Last week we reported that HTC is preparing to launch a new camera sensor technology called Ultrapixels, which aims to improve image quality using a Foveon-style stack of three sensor layers. The smartphone imaging war is heating up, after all, an rivals like Nokia are investing heavily in photography technologies of their own (e.g. PureView).
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 …
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.
Want a cheap and simple way to project photographs from your smartphone onto your wall? Photojojo writes that you can actually make a makeshift projector with a few things you might already have lying around. Total cost: $1.
The "flash units" found on the backs of smartphones may be getting more powerful, but the general idea has largely remained the same: use a powerful LED light that can illuminate a scene when you need a little extra light. The power output doesn't really stack up to the flashes found on compact cameras, but Google has one solution for making the flash a bit brighter.
The company formerly known as RIM changed its name to Blackberry yesterday, and launched a new flagship smartphone called the Z10. While the the phone is getting decent marks among reviewers, one weakness is sticking out as a sore thumb: the camera's low-light performance. Gizmodo writes, …
In most ways the smartphone is the height of convenience. Phone, check; computer, check; camera, check. But one market the smartphone seems well suited for, but hasn't yet broken into with any reasonable force, is the action cam market.
When you think "Instagram competitor," the first app that comes to mind is Flickr's new offering. Having released just in time for Instagram to royally annoy its users with the proposed ToS changes, disgruntled Instagrammers flocked to Flickr in droves.
Lomography (the movement) has been called many things, including "analog Instagram;" but regardless of how you feel about the movement or the company that bears its name, it seems that Lomography (the company) has been one of the driving forces keeping film photography alive and interesting for the masses.
Dropbox has been making major moves toward being a series photo-sharing service as of late, and its latest Android app update moves the service one step closer in that direction. The new feature allows users to quickly and easily share entire collections of photographs with friends and family.
After a substantial leak in mid-December, we expected that Polaroid would unveil its android-powered J2 (or is it J3 now?) look-alike at CES. And here it is, officially announced in all its pre-production glory alongside a few other, less-impressive products.
We can no longer ignore smartphones as legitimate photography gear. As smartphone cameras have gotten better we've seen everything from hipstamatic war photography to iPhone fashion shoots, and here comes yet another first.
If you'd like to receive a regular injection of photographic inspiration, you should consider following along with photographer Brock Davis' Instagram feed. The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based artist regularly shoots conceptual photos with his iPhone that have the same creative touch as photographs Davis shoots for major commissions.
Part awesome party-trick, part brilliant idea, the new Cycloramic app from Egos Ventures is about the coolest thing you can get for one dollar on the iTunes app store at the moment. The app -- which will only work with the iPhone 5 -- triggers your phone's vibration at the exact right frequency to make it spin around in a perfect circle. Just stand your phone up, hit go, and keep an eye on your friend's faces (several reviewers called the reactions "priceless").
Lytro is currently the only camera on the market that lets you refocus photographs after they're shot, thanks to its fancy schmancy (and proprietary) light field technology, but it won't be the only one for long. Toshiba is reportedly developing its own Lytro-style camera that will target a different segment of the photography market: smartphone and tablet photographers.
Wireless adapters for digital cameras can be very pricey accessories, especially when you're dealing with high-end DSLRs. Manufacturers can squeeze more money out of those who pay thousands for a camera by charging hundreds for an adapter, even though a cheaper one could work just fine. What's more, the adapters are often designed specifically for certain cameras, making them useless if you change models or makes.
The rise of smartphone photography in recent year has been transforming how people think cameras should look and work. Instead of pulling out a single-purpose device that has dedicated controls for picture-making, legions of consumers are now content with pushing a single button (whether physical or digital) in order to preserve a moment in time.
Getting a good picture of a toddler, dog or other easily-distracted subject is no easy task. You snap, you whistle, you make funny faces, but in the end you're often left with nothing more than a blurry picture and a very real relief that nobody else was there to see what just happened.
The saga of anti-virus pioneer John McAfee's run from the law is a strange one, but this much is clear: McAfee wishes geotagging wasn't a feature built into modern cameras. After a month of fleeing from Belizean law enforcement after a neighbor was found murdered, the software tycoon was finally taken into custody this week, largely due to a single photo loaded with GPS data.
