Why Buy a Digital Camera When You Can Rent?

By: Lauren Goode. April 21, 2014 (http://recode.net)

It’s a well-reported trend: The digital camera market is getting hit hard by smartphones.

And yet, after looking at another set of dim, noisy smartphone photos from a wedding reception last weekend, I can’t help but think there are still situations in which a digital camera — or at the least, a more powerful sensor — is a good thing.

It’s those scenarios that Lumoid wants to capitalize on. Lumoid is a new camera-rental company that’s targeting wedding-goers, new parents, vacationers and photo hobbyists. Its prices range from $5 to $25 per day per item, except for accessories, which are listed for purchase.

Full article at the source>

The “Digipod” is simply a digital 35mm film cartridge, that once adjusted, will fit most still SLR cameras

Short Summary

As a 58 year old ex-professional photographer I have for years been looking at a number of old analogue or as I call them wet film (refers to the developing process) SLR camera bodies that I used as a young professional, all of which are precision mechanical instruments, they all hold great memories and have taken some great images.

Some are completely mechanical others have batteries to power meters, there are Nikons, Canons and a couple of Leicas’, in my eyes they are all works of art and I have taken some wonderful images with them, but they have not taken pictures for a number of years and that’s a sin.

So for the last five years been looking for a way to make a digital film pod to replace the 35mm film for these cameras, there has been a number of prototypes and a very steep learning curve for me.

I wanted the Digipod to be as versatile as possible in the space available, so there is no hard memory, everything is saved to a micro sd card, plus it has a mini USB for direct connection to a computer and a built in battery.

Others have tried, notably “Silicon” back in 2000, but they failed due to technical problems. Having researched their attempt, I came to the conclusion that it was an overcomplicated project which made it too expensive and the hardware was just too big, given that the smallest memory cards in 1999 were the thin smart media cards and a maximum of 128mb memory (about 24, pictures at that time) so it’s no surprise that they fell by the wayside!

See full description at IndieGoGO Project Digipod Page

SIGGRAPH 2013: Reconfigurable Camera Add-On, KaleidoCamera

Published on Apr 29, 2013 (Alkhazur Manakov)

A Reconfigurable Camera Add-On for High Dynamic Range, Multispectral, Polarization, and Light-Field Imaging.

We propose a non-permanent add-on that enables plenoptic imaging with
standard cameras. Our design is based on a physical copying mechanism
that multiplies a sensor image into a number of identical copies that
still carry the plenoptic information of interest. Via different
optical filters, we can then recover the desired information. A minor
modification of the design also allows for aperture sub-sampling and,
hence, light-field imaging. As the filters in our design are
exchangeable, a reconfiguration for different imaging purposes is
possible. We show in a prototype setup that high dynamic range,
multispectral, polarization, and light-field imaging can be achieved
with our design.

More info and results here:
http://resources.mpi-inf.mpg.de/Kalei…