Nikon released a Lens Positioning Map, which graphically represents their Nikkor lens lineup. Thom Hogan has a very good analysis on his site about the holes in Nikon’s lens lineup based on this information and what lenses he thinks Nikon will release next to plug these holes.
Nikon's Lens Lineup
The tool itself is written in Flash and depicts lenses by focal lenght (X-axis) and aperture (Y-axis). The lenses themselves are represented by a spot, a bar or a rectangle; depending on whether we are talking about a prime, a zoom with a fixed maximum aperture or a zoom with variable maximum aperture. Filters on top allow you to narrow down the selection.
Please note that the Flash animation only worked on my Windows machine; it did not work in any of my browsers on my Mac despite running the latest version of Flash for MacOSX.
Update: ProCamera just released an update, version 2.5, which added some exiting features.
If you have an iPhone 3GS, the most important new features are video recording from within ProCamera as well as a Photo Compass. Two very useful features, indeed.
But to me, it’s sometimes the small things that matter much more. The feature I missed the most was to auto-save pictures – too often, I simply forgot to save my pictures using the background save. While at it, they also added a Grid overlay (Great!), a variable timer (ProCamera is my app-of-choice for taking “iTripod” pictures) and also to get rid of the Zoom buttons, since I never use digital zoom.
Overall, a great program has been made even more powerful — it remains our camera replacement of choice and a solid Editor’s Pick!
Let’s face it – the iPhone camera is not that great. We all hope for something better once iPhone 3.0 comes out.
In the meantime, there is some help. Pro Camera is one application with advanced features compared to the regular camera app and it has become my new default camera application. First of all, it supports a very basic image stabilization (in Canon-speak) or vibration reduction (in Nikon-speak): it utilizes the accelerometer to help you level your shots before you take them and has an user-definable anti-shake delay function so it won’t capture your shot until you hold your iPhone still. The results are noticeably better as you can see from the 100% crop from two images taken in my home office.
ProCamera also includes a timer for delayed shots or self-portraits. In addition, as is also visible in the image above, it applies color temperature correction to your shots, which makes them look a bit cooler. This might not be to everyone’s liking, but can be changed in Photogene (see our review) on the iPhone or your favorite photo editor on your PC or Mac.
One feature that takes getting used to is the background save function. While it’s great to have a buffer, so you can keep snapping pictures and don’t have to wait for every photo to be saved before being able to shoot again, you have to wait until the last photo has been saved before you can quit the app. Quit the application too early and you lose all the photos that have not been saved yet. I wish there was a warning when you try to quit before all pictures are saved. Fortunately, there’s a setting to turn this off, if you do not like photo buffering.
Price: $2.99 from iTunes.
I’m known to shop the modern way – when being out there shopping, I take pictures of merchandize with my iPhone as reminders to research them later in order to make a buying decision. Of course, this can get embarrassing when, e.g., a clerk watches me in a bookstore taking pictures of books. So I’ve been waiting for an app like cam-u-flage to allow me to camouflage what I’m really up to…
With cam-u-flage, you can cover up your screen with any image (in a bookstore, a screenshot of some text or an Evernote note might work best). At the same time, the entire screen becomes your camera – just tap anywhere to take the picture. Of course, tap to focus is not supported any longer. cam-u-flage then starts writing the image to memory and lets you know when it is ready for the next shot. In fact, only the bottom of the screen gives away what you are really doing.
You can use different pictures as a background and in case you want to see what you are shooting, you can adjust the opacity of the background image. Set it to 100% and you are in total stealth mode. Set it to less and the camera live view will be overlaid. For my shopping activities, I always leave it at 100% opacity. And have yet to be “caught” since using it…
Verdict: Recommended
Price: $1.99 from iTunes.
We’ve shared with you before the technique to use the Hoodman HoodLoupe as a viewfinder for point&shoot cameras, DSLRs and even the iPhone. So it is good news that Hoodman recently released a 3 inch version of the popular HoodLoupe
. Since most point&shoot now feature 3 inch LCD’s, you get perfect coverage with the new HoodLoupe. You can also use the Cinema Strap
(not included) to secure the HoodLoupe to the back of your DSLR or point&shoot camera.
For the iPhone, we still recommend using the smaller HoodLoupe to have better access to the camera button on the screen. If you prefer the 3 inch HoodLoupe instead, simply slide it to the left on the iPhone screen to continue to have access to the camera button.
See our post about using the Hoodman as a viewfinder for the iPhone as to why we like using it.
Price:
Hoodman HoodLoupe 3.0: $79.99, Amazon: $78.95.
Hoodman Cinema Strap: $19.99, Amazon: $16.81.