When Nik Software was acquired by Google back in September, one of the prized catches -- besides Nik's impressive suite of high-end photo editing software -- was Snapseed, a highly popular photo editing app for iOS. Many people suspected that Google was gearing up to fight more directly with Instagram, now the Facebook-owned 800lb gorilla in the mobile photo sharing space.
If you've been following the news, you might have heard that a man John McAfee is on the run from police who want to question him about a murder. Not just any ol' John McAfee, but the John McAfee, the once-ultra-rich founder of anti-virus software company McAfee. Well, a photograph published to the web today may have revealed the exact location McAfee is was hiding.
A week after acquiring a 2-man mobile-app-developing team, photo-sharing service 500px has launched an official app for the iPhone, which joins the iPad version that was launched about a year ago.
Last week we reported that Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am was planning to launch an iPhone attachment that would boost the phone's resolution to 14 megapixels. That launch happened today, and we have our first look at how the artist plans to turn iPhones around the world into more-formidable cameras.
There was some surprising news in the smartphoneography world yesterday: Amateur Photographer reported that Nokia's imaging chief Damian Dinning -- "considered the driving force behind the firm’s smartphone camera technology" -- would be leaving the company for personal reasons at the end of this month.
Want larger photos from your iPhone? Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am has a solution for you. The entrepreneurial musician will reportedly be launching a new iPhone attachment next week that will "turn your smartphone into a genius-phone" and boost the phone's camera resolution from 8 megapixels to 14 megapixels. Like the man who developed it, the device will have a quirky name: i.am+.
Samsung released the open source kernel files for its new Galaxy Camera late last week, something commonly done in the smartphone world -- at least with certain platforms -- but a foreign concept in the world of digital photography. This opens the door to all kinds of possibilities as hackers begin to peer into the cameras brain and dream up new possibilities for how it should work.
Samsung's smartphone-esque Galaxy Camera finally has a definite price and launch date. AT&T announced today that it will begin selling the Android-powered camera on November 16, 2012 for $500. The camera comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and can be connected to the Internet via the carrier's 4G mobile network.
Mobile operating systems have begun making their way into digital cameras, but so far their foray has been limited to compact and mirrorless cameras. However, DSLRs are starting to have built-in Wi-Fi, but it seems to be only a matter of time before a full-fledged mobile OS appears in one.
Thai photographer Benz Thanachart caused quite a stir in his country this past summer with an unusual photo project titled Smartphone. For each photo, he boarded a subway train, screamed a completely random word, and snapped a photograph to document the passengers' startled reactions. The photograph above was captured after Thanachart shouted "Fried egg!"
When we handled a pre-production model of the Fujifilm X-E1 at Photokina back in September, we noted that there seemed to be some strange pixelation, a little lag, and a delay after shots. We said at the time that those issues were likely due to the fact that it was an early demo unit of the camera, and that now appears to be true. A photographer named Andrew (apw100 on YouTube) recently got his X-E1 before most people by ordering through eBay from a company in Hong Kong. He then shot a series …
Ever since the launch of iOS 5 in mid-2011, iPhones, iPads, and iPods have accepted the "volume up" signal as a "take a picture" command, allowing Apple's headphones to double as handy remote shutter releases. If triggering your camera's shutter with a pair of earbuds in your hand isn't "hip" enough for you, check out this new iCA Remote Shutter by Japanese novelty photo company Gizmon. It's a dedicated shutter release for your iOS device that's designed to look like a roll of film.
When Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, an iPhone photo by photographer Nick Cope was one of the first to go viral and attract the attention of news organizations. American Photo has an interesting interview with Cope in which he shares what it was like to have the world pounce on his photo: …
The Canon 6D is the first Canon DSLR to offer built-in Wi-Fi, which allows a smartphone or tablet to be paired with the camera to act as an external remote, viewfinder, photo viewer, and hard drive. If you want to see how the system works, check out this 5-minute video by Dave Etchells over at Imaging Resource. It's a short demonstration of the free EOS Remote smartphone app in action by Canon's Chuck Westfall.
Amazon has launched Cloud Drive Photos, an Android app that makes it easy to store and share photographs to and from the the cloud. It's a consumer-oriented app build on top of Amazon Cloud Drive, a cloud-storage service that competes with the likes of Dropbox and Google Drive.
