Life – Nayana Sri Blog

November 27, 2019

Gift guide: Photography accessories for the shutterbug in your life

Looking for some gift ideas for the photographer in your life? Look no further. Though shooters amateur and professional tend to take care of their own needs pretty well, there are plenty of things you can given them that they’ll appreciate. But you might have to be ready to spend a bit — people don’t pick up this hobby because it’s so cheap.

USB-C Hub – $ 40-$ 60

A lot of the latest laptops are eschewing a variety of ports for more or only USB-C. Some like this trend, and some hate it, but one way or another you’ve got to deal with it. Photographers especially. This Vava hub has pretty much everything your average shooter needs, including old-type USB ports for legacy gear, an SD card reader, and a headphone jack for reviewing video. This one is $ 60 but there are bigger and smaller ones if you happen to know they use Ethernet, microSD, and so on. Just stay away from the bargain bin ones — you don’t want to mess around when it comes to carrying lots of power.

Hand strap – $ 10-$ 40

Everyone has a neck strap for their camera because they always come with one. But not everyone wants to use them — the included ones are cheap and even good ones can be annoying. A hand strap is a good alternative that adds a lot of security very simply. For a smaller camera like a mirrorless, a simple, high quality strap like Gordy’s is a good option. And for heavier bodies like DSLRs with big lenses, Peak Design’s Clutch is a solid one that works across many brands. Many camera manufacturers make their own as well, but we’ve found that Peak often makes meaningful improvements on suchstandard models.

Extra SD cards and a carry case – $ 30-40

A photographer can never have too many cards, and a good case never goes amiss, either. You can’t go wrong with Pelican when it comes to cases, even if $ 30 seems a lot to spend on a little plastic clamshell with foam inside. As for SD cards, 32 gigabytes is a nice safe number. Just make sure you stick to known brands like Sandisk and Kingston, and make sure it’s a “Class 10” card — lower numbers mean slower transfer speeds.

A year of Adobe – $ 120

This is a tough one. Lots of photographers use Lightroom and Photoshop, and it would be nice to be able to gift them a few months or a year’s worth of subscription to Adobe’s platform. But Adobe makes this so hard to do that we can’t actually figure out a good way to do it. Nevertheless, if you can figure out a creative way to go about this, your photographer friend will appreciate it. Adobe, if you’re reading this, make this work!

Microfiber wipes – $ 10-15

One thing you can never have too many of as a photographer is lens wipes. Some prefer the disposable type and/or a little air puff, but a pack of small microfiber ones will also be welcome, as they can be used for glasses, laptop screens, and everything else as well. They’re all pretty much the same and you can get a dozen small ones for less than ten bucks.

A decent bag – $ 100-400

waxed messengers 28

It’s amazing how often a photographer will spend a thousand bucks on a lens but have their gear sloshing around in some old backpack. A good bag helps keep your gear safe but also makes you a better shooter by making you organize, inventory, and keep things accessible. There are a lot of great bags to choose from out there, which is why we have Bag Week, but I’m partial to Ona for waxed and vintage style camera bags and Peak Design for a more modern, synthetic style.

Soft shutter release – $ 25

A soft shutter release is definitely a niche gift, but if you have someone on the list who shoots one of Fujifilm’s rangefinder-style cameras, or a Leica if they’re really fancy, a soft shutter release is an awesome, inexpensive stocking stuffer. The Match Technical Boop-O pictured above on an X-T3 camera adds a very nice, easy-to-squeeze ergonomic shutter control to the existing flat button. It screws into a hole that’s already built in to Fuji cameras that support this, including the X100-series and the X-T series cameras, to name just a few popular options. Stick-on soft shutter releases are also available for cameras that don’t have this mount built-in.

Portable lighting – $ 70-$ 500

If you think photographic lighting is just about on-camera flash, then you probably haven’t done enough experimenting with the variety of smart lightening accessories out there. Two great options are the Lume Cube line of products (Lume Cube Air pictured, left above) and the Profoto C1 and C1+. These serve different needs, but can both be used to help you do really fun stuff with both smartphone and dedicated camera-based photography. The price ranges vary, but Profoto’s offering is aimed more at pros who want portable lighting that approaches what you can get out of much more expensive studio setups, while Lume Cube is better suited to the action and drone photography set.

Gnarbox – $ 500-$ 900

This is definitely a gift reserved only for the people who merit big ticket purchases on your list, given its price. It’s also designed specifically to suit the needs of creative professionals, so it’s probably too much gear for most people. That said, if there is a pro photographer or videographer in your life who you really care deeply about, this is likely to be a gift that they’ll value – even if they already have one, since it’s the kind of gear where more = better. The Gnarbox provides easy SD backup and file management for photos and videos, so that you can keep shooting longer in the field and work with the files on the go. The 2.0 version is finally shipping, which offers SSD-based storage for much faster transfer and working speeds.

Mini tripod – $ 12 – $ 35

A mini tripod is a great addition to any photography kit, and there are a range of options available to suit different sizes and types of cameras, from smartphones all the way up to big DSLRs. The best value for money just might be the Manfrotto PIXI lineup, however, which itself comes in a range of options. The basic PIXI Mini Tripod is probably plenty enough for most, and can really help make sure that you get great travel shots and selfies while keeping your pack light. The PIXI EVO gives you a bit more flexibility with extendable legs for a bit more money.

