If taking a photo with a nearly 10-inch tablet didn’t look silly enough, you can now pair your iPad with a telephoto lens to expand tablet photography horizons. Regardless of the awkward appearance of the iPad as a camera, shooting with the tablet has grown in popularity. The new 10x zoom accessory for the iPad 3 and 4 and 12x zoom for the iPad Mini is a further proof. Read more about the lens at connect.dpreview.com.
A recently released app in the Apple App Store promises the focus-shifting experience of a Lytro camera for a much smaller price tag. FocusTwist takes a series of images with different focal planes and allows users to choose a focus point after they have taken the photo. We take the app for a quick spin and offer our take at connect.dpreview.com.
As part of its partnership with the World Photography Awards, Sony is hosting a series of workshops at London’s Somerset House. The sessions take place from April 26th – 28th and cover a range of interests from beginner topics to those looking to make a career out of photography. Individual sessions are are priced at £5 each. Speakers include commercial photographers Michael Wayne, Magdi Fernandes, What Digital Camera’s Editor, Nigel Atherton and Technical Editor of Amateur Photographer, Richard Sibley. The workshops promote the Winners Exhibition of the World Photography Awards 2013 that will be showcased from April 26th – May 12th at the Somerset house. Click though for more details
Just posted: Our hands-on preview of the Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 DC HSM Art lens. The announcement of the world’s first constant F1.8 zoom caused a lot of discussion, much of it centered around the idea that the brighter aperture would help APS-C DSLRs to compete toe-to-toe with full frame cameras in many respects. We’ve had a chance to handle the lens and prepare a preview putting its capabilities in more context. Click here to find out more.
BlackBerry, the phone maker formerly known as Research in Motion, has a lot riding on its newest smartphone, Z10. It’s the debut handset for the long-delayed BlackBerry 10, the operating system that the company hopes will mark the beginning of a turnaround after years of losing ground to Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms. We take a thorough look at the camera capabilities of the Z10 in our review on connect.dpreview.com.
British sports photographer Tom Jenkins has written a thought-provoking article for The Guardian about how quickly sports stories can turn into breaking news events. In the aftermath of the bomb attacks at the Boston Marathon, Jenkins draws parallels with past tragedies including the Hillsborough disaster, which occurred on the same day 24 years earlier. Jenkins also adds personal reminiscences about how he has made the transition from sports to ‘news’ photography in the past. Click through for excerpts and a link to the full article at The Guardian.
Ireland is a fantastically varied place with a lot to offer the travelling landscape photographer. In this three page article, Carsten Krieger explains Ireland’s enduring appeal to photographers and as well as travel advice, he shares some of his own work, captured all over the ’emerald isle’. Click through to read his article, ‘Ireland: A Photographers’ Guide’.
Pentax has released firmware updates for its K-5 II, K-5 IIs DSLRs and Q mirrorless cameras. Firmware version 1.04 for the K-5 II and IIs improves overall stability and resolves an issue where some of the controls stopped working on the cameras’ status screens. The update Pentax Q firmware v1.12 resolves issues regarding one of its Smart Effect filters. The updates are available for immediate download from the company’s website – click through for download links.
We just published the DxOMark Mobile Report for the Sony Xperia Z on connect.dpreview.com and the results don’t look fantastic. DxO’s imaging experts have analyzed 14 aspects of mobile imaging including detailed image quality assessment, flash performance, autofocus reliability and more to calculate a final score and the Sony scores lower than most of its competitors. We will start working on our evaluation once we receive a review unit at DPR Connect but for now click through to find out how the Sony Xperia Z’s camera performed in the DxO lab tests.
Dutch designer Ruben van der Vleuten was curious to know how many people and steps were involved between mailing and receiving a parcel, so he decided to find out. He installed a tiny 3MP camera in a parcel, built a timer circuit using Arduino (a simple single-board microcontroller designed to control devices.) and shipped it to himself. The timer of the circuit was set to make a 3 second video every minute and make longer videos while the box was moving. Click through to watch the results.