If you want to experiment with pinhole photography yourself but would rather purchase something premade than build a DIY camera, check out the ONDU III. Created by Slovenian design collective ONDU, this handcrafted pinhole camera is made from sustainable, locally sourced walnut, maple, and ash wood and finished with natural oils and beeswax for a stylish and durable result. Its high craftsmanship, along with its minimalist design and simple operation, makes it a great place to start for beginner pinhole photography enthusiasts, but it also makes a stellar collector’s item for experts.

The ONDU III “brings us back to a less complicated time,” explain its creators. There’s no need for batteries, charging cables, flash cards, Wi-Fi, or even lenses. Not only is it a beautiful way to take simple, low-tech photos with a dreamy analog feel, but it has also improved upon the aspects of pinhole photography that previously made it harder for amateurs to produce quality images.

For instance, the new design boasts a smooth, easy-to-use shutter that makes a clicking sound to give you a better feel for the length of your exposure. While traditional pinhole photography typically requires long exposures and a tripod, the ONDU III aims for shorter, more casual handheld shots. It also includes a magnetic filter mount, so it’s easy to snap standard camera filters on and off it within seconds. All of the parts consist of CNC milled wood, aluminum, or steel for optimal precision.

“There is a lot of exotic film floating around the globe, as well as the need from some photographers to expose 135 film over the sprocket holes (yes please). For this, we had no choice but to integrate a red window shutter on the backplate of the 120 film cameras. It features the same shutter system as the actual camera shutter, which is lightproof. This makes it possible to use 135 film with the use of an adapter in our medium format cameras. We have also enlarged the red window so it’s easier to see the frame number in direct sunlight.”

ONDU also offers a model called “Rise,” a pinhole camera featuring multiple holes in the center and film plane thirds “to compose images with the rule of this in mind without distorting the perspective in our image as was traditionally done.”

“So many capabilities have never been seen in a pinhole camera until now. The possibility to choose between three holes, snap on filter capability as well as well as the option to use 135 film without modifications thanks to the red window shutter makes the ONDU Rise series the most versatile pinhole camera ever created!”

Since the Rise is a little more complex to work with, the company recommends that beginners stick with any of their classic models, which include a pocket-sized camera, a classic 6×9 camera with a 40-millimeter focal length, a 6X12 multiformat camera, the 6×17 “Ondurama” with 70-millimeter focal length, and the 4×5-inch camera for large format film. You can check them all out (and place preorders) on the ONDU III’s official Kickstarter page.

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The prototype in question is Fishball, a device that you can clip onto your iPhone to shoot 360-degree video. The best part is that there’s no electrical component to it, which means no annoying wires or batteries to keep track of. Just high-clarity polycarbonate lenses.

Since this device works directly with your phone’s camera, you can rest assured knowing that everything you record will be stored right on your phone rather than on an external memory card. And of course that means it’s a snap to email footage to friends and family — or post it on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and all of the other usual suspects.

So who exactly are the brains behind this clever gizmo? Fishball co-founders Yuriy Pryadko, Tony Sgroi, and Sora Elcan met at the prestigious Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley in California. When they learned that experts were predicting an explosion in the visual content market, with 360-degree content and virtual reality leading the way, they knew they had to take advantage of the opportunity.

“We came together to address the biggest roadblock for bringing the benefits of VR to everybody: capturing 360-degree content easily and at an affordable price,” the team explains. “Instead of creating another cumbersome and nonintuitive 360-degree camera (not to mention expensive), we decided to take the most powerful device people already own, your smartphone, and to harness that power to record in 360 degrees directly.”

The free Fishball app works on the iPhone 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus, and the new iPhone X. It’s also been tailored to work with future iPhone models, so you’ll never have to worry about it becoming obsolete. The company is currently looking into Android options as well.

More recently, the designers have announced a software development kit that allows other companies to use their photo or video apps with Fishball, so hopefully that will help even more smartphone users take advantage of the product.

The app and the company’s proprietary stitching software work in unison to record 360-degree video that can be viewed instantly via the Fishball’s live streaming capabilities.

Wondering how it looks in action? Take a look at this video shot by Yuriy from a rooftop in Kiev. Note that you can move around the screen to see in every direction — and even get a peek at Yuriy himself.

