multiple exposure brackets to ensure they have sufficient data for both highlight and shadow regions, resulting in a pixel-shifted HDR image.

Nikon has also tweaked pixel-shift file management on the Z8, allowing users to create a new folder for each pixel-shift sequence. Furthermore, users can now enable pixel-shift in self-timer mode and lock white balance, even when using automatic white balance, two features that were previously unavailable on the Z8.

With firmware version 3.00, Z8 owners can utilize Flexible Color Picture Control to create their own unique looks inside Nikon’s processing and editing software, NX Studio. Within NX Studio, Z8 owners can adjust image parameters such as color hue, brightness, and contrast and then save their specific look to a memory card. When inserted into the Z8, users can then save these custom looks on the Z8 as Custom Picture Controls. Like other Picture Controls, these can be previewed in real-time while shooting, allowing photographers to see what the final image will look like while composing in the viewfinder or on the rear display.

Firmware version 3.00 introduces an in-camera focus limiter to the Z8, which restricts autofocus to a selected range. This is similar to the focus limiter switches on high-end telephoto lenses, which can limit autofocus to specific distances but with more customization options. Z8 users can specify precise minimum and maximum focus distances, ensuring more accurate focus on the intended subject, provided they are a predictable distance from the camera. Nikon also notes that this feature can be beneficial when photographing subjects partially obscured by foreground objects, such as wildlife, or when trying to prevent background distractions from being detected, as in macro work.

Nikon Z8 firmware 3.00 includes other helpful features and improvements, including the ability to select a subject type for detection priority when using manual focus, focusing at maximum aperture in live view, 400% magnification in the zoom function, new custom wide-area AF setting patterns, a slower release mode option, a new [FINE] image-quality setting for improved image quality when using High-Speed Frame Capture+, and the option to use an external mic (wired or wireless) when recording voice memos.

Specifically for videographers, View Assist has been improved in firmware version 3.00. N-Log View Assist now features enhanced contrast and detail to deliver a more accurate waveform exposure and display on external monitors, making it easier for users to work with N-Log, which would otherwise appear washed out.

The new firmware also allows Profoto A10 owners to use its white LED as a powerful AF-assist illuminator on the Nikon Z8. While this is a niche use case, it is nonetheless worth mentioning.

Nikon Z8 firmware 3.00 will be released “soon.” PetaPixel will share updated availability information as soon as it is available.

Rollei’s First Lens

German photo company Rollei has announced its first lens, which the company calls “the beginning of a new era.” The full-frame Rollei AF 85mm f/1.8 STM will ship next month in Sony E and Nikon Z-mount versions.

Before exploring the new lens, it is worth taking a slight detour to explore the Rollei brand. The Rollei name is, of course, a legendary one in photography. The company was founded in 1920 in Germany by Paul Franke and Reinhold Heidecke.

This original company lasted an impressive 75 years, with a few name changes, before being acquired in 1995 by Samsung Techwin, a part of the South Korean Samsung Group conglomerate. Samsung sold the company back to its original owners a few years later, who then promptly sold Rollei again to a Danish investment company in 2004.

The newly renamed Rollei GmbH relocated to Berlin and underwent a series of restructuring efforts. In 2007, Rollei was split off into three companies. Franke & Heidecke GmbH, Feinmechanik und Optik, worked on medium-format cameras and slide projection products, while another off-shoot, RCP-Technik GmbH & Co. KG in Hamburg, Germany, focused on rebranded digital cameras. This company owned the rights to the Rollei and Rolleiflex brands. A third company, Rollei Metric GmbH, handled photogrammetry.

Unfortunately, the newly formed Rollei medium-format camera operations went under and have since been dissolved. A new company, DW Photo, was founded with many of the same leaders but a smaller staff. This company continues to produce Hy6 cameras and lenses, as well as perform repairs.

That brings the story back to the Rollei name itself. RCP-Technik GmbH & Co. KG changed its name to Rollei GmbH & Co. KG in 2015 and is the company behind the new Rollei 85mm lens, alongside other photography equipment, including tripods, lights and flashes, filters and adapters, backpacks, and more.

It is vital not to confuse the new Rollei lens with the Rollei 35AF camera released by Mint last year, as that company separately licensed the Rollei branding for its new AF-equipped 35mm analog camera. The Rollei behind the new 85mm prime lens is also entirely separate from Rollei Analog, which formed in 2004 as a licensor of the Rollei brand and makes film, paper, and film chemistry products.

As for the Rollei 85mm f/1.8 lens itself, Rollei says in a translated press release that its new full-frame prime combines “proven Rollei quality with state-of-the-art technology” to set “new standards in image quality and user-friendliness.”

The company notes that 85mm is an ideal focal length for portrait photography, a belief shared by many companies as fast 85mm lenses are very common. Both Sony and Nikon make 85mm f/1.8 primes for their mirrorless camera systems. Each also makes more expensive, faster 85mm prime lenses, the Sony FE 85mm f/1.4 GM II and the Nikon Z 85mm f/1.2 S. There are also numerous third-party offerings, including the Viltrox AF 85mm f/1.8 that shares some features in common with Rollei’s lens. Viltrox and Rollei have a collaborative relationship, so it is worth looking at how the two 85mm lenses compare.

