Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

Most people buy a compact P&S digital camera because they’re convenient to carry around. You don’t need to bring a bag full of accessories like lenses or a tripod to take half-decent photographs. But there are still times when you might need to prop up the camera, whether for taking self-portraits or for keeping it steady during long exposure night-time shots.

So while it might not be as versatile as a tripod with a ball head, the FOZI’s real advantage is that it can easily fit in your wallet when folded down. It’s made from durable polypropylene plastic and the flexible hinges will survive over 1000 full reversals, meaning that with normal use it should survive a lot longer than that. A series of notches cut into each side allow it to hold a variety of cameras at different angles, and it can even be used to support your PMP of choice when you get tired of holding it in your hand.

The FOZI Tripod is available on the Timetale website in pink, red, blue, black, white, clear and clear striped for about $8.

[ FOZI Tripod ] VIA [ The Gadgeteer ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Looking for a simple way to take your photography to the next dimension? It doesn’t get much easier than this special 3D lens from Loreo. While you can go out and buy a dedicated 3D P&S camera, using this lens with your SLR allows you to take advantage of the camera’s advanced functionality to produce some great 3D images. (Note: Upgrading to an SLR does not automatically upgrade your photography skills.)

The 3D ‘cap’ as they refer to it has a matched pair of lenses with a focusing range of one meter to infinity. And the design of the Loreo 3D lens apparently improves on similar beam splitters designed in the 1960s, particularly when it comes to reducing the keystone effect in the 3D images. The lens is compatible with most SLRs and ships with a choice of 7 common mount types for Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax K, and Minolta cameras. However it is not compatible with screw type mounts since there’s no way of ensuring an accurate alignment, which is crucial to producing a good 3D effect.

The lens itself is available on the Loreo website and ranges in price from $48 to $117 depending on your type of camera. But if you want to see the 3D effect on your developed shots you’ll also need to pick up one of their viewers which ranges in price from $1.70 for a cheap cardboard version, to $24 for the ‘deluxe’ version.

[ Loreo 3D Lens Cap ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While manufacturers have managed to cram larger LCD displays onto digital cameras, they’re still far too small for sharing photos with a group of people. But as long as you have access to a relatively large TV, sharing your shots becomes easy with this SanDisk Photo Album. It looks and works like a large multi-format card reader, but can also be connected to your TV for viewing photos.

It includes slots for CompactFlash, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, SmartMedia, xD, SD and MMC cards as well as a USB port for flash drives. (Which is also used to connect it to your PC.) It supports JPEG files up to 16 megapixels and will not only resize them on the fly so they fit on the screen, but using the included remote you can also zoom in to any part of the image. If photos aren’t your thing, the Photo Album also plays MP3s and has limited video capabilities with support for 8fps MPEG-1 files.

You can get it directly from SanDisk for $49.99 or save yourself $10 by buying it from Amazon instead.

[ Sandisk Photo Album ] VIA [ GadgetGrid ]

By Evan Ackerman

If you’re thinking about getting yourself a DSLR as a step up from a compact digicam, one of the things you’ll have to get used to is looking through a viewfinder, instead of at an LCD, to compose your pics. Unless, of course, you get yourself one of these digital viewfinders (or a really fancy and expensive camera). The Zigview S2 digital viewfinder simply uses a small camera to reproduce whatever it sees in your viewfinder on a 2.5 inch LCD, with a refresh rate of 25 fps. It also offers some features that you won’t find even on fancy and expensive DSLRs… You can flip and rotate the screen, or even detach it completely and (with the help of a few extension cables) use it up to 30m away from the camera. A control on the LCD itself allows you to trigger the shutter from that distance. Or, you can use a built-in motion sensing feature to have the screen trigger the camera whenever something changes in-frame. You’re even able to set the detection interval, shutter delay, and exposures per detection.

The Zigview S2 offers a lot of cool features; the only problem when it comes to remote applications is that it partially defeats the purpose of having a DSLR in the first place: being able to manually control your camera. Seems like it would be just about perfect for wildlife photography, though… If you can handle leaving your shiny new DSLR off on its own. Cost: $470.

[ Zigview S2 ] VIA [ RFJ ]

By Andrew Liszewski

If you only occasionally sell things on eBay or Craigslist then you can probably get away with a less than stellar photo of the item in question. But if selling things online is your bread and butter, you’re going to want your products to look their best. A light box is an essential tool for taking professional looking product shots and while you don’t necessarily have to buy something as expensive as the MagneFlashCT MAXI, it certainly looks like it makes the job a lot easier.

The Zenon flashes it uses are actually built into lightweight acrylic panels that completely light up when the flash is fired. As a result, the system provides soft and uniform 5,600 degK lighting and looks to be a lot easier to use for amateur photographers who might not know the best way to position or bounce a regular flash.

While the largest MAXI version of the MagneFlashCT will set you back about $1,020, there are smaller MIDI and MINI versions as well that run about $600 and $250 respectively.

