Instaprint: Instant Printer for your Instagram Photos

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Have you ever wished there was a way to automatically print out and keep your favorite Instagram photos? Sure, there are companies like Postagram, which prints and sends your photos on a postcard for a fee, but until now, there hasn’t been an astonishingly easy way to get your Instagram photos on demand.

With that in mind, meet Instaprint.

What’s remarkable about this little printer is that you can set it to automatically print photos that are tagged at a specific location, or use a certain hashtag. It’s been used at events such as store openings and product launches, as well as The Grammys and Lady Gaga concerts.

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Diana mini and Diana F+ cameras exclusive for Valentine’s Day

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So, we all know that the digital camera has entirely taken over the photography market. This is just a given. However, every once in a while, a camera that uses actual film comes along and takes us by surprise. Now, I’m not sure that these lomography exclusives fall into that category, but they’re worth mentioning for their fun designs alone.

The new Diana mini and the Diana F+ cameras are an exclusive offering just in time for Valentine’s Day. The Diana mini, also known as the “Love is in the Air,” is a tiny 35mm and offers a cloud-themed design for $119.00. The Diana F+ has the appropriate name of “Take My Heart” and sports an Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden theme and an apple with a bite out of it on the lens cap to tempt you. It also has a red-backed flash, uses 120 film and for just $99, it looks pretty in the pocketbook, too.

JVC GZ-HM340 Camera Highlights Your Flaws in HD

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JVC-GZHM340If a normal camera adds 10 pounds, imagine the damage that high-def can do. Still, if you want relive family moments like they were yesterday, nothing looks better than an HD camera/camcorder.

JVC just announced the GZ-HM340 camera, which is the latest and greatest in the company’s Everio line. Aside from being able to take better pictures even when less light is available, the unit offers time-lapse recording, auto record features and a 20X optical zoom. Also, new Everio MediaBrowser software allows for file conversion so you can burn DVDs or stuff all of those special moments into an iPod or iPhone. It also provides instant embarrassment, with one-touch sharing via YouTube.

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Samsung’s TL320 Goes Retro

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The new Samsung TL 320 point-and-shoot looks like a camera my dad used to have in the mid-70s. It’s the twin analog dials (for indicating battery life and memory usage) that do it, along with a very retro-inspired flat front. But, don’t be tricked, this isn’t some old inst-a-matic, it’s a serious camera for the digital age.Samsung TL320

  • Display: 3″ HVGA OLED display
  • Lens: 24mm wide-angle 24-240mm
  • Zoom: 5x optical zoom
  • Video: 720p H.264 video recording

Did I mention it has HDMI output and a new hardware and software image stabilization design? You can use a wide array of standard automatic controls (which is more my style) or set it to full manual (for those of you know who actually know what “24mm wide-angle 24-240mm lens” means).

It also comes with 11 presets, face detection and “Beauty Shot,” which supposedly smooths out various skin tones, eliminating red blotches and dark circles (much like the trademark “blur” and “soft light” used in GlamourShots).

Seriously though, I think this camera’s biggest selling point is just how darn cool it looks. This, this, is the camera that says “Yeah, I’m a dad, but I’m a cool dad. Please see my tres chic analog dials for proof.” I want to take this camera and sail around Italy, or take pictures of my kid at a soccer game, you get the idea.

It’ll be sold in May in black and silver, for $379.99.

Uncle Milton’s Pet’s Eye View Camera

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Pet's Eye View USB CameraEver wondered what your best buddy gets up to when you’re at work? Think the cat might be sleeping on your clean laundry? Now you can finally find out. This 640×480 resolution camera (by Uncle Milton Toys) hooks on to your pet’s collar and takes snapshots at 1-minute, 5-minute and 15-minute intervals.

When you get home, simply plug it into a USB-port, download and review your pet’s day. From the 10:00am perusal of the toilet to the afternoon spent licking himself and napping, it will all be there for you, waiting. I’m guessing my own dog’s 35-photo breakdown would look something like this (35 is the maximum number of photos this camera holds):

  • 08 photos: Barking at the door.
  • 02 photos: Chewing on socks.
  • 03 photos: Drinking water.
  • 04 photos: Harassing the cat.
  • 19 photos: Sleeping.

The novelty would wear off pretty quickly, but at $39.99 this is a pretty fun gift for either the pet lover or the guy who’s convinced his wife cat is “marking” his shoes.

Polaroid’s Still in the Game

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Digital may have killed the instant camera, but don’t count Polaroid out of the game just yet — as the dirt’s being packed over their legendary instant film, the company’s rolling out a new twist with the Polaroid Digital Instant Mobile Photo Printer. Able to connect to both your phone and digital camera (via Bluetooth and USB, respectively), the pocket-sized printer whips out borderless stick-back 2×3″ prints in 60 seconds that are smudge-proof, water and tear resistant. Which reads a little ho-hum til you get to the interesting part: there’s no ink cartridge involved. The magic in the box? ZINK technology — which stands for Zero Ink — breaks through the ink barrier with 100 patents to deliver a special printing paper, an advanced composite material with 100 billion embedded cyan, magenta an yellow dye crystals that are activated via heat pulses to deliver the final printed picture. Talk about bonkers.

