Posts Tagged ‘ipad’
Unusual Gear and Gadgets
English: (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We usually have a weekly post on unusual and the bizarre news from the World of Photography on this blog while on our Professional site’s blog we have a weekly feature on gear and gadgets. Today we’ll do a twofer: here’s a roundup of unusual gear and gadgets.
The Camera Brand that Refuses to Die
“Rumours of my death are greatly exaggerated,” Samuel Clemens / Mark Twain once said. That could just as well apply to Kodak as a maker of cameras: PhotoRumors reported yesterday that Kodak displayed a “new Pixpro mirrorless (interchangeable lens?) camera” sporting a 28-112mm zoom at the P&E Show in China. A Kodak Camera! And we all thought that Kodak cameras were dead!
Or perhaps they are? For PhotoRumors does mention that a “few months ago JK Imaging got the rights to use the Kodak brand name” so is it really a Kodak? Or are people in Developing Countries who may view Kodak as a major brand name seen as naive consumers for what is no more than a licensing-rights product?
A legendary ‘good name’ is being sold off in bits and pieces by a once-dominant company as it gently, gently sinks into oblivion.
Reversed ND Filters
84.5mm’s ‘Reversed ND Filters’ are probably in that class of products one would call “Why didn’t anyone else think of it before?”
Not exactly “reversed”, these filters are graduated from the middle to the top and seem to have a harder transition at the other end.
PhotographyBlog reports that they’re meant for using while shooting landscapes during the Golden Hour when your composition includes the sun so that you don’t get exposure imbalances and can maximize dynamic range.
Nice idea, and it should work . . . let’s see what reports from the field have to say.
Funky and Funkier
It’s all happening for the iPhone and iPad with one new novelty, er, ‘development’ each.
FocusTwist is an iPhone app that synthesizes the Lytro effect. Key word, ‘synethesizes’, for FocusTwist shoots a series of images with different focus points, unlike Lytro technology. From there on, it’s easy to see how you can dynamically choose a different plane of focus for a photograph.
The iPad development is less of a novelty though it’s funkier: you get a zoom lens hanging off your tablet computer to complement its wee-wee 5 MP camera! We couldn’t say it any better than Lauren Crabbe on DPReview: “There is something about seeing a tablet take photos that just brings on the giggles. Pair that with a telephoto lens and you’ve got a one-way ticket to lol-ville.”
This one’s for iPad diehards only!
‘Flipping’ us ‘Out’: PetaPixel Pulls a Hat-trick
We’ll start off the week with our weekly ‘whacky’ news roundup because there’s been so much of it, none more ‘whacky’ than—
‘Whack!’
In one or two B-Grade Hollywood movies, the hero or heroine gets a fresh lease on life when a lucky charm amulet or medallion they’re wearing deflects a bullet that would otherwise have shattered his/her breastbone.
Real life ain’t as (melo)dramatic as Hollywood but it can be funnier: PetaPixel reports (and links to a video) on how an iPad saved its photographer-owner from getting a ‘whack’ on the noggin from . . . a softball! (Well, Hollywood also did The Three Stooges shorts.)
The man was taking photographs with his iPad when the (near-)‘whack’ happened, and after his trusty Apple device did double duty as a shield, he just resumed taking photos with it! This is one ‘Apple’ that sure kept the doctor away!
“Strange obsession”
That’s what Chris A. Hughes himself calls his hobby but he’s being a bit hard on himself. He searches out vintage cameras with film inside them, which he then has developed.
The sample photographs, published by PetaPixel, show that Hughes is preserving other, unknown people’s memories which range from historic and of public interest to very personal, from humourous to sentimental. He’s a ‘memories salvager’!
The images include those of a space capsule, vacationing children, and a truly fine portrait that would have had the self-styled cognoscenti ‘aah’ing over it if it had been taken by a big-name photographer. You can see more of Hughes’s finds at the Found Film website.
Whacky and Strange . . .
. . . is what Jeff Cremer has a yen for and he travels to rainforests to photograph it.
A picture story on PetaPixel introduces us to Cremer’s “rare, interesting, and bizarre” images. However, if you’re one of the “tens of thousands” of persons who ‘liked’ one of his astonishing images of an intricate and delicate lattice-like cocoon on Facebook, this item is old news to you! If not, don’t miss the story.
PetaPixel also goes into how Cremer’s photos tend to go viral but if you capture such little-seen and astonishing critters in the wild, the ‘viral-ing’ is going to be pretty much automatic.
Congratulations to PetaPixel for today’s hat-trick; it too seems to specialize in ‘flipping’ us ‘out’ . . .
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