Gooseneck tripod is good for product photos

When I post something for sale online, I like to include a few nicely-staged photos. Often the best angles for those pics are ones that are shot directly overhead, and they can be difficult to do. I have to lean out over a table or counter top while trying to see the image on my phone screen without casting a shadow or moving the phone when I click the shutter.

A few months ago, I got a phone camera mount that clamps onto the edge of a table. The concept was okay but the materials were flimsy, like the cheap desk lamp that I had back in the 80s. 

This gooseneck mount on a tripod is far more stable and useful. The tripod's long legs sit flat on the floor and provide a good counterweight anchor for the clamp at the end of the extended gooseneck, whether it's holding a standard pocket phone or a 12.9-inch iPad. The tripod tubing is made of sturdy metal and can be extended from 18 inches all the way to 80 inches.

The clamp at the end of the gooseneck is adjusted using a threaded thumbscrew, which I think makes for a more solid grasp than a spring-loaded clamp. If you disagree, you can replace the clamp with your own. The kit also comes with a remote shutter release that will work with iOS or Android devices. That should help me get clean and clear photos.

There are other ways you can adapt this tripod for different uses. For example, the product comes with a ball head so you can get a more precise angle for your photo. There's also a screw post where the gooseneck connects to the tripod. Remove the neck and you can mount a heavier object. I tried it first with a two-pound floodlight, then with a three-pound SLR camera.

Overall, I was very please with the quality and versatility of this device. I plan to give it lots of jobs.  

By: Ric Manning On 3/26/2024

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A photo backdrop for small items

Although this backdrop kit is promoted as something to capture food images, I thought it would be useful for the videos and still images that I create for many small products that I sell online. 

The metal frame was fairly easy to assemble. There are five metal bars are attached to each other using a provided allen wrench for the uprights and thumb screws for horizontal bar. 

The paper background sheets presented a bit more of a challenge. The sheets arrive wrapped tightly around a cardboard tube and sealed in plastic wrap. Once the wrap is removed, the sheets are not inclined to flatten without help. 

I tried putting a sheet color-side down and pulling it across a table's edge. Not a good idea. The sheets are very thick and the table edge left some scratches. A better approach is to re-roll a single sheet around the cardboard tube, then let leave it on a flat surface while it attempts to flatten itself. 

I appreciate the deep and rich colors of the sheets and the variety of colors. They really add some visual pop to product photos. And I like the fact that the frame and sheets can be easily transported to shoot items on location.

I only wish the LDMJNL frame was a few inches wider. The backdrop worked fine for a small object, like a pair of earbuds, but I couldn't find an angle that let me capture a decorative bowl without running out of backdrop at the edges.

Nevertheless, I expect I will get a lot of use out of this 

By: Ric Manning On 3/12/2024

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COLBOR delivers a blast of light for video shoots

After a frustrating couple of years trying to light my indoor video scenes with underpowered LCD lights or clip-on work lights from the hardware store, I finally decided to get my hands on a good pro-level studio light. 

I picked the COLBOR CL60. It's a lightweight and affordably-priced LCD light that delivers far more illumination than the cheap alternatives I was trying or the low-wattage ring lights I've seen pitched to YouTubers.  

The lamp in the CL60 can produce a color temperature raging from 2700K to 6500K with variable brightness. That was all the I needed to shoot a couple of product videos in an indoor setting.  The primary job of the CL60 is to be the key light, the main lighting source for the star of the show, whether it's a person or a product. Let's say your star is a cook positioned behind a kitchen island, ready to demonstrate a recipe. A single CL60 would provide adequate lighting for that type of video. 

The light comes with a horn-shaped reflector which is good for directing light on a specific spot. I tried the light for a scene that involved several people in my living room. The COLBOR light focused on people in the center of the group, leaving those on the margins in the shade. 

