Hasta La Gadget!

We’re all familiar with the stereotyped image of the old-school movie director. Clad in jodhpurs, a monocle and a French beret, he would spot a possible scene and frame it in his fingers, or lift a fancy viewfinder to his face. Well guess what? Now there’s an app for that.

Viewfinder (and the more expensive Viewfinder Pro) both do the same thing (Pro adds larger formats to the mix). They turn you iPhone into a camera viewfinder. The picture comes from the iPhone’s own camera and is displayed on screen with a number of outlines. These squares and rectangles correspond to the area that would be snapped by a particular camera and lens combo.

You set up a range of on-screen shortcut buttons for your various cameras using the menus (almost every camera is in there, and you can specify the specs manually if it isn’t). From there, you pick a range of focal lengths (And aspect ratios for cameras which support several) and the appropriate bright-lines will be overlaid on the picture, allowing you to see, all together, the various shots you would get with different lenses. Anyone who has used a Leica rangefinder camera will be instantly familiar with the multi-box approach.

It’s not just lines on a screen, either. You can choose to darken the areas outside of a chosen frame to remove distraction, much like the Photoshop crop-tool. You can even use a digital zoom to fill the screen with this view, although it gets a little fuzzy. If you want to go wider than the iPhone’s roughly 35mm field of view, you can use an optical wide-angle adapter of your choice and then dial in the focal-length multiplier. Viewfinder will then change its views for you.

Why bother, when you could just hold your camera up to your eye? First, you can see what another lens could do without actually changing it. Second, this seems to me like a great way to train yourself to see. With some practice using this app, you’ll soon have an eye for which lens will give you the picture you want. You can even grab a shot which includes the lines for later use.

Viewfinder costs $8, way less than any hardware solution, and also more likely to be in your pocket when you need it. The Pro version, which as we said just adds larger format cameras, costs a money-grabbing $15. Both available now.

Viewfinder Standard [iTunes via Luminous Landscape]

A new sensor technology promises to make cellphone cameras good enough to use for wedding photos.

InVisage Technologies, a Menlo Park, California, company, has developed an image sensor using quantum dots instead of silicon. The company claims its technology increases sensor performance by more than four times.

“We have all heard ‘Gee, I wish the camera on my iPhone was better,’” says InVisage’s President and CEO Jess Lee. “But the heart of the problem is in the heart of the camera, which is the sensor.”

Most cameras today used either a CCD (charged-couple device) sensor or a CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor)-based sensor. The silicon in current image sensors has a light-absorbing efficiency of only about 50 percent, says Lee.

Reducing efficiency still further are the layers of copper or aluminum circuitry laid on top of the silicon. The metal blocks the light, so only a fraction of a sensor’s silicon is exposed to light.

Replacing silicon with quantum dots could change all that. A quantum dot is a nanocrystal made of a special class of semiconductors. It allows manufacturers to have a very high degree of control over its conductive properties, and is about 90 percent efficient at absorbing light, according to Lee.

The quantum dots are usually suspended in fluid. InVisage takes a vial of these and spins it onto a layer of silicon, then adds the required metal circuitry to create a new type of sensor that it is calling QuantumFilm.

In addition to the increased sensitivity, InVisage’s technology allows the metal circuits to be placed underneath the quantum film, where they don’t block the light.

“This is entirely different from the type of image sensors that we have right now,” says Tom Hausken, director with market research firm Strategies Unlimited. “Usually you see incremental improvements in sensor design, but these guys have made a significant change in the process.”

Quantum dots can be made from silicon, tellurides or sulphides. InVisage won’t reveal exactly which material it is using.

As opposed to silicon’s indirect band gap, quantum dots have a direct band gap. Lee says Invisage can tune the Dots’ band gap much more efficiently than silicon so it is more sensitive to visible light, ultraviolet and even infrared waves.

In the last few years, manufacturers have been touting megapixels as the measure of a camera’s prowess. But the true measure of picture quality is not as much in the megapixels but in the size of the sensor used in the device.

To capture the light, imaging sensors need to have as much area as possible. Powerful DSLR cameras have an imaging sensor that’s about a third of the size of a business card, while camera phones sport sensors that are only about a quarter inch wide (see top photo). Smaller sensors mean less light sensitivity for each pixel on the sensor, and that translates into lower-quality images.

