Photography

You’ve all heard the expression “you can never be too rich or too thin”. Yet, a recent story about someone losing their MacBook Air because they may have thrown it out with their recycling has caused me to rethink the validity of this particular statement.

Take for example the ModoPocket MicroTripod for sale over at Think Geek. It’s tiny, sure, and it’s lightweight and easily portable. But is it so tiny and thin that you could spend the money on it and then misplace it because you’re not completely organized? It’s only 6mm thick when folded! I could lose it from opening the product box to look at it!! However, it would take up virtually NO space in your existing camera bag and it would come in quite handy for those shots that you can’t get without one.

The Think Geek description for this tiny titan of the tripod:
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Every once in a while, someone makes a great gadget by simply taking a lot of other great gadgets and puts them all together like wet bits of clay. Today’s example would be the Digital Photo Frame Webcam from WinWin Industry, a Hong Kong Company.

As you can see, someone in the WinWin industry has created a win-win situation by combining what looks to be an alarm clock, digital picture frame, and webcam all in one unit.

We’ll start with the webcam. When attached to the PC, your friends and loved ones can see you. As for the 1.5 inch digital frame, that’s so you can see your friends and loved ones, even if they are just still shots.

The photo viewer has 8MB worth of memory, which is capable of storing up to 70 pictures. You can use it to make some slideshows, and the whole thing is detachable from the base so you can carry the viewer around in your pocket if you like. According to the features, it uses two built-in rechargeable batteries for operation.

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In case you missed it, Polaroid announces the end of the Instant Film about a week ago. All I could think about was how a chic photo era has come to a close, and how that guy in Memento will be forever lost. In case you haven’t seen Memento, it is an awesome film about Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), a detective with short-term memory loss that has to remind himself of his case with Polaroids.

Hopefully, Leonard has gone with digital photos by now. Yet if he liked the nostalgic effect of the Polaroid Instant film, he could always go with this concept digital frame.

All Leonard would have to do is put his memory card in a slot on the bottom of the frame, and navigate with the touch screen to view his memories. He could do the Standard mode to see his memories one at a time, or enjoy a fading slideshow with the Classic mode.

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I don’t know about you, but I remember when a projector was something that could not do DVDs, but was designed to project things called slides. These were 35mm white framed things that you would have to arrange in a round housing carousel. Then you would click on a button, and the slide would be projected, usually upside down or sideways. Slideshows were an excellent way to bore guests with still shots of your life, and it was also an excellent way to get guests to leave.

To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I saw a slide show, since we live in an age of PowerPoint. However, there are still people who have tons of these slides gathering dust in their attic. Clearly, somebody needs to convert these slides to digital files before time takes its toll.

The Veho Film and Slide Converter is way ahead of us. All a user needs to do is plug in the apparatus to a USB drive, then have it take a picture of the slide you need with its 5 megapixel camera. The device can also do film negatives as well.

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When I was a kid, there was this magic camera that took pictures that you could see and hold instantly. Well, you got to see and hold something, which was usually a big blob until you shook it for a minute, then you’d see the picture that was taken. You’re probably familiar with Polaroid film, as it has been sold and used since the beginning of time (or the last 60 years). Unfortunately your children may not have such fond memories, as the film giant has ceased production on their popular instant film.

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When I was cell phone shopping last year, I really wanted a Sony Ericsson K800i. Badly. The only reason I did not get one is that I couldn’t buy one (aside from buying an unlocked one - which is quite expensive and wouldn’t have a guarantee that it would work with my provider) because they only sold it in the UK. I ended up with a Motorola RIZR Z3 instead.

I’m quite happy with my current phone, but Sony Ericsson has announced a metric ton of new phones and upgraded models this past week. I’m mainly going to review the one phone that is making me drool: The Sony Ericsson C902. From Gizmodo:

* Slim Cyber-shot phone with unique slide-out lens cover. Camera-ready in an instant
* Stand out design - instantly recognizable
* 5.0 megapixel camera with Face Detection and Auto Focus. Always capture the best shot possible
* Illuminated camera touch keys. Intuitive guidance around the camera settings

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If you’re like me, you have taken photographs with film cameras and have tons of negatives cluttering up your photo boxes. Or what happens when you find a box of old slides in your parent’s or grandparent’s attic and you can’t view these photos? I had that happen to me once and the process of going out, finding a service who can scan in slides and negatives is a time-intensive and very expensive process - and you’re at the whim of the people who run the service.

The National Geographic store is selling the VuPoint 35mm Film Scanner. Now you can scan your negative and slides to digital files quickly and easily so you can share them with others on online services (like Flickr) and email or print them on your PC. Old slide scanners used to be very expensive and very slow and the alternative of hiring a service to do it is even more expensive. This Stratford Labs scanner has a 4-element glass lens, a 5.0 megapixel CMOS CCD and can scan and preview an image in just 5 seconds. From the website: Read the rest of this entry »

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Since digital cameras surpassed the “sweet spot” threshold of six megapixels, camera makers have been involved in an arms race over the misguided belief that more megapixels are better. Trouble is that unless designers increase the size of the chips, all those extra megapixels are good for is more noise, especially at ISO settings above 800. So what does one do if one can’t enlarge the CCD chips in a compact point and shoot? Kodak thinks the idea is to reinvent the pixilated wheel. The result is the Kodak KAC-05020 Image Sensor.

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