We first heard about the startup company Satarii back in January when they began raising money for a novel camera dock that offers motion tracking. They went on to raise nearly $25,000 through crowdfunding, and now the dock is official and available for pre-order. Named “Swivl“, it helps cameras follow a remote tracking marker by doing its best to keep the marker in the frame.
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The Necono Digital Camera is a funky cat-shaped digital camera out of Japan that might make it easier for you to take smiling baby photos. It’s a 3 megapixel camera that doesn’t have any LCD screen embedded for you to review your shots — you have to connect it to a “Monitor Ground” base that includes an LCD or transfer the images to your computer via USB. The cat has a shutter button on its butt, the camera and a self-timer LED in its eyes, and magnetic feet that allow you to stick it in random places.
Like many novelty cameras, the Necono doesn’t exactly come cheap… It’ll run you a whopping ¥15,750 ($192). At least you can be the only one among your friends to take pictures with a cat.
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The i dropper is a conceptual device designed to make transferring photographs from different devices and computers intuitive, quick, and easy. To move a photograph from your iPad to your desktop, all you would have to do is “suck up” the photo on your iPad using the stylus pen-shaped device, and “drop” the data onto your computer screen. What’s more, the data contained in the pen is displayed on a little screen to inform you of what’s ready to be dropped.
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The Photo Album Story Teller is a nifty device that allows you to add voice notes to your physical photos. It works with color coded stickers that are used to identify photos. Place the sticker next to the photo, scan it with the device, and record a message. Come back later and rescan the sticker to hear the note that was recorded.
If writing notes next to photo album photos is too Life 1.0 for you, this could be a fun way to include extra background information with your images. There’s a price to pay for this photo-geekery: the Story Teller costs $100 for the recorder and 500 stickers.
A couple days ago we reported that the upcoming Nintendo 3DS will have a built-in 3D camera system, instantly putting 3D photography into the hands of those lined up to buy the system.
If you can’t wait for the DS to play around with 3D photography and instant feedback on a 3D screen, Hammacher Schlemmer has unveiled a 3D camcorder with virtually the same imaging specs as the 3DS. The device, which ships on July 2, also shoots and records at 640×480 (VGA) resolution and has a special 3D screen that allows you to review your photographs in 3D on a screen that doesn’t require special glasses.
Unlike the 3DS, however, this 3D camcorder has a 7 inch screen, almost double the 3.53 inch screen of the 3Ds.
The downside for this device is the price — it’s listed at $600, which is much more than most people think the 3DS will be sold for.
Unless you’re desperate to get your hands on this technology, it might be prudent to wait a year or two. Presumably 3D cameras and camcorders will be capturing at much better resolutions by then (unless you’re willing to pay around $21,000, of course).
(via Wired)
Here’s an interesting gadget that can help you with wildlife photography, or can simply make you look beastly while doing street photography. This tactical sight can help you lock your camera onto a faraway animal, making finding it much easier to find when you start looking through your massive telephoto lens. With longer focal range lenses, it can be pretty easy to lose sight of where exactly your subject is, and finding it again might require pulling your eyes away from the viewfinder. This sight can help you more accurately lock onto the subject prior to using the viewfinder.
After poking around a bit, it looks like this is actually a Phantom Tactical Sight for rifles that has been rebranded and repurposed for photography:
The sight can project a point, circle point, circle cross, or cross onto the screen (it’s not a laser pointer), and has two colors (green or red) and three intensities. This gadget will set your back about $45. Happy shooting!
Wildlife Photography with Tactical Four Reticle Sight (via Wired)
Getting a tripod head level can be a hassle, as Dr. Carl Koch found out on a cold night in Switzerland when photographing a Christmas display. He then spent four years inventing the Acadalus CPS-H1, an advanced self-leveling camera head that automatically levels a camera with the touch of a button. Killing hassles comes at a steep price — the Acadalus costs $5,000 for the studio kit, and an extra half-grand or so if you need the battery pack and charger for outdoor shooting.
This amazing pinhole camera is so small that it’s amazing it actually works. It was created by Francesco Capponi (Dippold on Flickr), the same guy who created the nifty printable 35mm cardboard pinhole camera we featured a while back.
Here are a couple more views of this extraordinary camera to give you a better idea of how it works:
To prove the camera is fully-functional, Capponi took the following photograph with it, titled “my little eye“:
The film used to capture this image was simple black and white photo paper.
Sadly, Capponi doesn’t have a tutorial out for making one of these amazing cameras (they would make fun conversation pieces), but hopefully he’ll post some explanation and/or instructions soon!
(via Gizmodo)
When Instructables member bertus52x11 had his cast removed after breaking his arm, he found that his arm was too weak to handle his DSLR camera. Realizing that those less fortunate might have similar problems with handling heavy equipment, he created a do-it-yourself camera support using PVC pipe that transfers the weight of your camera to your chest.
In addition to allowing people to more easily handle heavy cameras, the chest support also acts as a stabilizer, reducing camera shake in situations where you don’t have a tripod. He writes,
This device can help people with a weak arm or hand, but it can be helpful to people with Parkinson to stabilise the camera. Naturally it can be used for stabilising pocket cameras as well. You can then slim down the design by using smaller (copper) tubing. Once you have chosen for copper, a Steampunk design is never far away. I would like to see that!
If you’re interested in creating such a support for yourself or someone you know, check out the easy-to-follow tutorial on Instructables:
This is one of the coolest gadgets we’ve seen in quite some time. The Parrot AR.Drone is a quadricopter that you control visually through wifi using your iPhone or iPod touch. The quadricopter has a built in camera that displays the real time view of the drone on your screen while you control it. We’re not sure if still photography or video capabilities are built in, but this could open the door to making simple aerial photography accessible to the general public.
What’s even cooler is the fact that the AR.Drone comes with augmented reality games for both single and multiplayer. This means the real world is turned into the battleground, and you can either have aerial fights with virtual enemies or your friend’s quadricopter!
Parrot is currently showing off the carbon-fiber toy at CES 2010 in Las Vegas, and there isn’t any word on the pricing or availability yet. If the price is anything reasonable, you can be sure these things are going to be flying off shelves!
To whet your appetite even more, here’s a super-awesome video demonstrating how the AR.Drone works:
(via PDNPulse)