Quantum dot-based sensors won’t be more expensive than traditional CMOS-based sensors, promises Lee. InVisage says it will have samples ready for phone manufacturers by the end of the year and the sensors could be in phones by mid next-year.

Though quantum dots are commercially produced by other manufacturers, they have never been used on image sensors before, says Hausken.

“Mostly people have looked to use it in displays, solar cells and as identification markers,” he says. “So we will have to see how effective and reliable it is as a sensor.”

See Also:

• Olympus’ Omni-directional Camera Sensor Makes Pictures Look Like HAL 9000 Clones
• Panasonic’s Big-Sensor Camera Disappoints NYT Reviewer
• How Does Fujifilm’s New Camera See in the Dark?
• Olympus Camera Packs SLR Aspirations in Compact Body
• Eye Spy: Filmmaker Plans to Install Camera in His Eye Socket

Photo: CCD senor (Divine Harvester/Flickr)

Photo: Jonathan Snyder / Wired.com

Canon’s latest firmware update for the 5D MkII (v2.0.3) which was pushed out earlier this month promised all sorts of new video functions, from proper a 24p frame-rate to manual control for audio level. For some owners, though, it has broken their cameras.

Canon has issued a warning that some users are “experiencing issues” and that it is “are working on a new firmware update to address these phenomena”. What phenomena? No audio. Specifically, if you have the audio levels set to manual control, nothing will be recorded in any of your custom exposure modes If you happen to turn the camera off (and on again, obviously). Canon has pulled the firmware update until further notice.

Also mentioned at the 5D Mark II Team blog are a few unconfirmed issues, from the return of the infamous black spots, through “inconsistent stuttering and/or dropped frames on 24p” to “weird noises coming from the lens”.

There is a workaround for the confirmed audio problems (set levels to automatic), and the other problems are under investigation. This is exactly why I hold off camera firmware updates for at least a few weeks before applying them.

Canon Official Update Information [5D Mark II Team blog via Canon Rumors]

Important Update Information for Firmware Update Version 2.0.3 [Canon]

See Also:

• Canon 5D MkII Update Cures Black Spots
• Canon Firmware Update Adds Manual Control to 5D MkII Video …
• 5D MkII Update Adds 24p Video, Sound Levels
• Magic Lantern Firmware Supercharges Canon 5D MkII

You’ve pre-ordered your iPad, and you’re impatiently crossing off the days on the calendar until April 3. What can you do in the meantime, apart from obsessively refreshing your Google search to find articles like this one? What about some accessory shopping?

The iPad looks great, but it could also be improved with a few additions that will make it more useful, more often. Don’t worry, we don’t want you to spend much. Most of these picks are free, and all of them will improve your iPad. Here’s a list of what I’ll be buying (or making or downloading) for my iPad in the next few weeks.

A Ziploc Bag

When Jeff Bezos reads his Kindle in the bath, he seals it inside a one-gallon Ziploc bag. If you’re going to be using your iPad in the bath, or the slightly less hostile kitchen, you should do the same. You can see the screen, hear the (slightly muffled) music and generally relax. Amazingly, the multitouch will still work through the plastic. I tried it with my iPod touch a moment ago and it was like the plastic wasn’t there.

Price: around 35 cents

E-Book Software

Now that we know that the iPad will support the almost universal EPUB format, it’s time to prepare some books to load onto the device (as if you’ll be able to sit still enough to read a book for the first few days of your new toy). Many public domain titles can be downloaded in EPUB-form, notably from Project Gutenberg, but what you need is a piece of software to convert any and every text or PDF you can throw at it.

Calibre and Stanza are both E-Book conversion apps, and both work on OS X and Windows. Stanza partners our favorite iPhone e-reader of the same name, and does a good and simple job of conversions.

Calibre is a lot more powerful, and along with handling complex documents a lot better, it also stores your e-books in an iTunes-style library (although this will be moot when iTunes stores them for you). It will also download daily newspapers, free, along with many websites and any RSS feed you choose to add.

Price: Free

Calibre [Calibre]

Stanza [Lexcycle]

A Stylus

I have been ridiculing the poor Pogo Stylus for iPhone for a couple years now: Who wants a stylus on a phone designed not to need one? But with the iPad, the little hollow tube with a foamy metallic tip looks a lot more useful.

