Dec 20

Revue-Cam: A Smart Photographer That Hangs Around Your Neck

Posted in: Today's Chili

Who said that Microsoft’s experimental prototypes never make it to market (well, apart from Vista)? Now the Sensecam, first shown off way back in January 2008, and in the labs since 2003, has finally become a real, buy-able product.

Kind of. Microsoft may have dropped the life-recording camera like it dropped its PlaysforSure DRM business partners, but a company called Vico has licensed the tech and renamed it the Revue. The Revue is kind of like a Black Box recorder for your life.

Sling it around your neck and switch it on. The Revue will then use a variety of sensors to trigger the shutter, snapping a picture through a fisheye lens. The camera can detect temperature, infra-red motion, light color and brightness, and inside there is also an accelerometer and a compass. In short, the Revue probably notices more about your surroundings than you do.

The camera will snap a few photos per minute, storing them on its 2GB memory. The battery should keep things ticking for “at least” 12-hours.

But why? The main reason for the product is as aid for those whose memories are fading. Taking time to review the day’s events can help to train the memory, says the blurb. This can be done one picture at a time, or you can have the companion desktop (OS X, Windows or Linux) stitch it into a movie.

I see it as being a great way to record a day, or an event, without getting stuck behind the camera. Parties, festival, sports tournaments (especially if you are also participating) would all be better for a candid movie like this.

And what if you need some privacy? The Revue has a switch which will pause it for four minutes. That should be long enough to take care of any business. I’d grab one of these in a second if it weren’t for one thing: It costs $500.

Revue product page [Vicon via Oh Gizmo]

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Dec 20

IPad Five-in-One Dock Adapter: When Will the Madness End?

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, ipad, ipod, Today's Chili, usb, video

Just as seemingly every year the number of blades on a disposable razor inevitably increases, so every few months a new iPad dock adapter adds yet another input. In August we saw the 2-in-1 camera-connector, with USB and an SD-card slot. The just last week we were treated to the plasticky wonders of the 3-in-1 adapter, which added micrSD to the mix.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, behold the amazing, nay, astonishing 5-in-1 dock adapter. Slot this overachieving little widget into your iPad’s port and you get all of the above functions plus a mini-USB port (for charging the iPad or connecting to a computer) and an A/V-out port. This last lets you hook up an iPad (or a video-supporting iPod) to a TV.

That’s a whole lot of features packed into one small box and – if experience of these things is anything to go by – it will likely break soon after buying. On the other hand, this combines a whole shopping-cart full of Apple products into one, and even ships with the A/V and USB cables needed to use it.

What next? The same manufacturer also has an unholy version that will read Sony MemorySticks, but I’m hoping for something more practical (or plain weird). Comments, please: What oddity would you like to see here? MIDI would be nice for musicians. A crappy but functional webcam would be awesome for everyone. But I’m going to vote for a USB hand-warmer. Given the iPad’s huge battery, this should last at least a day, and keep me blogging from my cold, non-heated apartment.

5-in-1 adapter product page [Anguodz via MIC Gadget]

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Dec 18

First hand-machined RED EPIC ships, gets lovingly toyed with (update)

Posted in: camera, film, now shipping, NowShipping, shipping, Today's Chili

This RED EPIC belongs to Mark Pederson — the head of studio OffHollywood — who was apparently the very first one to drop $58,000 for the pre-production 5K camera, not to mention the first to lay down money for the original one. In case you’ve arranged to find yourself with a similarly jawdropping Christmas present in the mail, you can find pictures of what to expect at our source links below. The links will also do quite nicely if you haven’t experienced that feeling called “jealousy” in a while and would like a refresher course.

Update: OffHollywood is shooting up a storm with the EPIC-M right now, and you’ll find more gorgeous pics and impressions at REDUSER and their Twitter account.

[Thanks, Charlie and Patrick]

First hand-machined RED EPIC ships, gets lovingly toyed with (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 20:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dec 17

ShutterSnitch 2 Adds Automation, Metadata and Speed. Lots of Speed

Posted in: ipad, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili, wi-fi

ShutterSnitch, the iPad app that lets you beam photographs directly from your camera to your iPad, has been updated to version 2, and it adds a whole lot of really neat new features.

First – what ShutterSnitch won’t do: unless you jailbreak your iPad to let it create its own ad-hoc Wi-Fi network, ShutterSnitch requires either a router or a computer to create that network. If you have a battery-powered Mi-Fi, that will work just fine.

So, what’s new? Rob Galbraith, photographer, blogger and gear-head, has been testing v2.0 for some time, and has a detailed run-down on every new aspect. The first big changes are speed and stability: instead of crashing, you can now pump big files into the app, as fast as you like, and it will keep on going. Your collections can be a lot bigger, too: ShutterSnitch will let you put thousands of images together without bogging down.

