Let's Talk Tech
I’ll admit it. I’m a prime snob.
In moving from Canon to Samsung, I was worried about lens selection. While it’s certainly not as robust as Canon’s first party offerings, Samsung has some really decent glass to play with. Let’s check out one of the wider lenses available for this APS-C shooter!
Shop the 16mm f/2.4 Prime Lens for NX Cameras
Shop the Samsung NX30 Mirrorless APS-C Camera
Shop the Samsung NX1 Mirrorless APS-c Camera
Got a question on my iPhone Camera review from viewer Huber, who writes:
What’s up with the black bars when taking a picture with the iPhone?There are two black bars making the picture small, kind of like a square. All of the other phones the image takes up the whole screen.
That’s called “pillar boxing”. You know how some movies are SUPER wide screen and you see thin horizontal black strips on the top and bottom of your TV? That’s called “letter boxing”. Pillar boxing happens when the aspect ratio of a photo or video isn’t wide enough to completely fill the format it’s being displayed in.
In this case, the video window is 16×9, which is a pretty wide rectangle, but the iPhone shoots photos in 4×3, which is a really squarish rectangle. As that chunky pic can’t fill the whole video window, the software showing the photo adds the pillar boxing. If it didn’t do that, you would either have to crop and zoom in (which would defeat the purpose of me showing the pics in this video) or you would have to warp and stretch the photo to fill the widescreen view.
Cameras like those found on Samsung phones use natively 16×9 image sensors, so both photos and videos are automagically wide screen. Most other phones use an almost square sensor, so any widescreen photos or videos are the result of a crop.
Hope that answers your question Huber, and for more examples of pics and vids taken from all the phones we test here, make sure to follow on Youtube and Instagram!
I’ve really been enjoying my time with the Samsung NX30 which I picked up during their #DITCHtheDSLR event in Hollywood. It’s been a killer little mirrorless APS-C camera, and we’ve been using it recently to shoot our video reviews at 60FPS!
Well, you can’t really test an interchangeable lens camera without a couple extra lenses to interchange, so the fine folks at Samsung sent over a few for us to review, including their 45mm F1.8 3D lens!
I’m finding it’s actually terrifically difficult to share 3D files using traditional social networks, so I’ve set up a OneDrive folder where you can download the MPO files and view them directly via whatever method you prefer to use for 3D content. I’ve personally been running the files through an NVIDIA 3D Vision setup, and the shots are coming out much better than I would’ve expected for a consumer 3D solution.
Click on the folder or link below to see some of the 3D samples before we wrap up our review!
Photojojo’s Wide Angle Smartphone Lens has a neat trick. It can split in two, to become a macro lens. Especially for us folks NOT using the iPhone, this is a pretty handy camera accessory. Let’s get up close and personal with some macro shots from the Lumia 1020 and 1520!
Shop the Photojojo Wide Angle + Macro Smartphone lens on Amazon.
More info on Photojojo products.
The cameras found on Nokia flagship phones are certainly formidable, but no gadget is perfect, and there’s ALWAYS room for improvement.
Here’s how I (and others who have commented on this blog) would tinker with Nokia’s camera software.
Hyperlapse is becoming something of a buzz word. It’s essentially a time lapse video, but with more (and smoother) movement. Microsoft recently showed off an incredibly complex and beautiful method to achieve fluid time lapse video. Now Instagram is taking the wraps off of their solution.
It’s novel in its simplicity. Many phones incorporate some form of electronic image stabilization. Instagram’s Hyperlapse app will use the sensors in your phone to detect movement, and then it’ll filter that movement out to give you a smoother tracking shot. As it detects movement in real time while recording, it’s unknown if the app will be able to import and smooth out previously shot video.
The UI is incredibly simple. Push big red button to capture video. Once Finished capturing, there’s a slider to change playback speed from 1X to 12X, and then you have the option to share that video with Instagram or Facebook.
As this is Instagram, it’s iPhone only for now, as they’re sorting out Android API’s, and it’s doubtful we’ll see this on Windows Phone (and those incredible Nokia cameras) any time soon. It is live now for you iOS folks though on the App Store.
See another sample from Hyperlapse below!
Continue reading “Instagram Shows Off Hyperlapse App to Smooth Out Video and Time Lapse”
As part of my Birthday WEEK celebrations, I finally got to take a tour of the Petersen Automotive Museum in LA. For the trek I paired a PhotoJoJo Wide Angle Smartphone Lens with my Lumia 1020, and here are the results!
David J Slater, a British photographer set up a camera in Indonesia to capture monkeys at play. One monkey managed to snap an extraordinary “selfie”.
Wikipedia claims that because the monkey hit the shutter button, the image belongs in the Public Domain. I disagree…