Going back for more with Easy-Macro's latest Kickstarter campaign

If at the beginning of last year you'd asked me if one of the best $15 that I'd spend in 2013 might've been on a macro lens attached to an elastic band to use in conjunction with your smartphone, I probably would have looked at you askance. It's not so much that it's a ridiculous idea; actually it's pretty sensible – portable, flexible, affordable. But would it be effective? It wouldn't slip, would it? And it would actually magnify the subject, wouldn't it? And would I really make use of it? It might only be $15, but if I never use it, then it's $15 wasted. In 2014, the answers to those questions—would it work, would I use it, and would it be $15 well-spent—are very definitely yes. I pledged $15 for an Easy-Macro band on Kickstarter and it works a treat. It lives in my wallet, I use it regularly, and I love the results. If I choose to upgrade my iPhone or switch to a different manufacturer, my Easy-Macro will remain compatible. Fabulous!

There isn't just the review here on Photocritic, but I have lots of pretty close-up photos taken with my iPhone to show for it.

And now due to popular demand, Easy-Macro is expanding its product line. Woohoo!

In addition to the original 4× magnification band, a 2× and a 10× band are being put into production. Pledge $30 to the Easy-Macro Kickstarter campaign and you'll receive a triple pack of magnification bands if it successfully reaches its funding goal. You can then use them individually or stack them one on top of each other for some serious close-ups.

All of the details are available on the Easy-Macro Kickstarter page.

Glowing in the light of Cubee: the illuminating photo cube

How often do you print your photos? How often do you place your printed photos on display? I bet you should do it a bit more often. Image sharing platforms are great, but there's something special about seeing your photos in a tangible format. Digital images can be ephemeral; hang a photo on your wall and it's a little harder to ignore it. And placing five of your favourite images in a softly glowing cube, reminiscent of a 1970s acrylic photo cube but thoroughly more modern, is definitely a good way of showing them off.

This is precisely the aim of Cubee, which is nearing the end of its Kickstarter campaign having smashed its $9,000 funding goal. Cubee is an LED-illuminated, USB-powered, acrylic cube measuring 3.25” along each edge. You select five of your images to be printed on Kodak Universal Backlit Film, which are then inserted into your Cubee before its shipped to you. Want to change your chosen images after six weeks or six months or even six years? Not a problem, any of them can be replaced with new prints.

You can read about the development process and the technical aspects of the Cubee over on Kickstarter; what you most likely want to know is that you can pick up one Cubee for a pledge of $30 and that you have until Tuesday 21 October 2014 to do so.

I think I might send a pair to my niece and nephew, to serve as stylish, personalised night lights.

Lensbaby adds an Android option to its Kickstarter campaign

When manufacturers and purveyors of not-quite-toe-curlingly-expensive optically fun lenses Lensbaby launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring a Sweet Spot selective focus lens and companion app to mobile photographers, a few eyebrows were raised. First, because a well-established company was looking for Kickstarter funding for a project that felt nailed-on to succeed and second, because the Sweet Spot lens and app was iPhone-only. At least, I don't use an Android phone but I felt indignant on behalf of Andoid phone owners.

It sounds as if Android users have made their demand for an equivalent sufficiently for Lensbaby to take note. It has just announced a $50 pledge for an Android-compatible Sweet Spot lens and app, that will ship and be availble for download in October this year.

You can go lay down your money on Kickstarter now.

Click, snap, hang: showing off your prints with Fotobit

You've created a stream of several hundred, maybe even thousand, Instagram images that you love. There are landscapes and portraits and birthday cakes and bumble bees and holiday photos and you're really rather proud of a few. Now what do you do with them? Fotobit thinks that you should print them and display them in its nifty interlocking, extendable frame system that its launching on Kickstarter right now. You start with one 4×4" frame to which you can attach more frames—left or right, up or down—creating a block of images on a wall, a line of them around a room, or a zig-zag pattern of pictures. As you take more photos you can extend your display or re-arrange it to accommodate the new images.

