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Oct 19

Inflatable Photo Studio Is a Lawsuit Waiting to Happen

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Today's Chili

I so wanted to laugh at the IPS, or Inflatable Photo Studio, when I saw it. Luckily it is easy to do so. The giant black plastic balloon is actually ideal for quickly setting up a controlled shooting environment in minutes, but its website is as laughable as the machinations of the fashion-industry itself.

This (annoying Flash) site could only have been built in the U.S.A, land of the lawsuit. Almost every part on the site, from the Q&A to a section marked “Important” has a warning of some kind. Here is one of the best, as transcribed from the Flash monstrosity by our favorite Strobist Mr. David Hobby.

It is not recommended that you smoke, cook or have any open flames in the studio. Also lights can become very hot and melt the studio. Do not rest lighting or position it against the sides. Curling irons, hair driers [sic] irons, and steamers can also melt the plastic causing rapid deflation or possible fire.

Or what about this one, concerning the use of the big bubble-tent in wind:

Its [sic] not concrete. But if you’re shoot in an air bubble in gale force winds then yes its [sic] going to move around a bit […] It is not recommended that you inflate these on cliffs, dams or areas with strong wind gusts.

If you want more, then here it is:

DO NOT ALLOW ANYONE INSIDE WHILE DEFLATING! It is recommended that in the event there is a power failure that you crawl on your hands and knees to the nearest exit. In the event of a rapid deflation is is best to NOT PANIC, keep your arms up at an angle in front of you.

This last is accompanied by a photo of Shatner’s Kirk choking to death.

But back to the actual product. The 6-10mm-thick plastic is welded into a giant black balloon which is inflated by a fan connected to an entry tube. The tent is black inside to prevent light spill, and can be pumped up ready for action in 3-4 minutes.

There are two sizes, the smaller 12 x 7 x 10 foot version and a lager 20 x 12 x 12-foot model. Both can be had with or without fans, at $330/$400 or $350/$500 respectively. This is surprisingly cheap for photo gear.

Go check out the site. It’s worth it for a few minutes amusement. Especially good is the glimpse of what look like capri-pants on the boy-model in the video.

Inflatable Photo Studio [IPS via Strobist]

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Oct 18

Lens Guard, The Ugly Duckling of Protective Covers

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

The very best thing about the DeluxeGear Lens Guard is that it looks like it was designed and made by a three-year old. Take a look: it’s as if this protective cover had been squished out of Play-Doh and stuck straight on the front of the lens.

In fact the Lens Guard is a little more high-tech than that. An inner neoprene core is covered with Santoprene, a cross between rubber and polypropylene which can be molded when hot and sets to a bendy, waterproof rubber-like material. According to Wikipedia, Santoprene is also used to make the blades of “training knives, swords, and bayonets” which is awesome.

Back on the camera, the Lens Guard is like an extreme lens-cap. You pop the cosy over the end of the lens and the shock-absorbing cover soaks up bumps, whilst shrugging off dust and water. If you’re the kind of person who keeps a lens-hood permanently attached to your lens not to reduce flare but to protect the front element from whacks and smack, this is for you.

The Lens Guard comes in three sizes, to fit lenses from 2.5-inches to 3.9-inches in diameter, all of which cost $15. Or you could just buy a tub of Play Doh and put the kids to work.

Lens Guard product page [DeluxeGear via Photography Bay]

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Oct 14

The Ultimate Smartphone Camera Battle [Reviews]

Posted in: Apple, BlackBerry, HTC, motorola, Phones, photography, Reviews, samsung, Smartphones, Today's Chili, top

Click here to read The Ultimate Smartphone Camera Battle

Smartphone cameras are becoming increasingly powerful-many, in fact, are fully capable of taking very sharp and professional looking photos. But are these phones capable of holding their own against more sophisticated equipment? And which phone does it best? More »

Oct 14

How to Make Color Pictures from B&W Photographs

Posted in: Today's Chili

You know that your digital camera only takes black and white pictures, right? The sensor collects light intensity, and each pixel records a level between 0 and 255. The color information is added in later via clever processing: each pixel has either a red, green or blue filter over it. Thus the camera knows how much of each color is there, even though it records “green” as gray. This is pretty much how technicolor works, although that splits the image into three using prisms, and sends each image through a colored filter to be recorded on a separate reel of B&W film to be combined later.

