Photographer Cecil Williams of Orangeburg, South Carolina, wanted a faster way to digitize 2,000 of his negatives, so he invented a new system called the FilmToaster. It's a $1,699 box that lets you digitize most popular film formats using your digital camera.
Back in 2014, the foldable pop-up lightbox called the Foldio2 got over $500,000 of funding through Kickstarter to make product photos easier to shoot.
Now the company behind that lightbox, ORANGEMUNKIE, is back with a new product: the Foldio360. It's a smart turntable that's designed to bring 360-degree photography to the masses.
Another day, another innovative solution for catching, disabling, or destroying rogue drones. If your camera drone isn't taken down by a radio wave rifle or a drone with a giant net in the future, you now have another countermeasure to be aware of: a "Spider-Man" drone that shoots out a web-like net to neutralize other drones.
StikBox is a new iPhone case that's designed to make your selfie sticks unnecessary: it has a collapsible stick built right into the back.
"Why carry two things when you can carry one?" asks inventor Yekutiel Sherman of Israel.
Long-time film photographer Timothy Gilbert was frustrated with existing options for processing 4x5 large format sheet film at home, so, as an engineer, he decided to create an easy-to-use and affordable system himself.
After several prototypes and extensive testing, what he came up with is the SP-445 processing system, an extremely compact and simple tank that requires minimal chemicals and effort.
Want to learn newborn photography but don't have any newborns to photograph? StandInBaby is a new product designed just for you. It's the world's first fully articulated, lifelike, and camera ready dummy baby that's designed to help photographers learn how to pose newborns.
This is incredible: German photographer Lukas Fritz wanted an easier way to process his film at home, so he spent a year creating the Filmomat, a fully automatic film processor that can handle everything from B&W 35mm film to 5x7-inch color slides.
SLOPES is an innovative new stand for GoPro HERO cameras that uses a polyhedron shape to give you 20 different positions. Mount your camera to it, and you can position your camera in the orientation you'd like in just a couple seconds without having to adjust anything else.
If you thought the idea of a smartphone selfie stick was peculiar, get this: photographer Jesse Chehak has created a gigantic selfie stick for his large format camera, and it actually works.
Hyperspectral cameras can see things in the world that the human eyes can't by capturing information from across the electromagnetic spectrum beyond visible light. This type of technology has all kinds of interesting applications -- researchers are using the cameras to uncover secrets in old documents and paintings, for example.
The HyperCam is a new hyperspectral camera that aims to make the technology cheap enough to be casually used by the masses.
LCD screens on the backs of cameras have higher and higher resolutions these days, and since the size isn't usually increasing, we're seeing more pixel density. It appears that Canon has been thinking about creative uses of these high-res displays: a recently published patent shows a Canon digital camera with a loupe-style viewfinder that swings down onto the LCD to use a portion of the large display as the smaller electronic viewfinder.
Check out this crazy-looking rifle. No, it's not from a sci-fi movie -- it's actually an anti-drone counter-weapon called the DroneDefender that's designed to bring down drones using disruptive radio waves.
Canon has some interesting ideas for what cameras of the future will be like. A newly published patent shows that Canon has looked into the idea of an LCD screen that can expand and contract on the back of the camera.
Tripods are often designed for stability rather than ease of use, which can make operating them a slow and complicated process. Traditional tripods are also often difficult to set up with one hand.
The London-based product designer who goes by the name Product Tank decided to try his hand at inventing a tripod that's friendlier to use. What he came up with is this clever prototype that can easily be expanded, adjusted, and collapsed with a single hand.
Photographer Anton Orlov has created what he believes is the world's first camera that's both completely transparent and fully functional. It's called CLERA, short for Clear Camera, and is a camera that you can also look into while a projected photo is being exposed.
Samsung wants to help make roads safer by incorporating some camera technology into semi-trailer trucks. By adding a front camera and a giant rear "live view" display to the trucks, Samsung's 'Safety Truck' project makes it easier for drivers to see "through" the trucks and know when it's safe to pass.
If you thought the Selfie Arm was a strange idea, check this out: the SelfiePICTEE is a T-shirt that has a fold-down bounce reflector on the front that provides a quick fix for the harsh shadows on your face when snapping a selfie.
Some lenses have tabs on their focus rings that allow photographers to precisely control focus with a push or pull of their finger. For those that don't, TAAB is here to help. It's a universal tab that can be used on most lenses, giving photographers greater manual focus control than simple focus rings.
Hobbyist photographer and motor racing fan Carlo Bingen was at a race at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium yesterday when he cane across this photographer taking pictures over the chain link fence. While many people would be content with shooting through the fence gaps with a telephoto lens, this guy created a DIY platform that lets him stand over the top.
Memory Clock is an interesting new concept design that combines the world of clocks with the world of digital photo frames. It's a clock that helps you relive memories by showing you photos from the past.
After successfully raising money on Kickstarter to launch its LensRacks gear storage system, Vancouver, Canada-based Ansix Designs is back with another innovative product for lens changes and storage.
It's called LensPacks, and is a hook and loop fastener (popularized by Velcro) based system that lets you fix rear lens caps to the inside of your camera bag.