Fotobit has already achieved its Kickstarter funding goal, but you can still pledge $30 for a three-pack of frames, $45 for a six-pack, or $65 for a nine-pack (but there aren't many of those left; when they're gone, the price goes up to $80). And there are much larger packs of frames available for even bigger pledges. The Fotobit team has signed-off on the final design and production samples; it's waiting on the Kickstarter funds to place a minimum order of frames with its manufacturers, which means that if everything goes to plan, backers should have their frames by the end of May.

'There’s nothing better than the nostalgic feeling you get when reliving a memory through a photo and I was looking for a way to share and display the countless photos I’ve taken with Instagram in a more permanent way,' says Alan Yeung, Fotobit co-founder. 'Traditional frames made the task too daunting, so that’s when I came up with Fotobit, which I hope inspires people to get photos out of their phone and onto their walls.'

You've until 24 April to make a pledge via Kickstarter.

Lensbaby turns to Kickstarter to fund a selective focus iPhone lens

There's already an array of additional lenses to augment our mobile phones, and quite a few of them have their origins in Kickstarter, too. There are telephoto and fisheye lenses that screw on or clip on as well as macro lenses on elastic bands, but now Lensbaby, known for its creative optics for dSLRs, is joining the fray with a campaign to fund a selective focus lens for iPhones 4s, 5, 5s, and 5c. It's called the Sweet Spot, and it will render images with a sweet spot of focus surrounded by blur. By pledging $50 to the campaign, you can pick up a Sweet Spot and start composing dreamy, selectively-focused shots. The Lensbaby attaches to an iPhone using both adhesive and magnets. One stainless steel ring sticks to your phone, around its lens, and the Lensbaby is mounted to that using magnets. The Lensbaby lens has magnets on both ends, meaning that it can be combined with other magnetic iPhone-compatible lenses, such as fisheyes and telephotos, for even greater control over your photos.

As well as the lens, there's an accompanying app. It's been developed to provide an optimal shooting experience with a Lensbaby lens. Primarily, it ensures that the image you see on your screen is the right way up, because the optical design of the lens means that it renders upside-down with the iPhone's native camera.

The catch is, of course, that these are only some-iPhone-models-friendly. If you're an Android user, or an iPhone 4 user, you're out of luck.

The question quite a few people might be asking is why has Lensbaby, a well-established company with a significant turn-over, opted to seek Kickstarter funding for a mobile-oriented version of its product? The answer's in the question: this is a departure from Lensbaby's dSLR stomping ground and it wants to be sure that this is a product consumers want. An iPhone-only offering with a modest $20,000 goal suggests that Lensbaby is using Kickstarter to dip its mobile toes in the water. With 199 backers and over half of its goal achieved within roughly 24 hours, I'd say that people are interested in a selective focus iPhone lens. Android users might even be interested in a version for their phones, too.

If you'd like a Lensbaby Sweet Spot for your iPhone, you can pledge over on Kickstarter.

LifePrint, a wireless, social photo printer is looking for a Kickstarter start

Portable printers, wireless printers, and smartphone-connected printers aren't anything new, but LifePrint is looking to bring something new to the market. It's seeking Kickstarter funding for its portable, wireless, instant, and socially networked printer that'll be both iOS- and Android-compatible.

We get the portable, wireless, and instant bits; but what do they mean by social? It means that LifePrint isn't just a printer, but there's an app, too. This will allow you to follow your family and friends and be followed by them in turn, wherever you all are in the world. Anyone you follow can send an image to your printer that you can choose to print, or not. Likewise, you can send your images to your followers' printers, if you're so inclined. Grandmother in Italy should be able to print images of grandchildren in the UK without a hitch. Not that you have to acquire followers if you don't want to; you can remain an undiscoverable recluse if you prefer.

Provided that you have a connection to the Internet, it doesn't matter where in the world your phone is and your printer is. They can be thousands of miles apart, but once you click 'Print' your image should be ready in about 60 seconds.

You can print any photo on your camera roll, and use the LifePrint app's editing tools before you print if you want. It's got the usual filters and borders, as well as speech bubbles and picture-stitching. Once you've printed, you can share your photo to the social media of your choice from the app, too.

All of this is, however, a long way off. LifePrint needs to raise $200,000 before 25 April 2014 to reach its Kickstarter goal, with Earlybird rewards starting at $99. If and when it reaches its funding, the projected shipping dates for printer units is January 2015 for iOS and mid-April 2015 for Android-compatible devices.