The shot would likely have come out better if I had used a diffuser attachment in place of the reflector. Making that switch would have been easy as the CL60 comes with a Bowens mount adapter to hold the reflector. The mount is a ring that lets you snap in a variety of other attachments including diffusers and other light-shaping tools. 

Judging by the photos on the sales page for the CL60, you might think that the light is a portable unit with it's own power supply. It's not. The light needs a external power source, either the USB-C charger that comes wit the gear or your own charging brick. 

The light comes with a nicely-designed carrying case. The only item I had to purchase was a metal screw adapter that I needed to mount the light on a tripod. Overall, the COLBOR CL60 turned out to be just what I was looking for: a versatile and affordable first step into pro-level video lighting. 

By: Ric Manning On 11/20/2022

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Pro-level tripod is a serious upgrade

I don’t consider my self to be a professional videographer, but have produced dozens of commercial product videos for online sellers. And I’m always interested in upgrading my equipment with pro-level gear. 

The GEEKOTO tripod I found on Amazon is definitely a step up from the consumer tripods that I’ve been using. Even the best tripod in that collection is a poor option when I use my SLR and have to worry that the rig is going to topple over.

The first thing I noted about this tripod is the quality of the materials. The legs are solid and stable, even when the tripod is extended to a full 5.25 feet. The head holds a larger than normal ball that rotates smoothly and easily locks into place. And the head is so sturdy that it can function as a low-angle camera stand when it’s separated from the legs.

The head platform can work with a standard sliding shoe or with a screw mount for a phone, light or other gear. I really like the large knobs that tighten the ball socket and the horizontal panning scale that helps you get a smooth pan.

My video highlights several of the tripod’s main features, including some that I have never seen on consumer tripods. One is the notch points that let you lock in each of the three angle positions for the legs.

Another is the hook built into the center post. It lets you add a weight or a secured line to the center of the tripod to provide an extra measure of stability. And the center post is reversible. Why would you need that? Let’s say you shoot from a position close to the ground but with a slight upward angle, perhaps for a remote shot. You can mount the head and your camera between the tripod’s legs and lock in the exact view that you want.

The GEEKOTO is going to be my go-to tripod, even when I’m traveling. It’s advertised as a travel tripod and it does indeed collapse down to a snug 20 inches. And although it is slightly heavier than most consumer tripods, its high quality is fair tradeoff for a few extra ounces.

By: Ric Manning On 10/24/2022

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This web cam is for the birds

My house has web cams that monitor pets and kids indoors and people who come to my front door or travel down my street. My next camera may be for the winged visitors.

The Bird Buddy is a bird feeder with a built-in camera that will give you a face-to-face view of the dining customers. And a connected app will also identify each bird species, tell you the types of food that they like, and offer a sample of their bird songs.

In addition to providing bird information and profiles, the company hopes the data that users collect will assist conservation efforts by tracking bird migrations and populations around the globe. 

Bird Buddy feeders are scheduled to ship this spring for $235. The company iOS currently accepting pre-orders.

By: Ric Manning On 2/06/2022

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GIF Maker simplifies image animation

If you're like me, your Facebook and Twitter feeds are loaded with photos of friends, children and animals doing something cute and funny.

I love seeing the pictures, but my favorites are the animated. When my grandchildren are chasing each other around a tree, a moving picture tells the story best.

Most often, those little action clips are animated image files created using the Graphics Interchange Format, better known as GIF. GIFs have been around since the 1980s when they were valued for their small file size, which made them ideal for transmitting over telephone modems. Programmers later devised a way to animate GIFs by stringing together a series of still images to create a looping mini movie.

A free app called GIF Maker distills the GIF creation process down to a few simple steps performed on your mobile phone. The app will work with a collection of up to 50 still images. It can also capture a sequence of frames from a digital video or record whatever activity is displayed on your device's screen.

Once the source content is selected, users can adjust the speed of the display and save the finished file in high resolution format. For there, it can be shared on Facebook, WhatsApp or Twitter and sent using email or a messaging service.