Gadgets – TechCrunch

September 4, 2019

Light Phone’s founders discuss life beyond the smartphone

For a seemingly tough pitch, Light has had little trouble getting noticed. The company has run two successful crowdfunding campaigns for a pair of minimalist phones designed to augment or replace the smartphone. Today the startup announced that it will be shipping the second version of the handset, which introduces a handful of features back into the product, like texting.

Ahead of the launch, we spoke to Light’s founders, Kaiwei Tang and Joe Hollier, about funding, feature glut and the future of the handset.

How it all began

Brian Heater: The project essentially started as an in-house at Google, is that correct?

Kaiwei Tang: We met in 2014 in Google’s incubator called 30 Weeks. That’s where we met and started talking about Light Phone eventually.

Joe Hollier: 30 Weeks program was an experiment that came out of the Google creative lab, and their hypothesis was that if given the right resources, guidance, designers might be able to create new creative startups, and that designers should be on the founding table of companies.

So their hypothesis was that we as designers would be able to imagine a new going to startup in the software application space, and then through designing the end product, which is how the Google creative lab works, we’d be able to inspire the engineers and make the funding investors that we would need to make the product a reality.

Brian: What did you see in the market that wasn’t being fulfilled by countless different smartphone companies?

Joe: People were feeling overwhelmed by their smartphone and craving some escape, and we didn’t really see an escape.

Gadgets – TechCrunch

August 28, 2019

Softly, softly, catchy jelly: This ‘ultragentle’ robotic gripper collects fragile marine life

The creatures of the depths live in a very different world — one lethal to us. But our world is lethal to them as well, all sharp edges and rapid movements. If we’re to catch and learn about the soft-bodied denizens of the deep, our machines too must be soft — and that’s what this Harvard robotics research is all about.

Collection of samples from the deep ocean is a difficult task to do safely: Although these animals are subject to pressures and temperatures well beyond what any surface creature could handle, they are nevertheless very easily damaged by handling. Existing methods to collect them for study often involve sucking them into little containers that are kept pressurized and brought to the surface. But it would be nice to be able to snatch an intriguing critter up and inspect it in vivo, wouldn’t it?

To that end researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have been working on simpler, safer ways to entrap these creatures temporarily, letting them go seconds or minutes later once the collector has gotten some good images or (I don’t know) sampled some mucus.

A little more than a year ago, they created an “underwater Pokeball,” a kind of soft geodesic form that could close around something like a jelly or drifting fish. But even with that kind of method, there’s still the possibility that it could get squished during closure.

‘Underwater Pokéball’ snatches up soft-bodied deep dwellers

So they continued their work, pursuing instead “noodle-like appendages” that, when not activated, are as pliable and harmless as cooked spaghetti, or rather fettuccine considering their shape.

Each “finger” is made of an “elastic yet tough silicone matrix,” and inside it are tiny fibers that remain slack when not in use, but which can be stiffened using a tiny amount of hydraulic pressure. This causes the whole finger to bend in a specific direction, in this case inwards at the same time as the others, scooping whatever is in their range into the soft 3D-printed “palm.” The grip is soft enough that it won’t harm the creature, but firm enough that it can’t just wriggle out.

Sinatra et al. / Science Robotics

At that point the researchers are free to do what they wish, though presumably after taking such care to catch the animal unharmed, they won’t be doing anything too rough with it.

There are few limitations on the size or length of the fingers, meaning they can be customized for different operations. The device you see pictured was made to be effective in catching common jellies, but the whole thing could easily be scaled up or down to handle bigger or smaller animals.

Of course the whole thing can be attached to a submersible, but it’s small and simple enough that it can also be made into a handheld gadget for manual sampling, should that what a given researcher prefers. They put together a prototype and “demonstrated the use of this hand-held soft gripper to successfully perform gentle grasping of three canonical jellyfish species.”

Here’s hoping this means less shredded jellies in our oceans, and perhaps one day you’ll be able to rent such a grabber while snorkeling and have a chance to examine fragile marine life closely without having to grab it with your hands (not recommended).

The researchers’ work was published today in the journal Science Robotics.

Gadgets – TechCrunch

August 28, 2019

Sony’s new a6600 flagship APS-C camera adds stabilization and over 2x better battery life

Sony announced two new APS-C mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras at a special event in New York today, and the announcements are big news for anyone who’s looking for a small, capable camera that can handle everything from sport shooting to vlogging. The new a6600 flagship takes everything that is great about the a6400 it introduced earlier this year, and adds a big battery boost, in-body stabilization, a headphone jack and real-time eye autofocus for video.

The a6600 otherwise looks nearly identical to the a6400 on paper – it has the same 24.2 megapixel APS-C sensor, ISO sensitivity that expands all the way up to 102400, burst shooting at up to 11 fps, 3k 40p internal HDR recording and the same quality viewfinder. None of that is in any way a criticism, however – these were all excellent specs when they debuted on the a6400 earlier this year, and they’ll serve a6600 owners just as well.