No word on pricing (their online shop hasn’t even got the product listed yet), but keep your eyes peeled for this one.

Review: Fujifilm FinePix Z10fd

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(Skip to the end for photos taken with this camera.) Don’t judge a camera by it’s LCD screen — this may be the biggest lesson we learned with the Fujifilm FinePix Z10fd. While using the camera and adjusting the color and available manual settings, we were sure that every picture was going to come out blurry and with an overly blue hue given what was being displayed by the preview LCD screen; changing from one pre-set camera mode to another seemed to barely alter the color composition of the image in the viewfinder, but after downloading batches to the computer we found a completely different set of pictures than what had been displayed on the camera. Why would there be a color disconnect between the LCD and actual picture? Can’t be sure, but in trying to correct the apparent blue overtones we managed to do some real overcompensating; nothing that a round in Photoshop couldn’t fix, but it’s an extra step you might rather do without.


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Camera Armor

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Hats off to whoever put mental muscle into this one — made of high quality silicon rubber, Camera Armor is custom-fit to wrap around your most-loved (and expensive) digital SLR camera to protect against knocks, bangs and drops, the kind of “oops” moments that can eventually take your camera out of commission. The Armor is specifically designed for each camera model for a perfect fit (currently available for popular Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Fuji and Sony models) and includes a clear polycarbonate LCD shield for screen viewing. The kit also includes Lens Armor that serves as a lens hood to help minimize those awful scratches that become more difficult to buff out over time. Guaranteed for life, Camera Armor is great for outdoor use, working with multiple cameras, or other activities where full-time protection is required without a lot of additional bulk or weight. Available from Omega Satter, pricing from $39-$89 (depending on product and model type).

Canon EOS 40D on Amazon

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It’s not a rumor anymore. Due to deliver to market on September 20th, Amazon’s gone live with their shopping cart for the much anticipated Canon EOS 40D 10.1MP SLR Camera making it available for pre-order at the jawdropping price of $1299.99. Will it be worth it? You bet.

No new/official pictures are available yet, but the spec list speaks volumes. First up on the good news block, the EOS 40D Digital SLR’s 10.1-megapixel CMOS APS-C size image sensor has been significantly improved thanks to the use of larger microlenses over each pixel to reduce noise and expand sensitivity up to ISO 3200. The next generation EOS delivers a 10.1-megapixel CMOS sensor that captures enough detail for photo-quality poster-size prints, a large 3.0-inch LCD display with enhanced Live View and broadened color gamut, 6.5 frame-per-second continuous shooting capability (for bursts of up to 75 Large/Fine JPEGs or 17 RAW images), sRAW mode; 35-zone metering system; integrated Self-Cleaning Sensor Unit, powered by BP-511A, BP-511, or BP-512 lithium-ion battery pack with images stored on CF cards. And if you’re a rugged photographer, all the better — Canon design engineers made the EOS 40D SLR’s magnesium alloy exterior even more ruggedly dependable than its predecessors with upgraded dust and weather-resistant construction, particularly around the camera’s connection ports, battery compartment, and single-slot CF memory card door. If you accidentally open the compact flash card door while the camera is writing to the card, a warning will pop up on the LCD screen and an open door “alarm” will sound, but the image(s) will continue writing to the memory card without interruption.

Check out the full spec list on Amazon for more fantastic features — look out, shutterbugs, there’s a great new toy on the market.

Telescope with Video Capture

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Did you manage to catch the Perseid meteor shower this past Monday? I mean, REALLY catch it? Imagine being able to take incredibly zoomed photos — or even videos — of your favorite celestial events. Ok, now imagine that there’s already a product out there that won’t cost you an arm and a leg and we’ll tell you about the Telescope with Video Capture available at Gadget Universe.

For about the same price as you’d pay for a mid-range digital camera these days, you can pick up a professional digital camera with a built in telescope that lets you zoom between 15x and 45x with a full 60mm of light capture. And while this is great for star catching, the applications are limitless — take it to the game to pick easy photos of the goal line from 100 yards away, use it on hiking trips to capture wildlife without needing to get close enough that you disturb the area, or set up for beautifully zoomed landscape shots. If your digital zoom lens is a big disappointment, the Video Capture Telescope with a built-in 3.1 megapixel camera is ready to tackle your long shots.

The camera, able to record stills and video images, comes with an SD memory card slot and stores images in JPG format for easy sharing. Powered by 4 AA batteries, the unit will auto-power off after 17 minutes of inactivity to preserve your Energizer bunny, and arrives at your doorstep packaged with a tripod for easy stabilization. For $499.95, this may be the camera you’ve been waiting for to capture those faraway pictures.