According to the sensor-studying pixel peepers at DxOMark, cellphone cameras have already surpassed the compact cameras of five years ago in terms of image quality. Amazing.
Like the iPhone 5, most of today’s competitive smartphones sport a camera with a sensor of at least 8megapixels. This is a far cry from one of the world’s first mass-produced camera cellphones, the Sharp-made J-SH04, which had a sensor resolution of 110,000 pixels, or just 0.1-Mpix.
Go a GoPro HD Hero2? And an iPhone, iPad or (ahem) Android device? Then head over to the App Store right now, because — with a new free app — you can use one to control the other.
Lytro’s Light Field cameras — the ones which let you refocus an image after you have taken it, are now on general sale. BEtter yet, they come in a range of Nano-tastic colors, and get a whole lot of new controls.
Another week, another clever way to hold your lens cap.
One of the very best things about the iPhone’s camera, aside from its portability, its speed, its quality, its connectivity and its ability to share pictures instantly. And to edit them. And its tough, sapphire crystal protective cap. And… Wait. Where was I?
Ah, yes. One of the best things about the iPhone camera is that there’s no lens cap to lose. That’s not the case for your supposedly superior SLR. Which is why you’re going to have to spend another $14 or so just to fix the problem.
Oh man. Just this weekend I was poking around my kitchen, trying to find a stand to turn the iPhone/iPad into a scanner. And then this morning I open up the internet and find this, the Nimbus Cloud Dome, a plastic light-diffusing bowl which could double as a receptacle for making cakes.
Eye-Fi has updated its top-of-the-range Pro X2 SD card from 8GB to 16GB, upped the speed to Class and kept the price at the same ridiculous $99. The X2 is the card to buy if you need everything Eye-Fi has to offer: geotagging, direct transfer to your iDevice and RAW file support. But it might not necessarily be the one you want.
Photo app Camera+ has been updated to take advantage of the iPhone 5’s new low light boost mode. This feature is new to the iPhone 5, comes enabled automatically in Apple’s camera app, and is available to third party developers as an option.
Camera+ is the first non-Apple app to incorporate it.
The iPhone 5 takes great pictures in low light. This is thanks to a “boost mode” which amps up the signal from the chip to grab back detail from the shadows. This comes at the expense of extra noise (it’s effectively upping the ISO of certain sections of the image), and presumably getting some extra noise-reduction to even things up.
However, right now you’ll only find it in the native camera app. But not for long.
Tripod and lighting supremo Manfrotto — the Italian company whose name seems to combine the words “man” and “frottage” — is finally getting in on the iPhonegraphy game. And its Klyp looks to be every bit as sturdy and well thought out as the rest of its products.
Nokia might have fudged some of their demos of the Lumia 920’s camera, but there’s no denying that the PureView technology that camera is based is incredibly impressive, especially in low-light. The iPhone 5, though, is no slouch when it comes to low-light either. How do they stack up?
Engadget recently went to Nokia’s Tepere, Finland R&D complex and were given access to a testing suite, where they were able to do low-light comparisons between the Lumia 920, the iPhone 5, the HTC One X and the Galaxy S III. Using each camera, they took photographs of a static scene at around 5 lux, which is about the same lighting level you’d see on a dimly lit city street in the middle of the night.
While the Lumia 920 was the clear winner, the iPhone 5 wasn’t too far behind, especially when compared to the absolutely terrible efforts of the HTC One X and Galaxy S III.
Source: Engadget
Got an iPhone 5? Missing the Glif stand/tripod adapter/icon that fits your old, fat, ugly (not to mention slooowwww) iPhone 4/S like a (right-angled plastic) glove?
Don’t worry: by simply spending more money, you can secure yourself a brand new, elongated and slenderized version of the Glif for your new iPhone.
Photographer Dustin Curtis decided to put his new iPhone 5 up against his ~$4,000 Canon 5D MkIII SLR in a head-to-head shootout. The result? Clearly the Canon won, but the iPhone did surprisingly well.
Some years ago, I had a science-fiction idea. What if you could wear a camera and record your entire life? It would be small enough to hang around your neck or clip to your clothes. It would have enough memory and battery power to run all day, and it would record with a high enough resolution that you could “enhance” images to see close-up details.
