Did you know that your Lensbaby Composer has a removable optic inside? Using the right tool you can extract this glassy core and swap in one of Lensbaby’s new Fisheye or Soft Focus optics.

The Lensbaby Composer itself is a twist’n’shoot lens which bends to place the point of focus anywhere in the frame. It’s great fun to use, and can give some odd and unexpected effects to your photos. These new optics slot into that same case and distort the images even more.

The fisheye gives a fully round view, with the bending of straight lines you expect from a fisheye. With a full-frame camera, you actually see the circle. Crop frame sensors will get a little vignetting at the edges and Micro 4/3 bodies will not see the circle at all, but do get the bendy lines.

The soft focus unit slots in and gives even blur across the image. From the example pictures, it looks like the picture is still in focus but jut, well, softer. Imagine the old Hollywood vaseline-on-the-lens trick and you’ll be close.

Both optics have interchangeable aperture disks, and both can still be used with the tilting mechanism of the Lensbaby, although in the case of the fisheye you end up just blacking out a lot of the frame. The softy is $90, and the rather satisfyingly hefty fisheye is $150. Both turned up here at Gadget Lab España yesterday, and will be thoroughly tested over the next week (including shooting video on a Micro 4/3 body).

Fisheye [Lensbaby]

Soft Focus [Lensbaby]

Olympus has taken the lovely, popular and slightly flawed Pen EP-1 camera, tweaked it to to be more like Panasonic’s equally nice GF1, and in the process created a Frankenstein’s camera, a bloated monster that bears the same relationship to the EP-1 as Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz bore to his Stanley Kowalski.

So, what’s new? The Pen E-PL1 is still an interchangeable lens, Micro Four Thirds (M4/3) camera, but it gains a pop-up flash and a direct video-record button (this button, found on the Panasonic GF1, is wonderfully useful for quick clip shooting). As mentioned, the body loses its sleek, muscular good looks and also the two innovative thumb dials, replaced by one top-plate dial and a whole lot of buttons. If you are looking for an easy to control manual camera, this isn’t it — stick with the EP2 or the GF1.

The new Pen has some nice features not found in the Panasonic. First, in-body image stabilization, which works whatever lens you put on the front. Second, you can hook up a microphone to supplement to built-in mono mic (both the EPx cameras have stereo mics, the Panny mono with no aux input).

There is also a range of Live Guides, which let you tweak color and other parameters and see the results live on-screen before you shoot. And one of the coolest features is that you can pair the camera with Olympus flashes and control them remotely. That’s a pretty high-end DSLR feature right there.

All this comes in a $600 package, bundled with a Zuiko 14-42mm f3.5/5.6, available in March. If you’re looking to step up from a high-end compact, but don’t need the price or the great manual handling of the EP-2 or GF1, this is a rather sweet-featured camera. If you squint, and don’t look too hard at its ugly lines.

Introducing the Incredible Olympus Pen E-PL1 Camera [Olympus]

Dan Woolley was all over the news last week as the tech geek who survived the Haiti earthquake with the help of a first-aid iPhone app, his digital SLR and, of course, a lot of luck.

The religious man credits his survival to God and all those praying for him. But in an interview with Wired.com, he reveals that he was even more technologically resourceful than initial reports suggested.

After the quake struck, burying the Hotel Montana in rubble, Woolley, a web programmer, came up with some clever techy ideas. In addition to consulting the iPhone app First Aid & CPR for advice on treating cuts, Woolley used his digital SLR’s focusing light to help illuminate his surroundings. He snapped photos of the wreckage, using the flash to help him search for refuge. His viewfinder revealed a crumbled elevator shaft, where he prayed, rested and bandaged his wounds. Then, Woolley set his alarm to go off every 20 minutes to stay awake, fearing that if he fell asleep, he could go into shock. A French rescue team dug him out of the shaft 65 hours later.

• Join Reddit’s Haiti relief fundraising drive with Direct Relief International.
• Contribute to Haiti Rewired, Wired’s community for discussing tech, infrastructure, and the future of Haiti.

That was the gist of the story broadcast news outlets reported last week on Woolley, but there’s more.

While waiting for rescue, Woolley recorded voice memos for his family with his iPhone. And when he was feeling discouraged, he used the iPod app to listen to music.

How did his iPhone battery last an amazing 65 hours? Woolley had a Mophie “Juice Pack” battery extender that he plugged into his iPhone, giving it several hours more juice. He also stopped using the alarm after feeling reassured that he wouldn’t go into shock.

When the battery meter sank to 20 percent, Woolley shut off the iPhone to save the power. Before he did, he had stored some text messages calling for help, figuring he would have them ready to send in case he could get a miraculous cell connection.

“It really was an incredible tool in my pocket, and I was really glad to have it,” Woolley told Wired.com on the phone.

Woolley clarified that he was using the app not to learn to treat his cuts, but rather to ensure he was doing it properly.

