Those unwilling to open of their iPhone to adjust the camera focus might take a look at Griffin’s Clarifi, a case with a built-in close-up lens that can slide in our out of place as needed.

Flickr user Meine Ideenecke, meanwhile, has figured out the iPhone camera specifications. He says it’s about 37MM (35MM equivalent), though this source says it’s 27MM.

The above are the result of PanoLab, Hugin, Calico, and a single shot with a very wide angle lens (Canon’s 10-22mm, effectively 16mm on my Rebel XTi). The first three originated on my iPhone and the PanoLab shot was stitched and originally uploaded to Flickr on my iPhone (though I have since done some color enhancement and reuploaded the photo from my MacBook Pro). Hugin is GPL, the other solutions are less free (in both senses).

I can’t explain my fascination with putting flowers into the In-Sink-Erator, but the sink does smell like flowers afterwards.

Music is Evil by Beads.

Kent Wien’s photo of Providence, Rhode Island is better than average for the camera out the window genre.

I’ve been keeping my eye on the Olympus Stylus Tough-8000. It’s reportedly durable and waterproof to 33 feet. But I’ve just discovered the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS1, also supposedly tough and waterproof (though only to 10 feet). The Panasonic, however, can shoot HD video and has a higher maximum ISO. The Panasonic also does some funky facial recognition (which favors recognized faces when focusing), but the Olympus can stitch multiple-shot panoramas in the camera and has “tap control” that allows, well, it appears to allow you to control the camera’s settings by tapping the sides rather than fiddling with buttons.

This reviewer seems to think the Panasonic bests Olympus’ offering. The Olympus is available now, however, and users seem to think it a good one.

The Canon 50mm f0.95 is the stuff of legend. Sure it wasn’t particularly sharp, and depth of field was so short that you’re unlikely to get an entire face in focus, but the notion of a lens that bright is more than a little attractive (even if you’re unlikely to have enough light to focus at all if you’re in a situation where you need the f0.95 maximum aperture).

So the announcement of a new 50mm f0.95 lens, this time from Leica and with sharper optics, is probably an angel song to some. It’s a little spendy for me to put on my lens lust list, but it’s good to know such a lens exists.

The entire kitchen is Sandee’s playground, and that includes the chalkboard. I’m not sure what holiday she’ll decide to honor next.

She’s been busy elsewhere at home too.

seanbonner’s photo of Esther’s new tattoo makes me want one.

original_ann’s hacked-together rig for shooting though the viewfinder of her Kodak Starflex has me wanting one. She has a beautiful set and points to the Through The Viewfinder group for more.

This light-piped ring flash should do the trick. It’s gotta be cheaper than Canon’s offering (though cheap ring lights can be had for under $100), and it seems to work more than well enough.

The Aiptek GO-HD isn’t such a bad camera for the money. It does 720p video and 8 megapixel photos, but the lens doesn’t go very wide. But a post in the Flickr blog pointed to a solution: use a door peephole as a fisheye lens. It works, but holding the peephole in front of the camera can get tiresome. Here’s how I solved it:

A rubber stopper easily holds the peephole, while a 1.25 inch hole in the stopper slides over the lens protrusion and holds snugly to it. Here’s the step by step:

Start with the parts. I’ve got an electric drill and a number of bits at the house, but I had to go to the store for the 1.25 inch drill bit. I also don’t have large rubber stoppers or peepholes laying around, so I picked those up too.

The hardest part (well, the only part) is drilling the two concentric holes, making sure they’re centered and straight through. My drill has a bubble level to make this easier.

My 1.25 inch bit had a screw-type guide in the center, making it easier to drill the larger hole first.

The larger hole fits snugly around the lens, the smaller hole holds the peephole.

Here is the camera before and after attaching the fisheye. The rubber stopper fits snugly, but is easy to attach and remove.

In use, I find I have to zoom to its maximum telephoto setting. The circular peephole view almost fills the width of the 16×9 frame that way, though it crops quite a bit of the top and bottom.

I didn’t have Sandee to chase around the house after finishing this, so I had to test it on myself and my cat:

A while ago now I bought a Aiptek GO-HD 720p from Amazon for cheap. The FotoRamp review was helpful; links to actual raw video convinced me; but this video review was absolutely no help at all.

You can’t track the brand on Flickr; but a search reveals a few photos (one, two), a video, and even some photo panoramas (one, two) assembled from the video. You can see my own test videos here (note the link to the raw video in the description of each).

The camera works well with both iMovie and iPhoto. Upon plugging it in, iPhoto launches and prompts to import all the photos and video. The video is available in iMovie from within the iPhoto library browser. Though most video gets delivered online (and at resolutions somewhat lower than HD), the additional resolution allows you to zoom in on sections of the recorded video seeing much quality loss in the output. This video, shot on the Aiptek and edited in iMovie, demonstrates:

Update: my biggest complaint with the camera is the lens’ limited wide angle ability. This might not be a problem for others, but it was enough of an annoyance for me that I built my own wide angle add on lens for it.

I have an old Lensbaby 2.0 (looks like this) that does a great job of making casual snapshots look like real portraits. But I also find it really difficult to get focus on my subject. Blame my bad eyes, my insistence on using it wide open with it’s shallowest depth of field, and simply sloppiness, but I can’t do it.

This new Lensbaby Composer with a sort of normal focus ring (rather than flexible bellows), might work a little better. And the idea is appealing enough that I’m now lusting for it about as much as I’m drooling over these.