What’s been added should be plenty exciting, however, since it brings the in-body image stabilization (IBIS) that was present on the a6500 but did not make it into the a6400, which was more capable in many other ways. This is a clutch feature for video creators, and that’s a key market for the a6XXX line for Sony, especially with its class-leading reputation for autofocus and high-quality 4K video capture. Ditto the addition of continuous real-time eye AF during movie recording.

Finally, that bigger Z battery (which debuted on the company’s full-frame mirrorless camera line and brought big battery life gains there) will be a boon to video and still shooters alike. The existing battery that powers the a6400, along with the rest of the line, is rated at 360 shots, but that’s very low compared to the a7 III’s 610 shots, and Sony is saying you’ll get over 2x the shooting time with the Z battery in the a6600 compared to its predecessor.

The a6600 retails for $ 1,400 U.S. for the body alone, and is available in a kit with the 18-135 lens from Sony for $ 1,800. It’ll be on sale in November.

Sony also unveiled a new entry-level option in its a6XXX line, the a6100. You get a lot of the benefits of the more expensive cameras here, including the same AF system (albeit without real-time Eye AF for movies, which is only on the a6600), and 4K 30p internal recording. You don’t get S-Log or HLG recording options, or HDR, however, and there’s no in-body stabilization. You’re also stuck with the older battery, lower maximum ISO sensitive (51200 in expanded mode) and a lower resolution electronic viewfinder. Still, all told it’s a good bargain – especially since you get Sony’s outstanding real-time object tracking autofocus feature.

The a6100 retails for $ 750 U.S. for the body alone, and is available in a kit with the 16-50 lens from Sony for $ 850, or with both the 16-50 and the 55-210 for $ 1,100. It’ll be on sale in October.

Finally, there are two new lenses which will be hugely beneficial to Sony APS-C camera shooters looking for pro-level options. The E-mount 16-55 F2.8 G gives you a focal range on par with the best glass available on other camera systems, and the E 70-350mm f4.5-6.3 G OSS gives you a really long reach zoom (105-535mm equivalent on a 35mm) with built-in stabilization in a relatively small package. The new 18-55mm lens sells for $ 1,400 and will be sold in October, and the 70-350mm goes on sale in November for $ 1,000.

Gadgets – TechCrunch

August 19, 2019

WP Standard’s Weekender leather duffle is built for life

Have you heard? It’s Bag Week! It’s the most wonderful week of the year at TechCrunch. Just in time for back to school, we’re bringing you reviews of bags of all varieties: from backpacks, to rollers to messengers to fanny packs.

WP Standard makes exceptional leather goods and the company’s new leather duffle is no different. It’s fantastic and my go-to travel bag. There are downsides — it’s heavy and the shoulder strap slips on my boney shoulders — but the good outweighs the bad.

I travel a lot. Airplanes, bikes, cars, and pretty much everything but trains — because I live in the midwest and not because I don’t like trains. A few years back I got a lovely, low-cost leather duffle from Amazon and started using it instead of a roller bag. It’s fun and forces me to pack smarter. Besides, the duffle always fits in overhead spaces, in taxi cabs and is easier to handle on a busy subway.

But you don’t care about my life. You’re here for this bag.

WP Standard built the Weekender duffle for people like me. It’s a great size and I have no issue packing away a bunch shirts, a few pairs of pants and an extra pair of shoes. This isn’t a bag built to hold suits, but rather a weekend’s worth of clothes — hence the name.

The full grain leather is thick and tough and has so far held up nicely to the riggers of travel. There are scratches and scuffs but those are souvenirs and badges of honor. It’s ridden in the back of my pickup in downpours and down dusty lanes. It’s survived several transatlantic flights and still looks like it has decades of life to give.

In the end this isn’t a Patagonia or The North Face duffle constructed out of space-age fabric designed to survive the tallest peaks or the deepest valleys. WP Standard doesn’t play that game. This company makes goods out of full grain leather that are naturally tough and will age gracefully.

The bag is constructed in a way to give the leather the best chance at survival. The hand straps wrap the bag to give it extra strength. The bottom is constructed out of two layers of stiff leather. The zipper is beefy. The shoulder strap is tough and hasn’t shown any sign of stretching.

A few years ago I reviewed WP Standard’s messenger bag. The Weekender duffle is just as lovely but these two bags share the same downside: The shoulder straps pad is too slippery. It doesn’t matter if I’m wearing a t-shirt, jacket or parka, the shoulder strap doesn’t stay in place. To compensate, I often forgo using the pad and use the strap itself, which is thinner and can be uncomfortable after several minutes. To me, this isn’t a deal killer, but you, dear reader, should know about this downside.

The WP Standard Weekender costs $ 375. It’s a great price considering the thickness of the leather and quality of construction. Similar bags can be had from Wills, Shinola or Saddleback but for nearly twice the price. Pad and Quill makes quality leather goods and sells a leather duffle that’s similar to the Weekend for $ 545; it’s also worth a consideration.

Gadgets – TechCrunch