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iPhone Becomes One of the Most Popular Cameras on Flickr

Cory Bohon — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:59:05 -0500

With the 3GS's 3-megapixel autofocus camera, the iPhone has quickly replaced our point and shoot camera for everyday photos. Leave it to Flickr to find the most popular cameras used on the site, and you'll see that the iPhone is number 2, with a bullet.

According to Flickr's camera page, the iPhone is second to only the Canon Rebel for being the most popular camera on the photo sharing site.

Not only is the iPhone near the top of the overall cameras, but it is in first place for the most popular camera phones. MacRumors notes that the charts are updated daily and is the proportion of users who upload at least one photo for that device. You can see photos taken by iPhone users by clicking here.

Flickr via MacRumors

Upcoming iPod touch & nano to Get Built-in Camera?

Christine Chan — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:40:15 -0500

Source: Cult of Mac

China is well known for their knowledge of possible upcoming releases in the latest tech gadgets, and this time they're showing off their knowledge with newly designed cases for upcoming versions of the iPod touch and iPod nano.

The difference? Both are [possibly] getting cameras.

We've been reading or hearing about this for a while now, since iLounge debuted the alleged new nano design in May, but this may be the real deal, if all of these companies manufacturing these cases are actually correct. Cult of Mac has an entire gallery of dozens of different cases for both models.

What's new though, is that it seems that the camera for the iPod touch will be centered and not offset like on the iPhone. Along with a space next to the lens, possibly a flash? The iPod nano will have the camera at the bottom left so that it will be top left when the device is held horizontally for snapping. And since the nano will be held horizontally for the camera, it seems the device will also be getting a widescreen display for better photo taking, but outer dimensions will stay the same.

The Chinese manufacturers of these cases seem to be pretty confident, though nothing is really confirmed. But even that hasn't stopped them from starting to send out some samples of the cases.

Cult of Mac received a quote from one company:

“My company had got full information and dimension,” wrote a Chinese distributor in an email to a U.S. reseller. “Enclosed some image and instruction for your reference. Most of the sample available now. If you need some sample check quality please freely let me know.”

What do you make of this? Possible, or completely false? Let us know!

Via Cult of Mac

New iPod touch To Include Camera, Microphone?

Cory Bohon — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:03:41 -0500

For years people without AT&T have wanted an iPhone without the phone. Some where happy when the iPod touch was released, but it still didn't measure up to other people's expectations. Wired is reporting that their sources have confirmed a new iPod touch is in the works (possibly already in the manufacturing phase) that includes both a camera and microphone.

The article also mentions that these iPod touches should be available for purchase in "two to three months," which would be around the time of the normal iPod refresh schedule in early fall. If these rumors are true, then we would like to see what happens to iPhone sales and iPod touch ownership.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Russ Juskalian — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:31:00 -0500

When Canon announced the 5D back in 2005, it was a game-changer. The camera was the first full-frame DSLR--meaning that its CMOS sensor is the same size as a frame of 35mm film, about 60 percent larger than the sensors in most DSLRs--in a standard sized SLR body, all for just a bit more than $3,000. Three years later, its successor, the 5D Mark II, pushes the image-quality bar higher and the cost of entry lower. But 2009 offers a more crowded field of competitors, and this camera comes with a few things--like full 1080p HD video--that puts it in a category all its own.

The second generation of Canon's 5D offers awesome stills and full 1080p video.

The price has come down, but at $2,699, the new 5D is certainly no entry-level camera. The price does buy quality, however. It’s chunky and well built, has monster resolution, and can produce images that rival anything you’re likely to achieve with a high-end consumer or pro camera.

It’s astounding that the Mark II, at 21.1 megapixels, offers nearly twice the number of pixels as its progenitor without incurring any negative consequences with respect to image quality. In fact, low-light images are actually cleaner--and the ISO range of the camera is as good as it gets--from 100 to 6400 standard, and it can be pushed all the way to 50 on the low end and up to 25600 on the high end.

