PocketWizard, the off-camera flash-triggering company, has finally begun testing prototypes of its Nikon FlexTT5 units.

Normally, Nikon cameras communicate with the strobes via bursts of light, coded flashes which chatter back and forth in the moments before the pic is taken. The problem is that the range is limited, and you need line of site. That’s where PocketWizard comes in. The FlexTT5 sends these signals via long-range, corner-proof radio waves. Previously, these were manual only, and after some teething problems, PocketWizard successfully added an auto mode to it’s radio-powered flash Canon triggers.

The new prototypes, seen in the video above, are still far from production, but Nikon-shooting flash-freaks should be getting excited already. The Nikon CLS system is pretty close to magic already, letting you get great flash-shots with tiny effort. These new PocketWizards should make the experience even better.

If you just can’t wait, try to track down some RadioPoppers, a rival product which already works with Canon and Nikon and is cheaper: The PocketWizards are around $220 each, and you’ll need two. The RadioPoppers are $180 each for the TTL versions. The problem is that the RadioPoppers are selling so well it’s hard to get ahold of one.

Video: PocketWizard + Nikon – first look [Snap Factory]

First FlexTT5 Nikon Prototype Test [PocketWizard via Photography Bay]

RadioPopper page [RadioPopper]

See Also:

• Radipopper: Smart, Remote Control Flash Photography
• Pocket Wizard Fixes Reliability Issues With Tin-Foil Hats
• TTL 'Poverty Wizard' Flash Triggers

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A few pieces of shelving. A Computer fan. An air filter. A shower curtain. Some lighting. Combine, and you’ve a budget space fit for swapping lenses and examining moon rocks. [I Heart Robotics via MAKE] More

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Sure, these days it seems like everyone has an iPhone, but in bizarro 2010 literally everyone has a watchphone. They’re miniature. They’re wireless. They have geometric buttons. And they’re eating bizarro AT&T’s bandwidth alive. Oh, 1995, you’re so naive.

This ad was dug up by Wired Reread, a site that does just what its name advocates. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s sad, sort of like looking at the promises people wrote in your middle school yearbook. [Wired Reread via BoingBoing]

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The 4N Watch was designed with a relatively simple goal—display digital time through mechanical, analog function.

Despite the exposed gears and jumble of numbers, the watch operates upon logic that anyone can grasp. Really, three numbered discs rotate to display the proper 3 to 4 digits of time (we’re assuming the hour disc displays the 11 and 12 hours on its own). That’s much more reasonable than a tiny arm sorting through a massive pile of numbers with every new minute, which is pretty much what we imagined upon first glance.

Unfortunately, only 16 watches will be produced. So enjoy the picture. [4N via SlashGear]

Via [gizmodo]

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Tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM PST Cisco Systems will be making an announcement which will “forever change the Internet.” This means we’ve got a nearly all night to speculate, make bets, and daydream of life changing technologies. [ZDNet]

Via [gizmodo]

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Apple aired its first iPad ad during the Oscars last night, but it felt like something was missing, didn’t it? It was a voiceover. So I went ahead and added one for them. You’re welcome, Apple!

Via [gizmodo]

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For the last month, I’ve been testing out Lensbaby’s new fisheye and soft-focus optics, two glass cores which are drop-in replacements for the optic which comes inside the Lensbaby composer. The Lensbaby composer itself is a lens with a ball-and-socket arrangement which grants the front section to be twisted in any direction and place the focus “sweet spot” anywhere in the frame. This is combined with an optic which is heavily blurred away from this spot, leading to some dreamy, tilt-shift-like photos.

Standard Lensbaby Composer on Panasonic GF1 with sharpening and auto-levels applied.

The new fisheye and soft-focus optics replace this blurry-edged glass for some new effects. The fisheye is a 12mm ƒ4 lens with a massive 360-degree angle of view, enough to catch both your feet and the brim of your hat in the same shot. Trying it out on a Panasonic GF1 (via adapter, although there is a proper M4/3 mount version), it gives a mild distortion, and a very low contrast image. You can twist and turn the Lensbaby, but as the Micro Four Thirds sensor only see the center portion of the image from the lens, it doesn’t make much difference.