But you’re here for the new gimmicks, right? Now you can enjoy full-resolution zooms and support for RAW files (although remember this works over Wi-Fi, so those big files will be slow to transfer). There is support for simple metadata, including geotagging (this grabs the location from your iPad and embeds it into the photo.)

But best of all are Actions. You can automate what happens to the photos when they arrive, adding metadata, saving a copy to the photo-roll and even exporting, sending photos to Flickr, Facebook or an FTP server. And there are plenty of other tweaks, too, including slideshows and external-display support.

To use ShutterSnitch, you’ll also need a way to send the photos. The easiest way is with an Eye-Fi SD-card, which turns any camera into a wireless photo-transmitter. If you have a transmitter for your SLR, one of Canon or Nikon’s units, for example, those work too.

ShutterSnitch 2 is in the App Store approval tubes right now, and should hit any day soon. The update will be free for ShutterSnitch 1.x owners, and $8 to buy new. The price will go up to $20 early in the new year.

A first look at ShutterSnitch 2.0 for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch [Rob Galbraith]

ShutterSnitch app [iTunes]

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Dec 15

Dongle Adds USB, SD and MicroSD to iPad

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, ipad, sd, storage, Today's Chili, usb

Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit is a wonderful thing, although overpriced at $30. Not only can you use it to inject photos from your camera direct into the tablet’s brain, you can also hook up all manner of USB peripherals, from keyboards to microphones to thumb-drives.

MIC Gadget’s 3-in-1 adapter does all this, and more. It combines Apple’s two small, easy-to-lose widgets into one slightly larger, slightly harder-to-lose package, putting an SD card reader and USB port into one plastic box. The extra is a micrSD slot, which is actually all but useless: the only way it would work is if your cellphone saves its photos into a standard folder named “DCIM”, which is what will trick the iPad into reading them.

There’s one thing that MIC Gadget’s version had in common with the official Apple version: it costs $30. I’d stick with Apple’s overpriced kit: it works, you only have to carry the part you need and it is built to last. It is also available now, unlike this 3-in-1 solution, which ship after Christmas.

3-In-1 iPad Camera Connection Kit [MIC Gadget]

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Dec 13

Lab for iPhone Gives Gorgeous, In-Depth Photo Data

Posted in: apps, iPhone, Today's Chili

The iPhone takes some great pictures, but when it comes to organizing and, well, doing anything else with those photos, it sucks. LateNiteSoft aims to patch at least one gaping hole with Lab, a detailed photo-viewer for iOS.

Lab tells you everything you want to know about a picture, and it does it with a gorgeous interface that makes it easy to use. Fire it up and you see all the photos in your library (album support is “coming soon”). Tap a photo and you get an almost full-screen view, along with the date the photo was snapped, how many megapixels the camera had, and the file size.

Hit the big “i” button and you get the juicier bits. The photo sits at the top of the screen, like a Polaroid on a clothesline, and the info is arrayed beneath. You get the time and date, the kind of camera, the size in pixels (along with the size info from the previous screen). If the photo has GPS coordinates embedded within, then its position is shown on a map, and below that is a histogram. Finally, exposure information sits at the bottom (ISO, ƒ-number and shutter-speed).

While this is obviously best used on an iPhone, it works equally well on an iPad. The interface is pixel-doubled (and looks fine for it) but the photos are displayed at their proper resolution. The app didn’t do a great job of pulling the metadata out of my photos, though, but that’s more a problem with other apps, and iOS itself, which strips the metadata from pictures: an iPhone 4 HDR, for example, sent full-size from a friend, doesn’t give up much. The sizes and histogram always work, though (the histogram is generated in-app from the photo itself, it seems), as does anything pulled in via the camera connection kit.

LateNiteSoft is also responsible for the great Sketches app for iPhone and iPad.

Lab costs just $1.

Lab product page [iTunes]

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Dec 13

Touch-Screen Wristwatch Does Everything. Everything!

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Phones, Today's Chili

This has to be just about the coolest watch ever made. What does it do? What doesn’t it do? Seriously: The Swap Rebel, as it is named, takes pretty much every gadget you own and crams it into this tiny, inch-wide wristwatch.

Phone? Check. Camera? Check. 1.46-inch touch-screen? Check. The list goes on, with Bluetooth connectivity (so you don’t actually have to talk into your wrist), an MP3-player, a USB-port for transfer to-and-from the 128MB memory and 2GB microSD-card (expandable to 16GB), plus a range of candy-colored shells. And you thought the new iPod Nano was neat.

