Smartphone News

We rarely use this space for opinion pieces, but Google’s new Clips camera really bugs me and I’m going to rant a bit, so please bear with me. Billed as “A new way to capture big moments and little ones,” Clips works in tandem with the Google Pixel 2 smartphone (as well as with Samsung’s S7/S8 and the iPhone 6 and up) to let you “shoot and share like never before.”

The Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone may be a few generations old, but it’s a rugged little device and shoots some decent video under turbulent conditions as you can see in the insane two-minute clip below.

Not long ago, pro sports photographer Brad Mangin wrote a story for the PetaPixel website that was titled, I Earned More From Photo Gigs in 2016 With My iPhone Than My DSLRs!

Longer story short: With a high-flying imagination and no shortage of necessary technical skills, Ali Jardine turned a creative hobby into a creative business by networking the new-fashioned way—with Instagram, Snapchat, Flickr, Facebook, and probably some other social sites she didn’t have time to list or mention.

We’ve all been there: You’re in a scenic spot about to take a selfie of you and a companion, when a passerby offers to take the shot for you. So you accept the kind gesture and hand the person your phone. Unfortunately, if you forget to turn off the phone’s selfie mode and wait until later to look at the results, the photograph may not be what you expected.

Tony Sweet says that smartphone photography “isn’t officially part of the show” at his photography workshops, but the subject does come up with increasing frequency. “They’ll do their big camera work first,” Sweet says of the students, “then they’ll pull out the phones and shoot a few things, discuss among themselves, and ask me some questions.”

Some trends just won’t go away: Billboard magazine notes that U.S. vinyl album sales are up 53 percent, generating $416 million in sales. Stereophile, our sister publication, reviews new analog audio equipment and you can purchase new Nikon F6 or Leica M-A film cameras from Shutterbug advertisers. Ferrania is back making film and the Japan Camera Hunter website is making their own film, a discontinued Agfa emulsion they’re calling JCH StreetPan 400. Amazon’s top-selling photo item is Fuji’s Instax Mini Instant Film. There’s even a new twin-lens instant camera, Mint’s InstantFlex TL70, and yes, I gotta get me one of those.