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.
Just a few weeks back we brought you the then-cheap $100 ring-light for the iPhone, a cheap way to shoot flat fashion photos and videos with your favorite camera. Now, though, you can achieve the same thing for just $10.
Bonus: It’s a DIY project, so you have a great excuse to ignore your family this Christmas.
Ring flash — once the preserve of high-end (or deep-pocketed) fashion photographers and macro nerds with real, like, cameras — now in reach of us plebs with cameraphones. The LED Ringlight from Adorama is a dim-able, continuous light source that can now be used for video and non-synced camera lighting, and it costs just $100.
Here’s an incredibly neat little hack for making your iPhone’s flash suck less, and it’s marred only by the photo used to illustrate it, which features some kind of Android “phone.”
If you ever wondered how you might use colored gels on your iPhone’s flash, read on. Or just look at the picture — it’s pretty self explanatory (once you get over the inexplicable purchase of an Android handset anyway).
It’s hard to overstate my love of the Paparazzo light, despite the fact that I have never touched or even seen one outside of the photos on its Kickstarter page. Maybe it's the idea I like so much: it's an old-style flashgun which pumps out a ridiculous 300 lumens of subject-petrifying light whilst making you look like and old-school newspaperman.
Sony has long had an inexplicable love affair with proprietary connectors, accessories, anything. From Memory Sticks to ATRAC Minidiscs to annoying headphone sockets on phones, Sony’s philosophy seems to be "if you can piss off a customer, why not do it?"
And so it is with the NEX mirrorless cameras. Excellent devices in almost every way, unless you want to use a flash, in which case you have to spring for one of Sony’s own specialty units. Still, this customer hatred is at least good news for third-party accessory makers, and NEX Proshop will now sell you an adapter that adds a proper hot-shoe and PC socket to your NEX camera.
This DIY grid spot looks as professional as a store bought one. Photo Jeff Vier (CC BY-SA 2.0)
On of the funnest* things you can do with off-camera flash is to modify the light. This might mean squirting it through a “snoot” (some kind of tube or cone which focuses the light into a tight beam), reflecting it from a colored, uh, reflector, or firing it through a giant soft-box.
Or you can use a grid spot, an excellent tool for pointing your light at one single spot, far away, with a sharp fall-off into shadows at the edges. Sound expensive? It can be, unless you steal some drinking straws from your local fast food emporium and follow along with this how-to.
These fun filters are a great reason to charge some AAs and dig out that old abandoned flash
You have a camera, and maybe you have an old flashgun lying around the place. Problem: while you know what to do with the camera, even in all-manual mode, you are terrified of that flash. Used on top the camera it washes everything out and makes it look like a drunken birthday party photo taken in a bar. Used off the camera… well, in that direction there be dragons.
You really should learn to use off-camera flash. But seeing as you never will, Photojojo’s neat set of flash-filters will at least give that old strobe something to do.
I’m a complete neat freak. Add to this my weakness for bags of all kinds and you’ll see immediately why I love these new organizing wallets from ThinkTank. These four wallets are designed for tidying and storing SD cards, flash gels and cameras batteries.
If you hear the phrase “A place for everything, and everything in its place,” and nod in solemn agreement, then read on.
Publicity stunt? Sure. But that still didn’t stop photographer Jesse Rosten from lighting his latest shoot with nine iPads mounted on several pieces of plywood. Now that’s an Apple-centric strobist!
![Old-Style Newspaperman Flash Gun For iPhone [Kickstarter]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/wpid-Photo-02082012-1111.jpg)
