photography - page 28

When I initially stumbled across Canopy’s Kapok ($70), it seemed like a groovy idea: A case that had dedicated buttons for shooting photos and video is exactly what the iPhone needs, I thought. Plus, other app developers would be able to use Canopy’s API to add functionality to their apps through the buttons. Brilliant.

But then came the iOS 5 unveiling, with the revelation the camera app would gain its own hard button (in the form of the iPhone’s volume up button), and no other app developers have taken advantage of the kapok’s hard buttons. So is it still as shiny a toy as I’d orginally thought? Here’s what some hands-on time revealed…

If you’re a fan of iPhone photo app Hipstamatic, there’s some treats in store for you in the latest update. One is free extras (lenses and films) to give your pics a fresh new Hipsta twist, and the second is a new shared albums service for collating and curating photos.

Photo accessories company Modahaus recently posted an excellent little how-to for anyone wanting to take nice looking product shots with an iPhone.

This week saw the launch of a brand new MTV app for the iPhone called MTV PUSH — our first must-have app of the week — which aims to introduce music lovers to the hottest new and up-and-coming artists; featuring videos, photos, news, and plenty of additional content that will help you discover the best new music.

We’ve also chosen a great new photography app that will help you discover Instagram photos from the people around you; the quickest and easiest way of recording video on your iPhone; and a highly-polished finance app for monitoring your budget.

No, it’s not a fake. This is the latest scoop from Photojojo – a kit that lets you attach any DSLR lens to your iPhone.

Magic Hour is a photo app for people who love the filter effects you get from apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic.

We’ve seen people do some pretty impressive things with iOS devices, such as producing short films and recording complete albums. However, this is the first time we’ve seen an iPhone capture one couple’s special day.

I always had a heck of a time figuring out what to get my dad for Father’s Day; he never wore ties, didn’t have patience for gadgets and wasn’t a big sports fan. I might have sent him one of these, though (and if he had ever read his email, he might have received it).

Anyone playing around with an iPhone 4 for any length of time will have realized that its compactness, decent sensor-processor combo and the huge selection of editing apps available make the darn thing is a superb platform for making both films and still photographs — if you can work around some of the gadget’s limitations. In this case, Habbycam, a small Southern Camifornia-based company that supplies all manner of rigs to the film industry, came up with the Habbycam iGrip ($140) as a better way to hold and position the iPhone for extended shooting. We think it needs work.

Images © 2011 Lonnie Lazar · All Rights Reserved

Lost in the hoopla of Apple’s WWDC software revelations this week — from iMessage, to iCloud, to iTunes Match — has been coverage of what may prove to be the company’s most enduring revolutionary influence, which is the one it’s having on the Art world.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a famous photographer say something like “it’s not your equipment, it’s how you use it”; but they love to trot out that phrase like a dog breeder trotting out a prize poodle. And of course, they’re right. In fact, one of the most important — if not the most important — feature is that the camera is actually around for you to take the shot with — or you’ll miss the moment.  The second? That the damn thing doesn’t require much fumbling around with to operate.

The iPhone has never had any problem with the first one. And today, bam — Apple has just taken care of the second. In fact, the camera tweaks in iOS 5 should make the iPhone the most-used camera ever. Here’re the much-needed improvements, in order of grooviness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNtV9dLUNAs

Check out this Kickstarter project — it’s a really smart clear polycarbonate iPad 2 case (called the iLoqk — hey, we’ve heard worse) that comes with a removable clamp that doubles as a tripod mount, which is yours for a pledge of $40. An extra $20 will bag you the XShot, an extending arm that attaches to the tripod mount and comes with a wireless shutter release for the iPad’s camera. It’s a pretty nifty idea, and seems like it’d helpful in all sorts of situations.

There’s nothing like traveling with several thousand dollars worth of expensive photo gear to kick up the ‘ol stress levels: Will I be able to pack all my stuff, and will it ll be easily accessible? Will any of it break? Are colleagues or clients going to laugh at me because it doesn’t look pro enough? If it does look pro, will it make a tempting target for thieves? Can it fit into the overhead bin or under my seat on a plane? And what the heck am I going to do with my laptop?

So it’s always a welcome relief when a bag answers those questions soothingly, in a way that sets the mind at ease — which, except for one or two of those questions, Crumpler’s $172, ruggedly adventurous 8 Million Dollar photo/laptop bag does.

This week’s roundup of must-have iOS applications begins with the second edition of PhotoForge – the popular photo manipulation tool for iOS. Completely rebuilt from the ground up, PhotoForge2 promises to be a breakthrough for image editing on the go, with unparalleled tools and amazing effects to transform your photos into masterpieces.

Foodish is a new application that claims to make dining and drinking twice as much fun (is that even possible?), by providing a quick and easy way for you to keep a record of your diet, but in a way that’s fun and enjoyable rather that dull and tedious like traditional diet tracking applications. It makes it simple for you to see how healthy or how dreadfully unhealthy (like mine) your diet is.

Zootool is a great little tool that makes bookmarking, organizing and sharing your favorite images, videos, documents and links from all over the web incredibly effortless.