Will it make it? Well, according to Kicktraq, if pledges continue at the current rate, it'll get there.

And then the hard work for the LifePrint team really will begin. They have an app to develop and hardware to finalise, manufacture, and ship. If you like what you see, you know what to do over on Kickstarter.

Slidestrap: a simple and stylish camera strap

I'm not a great fan of the strap that came with my camera. For a start, who wants to walk around advertising their camera make and model to all and sundry? It's a siren to wannabee muggers that I have an expensive piece of kit on my person. 'Oh yes! Do come over here and relieve me of thousands of pounds-worth of photography gear. I don't mind at all!' Neither is it especially practically designed. Usually, I sling my camera across my body, which means that a 70-200mm protruding from my hip is uncomfortable and has the potential for damage, either to the lens itself or someone or something else. And there's an awkward moment of readjustment when I bring my camera to my eye. Lazily, I've not done anything about this yet. I suppose it's an 'I've coped for this long, so why change my habits now?' mentality. But there's a Kickstarter project in town that might convince me to get my credit card out of my wallet and get a new strap.

It's called the Slidestrap and it has been developed by Glasgow-based start-up VU Equipment. They couldn't find the strap that suited them (or me): not covered in repeated corporate logos or bright patterns, simple and didn’t require constant adjusting, yet made from high quality materials. The solution? To design one themselves.

The Slidestrap has been designed to be worn across the body but without the need to readjust it to take a photo: just slide the camera along the strap. Its mounting plate ensures that lenses are carried downwards and not outwards, making them less vulnerable to knocks and scrapes. And it's made from cotton and leather: hard-wearing, comfortable, but understated.

With 17 days to go the project is 78% funded. With a Slidestrap pledge valued at £29, it needs another 73 backers to get it underway. I hope it makes it.

Moment wants to bring more variety to smartphone additional lenses via Kickstarter

How many different lens manufacturers can you name in the next ten or fifteen seconds? Quite a few, I bet. We're accustomed to being able to choose between our camera manufacturers' lenses as well as third party lenses manufactured by the likes of Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, Samyang et alios. Now that smartphones are the snapshot-camera-du-jour, and a vertaible feast of apps and accessories are springing up to help people make the most from them, why not a selection of additional lens manufacturers? Moment is aiming to bring some diversity to the smartphone lens accessory marketplace with its Kickstarter project that launches today. If it successfully raises $50,000, it should be shipping wide-angle and telephoto lenses, suitable for iPhones (4s, 5, 5c, and 5s), iPads (third and fourth generation iPad 2), and Samsung Galaxy smartphones (S2, S3, and S4), to its backers around June 2014.

The wide-angle lens offers a 35mm equivalent focal length of around 18mm (it varies slightly according to phone model); the telephoto lens' focal length equates to approximately 60mm, again depending on the smartphone model, in 35mm equivalent. Pledge $49 and you put yourself in line for one lens; $99 will secure you a pair.

The mounting mechanism attaches a metal plate to your phone—either with or without a case—and to this you secure the lens with a bayonet fitting. The Moment team thinks, after lots of prototype testing, that this is the easiest, quickest, and most secure mount around.

Moment is convinced that it offers the best quality lens you can attach to a smartphone. Some of its developers have worked in the manufacture of cinema lenses, and they've applied that knowledge to Moment's smartphone attachments to minimise distortion and chromatic aberration and maximise sharpness. Without a model to test, you have to take the manufacturers' word for it; but that's the gamble of Kickstarter.

You can check out the Moment video down below, or wander over to its Kickstarter page for a closer look!

Update! Moment reached its Kickstarter funding goal in under 24 hours. But that shouldn't stop you from taking a look!

What happened to the Lightstrap Kickstarter project?

