David Pierini - page 31

Put the late Steve Jobs in your mind and chances are the iconic photograph made by Scottish photographer Albert Watson comes to mind. It’s a daring glare into the lens, a hand on the chin creating a kind of pedestal for a brain that helped to usher in the age of personal computing.

Today is the sixth anniversary of Jobs passing from cancer and Watson’s story about the day in 2006 Jobs sat in front of his lens should bring a chuckle to those who still miss him or knew his mercurial nature firsthand.

Lens attachments can extend the reach of an iPhone camera. But now you are carrying extra stuff and compromising the compact convenience of the camera that is always with you.

RevolCam is one attachment, but with three lenses, an LED light and selfie mirror and avoids the bulk each of those accessories could add to your pockets or bag.

Sonos’ new voice-activated Sonos One smart speaker will work with Amazon’s Alexa assistant when it ships later this month, and will add support for Apple’s new AirPlay 2 streaming protocol next year.

The new smart speaker, which will ship Oct. 24, places an emphasis on high-end audio. With its $199 price point and promised compatibility with multiple platforms, it should put pressure on Apple’s upcoming HomePod, which costs nearly twice as much.

Portrait mode on the iPhone does a very serviceable job of blurring out a distracting background. A new app makes it easy to remove the background entirely.

Depth Background Eraser, made for iPhone 7 Plus, 8 Plus and the soon-to-be-released iPhone X, uses the depth data stored in a photo to let your inner artist easily remove any background.

Brad Mangin and the iPhone 8 Plus scored an ace at this weekend’s Presidents Cup golf tournament, where the sports photographer shot more than 100 portraits for a beautiful gallery of pictures now on the PGA Tour’s website.

The power to control the wind and create an ethereal flight of blowing flower petals is now possible with your iPhone or iPad.

An iOS version of Flower, a hit PlayStation game when it debuted in 2009, became available for purchase Thursday on the App Store.

We’ve seen iPhone cases plated in gold, encrusted with precious gems and crafted from the skin of an ostrich. But one made from a meteorite is sure to make a strong impact.

Since you’re already spending more than a grand on the new iPhone X, another $4,100 will get you a case made with “authentic elements” from a meteor discovered in Russian in 1967. The case, available for pre-order now from the Russian luxury accessories company Caviar, which also offers slightly less expensive cases made from volcanic rock, mink fur, and amber.

The cameras onboard the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are the “best-performing” smartphone cameras ever tested, according to a report by DxOMark Labs.

Both iPhones surpassed what DxO once declared the best, the Google Pixel. The 8 Plus scored a 94, two points higher than its single-camera sibling. The Pixel and the HTC U11 both rated a 90 while the iPhone 7 Plus and iPhone 7 scored an 88 and 85 respectively.

Apple is out to “sabotage the economic model of the internet” as it protects users from shady tracking while browsing the internet, according to several organizations representing digital advertisers.

Six different digital ad and marketing trade associations recently signed and sent an open letter to Apple opposing a pending Safari update aimed at protecting how your browsing data is used.

Travel photographer Austin Mann calls the iPhone 8 Plus a marshmallow.

More on that later, but as he travels through India shooting with the Apple handset, he is finding the camera and software upgrades to be pretty sweet.

Moment, considered by many mobile photographers to be the leading maker of smartphone lenses, are taking orders for cases that will fit the new iPhones.

Tests show the stable of Moment lenses and the Photo Case work with the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, Moment founder Marc Barros said.

The NBA held a glitzy press event last week in Los Angeles to show off new team apparel for the upcoming basketball season. The star wasn’t the retooled jersey designs from Nike, hooded warmup jacket or even any of the 30 players who showed up to model.

It was the tag.

The Nike NBA Connected Jersey will cost fans $200 but inside the tag is a near field communication chip that connects to an iPhone app so that the wearer can have an “all-access pass” to content featuring their favorite players and teams.

Likewise, advertisers could also have unique access to pitching their products.

If you suffer from dock or dongle despair, one company has an elegant solution for MacBooks that only feature USB-C ports.

The DockCase is a leather case with a built-in aluminum alloy dock with nine ports, including Ethernet, HDMI, SD and MicroSD card readers, and three for USB 3.0.

Pricey iPhones need good protective cases and Speck has introduced a line of cases for the newest iPhones the company says is its toughest ever.