Throw in automatic dust reduction, live view with contrast detect autofocus, a killer 3-inch LCD, advanced battery management that tracks shooting history and battery stats for up to six batteries, a micro adjust feature to perfectly calibrate the autofocus for each lens in your collection--and there’s enough here to get excited about, if you’re in the market for a high-end piece of photographic equipment.

But let’s be honest. What makes the new Mark II not just an awesome upgrade, but killer device, is what it can do with video: beautiful, crisp, 1080p HD video that easily rivals pro-level cameras.

Forget the stuff you get out of high-end HD digital video camcorders with three chips--this is something altogether different. Because of the huge size of the CMOS sensor in the Mark II, the camera is able to shoot video that looks like what you see in blockbuster films at the theater: totally isolated subjects with razor-thin depth of field (the so called “film look,” where one part of the frame is in focus and the rest is a buttery smooth blur), incredible low-light sequences, and the sharpest, cleanest colors this side of a Hollywood studio. Even the mighty Red One video camera doesn’t have a sensor as large as the one in the Canon.

But as with all good things, there are limitations, and the Mark II has enough video limitations that the world’s filmmakers probably won’t ditch their current rigs. For instance, the longest you can record at full HD is 12 minutes (around 4GB worth of video). It’s not the end of the world--how many films have any single shot that runs longer than a couple minutes? So although it’s not a deal-breaker, it is an inconvenience.

Worse, in video mode, one is left with little in the way of manual controls for things like exposure, aperture, and ISO. A workaround for these issues is to use the video mode with older manual focus, manual aperture lenses that are adapted to work with the camera. But this is a whole separate project.

Eye-Fi Explore

Leslie Ayers — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:13:34 -0500

If you lose track of the photos you’ve uploaded, the Upload History in the Eye-Fi Manager can remind you at a glance.

Digital cameras have eliminated the need to get prints made from film negatives at your local Fotomat. But there’s still the matter of getting your digital snaps from your camera to your computer--then sharing them using one of any number of online photo sites out there.

To solve this problem and eliminate the need for a physical connection between camera and computer, Eye-Fi cards use Wi-Fi to transfer photos from an SD storage card directly to the photo-sharing site of your choice: Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Shutterfly, Snapfish, Kodak Gallery, Costco.com, Walmart.com, MobileMe Gallery, and many others. Eye-Fi released its first Wi-Fi-enabled SD card a few years ago, and in January it launched the 2GB Eye-Fi Explore card, which automatically adds geotags to all of your photos, even if your digital camera doesn’t have geotagging features built in. It was a nice coinky-dink that at the same time, iPhoto ’09 also added the Places feature, which takes advantage of geotags and organizes photos based on where they were taken.

The Eye-Fi Explore card is a no-brainer to set up and use. Using the included USB card reader, you insert it into a free USB port on your Mac and follow the onscreen prompts to determine what happens to photos that are stored on the card from that point on. Once you take a sample photo and it uploads, the setup screen also tells you if you need to change certain power-saving settings on your digital camera, necessary to make sure the camera stays on long enough for the Eye-Fi Explore to detect a Wi-Fi network and upload your pictures.

We set up our Explore card to automatically post photos to our MobileMe Gallery, which were then synced with iPhoto ’09. The end result: fast, easy photo-sharing, and nary a moment wasted getting our photos organized and in sync.

While more and more cameras are adding geotagging as a built-in feature, there’s no need to own a cutting-edge digicam to take advantage of geotags, which are just another layer of photo metadata--in this case, latitude and longitude--you can use to sort the snaps in your photo library. Flickr also lets you use geotags to “map” your photos--perfect for photographers who are lucky enough to travel a lot.

Compared to a standard SD card, Eye-Fi cards cost a pretty penny (2GB SD card street prices run low as $5, compared to the $129.99 retail price for the Eye-Fi Explore). But in the case of Explore in particular, you get quite a bit for the price: Unlimited geotagging, Wayport hotspot access for a year, and free use of the WebShare service to upload your images to online photo-sharing sites--all services that existing Eye-Fi card owners can add to their cards for a yearly cost of $9.99 to $14.99.