Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on August 8, 2011
Triggertrap Trips Your Camera With Just About Anything
Triggertrap is an open source, Arduino-based box that will take pretty much any input and use it to trigger your camera. Lasers, a clap of the hands, even your old TV remote — all of them will work to trip your camera’s shutter. Read More…
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on June 30, 2011
Triggertrap Trips You Camera With Just About Anything
Triggertrap is an open source, Arduino-based box that will take pretty much any input and use it to trigger your camera. Lasers, a clap of the hands, even your old TV remote — all of them will work to trip your camera’s shutter. Read More…
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on June 29, 2011
Apple Drops iPhone 3GS to $49
Apple has dropped the price of the iPhone 3GS to $49, a week after AT&T did the same. That Apple has made this official, even adding the price to the blurb on the phone’s web-page, makes this an permanent price-drop, not just a offer from a telco to boost new year sales.
The 8GB handset can be had for this price only on a new two-year contract, which means that buyers will miss out not just on the iPhone 4 but also the iPhone after that, whatever it may be called.
Apple has established a pattern of selling last year’s iPhone model for $99 in the US, and we imagine that this will continue with the iPhone 4 in the summer. This is the first time, though, that the iPhone has cost just $49, likely a side-effect of the 3GS using the almost three-year-old body-design first seen in the 3G.
Anyhow, if you’re happy to sign up for two years with AT&T, then you can now have an iPhone for the price of an iPod Shuffle. And that’s plain nuts.
iPhone 3GS [Apple]
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Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on January 10, 2011
Kodak Underwater Sports-Cam Almost Cheap as a Disposable
LAS VEGAS — Amongst Kodak’s rather mundane CES offerings is the cute little EasyShare Sport, a 12MP waterproof camera (to 10-feet) that costs less than the bag of film you would have bought to go on vacation in pre-digital days.
The C123 has fixed focus, and no optical zoom (although you can use the 5X digital zoom), and no listed specs, even on the specifications section on Kodak’s own site. This befits a camera so cheap that you could lose it and not really blink. The LCD screen, though, is a decent 2.4-inches, and you can shoot VGA-quality movies.
And because there’s a computer inside even the lowliest camera these days, you get all the features of Kodak’s Smart Capture, bringing face-detection, motion-detection (and from there, auto-ISO), and auto-everything (except focus, of course).
Finally, there is one-button uploading to a variety of sharing sites, including Flickr, Twitter, YouTube and even Orkut. You’ll need to plug into a computer first, though.
And the price that I have mercilessly been teasing throughout this post? $80. Available March.
Kodak EasyShare Sport [Kodak]
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Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on January 4, 2011
Flash on iPhone, But Not the One You Think
The iFlash not a battery-sucking, CPU-choking browser plugin. Instead, it’s an LED lamp that plugs into the dock-connector of any iPhone or iPod and provides a “flash” for your photos.
It’s self-powered, so you won’t drain your battery, and you’ll have to switch it on and off manually, making the dock-connector little more than a mounting point for the light. And that’s not the only hole it will fill on the iPhone: a little plastic jack-plug will let you dangle the dongle from the iPhone’s headphone socket when not in use.
I’d probably avoid this particular gadget, though. If you’re going to add light to your photos, why go to all the bother of buying an expensive light and then just stick the thing right near the lens, where it will give you the same harsh shadows you get from any light so close to the lens. It’s like buying an SB900 strobe for your Nikon and then sitting it in the camera’s hot-shoe. No, better to just take the $40 this widget will cost you and buy a decent LED flashlight.
iFlash Product Page [Gadgets and Gear via Oh Gizmo]
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Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on December 2, 2010
Wireless USB Box Streams Video from Laptop to TV
Link, from Imation, is a dead-simple way to get movies off your computer and onto your TV. It consists of two parts: a USB-dongle for the computer and a receiver that hooks into your TV. The pair talk to each other wirelessly and stream whatever is on the computer’s screen over to the television.
The connection is via Wireless USB, or WUSB, and will stream video up to 720p resolution and still images up to 1080p. It also sends stereo sound, and the whole lot is piped into the TV via an included HDMI cable.
Unfortunately, the one thing Imation doesn’t want to share is the price. If this thing is under $100, it might be in with a chance. With the rumors hotly tipping a new, $99 Apple TV at next week’s Apple Event on September 1st, anything that costs more than that may as well just go home now.
Link product page [Imation. Thanks, Michelle!]
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on August 26, 2010
Flash: The Strobist’s Guide to Slaves
David Hobby, the man responsible for re-lighting the enthusiasm for off-camera flash (and driving up second-hand prices of the same) has turned his lens on slavery. Not the unpaid servant kind, but the flash-triggering kind. A new article over at the Strobist blog (which you really should be subscribed to) details the different kinds of slaves, and how they work.
A slave unit is a simple trigger which closes a switch when it sees another flash. Thus, you can control many flashes from afar without wires. And while the operation is all-manual, slaving an old flashgun is way cheaper than buying the auto-everything strobes from Canon and Nikon.
There are two kinds: passive and powered. Read David’s excellent (and entertaining) post for the full run down, but the short form is that you should avoid passive units, which rely on gathering enough photons through their eyes to fire a trigger, and go for the powered units, which are a lot more sensitive. The best option is to only buy speed-lights with built-in slaves, as you don’t then have to drop extra cash on expensive adapter dongles.
