Another sign of the times: the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards has announced that they will be launching an entirely new award today dedicated to mobile photography. Organizers say that the new award recognizes "how mobile photography has helped redefine the way in which photographers approach their art."
Professional photographers using their smartphones is just a fad, I thought, but it all came to me sooner than I expected. Some 3 weeks ago I was diagnosed with central serous retinopathy in my left eye and was hospitalised for 3 days. In the process, I finally discovered smartphone photography!
Lytro is seeing more and more competition these days, as more and more companies are jumping into the "snap now, focus later" game. There are now apps that mimic the technology, and companies like Toshiba are working on building Lytro-style smartphone camera modules.
Lytro's latest challenger may be quite a formidable foe: it appears that Nokia has invested in Pelican Imaging, another startup that's working on building Lytro-style smartphone camera arrays.
Here's a new iPhone commercial Apple just released today on its website and on YouTube. It's a 1-minute-long spot that focuses on how the iPhone has shaken up the world of casual photography by becoming the world's most popular camera.
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.
Here's a startling side-by-side comparison of news photos that has begun floating around on the social web. Both photographs show a large crowd gathered to witness the unveiling of a new pope. The top one was what AP photographer Luca Bruno saw in 2005 when Pope Benedict XVI was introduced, while the bottom one is what AP photographer Michael Sohn witnessed yesterday at the election of Pope Francis.
As more and more consumers use their smartphones as their primary camera, camera gear manufacturers have been brainstorming new products designed to mount phones to camera tripods. Universal mounts to this point have largely been focused on ways of gripping the phone securely. The JackPod is a new stupidly simple answer to how to get phones mounted to tripods: it uses the standard headphone jack found on pretty much every smartphone on the market.
The "ultrapixels" that were rumored earlier this month have arrived. HTC announced its new flagship smartphone today. Called the HTC One, it features new camera tech that aims to shake up the world of smartphone photo snapping.
Smartphones are being used more and more to capture daily life photography, but many of its loyal users are perpetually stuck at the point-and-shoot level of photographic know-how. If that describes you, and you'd like to add a little more technical understanding to your brain, Photojojo has a new service designed just for you. It's called Photojojo University, a new educational service that teaches you photography lessons through bite-sized tutorials and assignments delivered into your email inbox.
Mobile photo sharing has become one of the big photography trends over the past couple of years, and smartphone makers are now working hard to win the affections of smartphoneographer by developing better cameras and sleeker features. Two of the big players in the game, HTC and Nokia, are both generating some buzz this week through reports that they have some big photo-related plans in store for their upcoming phones.
The two (proprietary) technologies that are making headlines are: HTC's "Ultrapixels" and Nokia's "PureView."
Yesterday we shared a piece by photographer Kenneth Jarecke on why Instagram isn’t fit for photojournalism. Now, …
Photojournalist Kenneth Jarecke wrote up a thought-provoking piece yesterday titled, "Instagram, the Devil, and You." He offers his thoughts on the question, "Will 'Instagram photojournalism' stand the test of time?":
Businessweek writes that Canon has lowered its sales estimates across all its camera …