Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
This is interesting for your iOS folks. There’s a new Kickstarter in town for something called the HyperCube. It’s an interesting little device that sits in between your phone’s charger cable and the USB socket and provides a microSD slot as well as a USB slot for plugging in a hard drive, SSD or flash drive.
When it hits retail (which won’t be for a while), it’s going to be $49, although it’s as low as $29 right now through the Kickstarter campaign.
According to a report on 9to5Mac, it looks like Apple might be starting to loosen their grip on external storage with iOS devices. New details shared from the Worldwide Developers Conference, seems like apps will be able to access external storage directly, just like Android, rather than having to import through the photos app and store on the camera roll.
Along with today’s release of the Sony A9 firmware v5.0, Sony as also released a pair of mobile apps. Sony Imaging Edge Mobile now replaces the somewhat terrible PlayMemories app, and there’s a new Transfer & Tagging add-on for it which enables continuous FTP transfers in the background (for the Sony A9) which they claim doesn’t affect continuous camera use.
Chroma Noir, the makers of popular iOS camera app Halide Camera, have created a new AI-powered app designed specifically for shooting long exposures. Called Spectre, the app uses AI to analyse a scene and computational photography to create a long exposure effect.
While the fake depth of field look on smartphones might not be everybody’s cup of tea, they’re definitely very popular. And while they’ve improved in quality and believability a lot over the last few years, they’re still not quite as good as you can get with a real large sensor camera like a DSLR or mirrorless.
But what if you’re running an older phone with a single camera and no depth sensor that doesn’t have built-in fake bokeh? While most new phones these days do offer some kind of fake depth of field effects, there are still many phones out there that don’t. DPTH may be the answer.
There’s a new camera app in town. It’s called SOVS and it’s designed to help you get those perfect Instagram photos whenever you hand your phone to somebody else to get a shot for you. Now, you no longer need to worry if that person clutching your phone knows how to shoot a decent photo. There’s also a SOVS2 app for group photos, too.
I’ve no idea what they’re saying in their promotional videos, but the point is quite obvious and they’re pretty funny. Whether the humour is by design, I don’t know, but I got a good laugh out of this one.
This is one of those things that’s definitely going to split people up into two camps. In one, there’s those who’ll think it’s awesome, and in the other, there’s those who believe that the types of locations to which this app allows access should remain secret.
You guys can discuss the camps to which you belong in the comments, but let me introduce you to Forgotten, a new mobile app for iOS and Android. It’s an app to help you discover new place to shoot or “sell” your locations. It’s the latter part of that which Forgotten says makes them different from similar apps and services that have popped up in the past.
So, Apple’s done its latest round of product announcements. Amongst them, there’s a new iPad Pro, and it seems to have seen some pretty significant changes over the previous models. It’s had a huge “next generation” performance boost, with a new design offering a substantially larger screen ratio. But probably the biggest change is that the Lightning port has disappeared. It’s been replaced by a Type-C USB 3.1 Gen 2 socket.
While many Canon shooters process their images on the desktop with something like Lightroom or Capture One, Canon’s Digital Photo Pro software doesn’t suck. A lot of Canon photographers still use it and recommend it to newer photographers who want to shoot raw without getting locked into a subscription or buying expensive software.
But as more photographers start to include tablets into their workflow, software needs to adapt. While Canon may sometimes take time to adapt, they’ve now released DPP Express; A version of Digital Photo Pro for the iPad and iPad Pro.
Yes, that’s right, it’s finally coming. Photoshop is to become an iPad app. Apple’s dream of turning the iPad Pro into a desktop replacement is potentially about to become a little more true thanks to a report from Bloomberg today. All I can say is, it’s about time!
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
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