Just over a week ago we featured a Kickstarter project called Lightstrap: a temperature- and brightness-adjustable ringlight set into an iPhone case, which aimed to bring better lit iPhone photos to everyone and rid us of the curse of evil red-eye. The project needed to raise a fairly sizeable $245,000, but only six days into its campaign it appeared to be well on course to achieve that with $67,197 pledged to the cause by 540 people and quite a lot of press coverage to boot. So why did Brick and Pixel, Lightstrap's developers, pull the plug on the Kickstarter campaign? In a message to its Kickstarter backers, Brick and Pixel stated that while the project appeared to be on course to hit its goal, it wasn't a slam-dunk. When it was offered the opportunity to put the Lightstrap into production through traditional channels, Brick and Pixel didn't feel that it could refuse. The campaign has been cancelled and anyone who pledged money to it won't have it debited from their accounts. Instead, they're going to have to wait for the Lightstrap to go on sale in stores and online.

As you might expect, there are quite a few disgruntled punters out there. Several of them are deeming the Kickstarter campaign a disingenuous attempt to raise the Lightstrap's profile and prove its viability as a product, lure in an external investor, and then dump the backers when a better offer came along. Quite a few would like to have been acknowledged for their support and perhaps offered a discount on the Lightstrap if and when it does make into full production. Even with those backers who remain hopeful for a positive outcome for the Lightstrap, there remains a sense of unease and there's certainly been an erosion of goodwill towards Brick and Pixel.

When I contacted Cassidy Crawson, one of Lightstrap's developers, he told me that he feels the backers' frustrations, but that it's a complicated business and they're doing their best to bring Lightstrap to fruition: 'We are deeply invested in this product (personally and financially) and we are making hard decisions with the goal of bringing Lightstrap to market successfully.' Brick and Pixel really do want the Lightstrap to make its way onto people's phones, but in one way or another they've managed to make a mistake.

Reading between the lines, it would seem that Brick and Pixel somehow underestimated what it takes to bring a product to reality, and how hard it can be to accomplish that through Kickstarter. Even when you have backers on your side, there are a great many other factors that need to be considered and you really do have to be prepared for anything. Furthermore, they also seem to have misjudged the depth of feeling that backers have for campaigns that they support. When we pledge money to projects, we're putting faith in the people behind them to deliver what they say they will. If a project doesn't reach its funding goal, that's all well and good and thems the breaks of Kickstarter. But if the project lead hasn't got it right, it's more than a sense of disappointment, there is, perhaps, an erosion of trust, too. For Lightstrap, I hope the it doesn't have a negative impact on its potential availability. For prospective Kickstarter project leads: check, check, and check again. And be prepared for anything.

In whichever way that the Lightstrap makers didn't get it right, it's a shame. I hope that they can somehow redeem themselves and finish what they've started.

Let's go fly a Sparrowscope! Kite photography comes to Kickstarter

Ori Barbut has loved electronics and tinkering with things since he was a kid. He fixed things for his friends and his parents' friends; then he took two degrees in engineering; and now he's a freelance engineer in the aerospace and energy industries. But he's also developed a project on the side, combining all of these skills and interests, inspired by a picnic in a Toronto park in 2012. Someone asked him and his friends if they could help secure a camera to a kiteline, for a spot of aerial photography. It got Ori thinking: there has to be an easier way to have a go at kite photography. Within a few days of thinking about it, Ori had knocked together a balsawood prototype. And now, after 16 months of development, he's about to launch the Sparrowscope on Kickstarter.

The Sparrowscope comprises a kite, a harness for a picture-taking mobile device, and an app for communication. The theory is that you launch the kite, fly it into clean air where it's easier to control, and then attach the harness to the line and send your mobile device up to start taking photos.

The Sparrowscope uses an easy-to-fly kite, so even if you're not a kite-flying expert, you shouldn't have too many problems. The harness uses a three-point design, meaning that if one strap fails there are two more to hold your phone in place. And the frame that takes the harness up the line is designed so that regardless of the angle that your kite plummets ground-wards, your phone shouldn't hit it. You won't need to catch it in your hands.

You'll need two devices, both running the Sparrowscope app, to operate the Sparrowscope: one in the harness and one on the ground. The one in the harness will be your picture-taking device; it will also send tone pattern signals to the tilt-pan motors through its headphone jack, allowing you to direct your camera using your device on the ground. The aerial device and the grounded device communicate using a wi-fi generated by a wireless hotspot. The device in your hands will give you a live view of what the aerial device is recording as well as allow you to direct the pan-tilt function to help you get the shots you want.