Tech lesson over. Now the fun starts. You can recreate the technicolor experience with Photojojo’s fantastic tutorial. What you do is lock down your camera (a tripod is best) and shoot three black and white images of the same subject using colored filters. This encodes the color information into three B&W JPGs.

Then you head over to Photoshop (or any image editor that will work with color channels) and re-combine the three images into one color photograph. This step is complex, but can be automated. Photojojo’s guide makes it easy.

Why do this? Because it’s fun. Because you’ll learn something about the photographic process, and because you’ll get some crazy images. For a variation, try using a colored flash in each photo instead of a filter on the lens. This will give you some very odd background effects.

What are you waiting for? If you have some colored hard-candy wrappers you’re good to go. And don’t forget, there’s a month-long free trial on Photoshop. Off you go!

DIY Photo Magic: How to Turn Black and White Photos into Full Color Images [Photojojo]

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Oct 14

Sony NEX Update Adds Autofocus for Alpha Lenses

Posted in: firmware, lenses, sony, Today's Chili

Heads up, Sony NEX owners: There’s a firmware update for your camera and it’s actually something to get excited about. An exciting firmware update? Yes. With a simple download, you now have full access to 14 new lenses.

The update, for the NEX-3 and NEX-5, brings autofocus to these A-mount lenses. These lenses, which include both Sony’s own and third-party models from Carl Zeiss, are designed for the bigger Alpha SLRs and previously only worked in manual mode on the smaller mirrorless NEXs.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that, by Sony’s measurements, focussing these lenses will take from two to seven seconds, or longer than doing it by hand. Still, it’s free, so what are you gonna do?

There are a few more upgrades: two of the three soft-keys on the back of the cameras can now be programmed with your choice of function, you can choose which menu pops up when you hit the “menu” button, and when you choose manual focus, you can have a section of the picture enlarged on-screen to make things easier, just like Panasonic’s Micro Four Thirds cameras.

The updates are available now, and can be installed from Windows or Mac OS2 (!?).

More enhancements for NEX-5/NEX-3 cameras [Sony]

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Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Oct 13

Canon Media Station Downloads Photos, Charges Cameras Wirelessly

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

Now: You bring your camera home, battery dead and memory-card full after a long day’s shooting. You remove the card and battery, track down your card reader and charger, plug them in, yawn.

The future: You walk in the door, put your Canon camera down onto the Canon Cross Media Station on the side-table and go grab a cold beer from the refrigerator. As you sip the well-earned beverage, the shiny black box slurps in your photos and videos whilst simultaneously charging the battery, all without wires.

And it is the future. Canon’s prototype is slick, but is still a few years from entering production, mostly because the cameras will need to be re-designed to work with it. Check out the video and you’ll see that the cameras – a compact, an SLR and a camcorder – all have annoying blue lights to let you know they’re talking to the Media Station.

The video, shot by Trusted Reviews at the Canon Expo 2010, goes on to demonstrate the sharing and display features, which group pictures together based on time taken, camera used or even by person (using face recognition). It’s impressive stuff, but eye-candy, and aimed at my mother, who would never buy this thing. Hopefully a final version will just slurp the pictures out and send them to my computer. Or better, to a hard drive that I have plugged into the back, from where I can grab them from an iPad or laptop on the same network.

One thing though, Canon. Don’t write any of this software yourself. I have used the stuff you package with cameras and scanners, and it sucks. I will, however, buy this cool Media Station, if only to add to my collection of 2001 monolith-inspired gadgets.