Combine the little pen with a big-screen iPad and some drawing or painting software and you have an amazing sketchbook. Most of us draw easier with a pen than with fingers (unless we are still in kindergarten), and the good-size screen, combined with an undo function, may even make the combo better than pencil and paper. The only downside is the lack of pressure sensitivity.

Price: $15

Pogo Stylus [Ten One Design]

A Case

This one might seem obvious, but I suspect many people are planning to buy the Wi-Fi iPad and leave it on the coffee-table or nightstand (or down the back of the couch). Don’t! This device begs to be thrown in a bag and taken with you, wherever you go. You can read, write, draw, paint, watch movies and all that stuff, all when you have a few minutes to spare. If you’re worried about scratching your precious iBaby, you’ll miss out.

Don’t, however, buy a laptop-style pouch, or anything that zips shut. You want easy, fast access or you’ll never take it out. At the very least, consider a slipcover. Better is a notepad or book-style cover, something that can be flipped open in a second, and preferably one that can double as a stand. Worried that it doesn’t offer protection from dust and spills? That’s what the Ziploc bag is for.

Price: Variable. Free if you use an old padded shipping envelope.

That Little iPad Camera Connection Dingus

If you have a camera and an iPad, you should buy the iPad Camera Connection Kit. Consisting of both an SD card-reader and a USB connection cable, the kit lets you load your photos onto the iPad without the computer middleman. Why would you care?

Think about what most of us do with our cameras. We take a lot of pictures of a day out, a family gathering or some other social event. Then we all crowd around the back to look at the tiny three-inch screen. Now think about the alternative: A 10-inch screen, pinch-to-zoom, a wide viewing angle, slideshows with transitions and music, plus an instant, in-the-field back up.

The iPad also supports RAW photos. That’s right. If you prefer to shoot your pictures now and ask your editing questions later, you’re not excluded from the iPad. Apple: “iPad supports standard photo formats, including JPEG and RAW.” This alone will make every pro photographer reading this article go out and order one now (here’s the pre-order page if you want it). I expect that there will soon be a lot of RAW photo-editing applications in the App Store, too, but for now, the ability to quickly view and edit pictures on a slim, portable device with a long battery life while shooting will be worth the money on its own.

Price: TBA

iPad Camera Connection Kit [Apple]

That’s my list. What about yours? Do you have a favorite Bluetooth keyboard, an awesome idea for a homemade stand or some weird use-case that nobody else has thought of? Hit us up in the comments.

See Also:

• Stanza v2.0: The iPhone's Best E-Reader Just Got Better
• Pogo Stylus: The Most Useless iPhone Accessory. Ever
• Leather Cases Turn iPad into a Book

Ziploc photo: tamakisono/Flickr

The Cloak Bag is a camera bag that lets you take pictures whilst your camera is still inside. It also doesn’t look anything like a normal camera bag, making it doubly secure if you’re a vulnerable traveler on vacation.

Like all the best niche products, the shoot-through bag was born of specific need. After two near misses in Buenos Aires, co-inventor Robert Merrill was afraid to take his DSLR out for fear of theft, so when he got back to Florida, he went to work. The Cloak Bag is designed to keep the camera protected and out of site, yet you can quickly flip it open and shoot with the camera still inside. A strap replaces your actual camera strap, and then the case itself hooks onto it with Velcro and a screw in the tripod-mount. The bottom of the bag zips open and folds inside when you want to shoot. In this mode, it looks like any other shoulder bag.

To shoot, you flip open the top (held in place with magnets) and your fingers slot inside through a gap to reach the dials and shutter release. If you need to zoom of focus manually, there is another zipper to gain access to the lens from the side.

Even if not fearing pickpockets and scam-artists, I like that you can have the camera ready to go but still protected from bumps (just don’t forget the front is open and put the camera down on wet ground). And at $50, it’s not much more than other day bags. The Cloak Bag is for DSLRs-only, and will fit cameras as big as Canon’s 5D MkII and Nikon’s D700 – in short, anything smaller than a bulky pro camera.

Cloak Bag [Cloak Bags via Photography Bay]

See Also:

• Make It: Stealth Camera Bag
• Gadget Lab Reader Makes Stealth Camera and Netbook Bag
• Hands On With Lowepro's 'Stealth' Camera Bag