Of course, this tech now exists. The latest iteration is this neat little Autographer, and in some ways it’s even better than my “invention.”
Like any good father, I love my Lensbabys. Screwed onto the front of my camera they distort the world just enough to make looking at it more interesting, and therefore make me take better photos. But for some, these lenses — which let the photographer move a "sweet-spot" of sharp focus around an otherwise blurred frame — are expensive novelties.
Well, they might still be novelties, but the new Lensbaby Spark are anything but expensive.
Hasselblad is planning to take a Sony NEX-7, replace its tiny, well designed body with a hideous blob of precious metal and rare wood, and sell it for around $6,500.
Yes, Hasselblad is trying to become the Vertu of cameras, a company that confuses “luxury” materials with actual quality. And it’s all the more sad, as Hasselblad made the cameras that went to the moon.
There's one camera accessory which you probably never, ever use — unless you're a professional who carries several cameras: the body cap. This protective plastic disk is most likely in the back of a closet somewhere, waiting inside the camera's box for the day you sell it and the cap is needed once again.
But Olympus thinks that it can tempt you with a fancy body cap. What's more, it thinks that you'll pay £70 for it (around $114). Behold: The 15mm ƒ8 "body cap."
Leica's new M-E looks to be the boutique camera maker's "budget" model, an answer to the Fujifilm X-Pro and the Sony RX1 cameras. Only being a Leica, the company has cut back on an already sparse feature-set whilst keeping a ridiculous price. The M-E will cost you $5,450 for the body only when it goes on sale this month.
It reads like some kind of fanboy fantasy: Jony Ive To Design Leica Camera. Only this fantasy is totally non-fantastic. Ive is set to design an ultra-limited edition of one single Leica, and it will be auctioned off by Bono (who else?) for charity.
Canon's other new camera today is the G15, successor to the G12 and flagship compact in the Canon range. The big changes are the lens, which retains its zoom range but gets a faster maximum aperture of ƒ1.8, and the rear LCD panel, which no longer flips out but now sports a higher 920,000 resolution.
Olympus joins the Photokina news bukake-fest with two new PEN cameras and a smart compact.
Olympus is entering Photokina week with three new cameras: the E-PM2 and E-PL5 for its PEN Micro Four Thirds lineup, and the X-Z2 as a flagship compact camera.
Both PEN cameras feature a 16.1MP CMOS sensor, a max ISO of 25,600, in-body image stabilization, a 3-inch touchscreen, touch shooting, 8fps continuous shooting, photo filters, RAW files with in-camera editing, and 1080i HD video recording.
Oh, it is soooo on. Right after the announcement of Nikon's (relatively) cheap and small full-frame 24MP D600, comes Canon's reply: the 6D, a (you guessed it) small and budget-minded full-frame SLR. And it adds Wi-Fi and GPS.
Canon seems intent on fighting camera phones with Wi-Fi and large sensors. Also: ISO 12,000.
Instagram: Probably the best thing to happen to photography in recent years. InstaStory: a slick and simple little app which turns your Instagram photos into slideshows, and adds music. If you have an Instagram account, and you have an iDevice, then you should be downloading this free app right now.
The iPhone 5 will probably be my first iPhone. Up until now, I have gotten by with a combination of dumb phones (and recently something even worse), an iPod Touch and an iPad. I have also tossed a camera into my bag more often than not upon leaving the house. Why? Because I almost never never make phone calls. Because I don’t want to sign a cellphone contract. And because my other gadgets do the job just fine. So why am I buying an iPhone now, after five years of holding out?
Sony has launched a whole new range of cameras at the Photokina camera trade show, including the new full-frame A99 SLR with 24MP sensor and a translucent mirror, the NEX 6, with 16MP sensor and Wi-Fi, a 35mm camcorder with interchangeable lenses (the VG900) and several others.
But we're not going to talk about them, interesting as they are (nice launch strategy Sony — burying your own products). We're going to look at the RX-1, the high-end, full-frame mirrorless camera. Why? Because I want one, that's why.