“I don’t know if I would’ve necessarily done things differently if I didn’t have [the iPhone app],” Woolley admitted. “At a point of great inner turmoil it was great to have something that was definitive. It’s not like I read it and I learned and said, oh really I should tie the wound? It’s more like OK, this is what I do. All right, I’m doing the right thing.”

Woolley added that many on the web criticized him for not having a first-aid kit with him. He said critics were missing a major point about the importance of the iPhone, and other similar app-powered smartphones, such as Google’s Nexus One, being a general-purpose tool that you carry with you everywhere.

“For people who pointed out I should’ve had a pocket first aid kit, the reason they’re wrong is I wouldn’t have it in my pocket,” he said. “How many people have gone out of their way to add one more thing to their pocket? What was valuable about the iPhone is it was already in my pocket. And I thought, it would probably be a good way to have some first aid tips in here, so I downloaded that app. That’s the value of this utility.”

Woolley was one of reportedly 23 survivors rescued from the rubble that buried Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince, Haiti after the massive earthquake. He was shooting a video about poverty-stricken children in Haiti with his friend David Hames, a filmmaker, when the quake struck. Hames was not found.

“My iPhone did not save me, God and the prayers of tens of thousands of His people did,” Woolley said.

See Also:

• Man Buried in Haiti Rubble Uses iPhone to Treat Wounds, Survive
• Application Turns iPhone Into Medical Assistant
• A Tech Rx for Doctors: The iPhone

Photo courtesy of Dan Woolley

Pentax has announced the three new compact cameras that were hinted at yesterday, in all their retro-tastic glory. As expected, the I-10 (above) looks like a tiny 1960s SLR (reader msatlas pointed out on yesterday’s post that it looks like the Pentax 110 SLRs from decades past), and the H90 caomes in a rather fetching orange’n’silver color scheme. Finally, Pentax snuck in the excruciatingly dull E90, a $100, 10MP camera which only a very bored mother could love (bottom).

The $300 I-10 comes in black or white and with “classy” leatherette cladding. The lens has a 5x zoom, the sensor 12.1 MP, a 2.7-inch LCD and 720p video capture. The most exciting feature, though, apart from the horrible styling and lack of a viewfinder (despite the lump on the top of the body) is the face detection mode. Pentax has tweaked the design to recognize dogs and cats. Now you know what to buy your crazy, tie-dye clad neighbor for her birthday.

By contrast, the H90 has hard, modern lines — if by modern you mean “1970s robotic scallop”. Again with the 5x zoom, 12.1MP sensor, 2.7-inch and 720p video: it seems almost as if these cameras were only differentiated by case design. And price: the H90 is just $180.

Lastly, a surprise. The cheap-o, fugly E90 shoots at ISO6400 (with likely quite noisy results) and takes a pair of AA batteries. It could make a great, semi-disposable travel-cam.

Pentax product page [Pentax via Photography Bay]

• DMC-FX66: This one’s a 14.1 megapixel slim camera with an F2.8-5.9 25-125mm (5x zoom) ultra-wide-angle lens (with Power O.I.S lens-shift stabilization). The 720p video capture and 1.06 second start-up time are sweet too, but no AVCHD Lite here. On the back there’s a 2.7-inch 230k-dot screen with wide viewing angle. All this is just 5.11 ounces including battery.
• DMC-TS2 (FT2): This camera has a lot in common with the FX66 above — same sensor, same image stabilization, same scene modes (but with three extra), same focus modes and same screen. The main differences are its AVCHD Lite 720p video format, F3.3-5.9 28-128mm (4.6x) lens and added ruggedness — waterproof to 10m, shockproof to 2m, freezeproof to 14 degrees Fahrenheit and dustproof. It’s of course slightly heavier too — 6.63 ounces including battery.
• DMC-ZS5 (TZ8) and DMC-ZS7 (TZ10): These two appear to be twins, except the former has a smaller screen (2.7-inch with 230k dots instead of 3-inch with 460k dots) and lacks GPS, AVCHD Lite and mini-HDMI port. Both do 12.1 megapixel pictures and 720p videos, have F3.3-4.9 25-300mm (12x) lens with lens-shift stabilization, and have identical scene and focus modes. With battery these weigh 7.55 ounces and 7.69 ounces respectively.
• DMC-ZR3 (ZX3): Whoa! Another 14.1 megapixel camera which does AVCHD Lite. The specs are almost identical to the TS2 except for the lens (F3.3-5.9 25-200mm 8x ultra-wide-angle) and lack of ruggedness. It weighs 5.61 ounces with battery.

Phew! No prices or availability announced yet, so take your time with picking out your favorite.

Panasonic churns out DMC-FX66, DMC-TS2, DMC-ZS5, DMC-ZS7 and DMC-ZR3 Lumix compacts originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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