It also fooled the camera into underexposure when indoors. As the lens is all manual, for both focusing and aperture (in fact, you’ve to use a magnetic “pen” to drop in and retrieve separate aperture rings), this isn’t a surprise. Just watch out, is all.

Put the same rig directly onto a full-frame D700 and the world turns inside out. Even in a tiny room, you get almost all of it in the picture, and the entire image is contained inside a dark circle. Swapping in apertures up to ƒ22 will increase depth-of-field, but there’s tiny point: With a lens this wide, it’s nearly impossible to get anything out of focus.

Fisheye on Nikon D700, sharpened for screen on output. Notice the edge of my finger, actually just under the lens.

On this camera, twiddling the front end moves the circle around and you can obscure half the image this way. It’s superior to leave it in the middle. Image quality isn’t incredible, but as you can see, it’s sharp and contrasty out of camera, and the effect is great fun.

The soft-focus optic is a tiny less interesting. The lens still focuses sharply, but gives the effect of shooting through a pair of white pantyhose (actually an old movie technique to soften an actress’ skin). Included are aperture disks which have many pinholes punched in them instead of a single central hole. These have a great effect on any highlights in your shot:

Soft-focus, multihole aperture on Panasonic GF1, sharpened on export for screen.

A few notes on the operation of the system. As I mentioned, it is all manual, even though a modern camera will still expose properly in aperture-priority mode. Focusing is easy enough: DSLRs usually have some form of manual-assist in the viewfinder, and the Micro Four Thirds cameras (mine, at least) lets you zoom in on the image to check focus.

Actually swapping out the optics is a knack gained after a few tries. When you insert the removal tool (cleverly the lid of the plastic storage case), the focus ring of the main unit twists with it and therefore drops the part you’re trying to unscrew out of reach. You’ll need to grab the fixed silver bands surrounding the focus ring and be bold with a good hard twist. The build quality is very good, and the optics are reassuringly solid and heavy.

The lenses are a photography nerd’s delight, but should you buy them? If you want a fisheye, and already have a Composer, $150 is a steal, and I’d buy one right away. The soft-focus unit is a little harder to recommend, despite being just $90, especially as much of the value is in the neat aperture disks (which can be dropped into the other optics, too). If you want it, you probably know it. I’d stick with the fisheye.

Fisheye [Lensbaby]

Soft Focus [Lensbaby]

Pics Charlie Sorrel:

See Also:

• Lensbaby Gets Fisheye and Soft-Core Optics
• Review: Lensbaby Composer Lets You Art Up Images Sans Photoshop
• Destroy All Photos: Lensbaby Fisheye and Soft-Focus Lenses

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With HTC’s upcoming crop of Androids, you’ll be able to separate people into two distinct groups: those who spring for the brainier, better-specced Desire, and those who get bowled over by the beautiful, yet lesser-specced Legend.

The Desire (or Nexus One) is the final word in the Androidsphere—it’s a mark of someone who knows what they’re doing, who wants to show people they NEED that extra computing power. If you compare it to the Legend, you could be justified in saying Legend-salivators are more shallow, ignoring the might of a Snapdragon processor in lieu of a unibody aluminum shell and trim build.

You’d be wrong, however.

I Mean, It Is Just a Sequel

The internal upgrades are minor, when you take into account it next to the HTC Hero, but like the Empire Strikes Back, sometimes sequels are far better than the original. While we found the Hero “tragically flawed” in its slugginess, the Legend’s slightly more powerful 600MHz processor behaved—well, like a legend. The 3.2-inch screen has the same amount of pixels as the Hero, but swaps the HVGA for a more superior AMOLED. The 5.0-megapixel camera is still the same quality, but has the much-welcomed addition of a flash. You get the picture—the Legend is building on the Hero’s quality in incremental upgrades, but each change, however minor, radicalizes the experience of using the Legend.

It’s running Android 2.1, which as any Hero owner knows should be released as an over-the-air update soon. One day. The jump from 1.6 to 2.1 is impressive—it’s a lot faster, the multitouch is better, there’s greater integration of social networking profiles with contacts, and HTML5 support, amongst other—admittedly small—changes.

