Our friend and photographer John Carey of fiftyfootshadows has been the creator of some of our favorite wallpapers over the years. For the last month or so, he's been meticulously experimenting with many of these wallpapers, searching for the optimal photo resolution that can take full advantage of iOS 7's parallax effect and maintain their crispness. He's taken his findings and assembled…
In early 2012 ,the original Capture Camera Clip System became an interesting and very popular alternative to wearing a camera strap. The company behind the project, Peak Design, has taken their success and ingenuity and poured them into creating a new version of the product: the Capture Camera Clip System v2. Like the original model, the Capture is a two-piece system: A…
If you're the type of photographer who's always dreamed of carrying your gear like Hawkeye, then the Urban Quiver by Blackstone Bags should be right up your alley. Made of military-grade nylon and sporting a surprising amount of storage space despite its slim profile (including a dedicated smartphone pocket on the shoulder strap), the Urban Quiver is an awesome way to tote…
The wonderful folks at VSCO, makers of VSCO Cam for iOS, have released an update to their VSCO Film 01 preset suite for Lightroom 4 & 5 and Adobe Camera Raw 7 & 8. This update adds support for pro-level Sony, Olympus and Leica cameras, in addition to their previous support for Fuji, Canon and Nikon rigs. To celebrate the occasion, they're…
One of our longtime favorite camera tripods has been the Joby GorillaPod, which has flexible legs for customizing your shooting setup — even if it means hanging the thing from a tree. If you've ever found yourself wishing for a similar setup for your smartphone, you're in luck because now the Joby people have released the MPod Mini Stand. With the original…
What if you could somehow take the accessibility of a smartphone and pair it with the power of a point-and-shoot camera? Sony's new 'Smart Lens' QX series of cameras aims to do just that. Available for pre-order in two flavors – the smaller QX10 ($248) and the larger QX100 ($498) – these cameras essentially look like zoom lenses that you attach to…
I'm going to let my Oklahoma bias show once again, this time with the Ruck Strap by HoldFast. Made in Tulsa, this camera strap is made of duck canvas and leather, and cleverly features a few places to keep small items. The two front pockets allow you to store credit cards, cash, memory cards, and other such things. The elastic band on…
John Carey runs two of my favorite photo blogs on the internet: the ever-popular Fifty Foot Shadows and the less-known but equally-good Yesterday Was Only. The latter is a project wherein John posts lovely photographs pretty much every day, and he compiles each month's photos into a book. Each volume – priced between $13 and $16 – is a perfect coffee table…
Frontback is a fun, simple, and totally free iPhone app with a singular purpose: it allows you to shoot with both the front and back cameras (one after the other), combining the images into a single photo that can then be shared with friends. Not much more to say than that.
The iOS App Store is replete with great photo editing apps these days, and one of the better-looking ones is PicLab for iPhone. It allows you to add nice typography and lots of different photo effects to your shots, with an interface that looks like it was ripped straight out of Letterpress (in a good way). The app itself is free, but…
The Lumu is a light meter built for the iPhone. The small orb plugs in to the headphone hack of the iPhone, giving you detailed information about the light affecting your photograph. The app will allow users not only to measure light, but attach all sorts of metadata to the moment: location, voice recording, notes, pictures, photo parameters more. The Kickstarter project…
This won't be the first time we've mentioned VSCO Cam – one of the best iPhone photography apps ever made, in my opinion – but I felt that the recent 2.0 update was worth another look. They've completely overhauled the interface, adding new features such as separate focus and exposure rings while shooting, as well as a white balance "lock". They've also…
Yesterday, the developers of the Hueless photography app released an update that added the ability to save photos in Lossless TIFF format and max-quality JPEG, as well as improved shutter response. After seeing this update and running a quick search on Tools and Toys, I was somewhat surprised to see that Hueless has never been mentioned around here before. This app has…
Adobe Lightroom is the go-to app for many professional photographers, and it's about to get a big update. The new version boasts better healing tools, more powerful vignette options, off-line editing and more. The beta is free, and you check it out here.
Whenever I'm editing photos, one of my favorite things to do is fiddle with color temperature. Nothing drastic of course, because I prefer subtle tones over the kinds of blown-out highlights you see in HDR photography, but a slightly different hue can completely change the feel of a shot for the better. That's why I'm interested in this first group of photo…
Ever wonder what happens to cities that build giant complexes to host the Olympics after the games are done? What comes of those massive stadiums and complexes? The Olympic City is a new book on Kickstarter that documents this very phenomenon. $10 will get you a digital copy, with a 200-page hard copy book heading your way for $85. The Kickstarter project…
My only camera is my iPhone 4S. Also, my only video camera is my iPhone 4S. After fabricating the world's worst camera mount to shoot a video I decided it was time to get a bit more official. I recently ordered this GorillaPod Hybrid tripod stand from Joby. I got the hybrid model because the head is ultra maneuverable an it has…
The olloclip is a 3-in-1 lens addition that snaps-on to the corner of your iPhone 4 or 4S. It has a fisheye lens, a macro lens, and a wide-angle lens to give some extra fun and functionality to your iPhone's already great camera. It started on Kickstarter and was more than 400% funded. The olloclip is easy to toss in your bag…