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The Crack Light is a one year old product that you can buy on kickstarter for $5 over its retail price

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We love Kickstarter here at DIYPhotography. It has brought many great photography accessories into our lives. True, sometimes it failed, but for the most part, Kickstarter is a great platform to get a product out there. And for this, we think Kickstarter is pretty cool.

What Kickstarter is not cool for, is when the platform is abused. We got an email telling us that a new campaign for the Crack Light is actually a one-year-old product that you can already buy for a significantly less than the Kickstarter campaign asking price.

The Crack Light is a small, waterproof, phone-sized, USB-powered light. I gotta say, it does seem pretty cool. But it is not new. Crack light has been on the market since IBC 2018, six months ago (or partially, even since NAB 2018, a full year ago). It is made by Profound, a South Korean LED manufacturer. Under the mother company, it is called the PanFlex 5W. Erik Nasso over at Newsshooter covered it at IBC. And guess what? You can buy it cheaper, a lot cheaper than the Kickstarter selling price.

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The “GimbalGun” wants to give your arms a rest by shifting the weight of your rig to your shoulders

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I really have no idea how I feel about this thing. This is the GimbalGun. It looks like something you’d use to take tanks out, but it’s actually a support system designed for use with single-handed gimbals to give you even more stability. It’s not available just yet, but it’s coming to Kickstarter soon.

Essentially it’s a long metal box with a bunch of 1/4-20″ holes for connecting devices. A gimbal, monitor, microphone, lights, mini tripods, or whatever you need to carry around with your gimbal. But its goal is to help take the weight off your arms and onto your more substantial shoulders.

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Maya is “the only darkroom timer you’ll ever need”

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One of the biggest issues in the darkroom is keeping track of time. Whether it’s for developing your rolls of film or exposing negatives onto paper in the enlarger, there’s just very little out there these days to assist with that, and using a phone can be tricky, especially if you’ve got wet chemicals on your hands.

But it seems there’s a new, modern solution to this particular problem; Maya. Billing itself as “The only darkroom timer you’ll ever need”, it has countdown timers, f-stop adjustments, a test strip mode, room light control (what?!?), and it’s modular so you can add more features to it in the future.

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This 250mm f/4.9 lens is the “world’s sharpest” and has interchangeable camera mounts

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It’s a pretty bold claim to say you’re the world’s something-est anything. But that’s what William Optics are doing with their new Redcat 250mm f/4.9 lens, hailing it as the “World’s Sharpest” 250mm lens ever made for full frame cameras. Which, to be fair, is possibly true, as very few 250mm lenses have ever been made for full frame cameras.

Interestingly, though, it’s based on a Petzval design, which is typically more associated with “swirly bokeh” than sharpness. But this lens uses a pair of synthetic fluorite elements to correct those issues in an attempt to produce sharpness across the entire frame. At least, that’s what their Kickstarter campaign says.

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Lomogon 2.5/32 Art is a unique 32mm lens with perfectly circular bokeh

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Lomography has come up with some interesting products in the past couple of years. The latest addition to their family is the Lomogon 2.5/32 Art lens. It’s a handcrafted 32mm f/2.5 lens aimed particularly at travel and street photographers, but of course, it can be used for many other genres. Aside from reasonable price and compact design, the most interesting feature of this lens is probably its perfectly circular bokeh.

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SwitchPod wants to replace your GorillaPod once and for all

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There are a few brands out there that make small, compact tripods. But SwitchPod is a new product that aims to provide you with everything you need from a mini tripod. It’s small, lightweight, compact and it transforms in a few seconds. And you could find it useful regardless of the camera you use and what you shoot, be it photos videos or vlogs. Well, especially vlogs, I’d say.

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Angry backers of Yashica digiFilm Y35 report multiple camera issues

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When Yashica announced a comeback, many fans of the brand rejoiced. With the interesting concept of the “digital film roll” and the design of the old Yashica Electro 35, Yashica digiFilm Y35 raised an incredible $1.28 million on Kickstarter. The future looked bright. But now, as the company is shipping cameras to the backers, issues with the digiFilm Y35 are emerging, leaving people angry and disappointed.

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The SPRY drone can fly in the air and swim underwater

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Well, when I say “swim”, it kind of bobs around under the surface before coming back up to take off. Drones that can take off from and land in water aren’t a new idea. We’ve seen it before with the original Lily Drone, although that one never saw reality.

The SPRY drone, on the other hand, appears to be very real. And it seems to have no problems with taking off from the water, landing in it, or even dipping below the surface. It’s currently on Kickstarter with a couple of weeks to go and was fully funded within 45 minutes of going live.

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