January 24, 2010 @ 4:25 pm
How did the Performance Book Caddy make it into production? Did somebody honestly think that this bike attachment would be safe and/or sensible at all? And plus, there seems to be a major design flaw on this item because nothing is stopping your book from flying off of the sides when you make a turn. Overall, this is a major failure.
November 22, 2009 @ 3:50 pm
A couple of weeks ago, I showed a quick preview of what the Lightscoop could do to photos requiring a flash. At the time, I said it was a pretty amazing tool for photographers looking for a cheap and effective way to soften the harsh flash exposures that often come off of on-camera flashes. After some more use, I still feel like this is an amazing alternative to a very expensive flash but with some limitations that should be considered.
For most amateur shooters, the Lightscoop is going to be a godsend. It does an incredible job at softening the flash and bouncing it off of the walls to better light the subject as well as the background. But because the Lightscoop works by bouncing the light behind and above the photographer, getting the best looking shots out of your camera’s flash does require you to be in a room with relatively low ceilings. So if you’re in a ballroom or something, the Lightscoop won’t really do much good (in fact, it’ll probably make your pictures darker than you want). Also, if you’re bouncing light in a room with colored walls, be prepared to color balance in post-production or deal with oddly tinted subjects (based on the color of the walls).
With the exception of those two problems (which really aren’t the fault of the Lightscoop’s), I found the Lightscoop to be very fun to use. It’s very lightweight and it attaches easily to my Canon 7D’s hot-shoe. I can actually keep the Lightscoop attached to my camera and close and open the flash without any problem (there are some camera models which require you to remove the Lightscoop before popping up the flash but I did not have to do this extra step).
For only $25
Overall, this small device gets my seal of approval for being so darn simple to use. It’ll certainly make a great stocking stuffer come this Christmas for the casual or amateur-pro shooter.
Here are some comparison shots:
Photo above shot with NO FLASH.
Photo above shot with ON-CAMERA FLASH (NO LIGHTSCOOP)
Photo above shot with LIGHTSCOOP ATTACHED
October 28, 2009 @ 8:04 pm
I was just introduced to Professor Kobre’s Lightscoop, a clever little attachment for digital SLRs that bounces the light from the on-camera flash upward so that photos you take with the flash don’t look all blown out. [via]
Most on-camera flashes these days are pretty decent and are actually quite powerful if tweaked correctly, and I imagine that this $35 add-on does wonders at a fraction of the price of an actual hot-shoe flash attachment.
Most of the images in the Flickr Lightscoop photo pool are pretty much on par with the quality of images I would expect from a much more expensive flash attachment.
March 4, 2009 @ 7:32 pm
This is the best garden hose head in existence. Case closed. [via]