Canon Showcases Filesharing Cross Media Station [Trusted Reviews]

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Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Oct 13

Pentax x nanoblock: 3D ads show off 3D customization

Posted in: advertising, MARKETING IDEAS, Today's Chili

Gadget-lovers out there will likely already be familiar with the Optio NB1000 from Pentax, a camera partly made from the Lego-style nanoblock toys.

pentax-optio-nb1000-nanoblock-camera-2

Out and about on a project recently we spotted this great advertisement for the camera, a leaflet that includes a free pair of 3D glasses.

pentax-optio-nb1000-nanoblock-camera

The idea is that you use the glasses to look at the artwork on the flyer and admire the funky pictures of the cameras and nanoblock animals.

Not a bad incentive for a camera that, while it may not be able to shoot in 3D, can still be customized in all three dimensions!

Oct 12

82 Striking Photos of Smoke [Photography]

Posted in: photography, shooting challenge, Today's Chili, top

Click here to read 82 Striking Photos of Smoke

Like water, smoke is beautiful, powerful and unpredictable. The 82 photos from this week’s Shooting Challenge not only capture smoke as smoke, but smoke as demons, jellyfish and…OK…sometimes just as smoke. More »

Oct 12

Scout: The Lensbaby That Doesn’t Bend

Posted in: lenses, Today's Chili

Lensbaby’s schtick is that you can twist and turn all the lenses in the range to grab selective focus from either a single, small circle, anywhere in frame, or photograph a sharp stripe the slashes through an otherwise blurred image. Until now.

Recently, Lensbaby added swap-in optics to the range, a fisheye, a soft-focus and a pinhole module which slide into the various bendy-shells. The new Scout is designed to hold these, too, but it doesn’t move. This lets you keep the optics dead-center to enjoy their various deliberate defects without the twisting. It also lets you focus so close the lens is almost touching the subject, and you’ll get a lot of lens-flare. This, if you were wondering, is a feature.

The analog nature of these tricks makes it faster and much more fun than tweaking things later in photoshop. Hell, you could probably buy the whole range for less than the Adobe Creative Suite.

But the Scout costs $250. This compares to $270 for the Composer, which also works with the all same optics but also adds the trademark twist. The Scout does at least come with the fisheye optic which retails for $150, whereas the Composer ships with the double-glass optic which costs $85 bought separately. Some quick math, then, tells us that the Scout’s shell is valued at $150, versus the Composer shell which is $185.

If you’re looking to buy into the whole Lensbaby system, then go with one of the bendier options and buy the fisheye separately. If you just fancy some flared-out, close-focus fisheye action, then get this, or the Lomo adapter with a plastic fisheye lens for around $50.

Scout product page [Lensbaby. Thanks, Jessica!]

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Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Oct 12

Color Splash Flash, the $30 Camera Rainbow

Posted in: flash, Today's Chili

The Color Splash flash adds a splash of color to your flash. It’s a dirt-cheap, plastic flashgun that contains 12 different colored gels. To select a color, just turn the dial and the gels are rotated in front of the flash-tube. You can even split a shot into two differently-colored halves just by stopping the dial between two sections.

Take a look at the gallery below to see what kinds of things you can do. I love accessories like this, or the $12 Diana lens adapter that lets you put crappy plastic Lomo lenses onto your DSLR: For less than the price of a few rolls of film you can jazz up your pictures and get excited about going out to shoot.

There’s one big warning attached to this kit, though. The flash unit is designed for film cameras. This makes it great for your Lomo, it may damage a digital camera. This is because older flash units have a very high voltage across the contact on the hotshoe.

This wasn’t a problem for film camera, as the hot-shoe was essentially a dumb switch. With a digicam, though, you could fry your camera’s innards: the Color Splash has a sync voltage of 270v, whereas the average DSLR is rated for just 10-12v. To avoid trouble, various adapters are available, such as the Wein HSHSB Safe-Sync Hot Shoe.

But at just $30, this is really the perfect companion for a disposable or toy cameras. And even if you don’t want to buy it, you might now be inspired to head out into the gray Autumn day and take color things up with the flash and gels you already own.

Splash Flash product page [Photojojo]

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