[ MagneFlashCT MAXI ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Digital photo frames were probably one of the more popular gifts last Christmas, and based on what I see in stores, this year isn’t going to be any different. But why buy a cheap model with a crappy resolution, when your digital camera is probably taking 7MP+ photos? I recently stumbled across a line of digital photo frames from a company called Ality, and while I haven’t seen one in person yet, they’ve sold me on features alone.

The Pictura Mirror PC019M model has a whopping 19-inch LCD screen and a half-decent resolution of 1280×1024. The frame also includes other basic features like support for BMP and JPG files, a high-speed USB port, slots for CF, SD, MMC and MS cards and will play back both MPEG and AVI video files. But it’s the frame’s other features that really set it apart.

First off, instead of showing a black empty frame when not in use, the PC019M actually has a mirror finish so it not only looks good, but can ensure you do too. It also has a built-in photo scheduler so you can load up specific pictures when friends or family stop by. (Or ensure that other pictures don’t get loaded into the slideshow.) But the biggest feature in my opinion is that it has a touch-screen interface! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to choose a menu option on a regular digital photo frame by touching the screen, only to remember I have to use a set of small annoying buttons instead. Unfortunately though the frame seems to be hard to come by if you’re looking to pick one up. I managed to find a price for the 17-inch version, about $350, so you can expect the 19-inch model to be even more expensive.

[ Ality Pictura Mirror Digital Photo Frame ]

By Evan Ackerman

For those of you (and there were a bunch of you) who took a liking to the Smart Image Resizing technique we showed you back in August, it’s now available in Flash form thanks to rsizr.com (and as a GIMP plugin, see below). Now, I’ll be totally honest: I was blown away by the demo video in August, but I’ve been messing with this Flash thing for about an hour now trying to make a nice example image and it’s not turning out that well. From what I can tell, you need a very specific sort of image for the seam carving to work without visible artifacting unless you’re only making small edits. This could be fixed with some sort of blending algorithm, but even without one, it’s not exactly quick in the processing department. Also, if you’re picky with your pictures like I am, it takes several iterations of seaming to produce good results, especially since it’s somewhat unpredictable. Feel free to post in the comments if you have better luck.

Also, I want to point out that the authors of the rsizr site don’t explicitly state (not that I can find, anyway) what their relationship is to the inventors of this technology. They do give credit for the technique to Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir, but it’s unclear whether they received permission from the inventors (both of whom are now working for Adobe, by the way) to adopt their idea and algorithm (which was published in an academic paper) in a pseudo-commercial manner. As long as it’s free, I suppose it’s not really a big deal, but I guess I just feel like Avidan and Shamir deserve a bigger share of the awesomeness that they created, you know?

I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade, and it’s certainly a very well done and useful implementation of the technique. You can check out rsizr for yourself (for free); you’ll need to have the latest version of Flash installed. And if you’d rather have a version for GIMP, check out Liquid Rescale.

[ rsizr ] VIA [ RFJ ]

By Evan Ackerman

I am starting to seriously hate eStarling. It used to be that I only disliked them for the initially crappy, and then finally slightly less crappy version of their brilliant (brilliant if it would only work) WiFi digital picture frame. To bring you up to date, the concept of the eStarling frame is that you can send pictures to it from anywhere via a built-in WiFi connection and an online interface that checks email accounts and RSS feeds for pictures. Version one of the frame was butt ugly, couldn’t connect to any wireless networks over 10 inches away, froze all the time, and had a terrible, terrible screen. ThinkGeek nicely replaced all version one frames with version two frames, which are less ugly, can connect to wireless networks (sometimes), and have a terrible, terrible screen. I reviewed this frame back in May in a two part review, of which the second part never got written, since the frame wouldn’t play nice with my unsecured wireless network no matter what I tried.

Regardless of the software problems that the eStarling has, the most glaring flaw is the hardware. Have I mentioned that the 7 inch, 16:9 (!), 480×270 (!!) widescreen is not only a terrible proportion, but it’s also terrible quality? I can’t stress the terrible enough. Seriously, for the premium you pay ($220), it’s fantastically terrible. And now that eStarling has apparently gotten enough schmucks like me to buy their crappy versions, they’ve released something that looks to have a quality display: an honest-to-goodness, 4:3 800×600 WiFi frame.

More ranting, and specs on the new frame and latest software, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

By Andrew Liszewski

A company called JOBO has just announced a couple of digital photo frames and their PDJ701 model actually ships with a half-decent 1GB of memory on-board. Sure it’s not exactly gigantic when you consider we’ll soon be seeing 32GB SD cards but compared to all the other digital photo frames on the market it’s a nice change of pace.

The Photo Display as it’s called has a ‘better than most’ 7-inch, 800×480 pixel LCD screen and that 1GB of memory can actually be expanded with support for a wide selection of memory cards like CF, SD, MMC, MS and xD. It even includes a rechargeable lithium-ion battery for those times when you don’t have access to AC power.

The JOBO PDJ701 will be available for about $179 but there’s also a slightly cheaper model, the PDJ700 which only includes 128Mb but will sell for about $159.

[ JOBO Photo Displays ] VIA [ Gearlog ]