GIF Maker is a free download available for Android devices in the Google Play Store. You can get more information and see samples of animated GIFs at the Setubridge Technolabs website.

By: Ric Manning On 11/26/2018

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Kwilt is a personal image server

There are many services that will park your photos videos on a cloud-based server, but there are also times when you might prefer having a more personal storage solution.

The Kwilt Shoebox aims to fill that need with a tiny device that turns a thumb drive or other USB hard drive into a private and portable server.

Kwilt lets users offload photos and videos from their mobile phones, then share them with friends or family members through a Kwilt app.

After I met the folks from Kwilt at this year’s CES, they sent me a sample of the device to check out. The tiny gadget has connections for a power cable and a USB storage device plus an HDMI output plug for displaying content on a TV to monitor.

To get things rolling, I linked the Kwilt to my home WiFi network, then used the free Kwilt app to transfer content from my iPhone. That process had a few hiccups. It took several tries to move my 23,000 photos from the phone to a 500GB portable hard drive but eventually, all of the still photos showed up in the Kwilt app. I’m still working on offloading my videos.

Now that my photos are safely stored on the USB drive, I can delete some from my phone, freeing space to shoot more.

The Kwilt Shoebox works with both iOS and Android devices and has a very affordable price tag of $49.99. To order one or for more details, visit the Kwilt Shoebox website.   

By: Ric Manning On 9/01/2018

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PogoCam is wearable and affordable

As the idea of a wearable camera continues to gain traction, the PogoCam is poised to jump to the head of the pack.

The device that I first saw at this year’s CES trade show has a lot going for it. Unlike Google’s Glass, the PogoCam doesn’t require its own frame and lenses and can be attached to the user’s own glasses.

And, probably more important to its potential success, the PogoCam is far more affordable: $149 compared to the $1,500 price tag on Glass when it was released a couple of years ago. And, as the prices indicate, the PogoCam is not in the same class as the Glass.

My experience wearing and testing the PogoCam over the past few weeks has been uneven at best. The PogoCam started strong by easily attaching to the right bow of my glasses using a small magnetic strip.

The camera has two buttons, one for shooting still images, the other for video. Its internal memory can hold 100 photos or a half-dozen 30-second videos.

The camera pairs with an iOS or Android mobile app, but the files don’t move directly between the camera and the phone. To make the transfers, you have to detach the camera and plug it into the PogoCam “smart case.” The case makes a Bluetooth link to your phone for transferring still photos. Moving videos requires a USB connection to a computer.

While I was able to capture several still shots and a couple of videos with the PogoCam, none were very good. They certainly didn’t match the colorful sample images featured on the PogoTec website.

I suspect my blurred images were largely due to way the camera is triggered. Try pinching the bow on your glasses frame without moving the frame and you’ll know what I mean. Maybe James Bond (or his tech wizard Q) could hold their spy cams perfectly still, but not me.

I think the PogoCam has a bright future, but early adopters should prepare to master complicated connections and commit to lots of practice.

For more details about the PogoCam, visit the PogoTec website.

By: Ric Manning On 3/01/2018

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Autogrammer puts social media posts on autopilot

Gizmo Editor Review

I thought I was doing pretty well using social media channels to promote my “brand” but it turns out I was missing a significant opportunity. While I was paying attention to Twitter, Facebook and a couple of lesser channels, it seems that a boatload of people were focusing on Instagram.

According to a site called DMR, Instagram has more than 400 million active users and more than 75 million use the service every day. And an article posted on Patrice Press outlines some of the ways companies and individuals are using the vast reach of Instagram to promote their products and services.

Clearly, I needed to get in that game and to do it right, I needed to do more than post an occasional image or item. I needed a way to schedule and even bulk upload my posts.

That’s what led me to Autogrammer, a new platform that lets users schedule Instagram posts along with content for other social media channels. In addition to Instagram, Autogrammer also supports Pages, Groups and Profiles on Facebook as well as the ubiquitous Twitter.

