Beautiful renderings of the “iCam”, a concept created by Italian designer Antonio DeRosa. The concept case would add interchangeable lenses — along with various other features — to the iPhone 5. Very reminiscent of the Camera Futura concept. I would certainly be first in line for something like this; I love the idea of these modular devices that leverage the processing power of computing devices, like an iPhone, that you may already have. I know it’s a long shot, but let’s hope this makes it out of concept-land.
On a side note, still waiting to upgrade to the 4S (I think I can get it December 10th without getting gouged), can’t wait to check out the camera on there, seen some pretty amazing things from my friends who have the 4S already.
Here’s a beautiful 3 part vignette shot by director Riley Blakeway of Taj Burrow and friends in Fiji. Filming in a place like this, with surfers of this caliber, you’d expect it to look great and it does. Riley goes a little further to make it something else with the color and grain work, which I really appreciate. All three pieces have a great organic film-like grain and the color grading is spot. A feeling and look that you can’t just do with a plug-in.
When I first watched it, I was convinced this was 16mm and maybe super 8mm in spots. Here’s the kicker, “All of the surf vision was shot with the EX1.” says Blakeway. He also added that intros and outros were super 8mm. The camera is the Sony PMW-EX1, a type of camera that is similar to what a lot of us were used to shooting with before the Canon DSLR days. Not a 5D, 60D or even a RED Epic, which is great to see. I’ll try not to get into the technical too much on this, because it’s simply well shot, well edited and graded. His attention to detail is great on these, well done Riley.
Lytro released its revolutionary Light Field Camera last week. Apart from its unique design, the camera uses a different type of sensor to capture light fields, allowing photographers to focus images after shooting them. It also allows users to capture three-dimensional shots with a single lens. Check out their picture gallery for a chance to see light fields in action.
I can see this technology being particularly useful in point-and-shoots and Blade Runner-esque “enhance” sequences, but I’m really interested in its creative applications. On one hand it takes away from the artistic choices available to photographers, but on the other hand it opens up a whole new set of possibilities. Either way it will be interesting to see what people come up with.
A great PDF of Hasselblad’s the guidebook for the NASA Photography Training Program can be had here. The guide focuses on the operation of the 500 EL/M, which was the official NASA camera.
The GigaPan EPIC Pro received a firmware update last week. You may remember the hardware from Gerald Donovan’s 45 gigapixel panoramic photo of Dubai (the making of which is included above), which happened to turn one year old that same week. To celebrate the occasion, Gerald has re-rendered the image to correct for stitching errors in the original file. If you missed it the first time, or if you are interested in checking out the updated version, you can view it here. Alternatively, you can check out the original forty-fiver here.
Black Design Associates have whipped up a pretty interesting iPhone / Leica i9 fusion camera concept. The device would cost around $1000 and shoot 12.1 megapixel images. It’s a long shot that anything like this will ever be produced but here’s hoping it sees the light of day.
Super 8 and 8mm have always been my favorites when shooting video. Although transferring the film to digital has posed problems mainly because of its expense and decline in locations to transfer. The video above by James Miller shows his method for transferring 8mm footage to digital using the beloved 5D Mark II and an Eumig Mark 501 (or the Eumig 610D & the Eumig Mark DL). The end result looks great, is much much faster and way less expensive. Now I just need to get a 1D Mark IV or 5D Mark II.
Hit the jump for more information on the process and the transfer results.
Some pretty incredible footage from the Phantom Flex high-speed digital camera shot at 2,564 fps. While this is impressive, it starts to be a little bit less so when you consider the price: around $150,000. Hopefully this kind of performance starts to trickle down sooner than later.