When Google upgraded its Android OS to Jelly Bean 4.2 a couple of days ago, the company unveiled a new camera app called Photo Sphere that lets you shoot 360-degree panoramas by waving your camera around. If you've been dying to play with the app on your Android device running the older version of Jelly Bean, but can't bear to wait until 4.2 officially comes to you, this should be music to your ears: the new 4.2 camera/gallery upgrades and Photo Sphere have been successfully ported to Android …
Apple may have launched a neat panorama feature with iOS 6, but Google is one-upping the Cupertino-based company today with its new Jelly Bean flavor: Android 4.2. The OS now comes with an official 360-degree panorama app called Photo Sphere.
GorillaPod maker Joby announced a new product today designed for people who regularly use their smartphones for photography or videography. Called the GripTight, it's a universal tripod mount that'll work with most popular smartphones. It's basically a compact spring-loaded clamp with a tripod mount built into the bottom. Stretch the rubbery clamp over your phone, and it'll grip it tightly in place.
If you do any darkroom work, you probably regularly print contact sheets to peek at the positive versions of your B&W negative film strips. Did you know that your iPhone can be used as a quick an easy tool for this same purpose?
Back in September, we wrote that there was a new service by photo-book company Mixbook called Mosaic on the way. New details have been unveiled that offer a better look at how the service will work. In short: it's an iPhone app that's designed to make turning your photos into photo books as easy and as affordable as possible.
Do you trust your hand-eye coordination enough to throw your Android smartphone into the air? If so, you can now use it for automated camera toss photography. ThrowMeApp is a new app created by programmer Anton Beitler, a student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
Frank Said What? is an amazing new iOS camera app that can accurately describe any photo you show it. It's not just smart, it's witty too: "Frank" will usually give your photographs humorous captions. Some will make you smile, while others will make you laugh out loud.
Photography purists, you might want to look away. For the rest of you: remember that Craiglist listing we shared a couple of months ago posted by a couple looking for Hipstamatic wedding photographers? Among the hoards of enthusiastic Hipstamatic shooters who responded were Keith and Marc, hosts of the iPhoneography podcast TinyShutter. After being chosen for the gig, they drove down to Connecticut from Massachusetts and New Hampshire to capture the wedding with their iPhones.
Dissatisfied with the way your smartphone photographs are turning out when the built-in flash is fired? When desperate times call for desperate measures, you can make your flash match the ambient light around you with the help of a colored gel. The flash is often just a tiny LED, though, so how do you comfortably "mount" the gel to your smartphone? Reader Todd Glidden has an answer: use an index card.
Bird Photo Booth is the world's first bird feeder that doubles as an iPhone and GoPro photo booth. Invented by photographer and bird-watcher Bryson Lovett, the hardwood feeder uses food to lure your feathery friends into closeup portrait sessions. Photographs can be snapped remotely by pairing your iPhone with an iPad that's running a remote camera app.
Since launching last year, JPEGMini has become a popular web-based option for trimming the file size of JPEG images without compromising their appearance. The web app magically shrinks photos by up to 5x while keeping the quality relatively unchanged. In May of this year, the company repackaged the technology for Macs as a simple space-saving app. Its next frontier? Mobile photo sharing and iOS.
It's seems like many photo enthusiasts are hating on Instagram and retro-filtered photos these days, but not photographer Richard Koci Hernandez. He has written a piece for CNN titled "Photographers, embrace Instagram," in which he explains why he thinks that "Smartphones have ushered in a golden age for photography."
Tumblr jumped into the mobile photo sharing game today by releasing Photoset, a new photo sharing app for the iPhone and the iPad. The app is stupidly simple and is focused on doing one thing well: sharing groups of photos with others.
A few weeks ago, we casually remarked that the best cameraphones today can probably snap better photos than top-of-the-line compact cameras from over a decade ago. Turns out that it's true.
Lincoln, UK-based photographer Adam Rhoades came up with an interesting way of printing digital photographs using analog darkroom processes. By mounting his iPhone (displaying a photo) onto a 35mm enlarger, he's able to enlarge and focus his digital photograph on photo paper as if it were a negative being projected.
If you own an iOS device, you've probably noticed that the Camera Roll in the native Photos app doesn't come with any way to mark photographs as private. For this reason, the App Store features a large number of apps (both paid and free) designed to offer that feature, allowing you to choose what to show and what not to when someone else is flipping through your photographs. If you want an easy way to "mark photos as private" without having to download a special app (or pay money for a fancy …