Users can set up a new account with a username and password or log in using their current Twitter, Facebook or Google+ account. Once inside, they’re presented with a dashboard to manage their posts on multiple platforms.

With just a couple of clicks, I added my Instagram account and my Facebook account along with Facebook Pages and Groups. Instagram required that I verify my account, but that was a simple process that didn’t slow me down. More details and a set of helpful walk-through instructions from Autogrammer arrived in an email.

Now I was ready to post some photos to Instagram. I clicked the link to my account from my media account list in the dashboard’s left panel, then clicked a “Add post” in the main screen to bring up Autogrammer’s posting window.

The window let me select which channels I want to post to, a date and time for the post to appear, the image I wanted to upload and any text that would appear with it, including a web link. An Edit button brought up a full palette of photo editing tools, including frames, contrast adjustment and tools to crop, resize or change orientation. Some of the photos I’ve seen on Instagram of parties, kids and pets would have benefitted greatly had their owners made use of Autogrammer's redeye removal tool.

Once a posting is saved, it appears on the dashboard with a calendar icon to show that it is scheduled for a future time or a checkmark to denote that it has been sent to Instagram. You can open a scheduled post to make revisions such as changing the time or text, but you can’t go back in time and change one that’s already been posted.

One of the most useful features of Autogrammer is the bulk upload option. I was able to upload several photos at once, then edit each one in the dashboard and set a publication date and time. That sure beat slogging through them one at a time in Instagram.

A trial account on Autogrammer is free. Upgrade packages that support multiple social media accounts start at $19 a month.  

By: Ric Manning On 10/24/2017

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New app locks shared photos

Gizmo Editor Review

Almost every week we hear about some Hollywood starlet having her private photos hacked and distributed. But online privacy is not something only celebrities need to be concerned about. Do you want to explain those bachelorette party photos to your grandmother?

There are plenty of online services that let you share photos with groups of friends, family members or business associates. But they typically don’t provide a high level of security. That’s the niche that is targeted by a new iOS social media app called SecureTribe.

The app’s name is a pretty good summary of what it does. It lets users join and create photo albums for different groups or tribes. And it uses encryption technology to keep photos secure. Only members of the designated tribe have the decryption key required to view photos in their group’s album.

I created a personal account on SecureTribe using a pre-release version of the app provided by the developers. The security features start immediately with the setup process. Once I entered a username and password, the app generated a QR code that users will need if they forget their password.

Unlike most other services, you can’t simply click a “Forgot password” link to get a new one. The app prompts you to store the code in a safe place and it delivers this stern warning:

“Without this there is NO WAY anyone (including SecureTribe staff) can help you gain access to your account.”

For additional protection, SecureTribe requires your password every time you launch the app. It doesn’t store the password in a keychain or password vault.

Once my account was in place, I could begin creating my personal tribes, joining other tribes and sharing my photos. Pressing the + symbol on your My Tribes page lets you give a new tribe a name, choose an image for cover art, enter a description, and start adding images.

Photos and videos can be captured live using the device’s camera, or selected from the user’s camera roll or iCloud drive. Each tribe has its own option menu to enable mature content, allow members to upload or download files.

How do you add members to your tribe? That’s handled from the main menu in an option called Create Invite Graphics. I assume it’s labelled that way because the process generates an image containing a QR code. You can send the invitation through email or messaging. You can even post it on Twitter or Facebook, just be sure you’ve selected the correct tribe.

I created a tribe to share photos of my grandchildren and sent invitations to several family members. The app would be a good way for parents to share photos from youth activities such as a sports team or dance group while maintaining control of the images. And SecureTribe suggests using the app at an event. For example, a musician or artist could display the scannable QR code invitation to give attendees at a performance access to songs, images, stories or other special content.

