While the rear camera in the iPhone continues to improve by leaps and bounds — and we can expect the iPhone 5S to continue that trend — the front FaceTime camera improves at a far more glacial pace. In an age of selfies, the iPhone 5’s front facing camera isn’t that much better at offering the sort of fidelity of resolution necessary to deeply inspect our blackheads and pores than the iPhone 4 was.
That’s probably about to change though. Omnivision — maker of the iPhone 5’s front-facing camera sensor — have just announced the OV2724, which crams a full 1080p sensor (or 2MP, compared to the current camera’s 1.2MP sensor) into a tiny cube small enough to go into the next iPhone. And it even shoots at 60 frames per second and offers some impressive dynamic range to boot.
It’s going into production this summer. With decent yields and some luck, that should make it ready for the iPhone 5S when it lands in fall.
The latest Lensbaby in the lineup is the Edge 80 optic, a plug-in 80mm blur-tastic chunk of glass for your existing Lensbaby body. It offers the same movable sweet-spot of all other Lensbabies, but in a portrait-friendly length.
Those quick-access camera straps which loop through a ring screwed into the tripod socket are fantastic and terrifying in equal measure. Fantastic because they really are fast, convenient and comfortable to use (just ask Cult of Mac’s Traci Dauphin, who I have never seen without an Olympus hanging from a Black Rapid strap around her neck); and terrifying because you’re hanging your expensive camera from a strap which could unscrew itself any any time.
Add to that the fact that you can’t use a tripod with the screw-in strap plate attached and you’ll see where this new Kickstarter gadget is coming from.
Sony is saying that their new Cybershot HX50V camera is the lightest, smallest 30x optical zoom-equipped camera in the world.
Seems like optical zoom is the new megapixels, at least as far as high-end point-n-shoots are concerned; it’s amazing to see the increasing zoom range camera makers are scrambling to pack into their pocketable shooters these days. For now, looks like Sony might just be the race leader.
Panasonic’s new LF1 is a Wi-Fi-sharing, fast-lens shooting RAW-capture camera which looks like a kind of remixed LX-series camera. It’s clearly aimed at smartphone users who want a little extra.
It’s funny: Back in high school I had a project called "Mount Julie" (which Julie never knew about), and now here in 2013 we see a new project called "Mount July." Coincidence? Probably…
Anyhow. Mount July will be a set of camera filters for film, stills and video which will add Instagram-like effects, using old-fashioned analog glass filters.
Got one of Fujifilm’s shiny new X100S rangefinder-style cameras? Or another of the company’s digicams with the fancy X-Trans sensor inside? Then go hit up your Software Update and install the new Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update.
Spider Monkey by Spider Holster Category: Camera Gear Works With: Anything Price: $17
I was going to ditch the standard review format for this post and instead make a gallery of different objects hung on my belt Using the neat little Spider Monkey accessory holster.
That was until I discovered that the adhesive tab that helps hold the Monkey’s Tab onto the target accessory is not reusable. Well, that might not be strictly true. It might well be reusable, but I will never find out because it is almost certainly unremovable.
It’s gotten to the stage that I’m so loaded up on cloud storage for my photos that I could toss my iPhone into the toilet and not lose a thing (well, apart from the action shot of the toilet bowl framing my shocked face as the iPhone shoots its last photo). But while Dropbox and Everpix are great, sometimes you just want to rock an old-school USB stick and transfer photos to and from you iPhone with a stick of plastic.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, all compact cameras looked like the Ricoh GR. they might not have been as sleek-looking, but they had big finger grips, a giant full-frame sensor (35mm) film and a fixed wideangle lens.
Now, proving that large sensors are the new black, the GR is packing a DSLR-sized APS-C sensor into its tiny body.