Like the Viltrox AF 85mm f/1.8, the Rollei 85mm f/1.8 features 10 lens elements arranged across seven groups, although the precise elements differ slightly. The Viltrox lens features one ED lens and four HD lenses, in contrast to the Rollei’s two ED and two HR lenses. The Rollei 85mm f/1.8 also has 11 aperture blades, while Viltrox’s lens has nine. The autofocus lenses offer very similar maximum magnifications, 0.12x for the Rollei and 0.13x for the Viltrox.

The Rollei 85mm f/1.8 also employs a different style than the Viltrox AF 85mm f/1.8, sporting a much more old-school look with a chunky grip and textured black finish. The Rollei lens also has an unusual orange ring surrounding its front element. It also features a huge Rollei logo on its barrel.

As DPReview notes in its coverage, while the Rollei 85mm f/1.8 doesn’t appear to be a rehoused Viltrox lens, it share many aspects in common with the 7Artisans 85mm f/1.8 released last year for E- and Z-mount cameras. Both lenses feature the same optical formula, 11-bladed aperture, and STM focus mechanism. The 7Artisans 85mm f/1.8 lens is $299.

In any event, Rollei promises sharp image quality, minimized ghosting and flare, and smooth and quiet autofocus performance.

The Rollei AF 85mm f/1.8 lens is available to order now and will release on July 9 for 299 euros, or around $340. Rollei does not appear to have an official U.S. distributor at present, although its products are regularly available on Amazon.     Currently, the lens is not listed on Amazon, but this could change at any time.

Lincoln

A rare, signed image of Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad — the only time the former president was ever photographed with a family member — is up for sale.

The intimate photographic image of Lincoln and his youngest son is up for auction by Bonhams in New York as part of its “Fine Books, Maps & Manuscripts” sale which ends on June 25. The photo, signed by Lincoln, comes with an estimate of $60,000 to $90,000.

The portrait shows Lincoln posed with his son Thomas, more commonly known as Tad, who was 10-years-old at the time. The photograph — which was taken by Anthony Berger who was working at Mathew Brady’s studio in Washington, D.C. on February 9, 1864 — was one of the most popular images of Lincoln at the time.

During a break in the photo session so Berger could change the camera plate, Lincoln and his son Tad began looking through one of Brady’s large photo albums.  Seeing this moment, Berger was inspired to pose them together: Lincoln sitting with Tad standing beside him, both looking at the large album filled with cartes de visite.

Lincoln enjoyed the moment with his favorite son, even putting on his eyeglasses for the photo. Tad was dressed in his best clothes, complete with a watch fob and chain. The resulting image became one of the most intimate and poignant photographs ever taken of Lincoln.

In unedited versions of the photograph, such as this one, the album’s brass clasps and the four cartes mounted on each page are clearly visible. However, Lincoln worried that the album might be mistaken for a lectern-sized Bible. After Lincoln’s death, some versions of the photo were retouched to make it appear as though he was holding a Bible, just as the President had feared.

What makes the photograph being offered by Bonhams especially rare is the fact that Lincoln signed the image himself. In June 1864 , Franklin W. Pitcher visited the White House and had a number of photographs of Lincoln signed, some of which were likely for inclusion in a sanitary fair. These were fund-raising events held in various cities on behalf of the United States Sanitary Commission to raise money and supplies for the Union Army during the American Civil War. Pitcher wrote a note on the back of the portrait that said: “Genuine Autograph of A. Lincoln procured in June 1864 by F.W. Pitcher.”

Wrong Couple

Wedding photography is a complicated business and depending on the job, things can get messy — especially if there’s more than one wedding party present at the location.

I discovered this once while shooting a wedding at a city clerk’s office. Capturing images of guests waiting outside the venue, I soon realized there were two wedding parties gathered at the same time, and I had taken photos of the wrong one. But that was nothing compared to what happened to another wedding photographer.

According to a post on Reddit, one wedding photographer on the way to capture pictures of a groom’s party getting ready in their hotel ran into a group of groomsmen in the elevator and, naturally, presumed they had found their subjects.

“My older sister hired a photographer that she had worked with before, but the photographer brought a partner to help out, whom my sister had not met,” the Reddit poster explains in the Wedding Shaming forum. “They got married in the ballroom of a hotel and so everyone got ready within the confines of the hotel as well.”

The sister of the bride explains that the primary photographer was with her and the rest of the bridal party, snapping pictures of them getting ready and then eventually a few first-look photos.

“At some point, the groom said something to the photographer about nobody showing up to take pictures of the groom’s party getting ready,” the bride’s sister says.  But it turned out the photographer’s assistant had been taking photos of groomsmen getting ready, just the wrong group.

“The problem was there was a second wedding party getting ready in the hotel at the same time that none of us knew about, which just so happened to be the people the photographer ran into,” she explains. “So, an entirely separate wedding party got photographed by mistake. Why nobody in the party questioned it or why the photographer didn’t verify, nobody knows.”

The unfortunate episode has a happy ending. Not only did the photographer give the bride and groom a discount but they tracked down the random groomsmen that the second photographer took pictures of and gave the photos to them as a wedding gift.

“I don’t think she ever got an explanation as to why nobody in the other groom’s party didn’t question the random photographer in their room though,” the bride’s sister adds.  My old photography teacher used to tell me to “never assume”, and that is sage advice during a hectic wedding shoot when it’s always worth double-checking the details. PetaPixel’s complete wedding photography guide is full of great tips for those interested in wedding photography.

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