The basic version of SecureTribe is available for free in the iTunes App Store. A Premium version includes support for additional features such as custom graphics for invitations, high-resolution images, and time or user limits on subscriptions to tribe content.

The app was launched today in the iTunes App Store. To see it in action, check out my video below and for more details, visit the SecureTribe website and follow the discussion @SecureTribe on Twitter.

By: Ric Manning On 9/18/2017

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This service lets you buy Instagram followers

When I see a popular Instagram account, I usually assume that the owner has a long list of friends and associates. But that’s not always the case.

Services like iSocialmike sells packages of Instagram followers in sets ranging from 1,000 to 50,000 followers.

Details posted on the service’s website say it’s not unusual for people to buy Instagram followers. Here’s how they put it:

“There are hundreds and thousands of online businesses who use this type of strategy to better promote their products and/or services and they benefit from it greatly.”

The people behind iSocialmike don’t explain how they are able to deliver such large numbers of Instagram followers, but they do insist that they use “manual and natural ways to deliver followers and likes. No bots are involved in our services.”

To read their full story, visit the iSocialmike website.

Of course iSocialmike isn't the only service that helps Instagram users quickly grow their followers. I found a post on a blog called Income Artist that profiles four of the major services that use bots to collect generate Instagram like and follows.  The profiles include Instato, InstaQ, FollowingLike and Follow Adder.

By: Ric Manning On 2/07/2017

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Your photos will be happier in the cloud

I recently bumped into one of my daughter’s friends from their high school years and I wanted to show her some old snapshots from the 1990s that I had scanned. At first I was disappointed, thinking I hadn’t put copies of the photos on my phone. Then I remembered that all of my digital photos were stored online where they could be viewed with a app.

There are several cloud-based services that will store digital photos and videos for free or for a few dollars a month. I use the two biggest services, Apple Photos and Google Photos. There are some subtle differences between the two services, but both are free and both do two things that are especially important: they keep your precious images safe from disasters like fire, theft or a hard drive crash, and they make it easy to view your photos any time and anywhere, whether you’re using a mobile phone, a tablet or computer.

If you use an iPhone, iPad or a Macintosh computer, Apple Photos is the logical choice. The program is included with the operating system for each of those platforms. Google Photos is likewise built into Android mobile phones and tablets.

The Google Photos app is available for free in Apple’s iTunes App Store for Apple mobile devices, but there is no Apple Photos app for Android devices. Mac and Windows computer users can log into either photo service using a web browser.

Both services get you started for free. Google Photos will back up an unlimited number of average-sized photos and videos like the ones shot with your mobile device. The maximum size is 16 megapixels for still images and 1080p resolution for videos. If you want to store higher resolution images, you can choose to use Google Drive where the first 15 gigabytes are free and 50GB costs $.99 a month.

The deal is similar at Apple if you want to use the iCloud Photo Library for offline storage. The first 15GB block on iCloud is free and, like Google, a 50GB warehouse costs $.99 a month. How much storage is that in the real world? I used iCloud to store about 22,000 files, mostly still images but also a few videos. That put me just over 50GB, so I jumped up to 200GB for $2.99 a month.

Once your account is set up, you can point the service to your photo libraries and it will automatically scoop up every photo or video it finds, a process that could take a day or more, depending on how many files you have. If you want to be selective, you can log in from the web to drag and drop.

Apple and Google both let you do some basic editing from any device. You can rotate, crop and lighten a photo from either platform while Apple includes a few additional options such as filters and redeye removal.

Both Apple and Google will display photos grouped by date, but you might want to organize them further by sorting them into topics such as people, places or events. Those collections are called albums and they can be shared, another great reason to put photos online. When you create an album, you can designate who else can access it. With a shared album, invited friends or family members can add photos and post comments for the whole group to see.

While there aren’t many differences between the two services, each has a few special tricks. Apple Photos makes it easy for users to create projects such as photo books, calendars, cards and slideshows. And they can order prints with just a couple of clicks.

