Hasta La Gadget!

The iPhone’s camera may be roundly regarded as a piece of crap, but that has certainly not stopped a lot of camera enhancing software appearing for it. The best realize that, like a Lomo, the pictures don’t have to be top-quality — they just have to be fun.

QuadCamera, from Takayuki Fukatsu is one of these. It captures a burst of four to eight frames and arranges them into a single-picture sequence — either a grid or a single row. This lets you grab a kind of time-lapse set of snaps into one masterpiece.

The application is akin to a real piece of hardware from Lomo, the Action Sampler, which captures time-stuttered frames onto a single piece of film. The advantage with Quadcamera is that 1) it costs just $2 (the Lomo is $30) and 2) it doesn’t use film.

And it actually does something the Lomo can’t do — QuadAnimator is a companion application for both Windows and OS X which will take your shots, split out the component frames and make a short, herky-jerky animation. The results remind me of the living, looping photos from Harry Potter.

Product page [iTunes via Cult of Mac]
QuadAnimator [Art and Mobile]

It appears that an enterprising Russian hacker has figured out a way to get video from Canon DSLRs. And not just the fancy new 5D MkII, either. This Windows program is claimed to pull video from any Canon DSLR with live view, which means just about anything in the current lineup. The clip above is apparently from an EOS 450D.

If real, this could be huge — free hi-def video for anyone willing to tweak their camera a little. There are a few caveats, though. First, this is not a tweak to the camera’s firmware like the Canon CHDK hack (which adds features to cheap point’n’shoots) — instead you need to run an application on a Windows machine. This means that the video is not saved to the memory card of the camera.

Second, beware. Google translate doesn’t want to decipher the original forum thread for me, and downloading and running an unknown executable is a bad idea. Aside from that, though, this could be awesome, even if it may just be making a screen capture of the Live View display on the computer’s monitor. Another video, linked below, shows that the resolution (from a 40D this time) is a hi-def-tastic 720×480. Nice.

Forum thread [IXBT via Canon Rumors]

Application download [Valexvir]

40D video [YouTube]

AVI file with cow [Odevaem]

See Also:

• Four Camera Hacks You Can Do Today
• Add Features to Low End Canon Cameras: Free

The Arsenal English soccer team will offer live wireless streaming of game highlights to fans’ Sony PSP gaming systems by next year, a club official declared this week.   

The system has been tested over the last two seasons and it has received a good enough response that the team is going forward with the full implementation.

Sony has developed software that enables the gadget with multiple video replay options, as well as feeds of live stats from the game and around the league. It is also working on adding an in-game social networking angle. This will hopefully enable a fan to not only keep track of the game’s key moments but to crowdsource his way to find the nicest ladies in the house.         

For now, it’s not clear whether the team will offer PSPs for free or for rent, or whether they will be only available in certain sections of the Emirates Stadium. Another important question will be whether a Sony PSP owner will be allowed to bring in his own PSP or will be forced to use one provided by the team.

Taking into consideration the money-grubbing brazenness of big-time sports teams, with their status-conscious VIP areas and income disparity regulations, my guess is that Arsenal will force fans to use in-house PSPs. (Don’t get me started on this topic: Many NBA teams, for example, don’t allow you to bring in any food snacks, essentially forcing customers to buy their overpriced and under-nourishing ‘foods.’).         

The ‘Gunners‘ of England’s Premier League are one of the wealthiest teams in European soccer, so it isn’t a surprise that Sony would want to implement new tech in their modern Emirates Stadium.         

The stadium currently uses huge HD screens to help follow the action and its roof is laced with Sony SNC-RX550P cameras (right) that monitor every aspect of the field (as well as the stands). Those cameras are used along with a digital camera monitoring system called ‘ProZone’ to create up-to-the-minute game analysis sent to the coaches and security details. The data is pushed through a secure IP infrastructure controlled by stadium technicians.

But Arsenal isn’t the only major team working on in-game wireless feeds.

In late 2006, Cisco Systems announced a deal with Major League
Baseball’s Oakland Athletics to create a network supporting data,
voice, video and wireless services for their new stadium. Some of the
features expected include smart location-based services and live video feeds in wireless UMPCs. The gadget-software combo would
provide Cisco and the team with real-time personal insight
into consumer preferences and could eventually lead to additional
revenue services.

Of course, the Cisco-Athletics Stadium has yet to be built, so we can’t test the tech just yet.

But if Arsenal and Sony follow the plan set forth by Cisco and the
A’s, expect the neat experience of following the game on your
PlayStation portable to be accompanied by a few advertisements offering
expensive snacks available in the stands, like $15 beer.

Hey, you gotta
love sports right?

Photos: Arsenal, Pocket-Lint, Sony

The Canon 5D MkII isn’t the only camera to suffer from black dots on its images. It turns out that Nikon’s D700 also has problems with little black specks, something that went completely unnoticed until revealed by today’s v1.01 firmware update. From the release notes:

An issue that, in extremely rare cases, resulted in noticeable black dots in images captured with Long exp. NR in the shooting menu set to On has been resolved.

The update also fixes an autofocus tracking problem (which would only manifest itself if you had switched on a rather esoteric custom function), a couple of weird flash-related issues and corrects a spelling error in the time zone options — only of interest if you live in the Manama, the capital of Bahrain.

I’m going to try this out on my own D700, although I haven’t experienced any of the issues. I’ll also admit I’m a little scared — updating firmware on a $2500 camera is a little nerve-wracking.

Nikon D700 firmware updated to v1.01 [Rob Galbraith]

See Also:

• Hands-On With the Nikon D700
• Nikon D700 Birthday Cake
• Photos: 5D MkII and D700 High ISO Shoot-Out
• Canon 5D MkII Update Cures Black Spots

Polaroid’s desperate stab at digital relevance, the Pogo, showed us just how desperate the much loved company has become. The  printer/camera hybrid follows the letter of the Polaroid law – instant printed pictures – and almost willfully ignores its spirit — low-fi, Lomo-like artifacts.

The folks at the Impossible Project know this, and are set to resurrect the beloved instant cameras. The Netherlanders have bought up the Polaroid factory and all the equipment inside, signing a 10 year lease on the whole shebang, and they plan to restart production of the shake’n’bake film.

Curiously, they will not be selling it as a straight Polaroid replacement. The plan is to "develop a new product with new characteristics, consisting of new optimized components, produced with a streamlined modern setup." Weasel-words aside, the film will work with vintage Polaroid cameras. What these "optimized components" will do we don’t yet know. What we do know is that the Impossible Project clearly loves the classic instant film cameras, and hopefully it will be able to sustain a small, cult following. Just like Lomo has done for junky, plastic Soviet film cameras.

The Re-Invention of Instant Film [Impossible Project]

See Also:

• Polaroid Ends Instant Film Production
• Polaroid Stages Comeback With Instant Printing Digicam
• New Polaroid Camera Will Shake it With Built-in Printer
• Video: Retro 1970s Polaroid Commercial Rocks Out