With a mechanical shutter and a 41-megapixel PureView sensor, the leaked pictures and video of the upcoming Nokia Lumia phone codename “EOS” have caused quite a stir.
Nokia, however, isn’t the only one that knows how to spring a leak when it comes to high-end smartphone cameras. Samsung also has a high-level camera phone up its sleeve, called the Galaxy S4 Zoom, and yesterday marked its first significant leak. Read more…
The Samsung Galaxy S4 hasn’t even made it into the hands of everyone who wants it, and yet there’s already a rumor going around that the company is working on a different version geared more towards smartphone photographers with an eye for quality. Read more…
Sony has used its “Cyber-shot” brand for digital cameras since 1996, and from 2008 to 2009 the company also slapped the brand on its Sony Ericsson camera phones. Now, with the smartphone industry investing heavily in camera technologies, Sony may soon be reintroducing the brand to its Xperia smartphones in order to compete against other photo-focused phones. Read more…
Over the last couple of years, smartphone photography has gained a lot of credibility. Many stock photography agencies, however, have managed to keep their “no smartphones allowed” signs proudly on display even as all of this was happening.
Due to the required megapixel counts and the high quality standards most stock photo agencies try to maintain, smartphones have, for the most part, been kept out of that particular business. Companies are starting to cave though, and the most recent of these is international stock agency Alamy. Read more…
Nokia has endured a torrent of bad press over the past couple days over its faked promo video, but the truth is, the company is investing heavily in improving photography in its mobile phones, and its PureView technology is definitely something we should be keeping our eyes on.
In order to back up its claim that PureView low light performance is “unbeatable”, Nokia set up a “photo challenge” booth at its launch party and invited passers-by to pit their cameraphones against the Lumia 920. The challenge involved shooting a photograph of a still life setup stuffed inside a dark cubby hole in a brick wall. Check out the video above for a glimpse of how the phone’s camera stacked up against the iPhone’s and the Samsung Galaxy’s. Read more…
We’ve seen some very heavy-duty gear lugged out to cover the Olympic games in London this year: some robotic rigs, an 800mm lens that could easily weigh more than the average lady gymnast, and of course, the usual suspects in a packed camera bag. But Guardian photojournalist Dan Chung is traveling light: he’s covering the games with a simple iPhone setup.
Using different combinations of an iPhone 4s, a clip-on Schneider lens and a pair of Canon binoculars, Chung has been live-blogging all aspects of the games. His photos yield surprisingly crisp results, indoors, outdoors and even underwater through a viewing window — which again reinforces the old photographer’s adage that the best camera is the one that’s with you.
Chung uses the Snapseed app to do in-camera/phone edits. You can check out more of Chung’s work on his Guardian blog.
BlackBerry doesn’t get much attention from App developers these days, and as such many of the photo apps iOS and Android users take for granted are expected to be sadly absent when RIM’s new mobile operating system, BlackBerry 10, makes it onto phones. Still, the upcoming operating system has already made some waves using Scalado rewind technology, and according to CrackBerry, there’s a lot more photo goodness on the way from RIM in the form of a full suite of editing options and Instagram-like filters. Read more…
Back in 1967 Yoko Ono said that it was her ultimate goal “to make a film which includes a smiling face snap of every single human being in the world.” And now that the 21st century has arrived she’s one technological step closer to achieving that goal. Her new app, #smilesfilm, compiles all of the pictures of people’s smiles taken and uploaded to either Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #smilesfilm into one easy-to-browse place. Read more…
It looks like Nokia wasted no time putting the folks at Scalado to work for them. As we reported a week ago, Nokia is acquiring Scalado’s developers, technologies and IP portfolio, and we’re already seeing Scalado’s well-known “rewind” technology make its way into Nokia’s new Camera Extras app.
Besides allowing you to rewind faces for group shots, the Camera Extras app also offers burst shooting, advanced panorama, timers and more. The app, which will remain a Nokia exclusive, launches in the US and China tomorrow. So if you’ve got a Lumia phone and you wanna take advantage of some cool new features, head over to the Windows Phone Marketplace tomorrow, or check out Nokia Conversations for more details.