Google excels in making quick animations and collages. If you’re not sure how to do it, Google will jump in without you. Every few days, I get a message from Google telling me it has taken a group photos that seem to be related and mashed them into a short animation. That’s my idea of a smart computer program - one that does my work for me.

By: Ric Manning On 2/05/2017

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BubbleChat puts thought bubbles in iMessage images

Like any doting grandparent, I often wonder what’s going on in their little rug rat brains. What are they thinking when they hod up a favored toy or spit out their mom’s ravioli?

They’re not yet ready to tell me, at least using words that adults can understand. But they don’t have to. Now I can put words in their heads using an an app I discovered lets me add thought bubbles to my photos.

BubbleChat, created by CaptionMagic, is an iOS app that lets you add thought bubbles to photos of people or animals, even if you have no artistic or graphic design skills.

The app is made specifically to to work with iMessage and once you download the app, it can be called from  the app store icon on the iMessage screen.

Start by opening a new message screen in iMessage, then take a photo or open one stored on your device. Then click the App Store icon and BubbleChat will automatically open a bubble next to a face in the photo.

From there, you can type in your clever text and pinch or pull the bubble to adjust its size, drag it to another face or tap on a face to add a second bubble.

The iMessage library of emoticons are also available too add to the text in a bubble. When you’re finished, tap Send to share your creation or Save to to put a copy in your photo gallery.

To see a full walk-through, watch the video below. There’s more information on the BubbleChat website and the app can be downloaded for free in the iTunes App Store.

By: Ric Manning On 1/18/2017

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Slideshows are free and easy at PepBlast

Gizmo Review

I’ve been making slideshows for more than 20 years for birthday parties, anniversaries, weddings and our family travels. I started using Microsoft PowerPoint and later moved to a dedicated Windows program. Both options required hours of work to drag, drop, resize, sync a soundtrack and hope for the best. Every project was a labor of love, with the emphasis on labor.

PepBlast showed me that making a nice slideshow doesn’t have to be like that. A couple of nights back, I created a video that used about a dozen photos of my grandchildren. I did it on my iPhone and I had it finished in less time than it took to drink a lemonade.

Making the process of creating slideshow videos easy, fast and portable is exactly the idea behind PapBlast. Instead of a complicated desktop program, PepBlast is a web-based system that you can use with a mobile phone, a tablet or any computer. PepBlast provides the backgrounds and soundtracks, and while you can get very creatine, all you really have to do is select photos and press a couple of buttons.

Here’s a typical scenario. Let’s say you’re at a music festival with some friends. You pass around your phone to get some selfies. You shoot a few pictures of the band and the dog that dropped by. Before long you’ve got a new album full of photos.

After launching PepBlast, choose a template from the hundreds that are available. Then select photos or use the camera to shoot a few new ones. I had issues trying to use photos from a shared album, so I would stick with images that are stored on your device.

You can rearrange the photos by pressing and dragging one with your pinger or thumb. Each photo can also be cropped, rotated and edited to adjust the exposure or color balance or to add text or a filter.

Once the pictures look the way you want, PepBlast shows you how your slideshow will look with your photos making an animated entrance and exit with a soundtrack. At that point, you can add a title and change the background, the animation or the music. PepBlast has a library of free music to use, or you can choose music stored on your phone. It’s best to avoid using a copyrighted song if you plan to share your video on social media.

The last step before PepBlast starts making you video lets you add a comment and a topic tag and tell PepBlast if you want to post the finished product directly to Facebook or Twitter or download it to your photo collection. The actual processing for my project took less than five minutes.

PepBlast offers free apps in the iTunes App Store and the Google Play Store or you can make a video from any computer using a browser to log into the PepBlast website. Photo shows can be private or made available to the public at your option.

While the free version of PepBlast has plenty of templates and songs, users are limited to 15 photos.  A subscription version lets you use more photos and give you access to additional backgrounds, styles and songs.