Did you know that the selfie stick was actually invented back in the 1980s? The concept didn't take off until Bluetooth-enabled smartphone cameras in recent years, but the concept has been around for decades now.
Remember that Taiwanese machine that can print a photo of your face onto the foam of a latte? Here's something along the same lines that's just as quirky: there's a new printer that can cook a photo of your face into a pancake.
miggo is an innovative new camera accessory that can serve two purposes. It can be used as a padded camera strap, but when you're done shooting, the strap can be transformed into a protective case for your precious camera.
Are ordinary macro lens attachments for your smartphone not enough for you? Want to zoom in closer? 22-year-old mechanical engineer Thomas Larson has just the lens for you. It's called the Micro Phone Lens, and is a tiny little attachment that instantly lets you focus on and capture very small subjects.
I've got a few days before my big summer vacation, so I thought I'd hammer out an incredibly impractical display technology!
If you're the type of person who prefers umbrellas to rain ponchos, you might prefer the Brolly rain umbrella to rain covers when using your camera in wet weather. It features a special finger hole grip handle that frees up the fingers that would otherwise be clutching the umbrella, allowing you to use your cameras more naturally without getting wet.
Boston-based artist and inventor Steve Hollinger has just been granted a second patent here in the United States for his Squito invention, a ball sporting embedded cameras and position sensors that allow for panoramic imagery in reconnaissance and recreational situations.
Each year, hundreds of hackers developers descend on Berlin for EyeEm's hackathon Photo Hack Day in hopes of walking away with the top prize and moving the world of photography forward. In 24-hours, developers have to take a swing at prototyping a brand new photo app and presenting it in front of their peers.
Over 120 developers took part this weekend, and now that the dust has settled (only just) we have the privilege of being the first to tell you which of the 41 hacks submitted last night came out on top.
When BBC Future approached design company Conran with a challenge to "redesign any object," Senior Product Designer Jared Mankelow chose the camera. He believes that the form factor of our cameras hasn't kept pace with their function, and so his square creation harkens back to the film cameras of old, while simultaneously catapulting the camera into the future.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but laziness is definitely its father. Case in point, here's an interesting tidbit of imaging history: the first webcam ever was actually invented by lazy students at Cambridge University who didn't want to waste a trip to the nearby coffee pot if it was going to be empty when they got there.
Holsters are becoming pretty popular for keeping camera gear on your hip and at the ready, and now Washington-based gear company Rhino Camera Gear wants to bring the concept to batteries. It has unveiled a new product that's designed to cut a few seconds out of the time it takes you to switch out empty batteries for fresh ones.
The accessory is called the Rhino Battery Holster, and moves your juiced batteries from inside your camera bag to your side.
We're not sure how many punk rock fans moonlight as photographers (or the other way around), but those who do may find the new CamCuff a tempting camera accessory. It's a fashion accessory wrist cuff that doubles as a camera strap for those of you who aren't big on the neck variety.
Jonathan Dandrow believes that traffic enforcement cameras are "dangerous, invasive, error-prone, and unconstitutional," so he decided to find a way to turn camera technology against those cameras. He ended up creating the noPhoto, a high-tech license plate frame that makes it impossible for a red light or speed trap camera to snap a useable photograph of your plate.
Photographer Preston Turk has an idea for how to best store lens caps when they're not attached to lenses. Called the Stow-Away, it a universal lens cap holder that can hold most of the standard lens diameters (AKA filter sizes): 52mm, 55mm, 58mm, 62mm, 67mm, and 72mm. Turk designed the accessory to attach to the underside of cameras via the standard tripod mount. Giving your lens cap a quick shove underneath your camera will click it securely into place.
Compact cameras feature lenses that automatically "cap" themselves when retracted and not in use. Interchangeable lenses, on the other hand, usually don't. The X-Cap changes that. It's a Taiwan-designed lens cap that snaps onto the front of certain lenses that feature a retracting front element (the Micro Four Thirds system has lenses like this). When the front element retracts, the cap automatically closes -- great for people who hate dealing with lens caps.
HandiZoom is a new camera accessory that adds a special grip to your DSLR that allows you to hold and use it like a camcorder. The device adds ENG-style zoom controls by connecting directly with the zoom ring on your camera lens. Videographers who've transitioned to DSLR shooting may feel much more at home with their hand around an ergonomic grip and a zoom rocker under their fingertips.
Photographer Jesse Rosten wanted a more efficient and mobile way to do off-camera lighting, so he invented this backpack-style apparatus that he calls "The Strobist Jet Pack". Although it's pretty ridiculous looking (it reminds us of Ghostbusters), it works well for placing lighting equipment in exactly the place needed while still being able to move about.
Google scientist Sam Hasinoff has come up with …
The Image Fulgurator is a brilliant device created -- and patented -- by Berlin-based artist Julius von Bismarck. It's an optically triggered slave flash that fires through the back of a camera, projecting a message or image on the film through the lens -- basically, it's an optically triggered projector. What this allows von Bismarck to do is prank unsuspecting photographers by adding random pictures or words into their photographs whenever they use their camera's flash.