Lightscoop: Perfect Holiday Gift

Looking for that perfect inexpensive holiday gift for your favorite amateur photographer whose camera has a pop-up flash? And, attention, pros: This is the perfect gadget for all those folks who ask you how to make their pictures better.

It's an easy-to-use device that easily slips onto your SLR camera and dramatically improves the quality of flash photography.

And it's got a catchy name -- Professor Kobre's Lightscoop.

OK, you don't have to take our word for it, just because we happened to have invented it.

Everybody's singing the Lightscoop's praises. Listen:

Wired:
"LightScoop Rescues Horrible Built-In Flashes"

Bizzie Mommy:
“Lightscoop: My new favorite photo accessory. I was actually on the verge of buying an external flash before I discovered the Lightscoop while flipping through a photography magazine.”

Doobybrain:
"WOW! The Lightscoop is amazing!!"

Lifetime Moms:
“I have been avoiding taking indoor pictures at night because I just hated how the pictures would come out with the camera flash on... Luckily I stumbled upon the Lightscoop...”

A Cowboy's Wife:
“I attached the Lightscoop to my camera and voila! Now THAT is a HUGE difference! I’m already sold and that was just the first comparison I did.”

The Gadgeteer:
“Professor Kobre’s Lightscoop is a clever and inexpensive ($35) device that clips on to the hot shoe of your DSLR or SLR camera.”

Gear Diary:
“Tired of flash photography that makes your victims look like a deer in the headlights? Here’s a cool photography tool designed for the everyday picture taker.”

GadgetSteria:
“The 'Scoop redirects light upwards, bouncing it off the tops of walls and ceilings which ends up giving the immediate surroundings more of a glow instead of spotlight appearance.”

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Plenty more accolades can be found here, including raves from David Pogue (New York Times), and American Photo, which awarded the Lightscoop an "Editor's Choice" honor.

And here's how it works:



One-stop shopping at LightScoop.com. Guaranteed to make your holiday season brighter! (And more evenly lit.)

P.S. Here's a little gift for you. Use this gift code when you check out, and receive a 15% discount just for KobreGuide fans: HOLIDAY.

Death of the DSLR Camera?

Does the popularity (and high quality) of digital point-and-shoots spell doom for digital SLR cameras?

Gearlog, "a gadget guide by geeks, for geeks," thinks so.

As small auto-everything 35mm point-and-shoot cameras began to be able to create SLR-like images, SLR sales dwindled. We're on the precipice of the same thing happening in the digital world. Consumer DSLRs are going down.

How popular are DSLR cameras? According to the Camera & Imaging Products Association, DSLRs accounted for 8 percent of camera shipments in August. That may not sound like much, but considering that most DSLRs cost $500 to $1000, compared with point-and shoots that often cost $100 to $300, this is impressive.

Consumer-level DSLRs won't go away; they didn't in the film days, and they won't now. But they'll become marginalized as more and more people turn toward more convenient alternatives.

Gearlog's report provides fascinating historical context regarding the technological advances in cameras over the past half century.

Lightscoop.com: Lighter & Brighter

C'mon over and take a peek at our completely redesigned Lightscoop® Website at Lightscoop.com

What's a Lightscoop®? Glad you asked!

Lightscoop® is a smart low-tech device that creates soft, flattering light by redirecting your camera’s pop-up flash to a ceiling or wall.

Don’t let your convenient little pop-up flash ruin your photos with evil red eye, ugly shadows, hot spots, bleached out faces, underexposed colors, and blurry movement that exist only in your photographs, not in the real world.

Slip a Lightscoop® on your camera and never miss out on another fabulous picture! Lightscoop® creates soft, natural light and lets you capture the scene the way you see it.

Oh, heck -- why don't we just show you!



And now a word from our sponsor:

Where can you get your very own Lightscoop®? Glad you asked!

SLR Photos + HD Video = Panasonic GH1 = Wow!

Panasonic's compact GH1 SLR/video hybrid gets a big thumbs up from New York Times tech columnist David Pogue.

Pogue wasn't wowed by last fall's G1 model, though he acknowledged that it was "a technical breakthrough that took a giant stride toward the holy grail of photography: gorgeous, professional-looking photos from a small camera." (It was Popular Photography’s Camera of the Year.)

But the updated version, to be released in May, features for the first time full, unlimited-length, 1080p high-definition video, with autofocus, a first for an SLR-style camera.

You can use different lenses for shooting video, including ultra wide-angle. You can use all photo controls for video, including macro (extreme close-up). You can achieve sharp foregrounds with blurred backgrounds, which is impossible with a regular camcorder.

Pricetag: $1500 -- nearly twice the cost of its predecessor. "Panasonic says that most of the increase over the videoless G1’s $800 price is because of the new included lens. And it is a beauty: a 10X zoomer, specially made for video (for example, it’s silent when focusing and zooming)."

In the end, though, $1,500 doesn’t seem that bad when you consider what you’re getting: the world’s first SLR that captures full high-definition video — and keeps it all in focus. Plenty of SLRs cost that much and don’t take any video at all — and plenty of $10,000 hi-def video cameras don’t take stills.

The camera is fast, well-designed, enormously satisfying to use, and generally tops in image and video quality. Overall, the Lumix GH1 is a big leap toward a future when pro-style photos come from consumer-size cameras.

Pogue's review / Slideshow of Pogue's sample images.