Design Works

Plain and simple—the Legend is the most well-built phone I’ve ever had in my hand. You just know when you feel the weight of it, the cool curved exterior of the unibody aluminum shell, and touch the ultra-responsive touchscreen. It’s that sensation when you first tenderly held the original iPhone, which has been long-missing in the market.

The bottom and top of the back is actually made from rubberized plastic though, so there are no issues with wireless signals—unlike the first generation of the iPhone. Removing part of the case reveals a very thin battery and a touch-sensitive catch which keeps the SIM and microSD cards encased. It’s a small point, but it’s also the most polished example of a phone’s innards that I’ve ever seen.

Just like BlackBerry, HTC is migrating its trackballs to optical trackpads. This is a relief, but in actual fact I barely had to use the trackpad—only when having to make an edit when typing out messages or emails. The screen is just so responsive, with nary a wrongly-actioned command made, that you can envision HTC forgoing the trackpad altogether at a later date.

Only eight buttons reside on the Legend’s body. The on/off button up top, the two volume controls on the top left, and then on the lower face, home, menu, back and search. They all worked well, though the home, menu, back and search keys did feel a bit cheap in comparison to the high-end feeling of the rest of the handset.

Same Old Camera?

HTC’s used the same 5.0-megapixel camera as we saw on the Hero, but the addition of a flash is a new and exciting step for them—strange as that sounds. As you can see from the two pics below, the flash is very strong—too strong, I’d say. However, the quality is decent in lowlight conditions—noisy for sure, but I’ve seen worse.

My friends in lowlight at a cinema before Alice In Wonderland 3D

In daytime I had a lot more luck. Testing it out on some cakes in my kitchen in the late afternoon sun retained the nice rays of sun across the cakes, with the yellow of the flowers showing up bright. But even at 5MP, the general image performance isn’t enough to ditch your point and shoot just yet.

Testing indoors with daylight

More Sense Than HTC Sense

Most manufacturers are skinning Android with their own proprietary interfaces…MOTOBLUR, Mediascape, S-Class, they’re ok, but I’d nearly rather use Android in its natural flavor than have to put up with some of their issues.

There just ain’t no Android phone like a HTC Sense Android phone. It’s simply the best skin an Android could ask for, even without the minor improvements seen in the Legend. By far the pick of the bunch is the new “Leap” view—or “Helicopter view” as it was known in-house when designed. It works much like Mac OS X’s Exposé function, bringing all seven homescreens up as thumbnails. The feature is very useful, particularly if you just can’t remember which screen your mail, or the weather widget, is listed on. The pinch command takes some getting used to, but once you’ve got the gesture down-pat, it’s a godsend.

Leap—or helicopter—view

But with ever feature that’ll be used often comes one with no point at all. FriendStream is a nice enough widget, which collates all your friends’ updates from Twitter, Facebook and Flickr into one feed, but for anyone who’s a purist and likes to see each form of update on each social networking site, it will be removed quickly from the homescreen. I preferred using HTC’s own brilliant Twitter widget, Peep, for the full Twitter options, and the Facebook app to see each form of action. The Flickr integration is handy, being able to see when my contacts upload pics, but not necessary if you get email notifications already.

Plus, FriendStream just felt slow sometimes—in fact, on a very speedy phone, it felt incongruous in comparison to everything else, often updating with tweets quite a few minutes later than the Twitter widget did. It’s not a huge problem, but for someone who relies on Twitter heavily as a source of entertainment, it became a source of frustration.

FriendStream

Respectable Battery Life

The Legend ran 36 hours before it died on me. Not too bad, considering I had an hour-long call plus about five shorter ones, sent and received around 20 text messages, and spent nearly a whole day browsing the web, checking Twitter, and showing it off to my friends. After the horror of seeing my G1’s battery deplete in half a day when I first bought it, the Legend’s 1300mAh battery ran to my satisfaction.

