iPhone Photo Video

OWLE: Strange shape, better iPhone videos

Veit — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:30:58 +0000

Recently, a very interesting contraption was released: The OWLE Bubo, a video handle for the iPhone.

If you shot video with the iPhone in the past, you most likely noticed that it is hard to shoot smooth and stable video. On major reason for that is the unnatural way you hold the iPhone while shooting video. The OWLE addresses this shortcoming by providing a handle that is held with both hands. In addition, by making the unit more hefty than the iPhone, it is adding to the stability of the device, and thus your iPhone videos.

The OWLE Bubo is constructed of anodized billet aluminum. It includes a high quality Vericorder microphone, an aluminum .45x wide-angle/macro combo lens, a rubber iPhone case and an instruction booklet with recommended apps. To use it, simply slip your iPhone into the rubber casing with the iPhone camera in the upper left hand corner and you are ready to go.

NPR all tech considered reviewed the unit in a recent blog post. Not only did they like it, but their side-by-side test videos showed smoother and better looking videos when shot with the OWLE.

To learn more about the OWLE Bubo or to buy one, visit the OWLE store.

Price: $99.95 introductory price.

Ricoh GXR: Innovative, but too costly

Veit — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:58:01 +0000

On the heels of Olympus announcing the E-P2 follows Ricoh’s announcement of another camera system: The GXR. Its claim to fame are removable lens modules, where the sensor, the processing unit and the lens are encased in one removable unit. Therefore, the camera itself contains only the LCD, the flash show, the battery and memory card compartment and connectors to the lens units.

The advantages of such a modular system are obvious, but so are its disadvantages. By encasing the sensor with the lens, dust is no problem. The unit can be optimized for just one lens and thus made smaller – in fact, Ricoh claims the GXR to be the smallest camera with interchangeable lenses. Also, weight can be significantly reduced.

Ricoh GXR camera system with lenses

However, there are significant negatives. You can only use Ricoh lenses. So far, only two lenses have been announced and contrary to Olympus, a lens roadmap has not been released.

Ricoh GXR camera body without lens attached

Price is also a negative. Lens units contain sensors and thus are much more expensive. In fact, the 24-72 zoom “lens” is listed at $440 – most consumer zooms in this range are a lot less expensive (the 14-42mm zoom for the Olympus E-P1 retails for under $300). Even if more “lenses” will be released, building up a camera system with the lenses you want might just be too costly.

Snapping a lens module into the Ricoh GXR body

As always, dpreview.com has a good preview of the Ricoh GXR.

Olympus micro-4/3 lens roadmap released

Veit — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:21:35 +0000

In an increasingly heated battle for the new micro 4/3 camera market, Olympus recently announced the E-P2, their second iteration of the Olympus “digital PEN” camera. We will see how this camera will perform and how much it will eliminate the shortcomings of the initial E-P1 camera from Olympus.

In another move to further gain advantage over their competition, Olympus also announced a high-level lens roadmap. While not providing exact details, two zoom lenses will be released in 2010: a wide-angle and an “all-in-one” (from wide angle to medium telephoto range). Four more “speciality lenses” will follow in 2011 to round out their lens line-up: a fish-eye, a wide-angle prime, a macro and a super-telephoto.

Olympus micro 4/3 lens roadmap

Basically, Olympus tries to cover the entire range with 8 lenses. For traveling, the zooms might be most interesting. Assuming the quality is there, the “all-in-one” zoom might prove the best choice, maybe coupled with the wide-angle zoom. Or maybe the all-in-one coupled with some Zeiss, Leica or Voigtländer primes, if you have some or can find them used.

While time will tell how well Olympus will follow through on this announcement, one thing is clear already: They are doing a superb job wetting my appetite…

4 top iPhone Photo Video stories from last week

Veit — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:45:28 +0000

Here are the most popular NEW stories with our readers from last week:

1. One Finger Discount in response to MacHeist

The MacHeist bundle has often been controversial and the free MacHeist nano bundle (5+1 apps for free for 4 more days) isn’t different, either. Upset by the nano-bundle, a coalition of Mac developers, organized by Daniel Jerkut, the developer of MarsEdit, now offers its own discounts: While the MacHeist nano bundle is alive, they offer the “One Finger Discount” (no, they do not specify which finger) – 20% off of all software from all participating Mac developers. [...]

2. Mac bundle season: MacHeist for free!

After the Macfriendly bundle was released (and did not really sell well), MacHeist is next. This time with a free bundle of 5+1 apps. Since it’s free, there is no reason for you to not get it, so grab it now. My quick take on the bundle: [...]

3. Camouflage your iPhone activities

I’m known to shop the modern way – when being out there shopping, I take pictures of merchandize with my iPhone as reminders to research them later in order to make a buying decision. Of course, this can get embarrassing when, e.g., a clerk watches me in a bookstore taking pictures of books. [...]

4. Yellow Rowing Boat

I had to drop my wife off for an appointment in Greenbrae, CA, on Friday. While waiting for her, I took a walk along the nearby river, when I spotted this rower. So I whipped out my iPhone and snapped a few pictures [...]

Quarrel

Veit — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:07:43 +0000

During a photo walk yesterday, we spotted two hawks going after each other. Unfortunately, one cannot capture images like these with an iPhone. Fortunately, I had my DSLR with a telephoto with me.

