The Kansas City Royals—it’s a baseball team, I had to look it up—posted a dark, moody preview photo of the new team uniform. You really can’t see much but enterprising fans who brightened the pic were met with a secret message: “nice try”.

Hidden details

This isn’t the first time this year that people have tried to use image-editing apps to reveal hidden details—though it hasn’t always been in the name of fun. 

The Silhouette Challenge on TikTok started out as a fun way for people to feel empowered and good about their bodies. It involved using a heavy, red filter to obscure all but the outline of one’s physique. Of course, Internet “creeps” quickly ruined everything. Tips for reducing the silhouette effect through desaturation and image brightening (to catch a glimpse of more than was intended) quickly began circulating. Sigh.

On a less gross/creepy note, I’ve used a similar technique when I was playing the zombie videogame The Last of Us: Part Two. Look, zombies are scary and to make getting through some of the darker areas easier, I just cranked up the brightness on my TV.

Steganography

And, of course, hiding messages in plain sight has a long history in spycraft. The technique is called steganography, and it can be used to sneak messages into almost anything. 

One of the biggest modern examples is printers: Most color laser printers add a series of yellow dots to every sheet they print. The dots encode the unique identification number of the printer, when the documents were printed, and things like that. It’s probably how whistleblower Reality Winner was caught, though, unsurprisingly, the NSA is staying quiet. 

This is, of course, not quite as amusing as what the Royals did, but still working on much the same idea. 

Doing it yourself

If you want to hide a Kansas City Royals’ style message in your own photo, it’s pretty simple to do with an app like Adobe Photoshop. I played around with a few different methods and this is what worked best for me:

Find an image you like with some nice deep shadows and open it in your image editor of choice. 

Use a Text layer to add your message and set the text color so that it’s roughly as bright as the surrounding area, but a different color. I went with this saturated blue to stand out from my green T-shirt. 

Add a load of contrast darkening all the deep shadows even more. I used a Curves layer, but use whatever you’re comfortable with. 

Save your image and put it out into the world. Anyone will be able to decode it by brightening all the shadows a ridiculous amount. 

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Camera troubles are the worst—just ask the engineers at NASA. They’re currently trying to fix the Hubble Space Telescope, which is in safe mode for the second time this year. And they have to do it remotely. 

What’s happening to Hubble?

Hubble has been in orbit taking pictures of far away galaxies for more than 30 years. It was launched in April, 1990. And bar the occasional breakdown, bit of routine maintenance, and upgrades, Hubble has been snapping away ever since. It’s taken more than a million photos that have fuelled over 18,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers. Suffice it to say, it’s had a serious scientific impact. 

But Hubble is getting old. It was last serviced in 2009, before the Space Shuttle Program was shut down, so it’s not surprising that the occasional hiccup is happening. 

In June, Hubble was shut down for over a month because of a glitch with a payload computer from the 1980s. NASA was able to get things up and running again by switching to a backup.

Hubble’s current predicament is thought to be less serious. All the scientific instruments are healthy; instead, the problem is with “multiple losses of synchronization messages.” 

Since Hubble entered safe mode late last month, the engineers have already got the Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument back online and making scientific observations. They’re continuing to work on fixes for the other instruments using ground based models. Whatever solutions they do find, however, will all be software-based—there are currently no plans for another service mission to Hubble. 

What’s next for Hubble?

While Hubble might be on the way out, it’s far from gone. It’s hoped that it will keep working until at least 2026, if not 2030—though that obviously depends on the ability of the engineers to keep fixing things from the ground. 

But the bigger news is that Hubble’s successor is on the way. 

The James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to launch from French Guiana on the December 18, this year. It is a significantly larger telescope than Hubble, and will focus on observing infrared light to explore the furthest reaches of our universe—and look back in time. 

Unlike Hubble, the JWST won’t orbit the Earth. Instead, it will be placed at the L2 “Lagrange Point”, where the gravity of the sun and Earth combined will keep the satellite locked in a similar orbit to ours, just a bit further out. This will enable it to keep cool, so that its infrared instruments can do their thing. Of course, that’s assuming all goes well—NASA has a list of 344 ways the JWST could fail.

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Pepsi and Polaroid have just announced a fresh new retro collaboration, courtesy of Retrospekt, a specialist restoration shop out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

The Pepsi x Polaroid 600 camera is built from refurbished Polaroid internals, though they’re inside a brand-new blue molded plastic case. The whole thing is inspired by a much earlier Pepsi-Polaroid collaboration from the 1980s—and is officially endorsed by all parties involved. Retro really is back, baby. 

The camera deets

The original Pepsi-Polaroid was very much an 80s camera. Instead of just copying it directly, Retrospekt used Pepsi’s 1992 rebranding, featured in the famous Cindy Crawford Super Bowl ad as inspiration for the design.

“When we went to create a new camera with a throwback feel, we didn’t want to rehash what the original camera had already done,” says Michael Kempen, Retrospekt’s Creative Director. “And since Polaroid was still producing this style of camera into the ‘90s, it means these logos and brand elements are an authentic fit for the camera’s original era.” 

This means that the Pepsi x Polaroid 600 isn’t strictly a retro camera. It’s got a brand new design, and it’s made from refurbished vintage internals, but it’s really its own weird thing. It’s like a retro camera from an alternative universe. 

In terms of specs, the Pepsi x Polaroid 600 is pretty standard. It doesn’t have sonar autofocus or a close-up mode, like some of the more desirable 600-series cameras. Though it does have the built-in flash, which you can override. Its fixed focus 110mm f/10 lens is going to give you the classic Polaroid look with whatever Polaroid 600 film you choose to use. 

Who on earth is Retrospekt?

At the core of this wild Pepsi x Polaroid collab is Retrospekt, whose mission is “to give you a product with years of history that works like it was made yesterday.” It does this by offering a combination of fully restored gear, refurbished and improved gear, stuff that looks like it was made in the 80s but is brand new, and weird projects like this one. 

I’m not quite sure how I feel about all this as an idea. As much as I love vintage film gear and retro projects, half the fun of it all is that nothing ever works as you’d hope. When I want reliability, I shoot with my Canon 5D Mark III—when I want to embrace the inner turmoil of the universe, I go vintage. 

Still, if new-old gear takes your fancy, Retrospekt is probably right up your alley.

How do I buy the Pepsi x Polaroid 600

The Pepsi x Polaroid 600 instant film camera is available right now from Retrospekt for $160—not including any film. We have no idea how many are available, or if more will be made, so if you want one, you should probably buy it soon. If you’re after a more traditional Polaroid camera, Retrospekt also has a full range of restored models.

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