The device will definitely be great for scenic panoramas like this, but we imagine that it would be perfect for bringing a concert or baseball game to life, too. Heck, it’ll even be useful at family reunions, when it’s usually impossible to fit all the second cousins and great-great-aunts into a single photo.

Fishball weighs just over an ounce and measures about 1.3 inches by 1.75 inches, so it’s easy to stick it in a bag or pocket. Consider having it with you at all times, because you just never know when a visual emergency is going to strike!

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The company’s eyewear cannot fix everyone’s color blindness, but it is able to treat 80 percent of the people who come to them with the most common form of vision deficiency, red-green color blindness. The remaining 20 percent are missing an entirely different class of photopigments — either blue or yellow.

McPherson and Co-Founder Andrew Schmeder were able to treat so many people suffering from this condition by targeting certain sets of photopigments. More specifically, they created a method called “multinotch” filtering, cutting out sharp wavelengths of light to enhance specific colors. EnChroma lenses separate the overlapping red and green cones, improving the vision of those who have difficulty seeing reds and greens.

Founded in December 2010, EnChroma initially only offered traditional outdoor eyewear. Scanning their site today, you’ll see you can choose between outdoor, indoor, speciality, and even children’s glasses. If you aren’t sure whether the $269 to $429 price range is for you, you can always take the company’s online test at home to get a better sense of how severe your color blindness is. “Normal color vision” is just one of eight results you can receive after completing the test.

Although correcting color blindness is the main purpose of these glasses, there are still some people with normal color vision that may want to purchase a pair. The website states that when an individual with zero vision deficiencies wears the glasses, they experience a “color boost” effect, in which colors appear to “pop” with a super-ordinary vibrance. This effect, officially called chromatic contrast enhancement, is exactly how EnChroma helps those with color blindness.

While it may be an adventitious discovery, McPherson notes that the success EnChroma has endured is based on years of rigorous science. The creators are consistently experimenting with new procedures in hopes of improving their product. “It’s the same every time, they get quiet, and then it’ll all start flooding in, and I love that moment, I can watch it a thousand times,” he explains. EnChroma is a prime example of how hard work goes a long way — especially when it fulfills you on a personal level.

The post Color-Correcting Sunglasses Will Make You Forget You’re Color Blind first appeared on Dornob.

Perhaps you can imagine why some eager amateur photographers weren’t too concerned about all of these warnings. If you can take a photograph of the sky that includes the sun on a normal day, why wouldn’t you be able do so during the solar eclipse, as well? Of course, most of us aren’t focusing our cameras right at the sun on a regular basis. Specially designed solar filters dim the sunlight enough to protect both the photographer’s eyes and the equipment, and they also protect delicate components from non-visible IR and UV radiation.

Most professional photographers were aware of all these factors and practiced their techniques with the proper equipment prior to the eclipse. Unfortunately, not everyone is so well-prepared, and the Lensrentals team had a feeling that some of their rental equipment would come back destroyed. They were good sports about it, though, saying: “We found this to be far more exciting than we were disappointed. With this being the first solar eclipse for Lensrentals, we didn’t know what to expect and were surprised with how little of our gear came back damaged.”

The most common problem they found was melted sensors destroyed by the concentrated heat. They were surprised by how visually apparent the damage was, with holes and charred areas showing on both shutter systems and sensors. This damage likely resulted from people shooting in “Live View” mode, composing the image using the back of the screen instead of looking through the viewfinder in the hopes of saving their eyesight.

Those who didn’t use Live View were more likely to damage the camera’s mirror. A photo of the inside of a Nikon D500 shows burn marks on the mirror’s edge. In other cases, the lens iris — the mechanical part that expands and contracts to control how much light enters the camera — actually melted. It’s often made of plastic, so it’s particularly susceptible to damage from high heat.

Customers probably realized pretty quickly that they had messed up the equipment, especially if they tried to take any more photos after the eclipse was over. Unfortunately, the rental company’s insurance coverage doesn’t cover neglect, so the guilty parties were fully responsible for replacing the destroyed equipment. Sure, this is one of those times when it’s probably fair to say “we told you so,” but the photos of all this eclipse-destroyed gear gives us a fascinating look at just how delicate this stuff actually is. At least it was the gear and not their eyeballs.

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