You can send a fourth or fifth generation iPod Touch (running iOS 5 or later), an iPhone 4 or later, or an Android phone running 4.0 or later up into the sky. On the ground, you've a greater range of device options:

• a third, fourth, or fifth generation iPod Touch running iOS 5 or later
• an iPhone 3GS or newer
• any iPad model running iOS 5 or later
• an Android phone running 4.0 or later
• an Android tablet running 4.0 or later.

Barbut needs to raise $75,000 (Canadian) from his Kickstarter campaign to bring kite photography to the masses through the Sparrowscope. The cheapest pledge that you can make and get your hands on a kite and harness rig is $249 (Canadian). As luck would have it, the project is launching on a day when the winds are so high in the UK several train companies have been forced to cancel services because of the risks from falling trees, but you shouldn't let that put you off. This sounds like far too much fun to pass up!

Triggertrap Redsnap goes live on Kickstarter

When Haje Jan Kamps (that is the very same Haje Jan Kamps who publishes Photocritic) launched his first Kickstarter project to deliver the Triggertrap universal camera trigger, back in 2011, little did he know that it would spawn a mobile app with 14 ways to trigger your camera, a high-speed triggering device, and an actual company with offices and employees. Now, Triggertrap is returning to Kickstarter to bring you Redsnap: an infinitely expandable high-speed camera triggering tool. Redsnap is a modular system, offering photographers the ability to build the camera trigger that they need for each shoot.

The base block includes the time-lapse options Triggertrap is known for: timelapse, TimeWarp (timelapses that include acceleration), long exposure HDR, and star trail mode. On top of that you can add a high speed laser sensor, great for capturing a bullet in flight; a high speed sound sensor, to capture bursting balloons and smashing vases; a high-speed light sensor to make sure you snap a lightning strike; and a passive infrared sensor (PIR) that's ideal for stalking lions and tigers and bears. Or butterflies, if you feel like something a little less adventurous. That's the initial offering of modules; more are in the works.

Redsnap has three outputs to connect it to three cameras, three flashes, or a combination of both. There's also a connector that allows it to communicate with the Triggertrap mobile device, bringing its triggering options into play, too.

What do you get for your Kickstarter backing, then? The timelapse kit is £35; the wildlife kit is £120; and multiple-sensor kits are priced between £125 and £190. If you're really, really desperate, you can pledge £1,000 and be first in line for a pre-production prototype.

Even more information awaits you on the Kickstarter page, and of course there's a video, too.

Pinhole, Printed - a 3D printed pinhole camera on Kickstarter

So much of the fun of pinhole cameras, apart from the pictures that they produce, is their simplicity. They're the very basis of photography: light, a box, and something to capture your image. What's more, they're simple enough that you can make them yourself, out of coffee cans, cardboard boxes, or canibalise a bodycap to make one for a dSLR camera. But what about if you introduced new world technology to old school simplicity, and you 3D printed a pinhole camera? Step forward Clint O'Connor and his Pinhole, Printed project on Kickstarter. By backing his project you can snap up a print-it-yourself kit that comes complete with the items that can't be printed—pinhole, O-rings, red window, screws—for $29. If you're not endowed with a 3D printer, you can buy a ready-printed camera along with two rolls of film and the STL files for $49. Whichever reward you opt for, it includes a guidebook to help you get your exposures right, too.

The pinhole camera you'll produce is the Flyer. It is printed in ABS, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene—the same material used to make Lego—making it light but sturdy. It takes 120 format film, has a 70&deg field of view, an ƒ-stop of 133, and can be mounted on a tripod. Old school meets new world.

Pinhole, Printed managed to achieve its Kickstarter goal within 13.5 hours of going live on 10 October 2013, so now it's a case of staking your claim on one of the limited edition Kickstarter versions of the Flyer (they're marked with a 'K') or on the files so that you can print own (they don't come with a 'K'). You've until 10 November 2013 to make a pledge.