A flash like the LP160 (which we reviewed a couple weeks back) is ideal. It’s cheap ($160) and the slave unit popped the flash every time in testing.
Failing this, you should buy the most expensive slave unit you can afford, otherwise you’ll suffer the rage-inducing frustrations of missed exposures. David tells us where to buy, and what buzzwords to look out for. Go read the article, and wait for part two, which will tell you how to get the most out of your brand new toy.
Understanding and Using Optical Slaves, Pt. 1 [Strobist]
Photo: Charlie Sorrel
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 26, 2010
Hands-On With the Quad-Sync LumoPro Flash
For the last couple of weeks I have been testing out the low-cost LP160 camera-flash. The successor to the LP120, the flash is designed for full manual control, and can be triggered pretty much any way you like. The strobe is aimed at Strobists, photographers who use small, off camera flashes in manual mode to get amazing, creative results.
For a full spec list, check out the preview from last month. The short form is this: The flash-head spins almost 360-degrees and tilts up 90-degrees (and down by seven-degrees). There’s a slave sensor on the front, and – in addition to on/off and test buttons – zoom, slave and power-output buttons on the back.
The quad-sync part of the name comes from the triggering methods: hot-shoe, PC-sync cable, 3.5mm jack cable and slave. The hard-wired methods all work as expected (although you’ll want to use the 3.5mm jack as the cables are cheaper and the plugs don’t fall out – a design problem with all PC-sync cords).
The real power is in that slave mode. The front-mounted slave unit watches for another flash and fires its own lamp. This can be hit or miss but in regular daylight (not full, midday sun) the LP160 hits it pretty much every time. The shot above, for instance, is taken with a Panasonic GF1. The built-in flash is the trigger, but to keep it from adding light to the photograph, I blocked it with a white card. Enough light bounced around the room to trigger the LumoPro for every exposure.
The slave has two modes. One is what you’d expect – it sees a flash and fires. The second, reached by sliding the switch across one more notch, is called Si. This is for use with compact cameras, and will ignore any pre-flashes. I tried it with the red-eye setting switched on on the GF1 and it worked great.
The other buttons control the zoom motor (24-105mm), which lets you change the concentration of the beam, and the power output. This goes from full power, or 1/1, down to 1/64. This, aside from all the other functions, is what you need to do manual photography. You just hit the button to cycle through the levels, and a red LED shows you what is selected.
Build quality is ok. The plastic is lightweight but flexible, so although it isn’t as solid as a Nikon speedlight, it shouldn’t shatter on impact. Would I buy one? Sure. At $160, it is in range of most photographers, and it works as it should. There are no frills, but a lot of thought has gone into what features have been added. And at the price, you can buy a clutch of LumoPros for the price of one Nikon SB900.
LP160 Quad-sync Manual Flash [LumoPro. Thanks, Moishe!]
LumoPro LP160: Quad Sync v.2.0 [Strobist]
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 14, 2010
The $37 Laptop. For Real
Walk into any toy store and you’ll see a “laptop” “computer”, a plastic clamshell that has all of the design cues of a notebook: keyboard, screen, some ports and switches, but none of the power. It’s cheap enough to buy for (and disappoint) a kid, but it isn’t of course a real computer. It probably has a few built in games and that’s it.
The Ebay $37 laptop is almost that same machine, although it looks even more like the computers it pretends to be. It runs Windows CE on a 300 MHz ARM VIA processor with 128kb RAM and a whopping 2GB storage. The huge bezel around the tiny 7-inch 800 x 480 screen has space for a pair of speakers either side, and you even get an ethernet jack and a couple USB ports (take that, iPad) along with Wi-Fi. You can also slot-in an SD card.
What’s the catch (apart from the extraordinarily underpowered internals)? There appears to be none. These are factory seconds or items which have failed quality control tests. They may or may not come with original packaging, and they ship from Hong Kong. Sound risky? C’mon. They’re $37. What do you expect? It’s almost worth it just for the AC adapter (9 volts, if you care).
If you run into Nicholas Negroponte and he’s still trying to make his $100 OLPC, point him to this, okay?
7″ Mini Laptop Netbook Computer Notebook WIFI WindowsCE [Ebay via Netbook News. Thanks, Sascha!]
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on June 29, 2010
Avaratec’s All In One is a Desktop Netbook
Let’s be honest: the Averatec All-In-One is a netbook with a big screen. The 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor isn’t going to give you blistering performance, but in our experience it will give you enough power to do most everyday computing tasks.
Like a netbook, the All-In-One is cheap. $550 buys you the computer, an 18.4 inch, 1680 x 945 widescreen display (with built-in webcam), a keyboard and a mouse. You’ll also find a DVD drive, built-in mic, 5 USB ports, ethernet and a 120GB hard drive.
Perhaps the neatest feature is the shiny metal swing-arm which connects the flat base with the monitor – it reminds us of the arm on the Anglepoise-like iMac G4 – which allows the screen to be lowered to desk level, or even flipped flat for easy storage, or the carrying of tea and cakes into the den.
Joanna Stern at Laptop mag has put the All-In-One through its early paces and she likes it. It’s easy to see why: The machine doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a low-end family computer, but for the price, Avaratec has squeezed in a lot of computer, and its glossy looks belie its cheap origins.
Exclusive Hands-On With Averatec 18.4-Inch All-In-One [Laptop Mag]
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by admin on October 17, 2008