Cool Lensbaby Composer photo above by Dan Catt.

The Woodman Institute Museum in Dover NH is famous for having a four-legged chicken, but that’s only a small example of the weirdness you’ll find inside. A big collection of snakes and bugs and bears in top hats along with other examples of taxidermy fills the first two floors. The top floor is dedicated to war and includes the obligatory rusty cannon ball that killed and maimed.

The absolute scariest part of the entire museum, however, is the hall of dolls. Amanda Etches-Johnson calls it the stuff of nightmares.

Digital Photography Review’s look of Sigma’s 50mm f/1.4 has me drooling. I have an el cheapo 50mm f/1.8 and am looking to upgrade. At $1500, Canon’s 50mm f/1.2 is just way too expensive, but their 50mm f/1.4 just didn’t seem to be enough of a upgrade to be worth the price. Sigma’s new lens, seems to do it.

I stumbled into that lens, however, as I was looking up Canon’s EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro. I’ve had my eye on it for a while because I’m a fan of primes and in need of a macro, but that’s no reason not to look elsewhere. I quickly found the Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 “macro” zoom. My preference to primes doesn’t blind me to the fact that a long-ish prime costs more than a decent used car, so Tamron’s promise of 200mm at f2.8 for under $700 seemed like a deal. Digital Photography Review entry on it is pretty good, too, but does reveal the reason I had to put “macro” in quotes above: the closest focus is only about 1 meter. And that review pointed me to another, this time for Sigma’s 70-200mm f/2.8 “macro” zoom. Like the Tamron, that lens isn’t really a macro by my definition, but it performs a little better in other respects. DPReview compared them both against Canon’s $1,500 optically stabilized EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS USM, but a fairer comparison is against the non-stabilized version, which is priced much closer to the Sigma and Tamron units.

Flickr blog I discovered the Peephole fish eye group. The idea is simple: us a $5 door peephole to give your camera a fisheye lens. Here are the instructions:

1. Hold peephole against rim of camera lens.
2. Set camera to “macro”. (the image is actually displayed on the inside face of the convex lens of the peephole. The camera must focus on the foreground image rather than the background image.)
3. Zoom in to the point that the viewable “circle” is framed almost evenly.
4. For best results, brighter lighting will avoid unwanted noise (grain)
5. Enjoy and have fun.

You can buy a pricier model with the Lomo label on it (and if you go looking, you’ll find a “peephole reverser” which is probably useless for your photography…probably). Henry Gordon Dietz offers a lot more info.

Above is my first experiment with a peephole fisheye and my cheap video camera.

The Albacore is a post World War II experimental submarine now on display in Portsmouth NH. Seeing the sub on land, some height above sea level, is a bit surprising, and it’s clear that moving it there was no small task.

Five dollars will get you inside the sub’s tight and awkward quarters, where you’ll see the Frankensteinian bathroom (and that’s for officers) and details such as lithium hydroxide canisters and signal ejector instructions that stand as reminders of the dangers of submarining. Still, it’s open enough that you can sit down at the controls and pretend to pilot the craft.

Gaellery’s Hotel room whisky and gin dispenser. Push in the drawer, pull out, and find a tiny bottle of booze. Just like those movies you claim you didn’t watch, it’s automatically charged to your bill.

The silver SUV apparently backed out into the street so fast that it struck and flipped the blue car, then mounted it. Nobody appears to have been seriously hurt, so we all have a guilt-free pass to mock the, um, compromising situation.

Found in Paula Wirth’s photo stream.

Physically located in Katoomba; found in Seb Chan’s photo stream.

News of Canon’s new EOS 50D with ISO sensitivity as high as 12,800 has my mouth watering. I used to push my black and white film so much that development times were as long as 45 minutes (I bought super cheap ASA125 and pushed it to 1000) just so I could get decent natural light. I leave my Canon Digital Rebel set for 1600 and usually only remember to knock it back when I go outside and find I can’t shoot wide open. Three stops more light sensitivity is better than trading my $85 F1.8 50MM lens for the $1,500 F1.2 model. And my F3.5 10MM lens suddenly becomes useful in falling light. I expect there’s plenty of noise, probably a little less than the ISO1600 print film from yesteryear.

Brooklynite Joshua Longo’s crazy animals are showing at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont through October 26th. Sweet for me: I’ll be in town this weekend. I’m hoping to check it out.

Amanda Mooney posted a note about being told she needed corporate permission to take a picture in a store. Mooney’s interest was in telling others how much she likes the products and the brand — exactly the sort of word of mouth advertising most brands are anxious for, but imagine some more pedestrian uses: what about the customer who wants a friend’s opinion about a new skirt? Can that customer snap a cell phone pic to send?

Meanwhile, Bruce Schneier reports on increasing limits to photography in public spaces and the supposed link between terrorist threats and photography. It’s nonsense, he says, but the trend is increasing.

Taking and sharing pictures builds community. Flickr knows this. Facebook, with more than 14 million photo uploads daily, knows this. What exactly are public officials and sales executives worried about?

(photo credit: Xava du)

I’ve been following Ásmundur’s use of multi-exposure HDR for a while, but today I discovered Max Chu’s use of an older, more crafty technique: black card mask. The photo below show’s Ásmundur’s multiple photo technique, but that above is Chu’s. How he do it? Apparently it’s about the same as dodging a photo in the dark room: simply block the light with a card or your hand.

Extra: Paul Butzi’s thoughts on dodging and burning in the digital age.