True-View is a Kickstarter campaign to let you make 3D photos and videos with your smartphone

If you're looking for an example of a small company with big dreams and an ethos of 'doing things right', have a look at the Pratley Company. They're two brothers, Peter and Martin Brennan, and their friend Oscar Fernandez and they have just launched a Kickstarter appeal to help get their dream of the True-View off the ground. The True-View is a device that allows you to take photos with your smartphone but see them in 3D. So how does it work? Through mirrors and physics. When you place your smartphone into the True-View, a series of mirrors inside it reflects light off of each other, effectively splitting your phone's lens into two. This produces a pair of stereoscopic images. When you view them through the True-View the two images are displayed side-by-side. The left eye sees the left image, and the right eye sees the right image. Then it is down to the brain, which amalgamates them into a single image where there's a perception of depth. It appears to be 3D.

If you think that this sounds similar to the Poppy, a 3D viewer that met its Kickstarter goal within a remarkably short period of time, you would be right. However, the Pratley team is keen to point out the differences. First, and perhaps most significantly, the True-View is Android-compatible, whereas the Poppy only catered for iOS devices. For anyone with a non-Apple phone who felt excluded from the Poppy party, now's your chance.

The Pratley Co presents - The TRUE-VIEW™ from ThePratleyCo on Vimeo.

It isn't just that True-View caters to a larger market than an iOS-only device, however. It has been designed to be a sustainable and more artisan product. If you change phone you won't need a new True-View, you just have to replace its base, where the phone is secured. Quite a bit of it is hand-crafted and the Pratley team has gone out of their way to meet with engineers and manufacturers to get the right people for the job. In their words: 'We could send our design files off to a cheap factory in China and see what comes back, but it just didn't feel like the right way to do this.'

They also wanted something that was beautiful and not just functional: the True-View has a leather stipple effect similar that of more retro cameras and a silver chrome piping finish.

All of this means that the True-View has an enormous Kickstarter goal of £125,000. This requires a lot of people to pledge £65 (approximately $105) for a True-View. These guys want to change the way that we think about 3D imagery; if you love stereoscopy, check out their Kickstarter.

Triggertrap - the universally awesome universal camera trigger

Haje describes himself as a technonaut and geek – amongst other things – and he also has boundless energy and enthusiasm. This means that he’s constantly inspired to try crazy photography-inspired experiments (who else would think to build a macro lens from a Pringles can?) and they invariably work (I’ve the Pringles macro thingy in my box of photography tricks). This is why I’m bouncing up and down at the prospect of his newest project: Triggertrap.

Triggertrap? What the hell is a Triggertrap? Ah, good question. It’s a universal camera trigger.

That is, a properly universal camera trigger. Yep, it’ll make your common-or-garden time lapse, you can trigger it with a laser beam or with sound, and it can make non-linear time-lapses, too, to give your animation the illusion of speeding up or slowing down. But it has something else far more groovy going for it. It has an Aux input. You can connect your camera to just about anything you like to trigger your camera’s shutter.

From ringing doorbells to boiling kettles to rising suns, anything can be used to take a photo. This baby is eminently hackable.

Haje’s already been working on the design. Doesn’t it look shiny, with its display, touch-sensitive buttons, and water-resistant-ness?

But in order to make it actually happen, he needs to raise a few fist-fulls of cash, for things like prototypes and to ensure that it really is the affordable gadget that he wants it to be. This is where Kickstarter, and hopefully you, come in.

If you’ve not encountered Kickstarter yet, it’s a crowd-sourced funding platform where anyone with a project that they’re desperate to unleash on the world, but don’t quite have the capital to realise it, can appeal to like-minded dudes to help them out. Here’s how it works:

Kickstarter. Here's how it works.

It’s small-scale, socially-oriented venture-capitalism with a creative bent. Reckon you can help? Here’s the page for Triggertrap on Kickstarter.

And if you want to know more about the project from Haje, he’s even made a video to help explain what it’s all about. It’ll only take two minutes to take a peek, so rock on:

Triggertrap has its own website on the surprisingly-named Triggertrap.com. You can find Triggertrap scattered about other bits of the internerds as well; it’s on Flickr and Facebook, and project updates will be tweeted via @Photocritic.

But dammit, let’s make this universal camera trigger properly universal, yes?