Find out more about the application above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves – including Audibly and eBay Motors – below!

Love Instagram? Love seeing your friends’ instaphotos? You might love Screenstagram then.

We think there’s little better than laying our fat mitts on the suddenly real version of something that’s, to that point, been fantasy — so you’ll excuse us if we go all giggly over the Hipstamatic app-themed new $40 HipstaCase 100 for the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch.

Wow. Is developer GhostBird really shoe-horning this much functionality into the second iteration of their legendary photo-editing app, PhotoForge? Looks like they’ve crammed practically every post-processing tool and feature on the planet into what will probably amount to an under-$5 app: curves, real layer support (including masking), ability to edit raw files (and images up to 20MB), editing timeline and a big pile of sharing options.

Add to that a smorgasbord of filters that simulate papers, processes, cameras and you’ve got the makings of what looks like the killer photo app. GhostBird also claims fast processing times — how they’re able to pull this one off, and just how fast it’ll clock on the slower processors of the 3G/s is the big question, though; we’ll know in a couple of weeks, the timeframe the developer has suggested for the app’s release.

The guys at Tap Tap Tap wanted to show off the new Clarity feature in their photography app Camera+, so they came up with a clever idea: run a photo contest.

This is the winning entry, snapped by Nick Wood, and it’s a pretty good showcase for what Clarity can do. What’s it supposed to do? Its makers call it “one tap to awesomeness”. It brings out details, colors and contrasts in otherwise dull photos.

Perhaps you caught our recent review for the killer iOS photo app, FX Photo Studio. If you didn’t rush out and buy it right away based on the stunning (cough, cough) examples in the accompanying gallery, or – heaven forfend – on the basis of its five stars, then here’s your chance to get it on your device for FREE.

Just go to Cult of Mac’s Facebook page and like us before midnight Friday PST (that’s about 36 hours from the time of this post) and you’ll be entered into a drawing for one of six free download codes for FX Photo Studio for iPhone and iPad.

That’s it. If you already like us on Facebook (yay!) you’re already entered, so don’t feel the need to “unlike” and then “Like” again to get in on this awesome opportunity.

Winners will be notified of their bounty and good fortune during the day on Friday.

Microsoft’s latest iOS offering hit the App Store today in the form of Photosynth; a fantastic photography application for taking 360º panoramic photos on your iPhone. It’s a free download, and one of the most impressive panorama applications I’ve tried.

The first thing I noticed about Photosynth is how easy it is to create your panorama. You simply tap the screen to start and then move your device around – up, down, left, right – and the application captures the images automatically, so there’s no need to move your device bit by bit while tapping a button to capture each tile.

Apple’s iPhone 4 could soon be the most popular camera used to upload photos to Flickr, overtaking the Nikon D90 DSLR. The iPhone still has a little way to go before it reaches the top spot, but if the current trend continues it will overtake the D90 in around one month.

Although the iPhone 4 only launched just under a year ago, it is considerably less expensive than the Nikon D90 – which has been on the market for around three years and costs over a thousand dollars. Its smaller form factor, and the fact that everyone carries their iPhone everywhere, is believed to be one of the reasons why the device is proving to be more popular than a traditional camera.

What’s better than a free app? Yeah, two of them — so today’s Daily Freebie is actually a twofer. Both are from MacPhun, developer of the PhotoStudio app we reviewed yesterday.

The first is a free version of PerfectPhoto, macPhun’s iPhone photo editor. It may lack the fancy filters of the paid version, but it comes with all the darkroom tools you’ll need to edit photos on the iPhone: adjust exposure, contrast, color temp, shadows, crop images and even a posterize and vintage effect. Frankly, you’re going to be using PhotoStudio for the effects anyway.

The second app, Cartoonatic, (that’s a screencap from its App Store page, above) is where the real fireworks are, though — it’ll let you transform a video clip with nine different, wild-looking effects, with live previews while recording, the ability to play around with the clip’s speed, add a soundtrack from your music library and all kinds of other neat stuff. That’s a lot of wow for free.

Okay, this is sorta creepy — and if you aren’t aware of this little fact by now, you should be: Unless you’ve adjusted the settings to turn this feature off, every time you snap a photo with your iPhone it embeds data with your exact location in the image file. This data, called a geotag, can be easily read using easily available software by anyone who has access to your images online (btw, contrary to what the folks at NBC say, it’s not new technology; the ability to geotag photos has been around since at least the first iPhone to include GPS, the 3G).

There are plenty of photo apps that do pixellation effects, but Pixel Face grabbed my attention because of the way it embraces the whole 8-bit world of pixels.

It’s not just the photos that look colorful and retro, it’s the app itself. The buttons are cheerfully bright, the sounds are like something your games console used to do back in the 1980s.

Lumiere is yet another photo effects filter app for iOS, but before you sigh and say: “Oh no, not another Hipstamatic clone,” I want you to pause and give this one a second look.

What makes Lumiere different isn’t that it applies filter effects to your photos – Hipstamatic and a gazillion other apps already do that – but the way it lets you flick from one effect to the next.