360 Panorama has come a long way since we first shared it two years ago, going from an unpolished app with some highly negative reviews to one of the most popular camera appears boasting thousands of reviews and a 4.5 star rating.
It has come so far that this week Apple selected it as the iTunes Free App of the Week.
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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.
How’s this for a strange camera accessory: the Paparazzo Light is a lighting attachment for iPhones that mimics the look of vintage press camera flashes (yes, the kind the original Lightsaber was made from). The light comes from a 300 Lumen LED that’s powered by two dedicated CR 123 batteries, and three modes offer different brightness settings for photos and videos.
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The iPICS2GO Negative to iPhone Scanner is a simple device that lets your iPhone double as a scanner for photos, both film and prints. It works with 35mm negatives and slide film, as well as 3×5 and 4×6 prints.
Just plug your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S into the top, fire up the powerful editing app and feed a photo, slide or negative into the PICS2GO. With the app’s easy-to-use controls you can scan your pics in seconds, and save them as a digital file that’ll last forever. Or at least until the next technological revolution.
Battery-powered and designed purely for the iPhone 4 and 4S, the iPICS2GO is a handy little gadget that you can use anywhere in the house. Scan your family album while you’re watching the telly; or take it round your Nan’s house and go through her black and white snaps. There’s never been an easier or more convenient way to save your precious, perishable photo prints.
The scan quality is, well, iPhone camera quality, but it’s a pretty cheap option considering the $63 price tag.
The latest issue of Sports Illustrated magazine features 18 baseball photographs by sports photographer Brad Mangin across 6 of the opening pages. Not just any photographs, mind you, Instagram photos. Mangin has an interesting blog post on how the whole process happened:
By the time the regular season opened in April I felt like I was shooting baseball for the first time ever, through the lens of my iPhone and the square format of Instagram. I wrote a blog post for The Photo Brigade entitled “I Love My New Camera.” I wasn’t kidding! I started looking at everything with a fresh set of eyes from the moment I walked onto the fields in Oakland and San Francisco about three hours before each game. It was like I was a newborn photographer seeing things for the first time.
I was naturally drawn to the dugouts where I found many baseball-related pieces of equipment that made for good pictures. By the time the players came out and sat in the dugouts before the games I was ready to try and capture them getting ready. At first I felt pretty strange not using my Canon EOS-1 Mark IV and shooting with my iPhone instead. I eventually became more comfortable and started getting some pictures of the ball players that I liked.
How I Made Instagram Images That Were Good Enough for Sports Illustrated (via A Photo Editor)
Image credits: Photographs by Brad Mangin
Typically, light painting requires a little bit of photography know how and some camera equipment that’s up to the task. But a new product by Tomy may change all that, or at least give non-photographers and kids something to play around with when they’re bored. Tomy’s new light pen and app combo, which will retail for $30, allow the user to create rudimentary light paintings using nothing more than the pen and a free iPhone app. Read more…
The stated goal on “the Kick” is that they’re trying to “help you take better pictures, make better videos and have fun doing it.” But what they’ve really done is re-imagine, and maybe even revolutionize, portable lighting. That’s because the Kick, in particular the Kick Plus, can do so much: use it as a strobe, as a continuous light source, or to generate different colors or effects.
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Aviary — the online photo editor that replaced Picnik as the official editor for Flickr — is expanding their scope by releasing an Android and iOS app. Up until now iOS users had no Aviary to speak of and Android users had only a “plugin,” but as of yesterday, full-blown apps for both operating systems are available in the iTunes App store and Google Play.
The new app will offer many of the same features you would find in the mobile Photoshop Express or iPhoto: you’ll be able to crop, rotate, add text, sharpen, blur, add preset effects, one-tap enhance and the list goes on. You can also rearrange all of those tools to your liking, so that they better fit the order you would use them in. And when you consider the fact that Aviary sells for the low low price of “free,” there’s really no reason iPhone and Android users shouldn’t go pick it up and give it a shot.
(via Engadget)
After Facebook launched its own iOS camera app last month, many people were surprised that the app was simply named “Camera” on the home screen. To clear up confusion — and likely to prevent any trouble from Apple — Facebook has updated the app with a new name: Camera•. No word on how it’s supposed to be pronounced (“camera dot”?) but the change comes along with the latest update that includes more reliable uploads.
Just like point-and-shoots, the camcorder market was also hit hard by the advent of good-quality smartphone cameras. For the average person, all the home video capability they might ever need can now be found in, say, their iPhone. The only problem with that — besides a higher susceptibility to Vertical Video Syndrome — is that the videos you take on your smartphone rarely leave your smartphone. Read more…
