Via Akihabara News
Thanko, a company from Japan, has just released the 32 LED Smartphone Flash that that attaches to your smartphone’s 3.5mm earphone jack. Its 32 LEDs will help to brighten dark scenes that your phone’s in-built LED isn’t powerful enough to properly light. Thanks to its small size, it is ultra portable, and since it is attached via an earphone jack, it can be used with any device sporting one. The 32 LED Smartphone Flash costs JPY 1,980 in Japan–that’s around US-$ 20. We don’t know if Thanko ships overseas, but if you’re fluent in Japanese, you can try to find out on their website.
It seems that Photojojo is a neverending source of gadgetry awesomeness. Their latest offering is called ‘The Kick Light’ and attaches to your iPhone. The Kick Light is a compact light studio that sports an array of LEDs that can be remote-controlled via WiFi to light up in almost any color. Via an iPhone app, you can control the LEDs’ brightness and hue, set a white balance, or program the LEDs to display various light patterns. Of course, you can also use The Kick Light–which has a standard tripod mount–with an Android phone, or with any other WiFi-enabled camera, but you’ll have to do without the app then, and program it via the buttons on its body.
The Kick Light is available now for US-$ 179 via Photojojo. To get an impression of what The Kick Light is able to do, here’s a video that shows off its awesomeness.
At CineGear Expo, in Los Angeles California, Fiilex unveiled three new LED lights for videography. The P100 is a versatile on-camera light equipped with a 12 Watt Dense Matrix LED and a focusing lens which can be rotated to modify the beam angle. The P180 is a professional 40W ENG light that is color tunable from 3000-5600 K. Finally, the Q500 is a full-fledged, intensity-controllable, studio light with 160W power consumption, extended range color tuning (2800K to 6500K) and hue adjustment.
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Many people are afraid of flashes, and rightly so. Because a significant number of them comes with an armada of buttons and dials and lights that scare off beginners. Well, at least one company seems to have realized that it’s about time to make speedlight operation easier and more fun. And so Nissin’s new Di700 flash sports what they’re saying is one of the most simplistic and straightforward user interfaces ever found on a speedlight: a large color LCD screen accompanied by a control dial and an On/Off button. What less could you ask for?
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Almost any serious camera these days comes with a pop-up flash. Some even go so far as to say a camera is not a proper camera without one. But let’s be honest, nobody really uses them, because they emit an ugly form of harsh, direct light that does not help at all to make a picture look better. Quite on the contrary. The internet is full of snapshots with bad lighting, and our eyes are sore from looking at them. In comes Photojojo’s Deluxe Pop-Up Flash Bounce, which aims at once and for all doing away with bad pop-up flash illuminated pictures.
And the idea is really simple. It attaches into your camera’s hot shoe and diverts the pop-up flash’s light burst upward, preferably to a ceiling from whence it is reflected onto your subject. The result: a picture with soft, indirect illumination that is much easier on the eyes of both the person photographed as well as the person looking at the picture. And at a price of US-$ 37, there really is no excuse anymore for bad flash pictures, is there. Even if you’re afraid of a proper speedlight.
Sample photos down below.
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For those moments where you need something more powerful than a speedlight but without carrying a massive unit, a small monolight can usually do the trick. Adorama has unveiled their new Flashpoint 180 Monolight kit complete with batteries, umbrella, umbrella reflector and of course the monolight itself. And all this is going for only $199.99. In all honesty, that’s a steal, but I wish that the unit were smaller and more speedlite-like in design and interface.
The light has a Bowens mount for a bunch of different light modifiers and it also has a stepless knob to control it for five different stops of power. The only thing that would make this deal sweeter is radio controls included with the kit. However, we’re not complaining–but please do note that monolights and speedlites work in completely different ways and have different flash durations.
