Hasta La Gadget!

The LumoPro LP160 might be the ultimate Strobist flash. Cheap, powerful and able to talk to pretty much any camera, it offers a great alternative to the $500 top-end flashes from Nikon and Canon for those who want a big light without paying for all the fancy automatic functions.

Strobists, or enthusiasts of off-camera flash, use small strobes and they use them in manual mode. LumoPro is a brand of Strobist gear made by camera retailer Moishe Applebaum (of Midwest Photo Exchange in Columbus, Ohio) in consultaion with the granddaddy of Strobism, photographer David Hobby. The kit is meant to be cheap, simple and good, and the new LP160 looks like it fits right in.

The details: The LP160 has a guide number of 140 (feet, ISO 100) which matches the Nikon SB900 or the Canon 580 EX II. It has a metal foot for mounting on hot-shoes and lighting stands and can swivel (270º) and tilt (180º up and 7º down). Power output is adjustable down to 1/64, and is done via pushbutton instead of the mechanical switches on the LP120 it replaces. Zooming, too, is motorized and done by a button.

The real magic comes in with the four different triggering methods. There is the regular hot-shoe trigger, a PC-socket for old-school cable masochists, a 3.5mm jack socket for those who don’t hate themselves and finally, a rather neat slave trigger. Slaves trip a flash when they see another flash, so you can pop your light using the small built-in flash on a digicam. This one will even ignore the pre-flashes from digital compacts. Nice.

How much is this flashgun? $200 $160. That’s a jump from the v1.0 LP120, which cost $130, but you get a lot more. And if you have been waiting on a back ordered LP120? Good news. Your ordered will be replaced with the new unit, at no extra cost.

LP160 Quad-sync Manual Flash [LumoPro. Thanks, Moishe!]

LumoPro LP160: Quad Sync v.2.0 [Strobist]

See Also:

• Cheap, Manual Flashgun: Built by Strobists, for Strobists
• First Look: Strobist 'Open Source' Flashgun
• Strobist Designs Real Open Source Remote Trigger
• Universal Translator: Marry Any Flash to Any Camera

HTC’s next Android-powered missile is a big-ass smartphone called the Evo. Designed to run on Sprint’s 4G network, the Evo is packed with a number of powerful features underneath its beautiful 4.3-inch touchscreen.

To give us a look at the Evo’s guts, repair company iFixit disassembled the smartphone in an exclusive video shoot with Wired.com. Some of the most notable observations include the behemoth 8-megapixel camera sensor, accompanied with a much smaller 1.3-megapixel front-facing cam for video conferencing.

Also impressive was the HTC-branded battery (3.7-volt, 1500 mAh rechargeable Li-ion), which contains 23 percent more capacity than an iPhone 3GS, 15 percent more than an HTC Droid Incredible, and 7 percent more than an HTC Nexus One.

The Evo is due in stores June 4, just three days before Apple is expected to announce its fourth-generation iPhone at the Worldwide Developers Conference. Leaked prototypes of the next-gen iPhone revealed a front-facing camera, also presumably designed for video conferencing. The Evo and the fourth-gen iPhone may be the first mobile contenders to spark a battle for video calls.

Check out the video above for a deep dive of iFixit’s dissection, starring iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens.

This episode of the Gadget Lab video podcast was produced by Annaliza Savage, with editing by Michael Lennon and audio engineering by Fernando Cardoso. For more video from Wired.com, go to www.wired.com/video.

See Also:

• HTC EVO 4G $200, on Sale June 4
• EVO 4G Hacked, Rooted Before Arriving in Stores
• Sprint, HTC Unveil First 4G Android Phone

Panasonic’s new 8mm fisheye lens brings a 180º field of view to the Micro Four Thirds camera range, allowing photographers the opportunity to shoot both the sky and their own feet at the same time.