Two hawks in an altercation

Canon EOS 5D, 70-200mm, 1.4x teleconverter. Processing note: Lightroom: Exposure boosted slightly, clarity boosted. Photoshop: Hawks masked and sharpened, grass blurred and de-saturated, image downsized and sharpened.

One Finger Discount in response to MacHeist

Veit — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:43:46 +0000

Simply go to OneFingerDiscount.com to see a list of participating developers – so far, 75 and growing. All of them have links to their stores, where you can enter the coupon code “One Finger Discount” to get 20%. So check them out and if you need to stock up on Mac software, this is your opportunity.

Among the participating developers are Red Sweater Software, Smile on my Mac and Tiny Planet Software.

Mac bundle season: MacHeist for free!

Veit — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:18:02 +0000

My quick take on the bundle:

If you are a Twitterer, getting Twitterific for free alone warrants your trip to the MacHeist site.
If you get distracted by all your windows on your Mac while writing your latest novel, give WriteRoom a try – it takes over your entire screen, thus allowing you to really focus on your writings.
TinyGrab is a screen capturing utility with a twist – you can upload your screenshots straight to your own FTP server and use the provided URLs to tell people where to find them. I will probably not use it, since I have enough screen grabbing software already.
If you are in need of organizing all the tiny bits of info, ShoveBox is a great app for that. I would use it, but I already use YoJimbo for exactly that purpose.
Hordes of Orcs is a good take on tower defense games.
Still locked, the most desirable app is MarinerWrite, a full fledged text editor. This one I will definitely install, should it get unlocked.

The value of this bundle cannot be beat, so head on over to MacHeist and download it now.

My ideal travel camera? The new Olympus E-P2

Veit — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:56:34 +0000

We’ve written extensively about the new micro 4/3 standard. Why I think it might be the technology of choice for my ideal travel camera, why Panasonic will not win against Olympus despite having the better camera with the GF1 and why Leica has the best travel camera (although it’s not micro 4/3 based).

So it is exciting to see this morning’s announcement that Olympus followed up their E-P1 camera with a new Olympus E-P2. Rather than upgrading the firmware of the E-P1, Olympus redressed it as a new camera, which has better auto-focus performance, 720p video support in full manual mode, an accessory port to connect an electronic viewfinder or an external microphone, two new art filters and more….

Olympus E-P2 plus existing 17mm and 14-42mm lenses (image source: dpreview.com)

In addition, Olympus also announced two new lenses, the wide-angle zoom M.Zuiko Digital ED 9-18mm f/4-5.6 (35mm equivalent: 18-36mm) and the wide-angle to tele zoom M.Zuiko Digital ED 14-150mm f/4-5.6 (35mm equivalent: 28-300mm). They will be added to their existing 14-42mm and 17mm lens offerings.

Olympus micro 4/3 lens lineup

The E-P1 got dinged especially for its slow auto-focus performance. It will be interesting to see how much improvement Olympus made with the E-P2.

Availability: Early 2010

Price: $1099.99 for the kit (Olympus E-P2, electronic view finder and 14-42mm lens). No price yet for just the body.

As always, dpreview.com has a very detailed preview of the Olympus E-P2.

Camouflage your iPhone activities

Veit — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:26:33 +0000

With cam-u-flage, you can cover up your screen with any image (in a bookstore, a screenshot of some text or an Evernote note might work best). At the same time, the entire screen becomes your camera – just tap anywhere to take the picture. Of course, tap to focus is not supported any longer. cam-u-flage then starts writing the image to memory and lets you know when it is ready for the next shot. In fact, only the bottom of the screen gives away what you are really doing.

You can use different pictures as a background and in case you want to see what you are shooting, you can adjust the opacity of the background image. Set it to 100% and you are in total stealth mode. Set it to less and the camera live view will be overlaid. For my shopping activities, I always leave it at 100% opacity. And have yet to be “caught” since using it…

Verdict: Recommended

Price: $1.99 from iTunes.

4 top iPhone Photo Video stories from last week

Veit — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:23:45 +0000

Here are the most popular NEW stories with our readers from last week:

1. Nikon Learn and Explore on your iPhone

Nikon recently released an educational iPhone app called Learn & Explore. As the title suggests, the app puts quite some educational information at your fingertips. While mainly conceived as a learning app for photographers, it’s also suitable for more experienced photographers. While obviously geared towards Nikon shooters, the tips, reference and glossary also apply to photographers who use cameras other than Nikon’s [...]

2. Keep track of sunrise and sunset on your iPhone

Sunrise Sunset is an iPhone app that allows you to track sunrise and sunset right from your iPhone. The app comes in three flavors:
The Sunrise Sunset LITE version allows you to track sunrise and sunset for your current location. While it is free [...]

3. NFL pre-game ceremony: Panorama shot with an iPhone

I really love to watch the elaborate choreography of an NFL pre-game show. In this case, it was amazing to see how quickly they could switch from a Bucs banner spanning one half of the field to this huge American flag which covered two thirds of the field. Amazing job by all involved [...]

4. Unusual Beauty

Last weekend marked the start of Click-Off, our town’s annual photo competition where they randomly assign you a subject and within 2 days you have to produce one photograph. After finally allowing digital cameras in the competition, I entered with the intent to shoot the entire event with my iPhone [...]