The Presidio ULTRA cases for iPhone 8, 8 Plus and the thousand dollar iPhone X, features four layers of protection Speck says passed a drop test from a height of 15 feet.

Photographers gripe about the ugliness of camera backpacks and a number of startups have cropped up on Kickstarter with designs that remove the bulk, improve functionality and give the genre a much-needed facelift.

Brevitē, pronounced like the word that means concession, had such a successful run with its first camera backpack in 2015, it immediately designed two more.

Now the Boston-based company started by three brothers is crowd funding to bring its most recent line to market. The Hadley Series appears to refine the minimalist design philosophy that motivates Brevitē.

Apple rolled out three new iPhones Tuesday that will excite mobile photographers. One day later, smartphone lens maker Moment debuted three new products that “take everything amazing about your new camera phone and make it worse.”

Poking fun at iPhone prices and the hyped spectacle of Apple product launches, Moment released a “live event” to introduce the “world’s first” $1 case, $2 waterproof case and $3 wireless charging case. Moment kept its price point in single digits because of a ground-breaking material used to create the cases – cheap cardboard that comes in one color, dirt brown.

The tech journalists lucky enough to get invited to Apple’s iPhone event Tuesday seemed to purr when given the chance to put the iPhone X in their hands.

Some quibbled over the $999 price tag, but most came away impressed with their first hands-on experience with Apple’s new flagship device.

Hard to believe that a smartphone camera born from two tiny megapixels and a fixed-focus lens10 years ago now includes 3D facial recognition, augmented reality and a studio lighting emulator.

The camera system on the 2017 iPhones features more than incremental improvements for making pictures and recording video. In fact, the new camera hardware transcends photography and plays a deeper role in personal communication, entertainment, and data security.

Luisa Dörr is not the first photographer to do a magazine cover shoot with her iPhone. But her 12 covers for Time magazine of women changing the world may be the most impressive to date.

Dörr photographed 46 influential women, from Oprah Winfrey and Serena Williams to Hillary Clinton and Selna Gomez, for the magazine, which published a piece called “Firsts,” featuring women who are changing the world.

Where do you put your AirPods when they’re not in your ears? Eric Migicovsky kept forgetting and when he did find them, he sometimes realized he had forgotten to charge them.

So he and a couple of friends came up with the PodCase, a relatively slim iPhone battery case that holds a set of AirPods and keeps them charged. The case can do away with the need to carry the AirPods charging case since the PodCase allows for one-cord charging for both phone and ear buds.

Lumu Power light meter for iPhone

The iPhone democratized photography and disrupted the video and camera industry. Now a new product that plugs into the iPhone’s Lightning port aims to replace an important photographer’s tool — the handheld light meter.

The Lumu Power light meter is a small, plug-in photodiode that looks like a pingpong ball cut in half. The light meter, a product of Lumu Labs from Slovenia, rose out of a Kickstarter campaign in 2015. It’s won favorable reviews from photographers and photo websites as the company works to improve the companion app.

Best List: BUBM gadget and cord organizer by ATailorBird

Pulling your charging cord from your shoulder bag or backpack can resemble that gag where you think you’re opening a can of peanuts and get surprised by springy snakes. Your bag’s other contents can catch on your cords and fly out.

The BUBM cord and gadget organizing case offers just one surprise. The mundane task of organizing your cords and other small accessories turns out to be fun and satisfying.

Imaging software company Macphun today announced a faster, more powerful version of its popular Aurora HDR.

Available for pre-order next month, Aurora HDR 2018 includes a redesigned user interface, speed upgrades in RAW imaging processing and merging and masking performance, and a lens correction tool that fixes chromatic aberration, vignetting and other forms of distortion.

I’ve never been one to wear a camera bag with the shoulder strap going across my body. I put all the burden on my right shoulder and, as time wore on, I wore out my shoulder.

The TurnStyle V2.0 sling bag by Think Tank Photo changed the way I carry my camera gear. For one, I now carry it more comfortably.

The designers at the Jerusalem-based company miggo are happy if its customers are left standing in the rain.

This really is supportive when you consider photography accessory company has a reputation for producing storm-proof bags and cases so photographers don’t have to run for cover before they get their shots.

miggo Thursday introduced three new bags to its Agua X line with a backpack, sling bag and a dedicated drone bag that includes a roll out launch pad.