For a closer look at the easiest slideshow maker I’ve ever used, check out the video below and some of the PepBlast projects posted @pepblastapp on Twitter.

By: Ric Manning On 9/21/2016

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iOS app puts captions inside images

Say you’re traveling in Europe, you’ve just used your phone to get a great photo of an old castle and you want to share it with friends and followers.

You could send or post the photo and add a caption in a separate message box. That’s okay, but kind of boring. Or, you could use CaptionMagic and put the text right in the photo.

The goal of the app is to let users add attractive text to an image without having to learn PhotoShop or some other complicated graphic design program. CaptionMagic uses artificial intelligence to automatically determine the best location and the best colors for the added text.

Using the app, you can take a new photo or pick one from your camera roll. Inside the app you can crop the image, then choose among different fonts, sizes and type effects, such as a drop shadow. The app suggests complimentary colors for the type and a location for the text, but you can resize, rotate and drag the text using simple finger gestures.

Options to share the photo using Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, iMessage, Snapchat and other social media are built into the app.

The developers of CaptionMagic say they don’t uploads you photos or store any personally identifiable information about their users. They also make the case that messages are more memorable when they are integrated into an image, and they have the science to back that up. Have you ever heard of the Gestalt Principles of Grouping? Check it out in the CaptionMagic Blog.

The CaptionMagic app is available for free for iOS devices in the iTunes App Store. You see the app at work in the video below, can get more details at the CaptionMagic website and see more examples @captionmagicapp on Twitter.

By: Ric Manning On 9/19/2016

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Drift's Ghost action camera gets new high-end features

Earlier this summer I told you about the Compass, a tiny wearable camera made by London’s Drift Innovation. The Compass is an inexpensive option for people who want to be ready to grab a video clip anytime and anywhere.
Today Drift announced an upgrade to its Ghost line of cameras for users who want to step up their action video game. The Ghost 4K is capable of shooting 4K Ultra High Definition at 30 fps or 1080p at 120 fps.

It also comes with electronic image stabilization and a gyroscope that automatically predicts movements for smooth stabilization.

Here’s what Drift CEO Sab Jhooti said about the Ghost 4K:

We wanted to go a step further with our Ghost design to add not only a creative spin but a major advancement to ensure that our Ghost fans are experiencing something truly special.We’re putting the power back into the hands of the user and offering them the freedom to film their lives the way that they want to.

Other premium features built into the Ghost 4K include:

• Dual front and rear microphones for amplified sound and wind noise reduction. When the camera is recording and in motion, it automatically switches from the front mic to the rear mic 
• Improved WiFi and bluetooth connections for live streaming
• A ‘Stitch’ mode that can be set to link a new clip to the last one 
• A side panel that can be removed to attach components such as a battery pack, an LCD viewfinder or a 4G unit.

The Ghost 4K will be introduced this week and at IFA 2016 in Berlin and will be available to purchase in October at the Drift Innovation website. You can follow Drift on Twitter @driftinnovation and see some cool user photos and videos on Instagram.

By: Ric Manning On 8/31/2016

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These apps help you digitize the family album

Browsing through the photo album that came to me after my parents died is a trip in a time machine. Here’s a great grandfather looking solemn in his Civil War uniform. There’s my teenage grandmother, posing with the other girls on her high school basketball team in 1919. And there she is again, standing next to a handsome Packard sedan and wearing one of those stylish dresses from the 1920s.

Those were photos I wanted to share with other family members, but there was a problem. How could I scan them into digital images without removing the pictures from the album and risk damaging them? The solution turned out to be the mobile phone in my pocket.

Every smart phone made in the past few years contains a high-quality camera. Pair the camera with the right app and you have a system that will easily and quickly turn an entire album of portraits and snapshots into a collection of digital images.