It ain’t cheap, though. Over in the UK, you’ll have to put down £190 for the Swap Rebel, which is $300 of your American Dollars. And I can’t imagine the battery life will be too good. The 240mAh battery is rated for 85 hours standby and 130-160 minutes of talk-time. Actually pretty good for the size, but not the all-day-chatting we’re used to with the likes of the iPhone (8-hours). Available now.

Swap Rebel product page [SWAP via Dvice]

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Dec 13

More Details of Fujifilm’s Retro-Tastic X100 Revealed

Posted in: Retro, Today's Chili

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Fujifilm has released some new details of its forthcoming X100, the retro-styled rangefinder with the big sensor and innovative viewfinder design.

First, a recap, if you don’t remember me raving about this thing back in September. The X100 is styled after classic 35mm rangefinders, has buttons and dials for everything (including a proper aperture-ring around the lens), a 12.3MP APS-C sensor, and a 23mm (35mm equivalent) ƒ2 lens (not removable). It also has a bright optical viewfinder with a prism inside which allows you to superimpose dat on the top, or to swap in an entirely electronic ‘finder instantly.

THe new info adds to this already impressive feature-set. Now we know that manual focus will be controlled with a ring around the lens, as God intended. There is also a distance scale for pre-focusing and, kicking it old-school, setting the hyperfocal distance (ask your dad).

There is also a rather odd “RAW” button, which, according to the British Journal of Photography, does the following: “When shooting in JPEG mode, it enables the user to instantly capture both raw and JPEG files, plus it also allows raw files to be developed in camera.” Does this really need its own button?

You also get an ISO button, as found on any decent SLR, and we now know that the movie-mode will capture footage at 24fps in 720p. The codec is still unknown.

The X100 is shaping up to be the hot camera of next year (it comes out early 2011), but there are a couple of things that may hold it back. First, it will cost $1,000. That seems even more expensive when you add the fact that the lens is fixed. Maybe Fujifilm should have gone the Micro Four Thirds route and adopted that standard instead of adding yet another one to the marketplace? Sure, the lenses wouldn’t be all metal and shiny, but they’d sure be useful.

Fujifilm reveals new X100 details [BJP]

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Dec 10

Rare Film Gift Pack for Hipsters, Oldsters

Posted in: film, Today's Chili

Miss running rolls of film through your camera? No, me either, but there’s a certain kind of hipster who will do anything – anything – if he thinks it’ll make him stand out from the crowd of identical, skinny-jeans clad fashion victims.

If you have one of these wonderful people in your life, and you feel like spending $50 on a Christmas gift for them rather than giving them the cash and having them waste it on drugs like they did last year, then you might consider Photojojo’s Rare Film Gift Pack, a three-pack of gelatin and silver rolls (just keep quiet about that last bit if your hipster is a vegetarian).

The films come in a Chinese-takeaway style box, and you actually do get some rather unusual emulsions for your money: Fuji Natura 1600, Rollei Redscale Film, and Fuji Neopan B&W 1600. The first is a fast (and grainy) color film and the second is some crazy package with the film threaded so that the emulsion faces backwards in the camera and gives weird, redscale shifts to the monochrome film.

The third, Neopan 1600, is a fantastic film. I know because I used to use it. If you want to know what the fuss is about shooting film, especially B&W film, just hit a quick Google search for Neopan 1600 to see. Sure, it’s grainy, but the richness of the tones is amazing.

OK, I admit it. I love film too. Black and white film, at least, but I’m not sure I’d drop $50 for three rolls. Now, will somebody just squeeze me into these skinny pants and help me find my light-meter?

Photojojo’s Rare Film Gift Pack [Photojojo]

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Dec 09

GPS Bluetooth Dongle Controls SLRs with iPhone

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, bluetooth, gps, Today's Chili

At first look, $150 seems a ridiculous price for a Bluetooth dongle that lets you control your SLR from your cellphone, but digging into the specs shows that it ends up as quite a bargain. But first, what does it do?

Named the BlueSLR, the little box plugs into your Nikon SLR via one of its ports (there are three identically priced models with different plugs) and talks to your phone via Bluetooth. From a companion app, you can control the camera’s focus, shutter speed, and self-timer, or fire remotely from “up to 300-feet away” (that must be some powerful Bluetooth in there).

That alone might be worth it for some pros, but we tend to ask a little more of our gadgets. The BlueSLR also has a GPS unit to geotag your photos, writing the GPS data directly into the RAW of JPEG file. Given that GPS-only widgets go for around the same price, the BlueSLR starts to look cheap.

Right now the device is Nikon and iOS-only, with support for Canon, Android and Blackberry (!) coming soon. The iOS app is a free download. Wow. I think I just sold myself on this thing…

BlueSLR product page [BlueSLR]

BlueSLR app [iTunes]

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