The Legend Is The Most Solid Android Phone I’ve Used

True, other phones may be better specced, but with that premium build it’s like comparing a Sony Vaio (not a bad laptop, sure) to a MacBook. Sometimes there’s just no contest. While the extra horsepower and added touches of the Nexus One and Desire are nice, I found the Legend more than satisfactory.

It wasn’t sluggish, certainly didn’t have bugs or issues like the G1 and Hero, and while it’ll inevitably slow down and have you cursing the fact you didn’t spring for something with a Snapdragon chip, I’m going to award it possibly the highest accolade a reviewer can gift a device: I’m going to upgrade to one.

It’s not the best Android phone. That badge still belongs to the Nexus One, or possibly the Desire, when we review it. But it’s one of the best all-rounders, when you take into account the hardware—and the feeling you’re left with once it leaves your hand. I feel bereft without it.

Superb hardware quality

HTC Sense is better than ever

Addition of camera flash

Super-fast and responsive

FriendStream could be faster

Camera flash isn’t perfect

The HTC Legend hasn’t been announced for the US market yet, with the European launch sometime this month.

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The Apple iPad’s Oscar debut on millions of TVs might have been the speak of the town Monday morning, but not for long. Rival Computer maker HP has launched a sneak attack on the iPad.

HP released a video introducing its tablet called the Slate that’ll run Windows 7 operating system and support Flash — a jab at the iPad, which won’t display Flash-based sites or videos.

“With this slate product, you’re getting a full web browsing experience in the palm of your hand,” posted Phil McKinney, vice president and chief technology officer for HP’s personal system group on the company’s blog. “No watered-down internet, no sacrifices.”

HP didn’t reveal pricing or availability for the device, though it has indicated the Slate will be available this year.

Since the announcement of Apple’s iPad in January, Personal computer makers are rushing to offer tablet devices that can position themselves between the 4-inch touchscreen smartphone and the 12-inch netbook or laptop. They say tablets could be ideal for web surfing, checking e-mail, reading e-books and viewing personal media while sitting on a couch.

Dell has stated that it will launch a family of tablets, the first of which will be a PlayStation Portable-sized device with a 5-inch screen codenamed Dell Mini 5. Dell hasn’t disclosed pricing or availability for its product yet. Apple’s iPad starting at $500 will go on sale April 3.

Though HP has not released the specs yet, the company’s video shows a device that’s closer to the 9.7-inch display iPad in its design and size.

HP’s slate seems to offer a full capacitive touchscreen and the familiar pinch-to-zoom gesture. Overall, the design resemblance to the iPad is startling, so the Slate could clearly be a tablet for those who want an iPad-like device on the Windows ecosystem.

The Slate has icons that lets users quickly access the browser and apps such as Pandora and the music player. And like the iPad, it will also display digitized versions of magazines and newspapers.

HP’s video also shows the Slate running a video from MTV, a web-based game designed in Flash, photo-editing tools and a digital version of The New York Times.

As for pricing, McKinney states HP could have released a slate two years ago, but it would have cost around $1,500.

“Since then, chip and screen advancements have given us the ability to create a product that can hit a size, weight, battery life and price point that’ll make this product a mainstream offering,” he wrote.

Photo/Video: HP Slate (HP)

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According to Microsoft, Pivot’s “a new way to browse and arrange massive amounts of images and data on the web,” enabling “spectacular zooms in and out of web databases, and the discovery of [invisible] patterns and links.” According to me, it’s awesome.

Pivot grants you to create and access data collections made from big amounts of web information in a visual way. It keeps the same interface independently of the content of the collection, allowing you to dive in the data with ease, zoom out, reorder the collection in any way you want, filter data with one click, and establish relationships between different data sets with ease.

To do this, it uses meta-information within an open XML structure to make those collections—which vary in complexity. Then it grants the user to manipulate the data view using Seadragon, a display technology specifically designed to move around titanic amounts of data and graphics in real time.

Like Windows Phone 7 or Natal, Pivot shows that Microsoft is using those research doublons in creating truly breathtaking stuff these days. Download and try it in your Personal computer now. Unfortunately, there’s no Mac OS X version yet. [Microsoft Pivot]

Via [gizmodo]

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