On the MFT-system, with its half-frame sensor, the 8mm ƒ3.5 wide-angle is the equivalent of a 16mm fisheye on a 35mm camera. And these ultra-wide lenses are one of the few kinds of glass that don’t really need a super-wide maximum aperture: even an ƒ2 fisheye wouldn’t give you a super-shallow depth of field here, and because you aren’t zoomed-in on one detail far away as you would be with a longer lens, you don’t have to worry about camera shake, either. Just slow the shutter a little to get enough light at night.

Other than just being wide, the lens also lets you slide in a piece of gel-filter into the rear for creative, Lomo-like effects, and the seven-bladed aperture should shape any out-of focus highlights you manage to achieve into pleasing blurs. The stepper-motors used for focussing are silent (for movie making) and the lens can focus as close as 10cm (four inches).

The UK price has been announced as £730 ($1,060), which should probably bring it in at under a grand in the US, possibly in July.

Panasonic Introduces World’s Smallest and Lightest Digital Interchangeable Fisheye Lens [Panasonic]

See Also:

• Olympus Collapsible Wide-Angle Zoom for Micro Four Thirds
• Noktor ƒ0.95 Lens for Micro Four Thirds Cameras
• Panasonic Micro Four Thirds 'Rangefinder' with Leica Lenses …
• Panasonic Announces Micro Four Thirds Camcorder
• Micro Four Thirds
• Adapter Puts Leica Lenses on Micro Four Thirds Cameras
• Adapter Puts Nikon and Pentax Lenses on Micro Four Thirds Cameras …

Lensbaby has popped out another new reality-distorting lens, this time for photographers who are a little too fussy about the technical side of things (you know who you are). Aptly named the Control Freak, the new lens has the familiar twisting front end which gives the trademark Lensbaby look – a single sharp spot placed wherever you like in the frame with surrounded by blur – but it also lets you lock it down for more, well, control.

It works like this: You push and pull the front section to get your subject in focus, and then twist to move the sweet-spot. When you’re done, hit the focus lock and everything is clamped down. Now you can twist the little swizzle-sticks to fine-tune the tilt effect and rotate the fine-focusing ring to get things just-so.

While the purpose of this lens is close-up and studio work (it will focus as near as nine-inches), where this level of control is useful, the fact that you can shoot freeform when the locks are off means it can double as a regular Lensbaby. It is even compatible with the Lensbaby Optic Swap system, so you can swap in the fisheye or soft-focus optics.

The Control Freak has a 50mm ƒ2 double-element lens, and comes with mounts for pretty much any modern camera system, including Micro Four Thirds. It will cost you $350, and is available now.

Control Freak [Lensbaby. Thanks, Jessica!]

See Also:

• Hands-On With Lensbaby Fisheye and Soft-Focus Optics
• Lensbaby Gets Fisheye and Soft Core Optics
• Destroy All Photos: Lensbaby Fisheye and Soft Focus Lenses …
• Review: Lensbaby Composer Lets You Art Up Images Sans Photoshop …

Concept cameras are usually little more than a GGI-rendered wish-list, the creator’s own dream-machine mocked up on-screen. But this concept Sony Alpha DSLR from Abel Verdezoto is both restrained and remarkably smart.

Well, almost. Verdezoto has decided to swap around and detail the positions of every button and dial, but the big design win is the face-friendly rear panel. Instead of being a vertical, cliff-like slab, the back of the camera slopes inward from the top, away from you. This gets the LCD panel and everything else out of the way of your nose and cheeks and lets your eye rest comfortably on the viewfinder. And lest you worry that the angle of view on that LCD will be compromised, the panel is hinged to flip out when needed.

The sloping back has another advantage: a more natural angle for the wrist when holding the camera to the eye. The hands tip back and the camera sits atop the meat of the thumb instead of tipping forward. Ingenious.

After that, though, it all gets a little crazy. The add-on flash, for instance, has a couple of telescoping legs to let you get it further from the lens-axis. Go take a look: it seems ready to snap as fast as Olive Oyl’s legs. Otherwise, though, the design is excellent.

Prototipo reflex con nueva ergonomía [Tecnofotografía via Yanko. Thanks, Radhika!]