Bird watching is about to join the 21st century thanks to the Bird Photo Booth. The device is basically a bird feeder with a space inside for a smartphone or GoPro camera. As birds come up to feast on the treats set out for them, the phone or camera captures their images from up close and sends them – via Bluetooth or wi-fi – to another device.

The user controls the shutter from the second device. You can take still macro pictures or HD video (with sound!) of the birds that come up to eat from the adjustable stainless steel bowl. The Bird Photo Booth’s design keeps the bowl out of the frame while letting birds get very close to the lens for the most incredible nature shots ever.

The case protects your expensive equipment from curious wildlife but still lets you utilize your high-tech stuff to enjoy nature in a completely new way. The device allows you to mount whatever type of bird feeder or food will attract the kind of bird you want to photograph. The feeders can be moved into whatever position will offer the best view of the birds.

If you don’t want to take pictures of birds but are interested in other animals (or maybe your new neighbors – we aren’t judging), the Bird Photo Booth offers the perfect outdoor camouflage for your smartphone or camera. Future generations of gadgets will be compatible with the Bird Phone Booth thanks to interchangeable interior foam pads that hold the devices in place.

The post High-Tech Bird Feeder Makes Unprecedented Nature Photos first appeared on Gajitz.

Police, firefighters, soldiers, and first responders on all kinds step into unknown and potentially dangerous situations every day. Their jobs could be made infinitely safer if they were able to see what was waiting for them before walking into the unknown. Bounce Imaging is a start-up company with a product that would make work a little safer for these folks by giving them a panoramic preview of what is waiting for them.

The Bounce camera is, not surprisingly, a bouncing ball-shaped device with six embedded cameras. First responders throw one of them into whatever dangerous situation they might be there to control. As the Bounce bounces like a tennis ball, it snaps two images per second and beams them back to a laptop on the outside. The associated software quickly stitches the images together into a panoramic view of what’s happening inside, giving first responders a clear idea of what is waiting for them.

The post Bouncy Ball Camera Gives a Safe Preview of Dangerous Areas first appeared on Gajitz.

We were sort of crushed when Polaroid announced that it would stop selling its iconic instant film, considering it the end of a very long and very fun era. But little did we know that they would come out with something that, though not quite the same, would still fill a void in our instant picture-loving souls.

The Z2300 Instant Digital Camera brings together the best of old technology and new technology. It’s a digital camera that lets you see the picture you’ve taken on an integrated screen. You can then crop, edit, and add effects to the pic instantly, right there on the camera.

When you’re satisfied with the picture, you can print a copy instantly – you know, kind of like the old-school Polaroids we loved for so long, but with ZINK Technology instead of the classic weirdly colored instant film. The Z2300 also keeps a digital copy of your pictures and lets you upload them to all sorts of sharing platforms. At $160, this 10-megapixel camera seems like a surprisingly good value.

The post Polaroid’s New Camera Blends the Best of Digital + Analog first appeared on Gajitz.

These innocent-looking little clips could revolutionize the way we snap mobile pictures with our phones and other devices. Known as the Mobi-Lens, these tiny devices are powerhouse lenses in a smallish package.

The clips fit over the built-in camera lens of almost any mobile device, which in itself is pretty special considering that most cool phone camera accessories are exclusively for iPhones. They even work on laptops and some digital cameras.

Using the clips, you can take pictures with a wide angle effect, a macro super-close-up, or a fisheye look. The wide angle and macro are combined on one lens while the fisheye is a separate lens.

The team behind Mobi-Lens is trying to take their idea to the next level by raising money on Kickstarter for a production run.

The post Simple Clip-On Lenses Enhance Mobile Phone Photography first appeared on Gajitz.

Recent Royal College of Art graduate Mimi Zou is rethinking the way we take pictures. Her Iris Camera concept would use biometric sensing to read a user’s unique iris signature and load his or her preferred camera settings.

Once the camera recognizes the user, it identifies precisely what the user is looking at based on the position of the eye. Zooming in and out are as easy as squinting or widening the eye.

When you are ready to take a picture, you hold your gaze steady and then blink twice. The camera takes a picture of exactly what you see, exactly as you see it.

The conceptual camera may be an indication of the direction in which photography is headed. Perhaps taking snapshots will soon be as simple as wearing a pair of glasses with an integrated iris-reading camera.

The post Pics in the Blink of an Eye: Iris-Reading Biometric Camera first appeared on Gajitz.