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. Read more…
What would it look like if the retro filters found in smartphone camera apps were turned into a real filter you could slap onto the front of your lens? A couple of Stanford product design students think they have an answer.
Olivia Vagelos and Martin Bush have started a new camera filter brand called Mount July, which features the world’s first multi-color, radially graduated filters.
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We already know that buying ‘new’ camera gear online is no guarantee that you’re actually getting something new. Even when the source seems to be trustworthy (ala Amazon), you just never know.
So when photographer Rob Dunlop stumbled onto StolenCameraFinder, he chose to look into something. Several months earlier he had received one of the two 5D Mark III’s he ordered from DigitalRev in the wrong box, so he went online and plugged in his serial number. As it turns out, his camera had been used by none other than Kai in one of DigitalRev’s YouTube videos. Read more…
The camera film industry may be struggling, but there are certain segments that are still profitable. One such niche is the one-time-use disposable film camera market, and Ilford Photo wants a piece of the pie. The company, which makes widely used films, papers, and chemicals, announced two new black & white disposable cameras today.
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Adobe has announced Photoshop Elements 11, the latest refresh to the company’s more-affordable and easier-to-use counterpart to Photoshop, which it claims is the #1 selling consumer photo editing program.
New features in this version include a complete overhaul of the user interface to make it more straightforward, better organization of photos by people/places/events, new guided edits for semi-automatic image adjustments, new filters for giving your pictures funky looks (e.g. comic, graphic novel, pen & ink), new intelligent extraction tools for selecting specific portions of photos, and built in sharing to popular social networks such as Facebook.
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With much fanfare, Leica announced its new M and M-E digital rangefinders at Photokina today. The M breaks new ground by introducing some fancy new features that have never been seen before in an M rangefinder, while the M-E is the company’s attempt at offering an entry-level digital rangefinder.
Notice that Leica has done away with its standard naming strategy. Apparently Leica is doing what Apple did with the iPad: leaving out the generation in the name entirely. In future, we’ll be saying “Leica M” with “20th generation” in parentheses rather than Leica M20.
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Panasonic has officially announced the Lumix GF5, conveniently skipping over the GF4 from the GF3. The tiny Micro Four Thirds camera is geared towards beginners and offers some subtle changes from its predecessor. While the 12.1-megapixel sensor hasn’t changed, the new camera offers a new max ISO of 12,800, faster autofocus, a new 1080/30p HD view mode, a stereo microphone, a higher-res 3-inch touchscreen, a refined user interface, and an increase to 4fps (up from 3.8).
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TrekPak is a new padded camera bag insert that does away with the annoyances of velcro by introducing a new pin system for adjusting dividers:
What makes TrekPak really unique, is that you won’t find any Velcro. When you try to adjust a normal gear bag while out in the field, you know how frustrating it can be. The Velcro sticks where you don’t want it to, is hard to pull apart, and just looks messy and cluttered. Our patent pending system uses anodized aluminum pins and durable padded dividers to offer limitless organizational options. The TrekPak pin system is much easier to adjust, very secure, and straight up, it’s slick.
They’re starting with inserts for Pelican camera bags, but are planning to release generic inserts and inserts designed for other bags as well.
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Canon has officially taken the wraps off its new 5D Mark III DSLR, a followup to the 5D Mark II that offers a feature set that sits somewhere between its predecessor and the soon-to-arrive 1D X. The camera packs a 22.3MP full-frame sensor, the 61-point AF system found in the 1D X, 63-zone metering, an ISO range of 100-25600 (expandable to 50-102400), 6fps continuous shooting, a 3.2-inch LCD (1.04M dots), and 100% viewfinder coverage (up from 98%).
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Last year MIT grad Justin Jensen raised nearly half a million bucks through Kickstarter to launch CineSkates, a camera slider system that adds wheels to GorillaPod Focus tripods. Now Jensen and his startup Cinetics are back again with a new product called CineSquid, which provides a strong suction cup mount system rather than wheels. This allows cameras to be mounted onto things like cars, boats, and even airplanes.
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