To capture my family albums, I used an app Photomyne (shown here) because it will shoot and process multiple photos one page at a time. Just take a picture of the page and the app will find the edges and corners for each picture and automatically straighten the edges to make a square or rectangle.

The app has an editing option that lets you crop the photos, fix colors and brightness levels and add details such as names, location and the year the photo was taken. With a couple of clicks, the photos can be stored on your phone, posted to Facebook, or sent to other people in an email or text message.

While Photomyne is a good choice to quickly capture a lot of photos, Pic Scanner may be a better option if you plan to make a new print from an old photo. In that case you’ll want the higher resolution image that Pic Scanner creates.

With Pic Scanner, you work through a stack of photos, either shooting them one at a time or in a group. Once they’re captured, an editing screen lets you crop and rotate the photo, adjust the brightness and contrast, and add special effects such as a sepia tone to give a photo that old time look. The app supports adding names, dates and descriptions to each image and it will create albums and share images.

Many of those same photo editing features are available with Heirloom, an app that focuses on photo sharing with selected groups. Scanned photos are stored on the Heirloom website where users can create albums for different collections. Each album is accessible only to people who have been invited by the album’s owner. Those people can view the images and download copies.

Two more apps are geared toward genealogy research. CamScanner will capture and correct snapshots and album photos, but it’s especially good for making copies of documents such as marriage licenses or birth certificates. The scans can be saved as PDFs as well as JPEG image files.

Shoebox is a companion app that works with the Ancestry.com, the popular website for collecting family history and creating family trees.  Shoebox will shoot and fix photos made from paper snapshots or copied from album pages. You can also use it to take live shots of cemetery headstones, for example, or when you find grandad’s childhood home.

The images can be tagged with the names of the people in the photo, annotated with historical details and the location pinpointed on a map. Ancestry users can also upload photos directly to a gallery in any of their family trees.

By: Ric Manning On 8/12/2016

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Website offers quick webcam photos

Sometimes you need a photo in a hurry. Maybe you add a face to the profile you created on a website. Or you want to show off a new hairstyle or new puppy.

Camtaker is a website that lets you easily shoot a still photo or video using a camera connected to your computer. That might be one built into the bezel around your monitor, or one that is attached through a USB port.

Depending on your computer and operating system, Camtaker may ask for permission to access your camera and microphone. Once it has access, the camera image appears in a large window in the center of your screen.

Click the Snapshot button and the results appear below the camera window along with a link to download and save the image. You can keep keep shooting until you have an image that you want to keep.

There is no charge and no registration required to use Camtaker.

By: Ric Manning On 7/06/2016

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PhotoCook makes collages for Instagram

I’m a big fan of photo collages. I used them in greeting cards and posters and share them on social media. But with many of my friends posting their best shots on Instagram, it’s been difficult to collect, edit and organize their images.

Then I found PhotoCook, an app designed specifically for Instagrammers. The app roofers a wide variety of grids that can be easily populated with Instagram photos.

It also has advanced features such as 20 different filters and a huge library of stickers. Users can also use sliders to adjust border sizes and corners.

Finished collages can be shared on Instagram where #photocook will link a project with other PhotoCook users.

iOS users can download the app for free in the iTunes App store. 

By: Ric Manning On 7/02/2016

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New app shares travellers' photos

My globetrotting friends share photos of their latest adventures by posting them on Facebook and Instagram. But those pictures tend to get mixed up among photos of kids, pets, meals and other images that have nothing to do with travel.

A new iOS app called Hip Traveller invites users to share there photos they take while they’re on the move, giving its collections a much narrower focus.

The Hip Traveller website says the app “is for people who go off the circuit to find new hip places in famous cities or hidden gems around the world.”

Users who upload photos to the service are encouraged to add a few words about the area they visited and what made it special to them. They can also use the app to create a circle of friends for photo sharing and to find images captured in a specific part of the world.

Hip Traveller is available as a free download in the iTunes App Store.    

By: Ric Manning On 6/19/2016

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