Sigma has been the darling of the lens world recently, producing high-performance products at reasonable prices. Its latest is the 50mm f/1.4 Art series lens, a long awaited addition to their line that we recently had the pleasure of trying out. You’re not going to find much more lens for the price.
For photographers looking to get really creative with their gear, Lensbaby is well known for its various DSLR lenses that can create tilt-shift and other popular effects. But for the first time, the company is letting iPhone photographers get in on the fun too, with a tiny smartphone-friendly lens providing extreme focus effects.
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Fisheye lenses distort a scene to absurd proportions—which is why fisheye photography is so fun to see. Here are your fisheye photos from this week’s Shooting Challenge.
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Olympus has had a run of success with its OM-D series of cameras, not least the E-M5 we reviewed last year, and now there’s the new OM-D E-M10 to carry … Continue reading
Apple has been granted two patents relating to ways it might look to extend/augment the built in camera lenses on its mobile devices in future (via AppleInsider).
The two patents, granted to Cupertino by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, are: Patent No. 8,638,369 (pictured above) for a “Back panel for a portable electronic device with different camera lens options” and Patent No. 8,639,106 for a “Magnetic add-on lenses with alignment ridge” (pictured below).
The back panel patent was filed in December 2010, and credits Richard Tsai, now a senior camera engingeer at Apple, as its inventor.
The magnetic add-on lens patent was filed in December 2012, and credits Jeffrey Nathan Gleason and Misha Scepanovic as inventors — the latter now an optical engineer at Apple, according to LinkedIn.
The back panel patent describes a system for extending the camera on a portable electronic device by supporting replaceable lenses — using an imaging subsystem and a removable panel containing optical components.
So, in other words, a swappable back plate that lets the user choose a different type of hardware lens — such as a wide-angle lens — or to support image stablisation and zoom. The patent even talks about the possibility for adding a mechanical shutter or stroboscopic flash via the hardware add-on.
From the patent summary:
A portable electronic device includes a digital imaging subsystem with a lens having an optical axis. A case encloses and supports the digital imaging subsystem in a first defined positional relationship to the case. A removable panel is coupled to the case and held in a second defined positional relationship to the case that covers the digital imaging subsystem without the removable panel being directly connected to the digital imaging subsystem. An optical component is supported by the removable panel such that the optical component is aligned with the optical axis and alters optical characteristics of the digital imaging subsystem. The device may include a power supply and an electronic control system coupled to the digital imaging subsystem and the power supply enclosed in and supported by the case. Electrical connectors may couple the power supply and the electronic control system to an electrical component on the removable panel.
The second, more recent patent, also describes a way to extend the camera performance of a thin “multifunctional” portable electronics device (which, once again, in the patent drawings resembles an iPhone) via optical hardware add-ons — but this time utilising magnets as the mechanism for attaching and detaching additional speciality lenses.
Discussing the rational for extending the camera in this way, the patent notes:
The optics for providing a telephoto lens and other specialty lenses require a certain length for their optical path, which often is unavailable within a small device. Further, users generally want to use a specialty lens intermittently. Therefore it is desirable to be able to change the lenses that are in the optical path to provide specialty optics when desired.
Apple is not the first mobile maker to look at hardware add-ons for extending smartphone camera optics. Last fall Sony announced the QX10 and QX100 camera lenses, for instance, for clipping onto a smartphone so you can take higher quality pictures — which is exactly the sort of scenario this patent envisages. As better cameraphone optics have steadily eroded the need for the average person to carry a separate point and shoot camera, so the next wave of mobiles looks set on getting seriously pro — and attacking the USP of DLSR devices. So this looks like more bad news for camera makers.
Apple’s 106 patent includes several drawings mocking up potential add-on lenses — including a telephoto lens in a horizontally-configured arrangement to save space, and multi-lens configuration additions which could include moveable elements such as the one pictured below:
As for the magnetic angle, Apple is a long-standing fan of magnetic fixture, having used magnets to ease the plugging and unplugging of power cords on its portable laptops for years, for instance, and also using magnets on the iPad as an anchor for its smart cover cases.
The newly granted patent notes:
A plurality of magnets are arranged on the camera module adjacent to the alignment feature to retain a detachable lens on the housing and engage the alignment feature to align the detachable lens with the optical axis. The plurality of magnets may be further arranged to minimize interference with the voice coil motor and movement of the moveable element of the lens assembly.
Moment, a new company made up of employees from former action-camera maker Contour, is launching a Kickstarter to bring high-quality telephoto and wide-angle lenses to the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy lines.
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Samsung has revealed a new smart camera, the Samsung NX30, running the company’s SMART 3.0 software for easy uploads of its 20.3-megapixel images to Dropbox, Flickr, and social networks. Launching … Continue reading
It’s been a good year for really huge aperture sizes on camera lenses, with products like the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8
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Even though 35mm film dominated the film industry for years and years, the majority of movies released to theaters were much wider than the stock’s 4:3 aspect ratio. But instead of sacrificing resolution and simply cropping off the top and bottom of a frame to make it widescreen, filmmakers used special lenses that squeezed a wider vista onto the 35mm film stock, and then unsqueezed the images when they were being projected. They were known as anamorphic lenses, and soon you’ll be able to get one for your iPhone.
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When the original version
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
