The iPhone camera is already so much better for utility photography than a regular camera, why not use it to replace your scanner, too? That’s the idea behind the ScanDock, a combo stand, lighting rig and companion app for scanning pretty much anything on paper.
Leica, once a camera manufacturer that made great tools for photographers and now little more than a boutique fashion brand catering to dentists, has just played a fantastic little joke on the world. It’s called the X-Vario, and it proves that Leica thinks you’re a sucker. Why? Because it’s a $3K compact.
IOS 7 looks fantastic, and the good news is that photographers haven’t been left out of the updates. There’s new stuff in both the Camera app as well as Photos: a neat combination of flashy new features and great little fixes that will make both apps what they probably should have been to begin with.
Camera Noir is just about the most basic B&W photo app I have ever seen. And yet, miraculously, it seems to have included just the right features. I can tell you in two words what you can tweak: almost nothing. And yet the results are fantastic.
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.
Source: Omnivision
Via: Gizmodo
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.
Let’s take a closer look at the HX50V.
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.
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.
The state of iOS photo management is a mess. In typical Apple fashion, the built-in tools work fine, but if you try to add anything else to the mix things get messy, fast. And in “anything else,” I even include iPhoto on the Mac. If you want to have be able to see all your photos on your iPad, regardless of what gear was used to take them, you’re out of luck.
If you shoot with both an iPhone and a regular camera, things get even worse. Sure, you can suck it up and use Aperture or iPhoto, but Lightroom is (for me anyway) way better.
This is the Bison Tote, and it’s just about the hottest laptop/camera bag ever. Unless, of course, you’re a bison. Why? Because the bag is made from bison skin.
Lomo’s awesomely handsome Belair camera has some retro-tastic styling, and a clever-and-classical bellows system to allow it to fold flat for your (oversized) pocket. The rub was that it used 120 roll-film, the kind used by medium-format cameras in the olden days.
120 is great, and the big negatives give amazingly sharp and detailed prints. But 35mm film is both cheaper and easier to process. To address this, Loma will now sell you a replacement 35mm back for your Belair.
Yesterday, I visited the nerd-o-rama that is the annual Barcelona comics convention, and along with the overweight folks in too-tight superhero costumes, there were overweight folks in black t-shirts and sweatpants taking lots of photos. And their comfy clothing choices were explained by the fact that they had to carry like 20 kilos of glass in their camera bags.
Next year, they might be able to dress a little better whilst also saving their spines, using the Schneider iPro Series 2 lenses for the iPhone 5.
Face it. Camera bags are dorky as all get-out. I avoid them entirely, either dropping my camera into the pocket of a regular bag with a pair of woolen socks underneath for padding (true, and it works great in my Rickshaw Zero Messenger) or putting it and its accessories into a padded liner that slips into any other bag I might want to use.
But Manfrotto (Bogen in the U.S) has hit on the formula for cool camera bags. The secret? Calling them “Stile” bags and taking photos of them being used by young people in leather jackets.
If you have a Nikon DSLR, then you can now shoot long takes of more than 30 minutes each, thanks to the tireless work of the Nikon Hackers team. This might be of limited interest even to our camera-loving readers, but what is interesting is the reason Nikon added the 30 minute limit in the first place.
Stills shooters have been having all the fun recently, with high-end cameras with tiny bodies, big sensors and fast lenses. Now it’s the turn of videographers: the new Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera is a RAW-shooting body that will fit into your pocket.
Panasonic’s new GF6 Micro Four Thirds camera has two new gimmicks: NFC and Wi-Fi, with the latter acting as a fast way to set up a Wi-Fi connection between the camera and an NFC-enabled phone.
Along with this it brings a new 16MP sensor, fast startup and the promise of great low light performance. Let’s take a look.
There seem to be two ways to make a Wi-Fi-enabled camera. The first is to build an actual camera and add a Wi-Fi radio. The second is to make an iPod Touch with a decent 5MP camera module inside. Depending on your requirements, either one can be great.
But there now appears to be a third way. Samsung has taken a camera, added an Android phone, and then taken away the phone part of that phone. Behold! The Wi-Fi Galaxy Camera.
First, remember one thing: this isn’t a full review of the Fujifilm X100S, even though I had to write it up there in the title to please our CMS. I’ve only had the thing for a few days, and even though Cult of Mac isn’t DP Review, a few days isn’t enough to evaluate an iPhone case, let alone a camera like the X100S.
On the other hand, the X100S is So Hot Right Now, and I’ve been staying up tip 3AM since I got it because I can’t stop playing with the thing. Combining those two interesting facts leads me to think that an in-depth first look might be a good idea — especially as you can now convert the RAW files on your Mac using the just-released Lightroom 4.4.
Let’s take a look — You might want to go make a cup of coffee first.
If you’re the proud owner of a Fujifilm X100s camera, then today is yet another happy day for you: Lightroom has been updated to v4.4 and now supports your camera’s wacky X-Trans sensor, the clever sensor which removes the need for an anti-aliasing filter by placing the color pixel filters in an irregular grain-like pattern.
And of course the update supports a whole bunch more camera (listed below), as el as fixing bugs.
