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Blind Spot Gear announces the Power Junkie v2 with USB Power Delivery and charging abilities

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Blind Spot Gear, the company behind 2018’s original Power Junkie, is back with an update. It’s the Power Junkie v2, and it’s just launched today through Kickstarter. If you’ve no idea what the Power Junkie is, it’s a battery plate that takes Sony NP-F style batteries and provides outputs with which you can power other gear, like cameras, monitors, field recorders, etc.

It negates the need to have multiple batteries for multiple devices. Now, you can power everything from a single battery. As well as the neatness of just having a single battery, it means you don’t have to monitor the battery life of multiple devices while you’re trying to record! The new Power Junkie v2 has been rebuilt from the ground up to power up to offer a whole host of new features over its predecessor.

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The CosmoCap is another camera body cap that lets you embed an Apple AirTag tracker

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The popularity of Apple AirTag always seems to be on the increase. With the amount of theft going on, particularly around photographers, it’s not much of a surprise that more and more photographers are taking to AirTag and similar tracking devices to ensure they know where their gear is at all times. The problem comes, though, when you’ve got an AirTag in your bag and thieves part out the gear while dumping the bag. Tracking takes you to an empty bag.

This is where the CosmoCap comes in. At least when it comes to the cameras themselves. It’s a camera body cap that lets you embed an Apple AirTag or similar tracking in its built-in slot. It’s a lot like the AirCap we featured a few months ago, and it’s of a similar price point (at least for now). But this one’s launching via Kickstarter instead of being sold directly. It’s also more of an ecosystem rather than a single product.

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NONS SL645 instant camera uses vintage lenses and shoots Instax Mini film

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Perhaps you’re already familiar with NONS and their interesting SLR cameras that use Instax film. The company has just announced the SL645: a camera that lets you shoot Instax Mini film. Like NONS’s other products, it lets you change lenses, so it seems like a perfect match for those who love instant film photography and vintage lenses with equal passion. Alright then, let’s check it out and see what it has to offer.

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Zacuto turns to mobile creators with its new Smart Z-Finder viewfinder for smartphones

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Zacuto, the company famous for its high-end (and expensive) cinema rig accessories has turned to smartphones with their latest release, the Smart Z-Finder. As with many of Zacuto’s more popular products over the years, this one’s a viewfinder. Except it’s not for cinema cameras or even mirrorless cameras. This one takes aim at mobile creators. It’s designed for smartphones.

A first of its kind, the Zacuto Smart Z-Finder allows you to film with a smartphone in a way that feels a little more like a “real camera”, allowing you to fill your view with the screen while blocking out external distractions. It’s compatible with most smartphones on the market and allows for both horizontal or vertical filming. It’s currently running on Kickstarter.

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HEIPI is a new style of lightweight and compact 3-in-1 travel tripod with a 3-pillar centre column

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There isn’t usually a lot of innovation in tripods. Occasionally we’ll see new materials being used, like the introduction of carbon fibre, or improved mechanisms to make things work more smoothly and easily. The HEIPI tripod, though, seems to rethink the whole concept of a travel tripod, by splitting the centre column into three for not only more stability when it’s raised but also to act as a second mini tripod.

It’s an interesting design that’s currently launching on Kickstarter. It allows you to essentially always carry two tripods with you wherever you need to go but takes up the space of only one. It uses patented quick lever locks on the legs which are made from carbon fibre to keep things as light as possible. It packs down to only 44.5cm, weighing 1.35kg and extends up to 150cm (or 59″).

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The Adaptalux Pod Mini is a small, lightweight power control unit for Adaptalux macro flashes and LED lights

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Adaptalux has expanded their mini macro lighting range with the new Adaptalux Pod Mini. It’s a compact and lightweight power supply unit for the Adaptalux Studio Lighting Arms. It offers up to eight hours of battery life and can supply power while charging through its USB-C socket. As well as supplying power, the Pod Mini also acts as the controller for the Adaptalux lighting range.

It’s a miniature version of the Control Pod, the Pod Mini works with both the Adaptalux continuous LED lights, including the UV ones, as well as their Xenon flash units. It offers up to 8 hours of battery life, has an easy minimalist button control layout, they’re small, lightweight and durable and they’ve been launched on Kickstarter.

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MIOPS launches the new Capsule Pro motorised pan and tilt motion control head for video and timelapse

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MIOPS has today announced the new Capsule Pro motorised pan and tilt head for shooting timelapse and motion control video. Released four years after the MIOPS Capsule360, I’m not entirely sure what makes this different/better than its predecessor, except for the increased load capacity and it looks like some highlight features from the Capsule360 (such as subject tracking) aren’t even mentioned with the new Capsule Pro.

Like most of the other MIOPS gear releases, the MIOPS Capsule Pro is being launched through Kickstarter with pledges currently starting at $299. It also talks to and combines with other MIOPS gear, like the MIOPS Slider, giving you multi-axis motion control that you wouldn’t be able to get with just the Capsule Pro alone.

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This adapter lets you use your old 100-400 Polaroid Land cameras with modern instant film

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With the discontinuation of Type 100 film by pretty much everybody, with the final nail in the coffin coming from Fuji in 2016, finding film for your old Polaroid 100-400 Land Camera became pretty impossible unless you wanted to spend an absolute fortune on eBay. There has been at least one attempt to revive the format, in the form of One Instant, but it’s also pretty expensive and appears to have been sold out for quite a while now.

A newly developed product by Clément Grosjean and his team, however, takes a different approach to keeping these older Polaroid cameras alive. Instead of releasing Type 100 film, they’ve designed an adapter that lets you use your Land camera with either SX-70 film cartridges or i-Type film without a battery. It’s called Newland and it’s launching through Kickstarter.

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Jollylook is back with the Jollylook Pinhole – Their new DIY instant film pinhole camera kit

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It always makes me smile to see a new camera from Jollylook. We’ve featured a couple of their other cameras in the past including the original Jollylook in 2017 as well as the smarter Jollylook Auto in 2020. Now, the Ukrainian company has relocated to Slovakia and is announcing their newest camera, the Jollylook Pinhole – a DIY pinhole camera kit you can build yourself that also takes Fuji Instax film.

Jollylook founder, Evgeniy Ivanic says about the project that “the Jollylook Pinhole DIY kit brings back the pleasure of the process of building a camera and taking a photograph”. As with past Jollylook cameras, the Jollylook Pinhole comes with a vintage-inspired design but incorporates modern Fuji Instax film for as instant an analogue process as you can get.

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Moment has launched an adapter that turns just about any lens into a 1.33x Anamorphic lens

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Moment, more commonly known for its smartphone lenses, has expanded into DSLR and mirrorless cameras with its new Moment Anamorphic Adapter which screws onto the filter thread of your regular camera lenses and turns them into 1.33x anamorphic lenses. Moment says they’ve been working on the adapter for the past eight years to turn your 16:9 footage into a more cinematic 2.35:1.

As well as stretching the view to what we’d typically expect from an anamorphic lens, Moment says it brings those horizontal flares and vertical bokeh that anamorphic lenses also typically present. They’ve launched the new anamorphic adapter via Kickstarter, where they’ve already blasted way through their $50,000 goal with 29 days still left to go on the campaign.

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