self-portrait
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Oppo Ulike 2 goes on sale in China with 5MP front-facing camera and free toothpicks
Last month, tucked in alongside news of the 1080p Find5, we got word of another, less macho Oppo phone coming to China -- the Ulike 2. This Ice Cream Sandwich-based handset went on sale today for the equivalent of $370, and you don't have to be in love with its ladyphone ways to acknowledge that it at least tries something different. Its front-facing camera rocks a full 5-megapixel resolution, putting the HTC One X+'s vanity cam to shame, while a countdown timer and a bunch of beautification filters (including face slimming and skin whitening) try to make all that extra detail work in your favor. The other specs are mediocre at best, including the 960 x 540, 4.5-inch LCD and 16GB of non-expandable storage, but Oppo is hardly alone in its views on what women want.
Casio joins the self-portrait LCD ranks with the €350 Exilim EX-ZR1000, we go hands-on (video)
Watch out, Samsung MV900F, there's a new self-portrait cam in town. Many camera manufacturers may not consider high-end models from Casio to be a threat to their own market share, but the company's new Exilim EX-ZR1000 has more that a few tricks up its €350 barrel. First and foremost is the 180-degree swiveling LCD, which, like Samsung's MultiView flavor, flips all the way forward to simplify composition for self-portraits, but it also offers some nifty gesture controls, letting you wave briefly to trigger a two-second countdown, for example. The camera also includes features that should appease more-advanced users, such as a dedicated mode dial, a versatile lens ring control, a top ISO sensitivity of 25,600 and a 6 frames-per-second burst mode. There's also a 16.1-megapixel CMOS sensor and Casio's Exilim Engine HS 3 on board to handle processing. We caught up with the snappy shooter at Photokina, and were pleasantly surprised with its looks and performance. Its body construction may not make it feel like a premium shooter, despite the decidedly high-end price tag, but performance was speedy and the 3-inch LCD looked quite nice, even when viewed at an angle. As we mentioned, that display flips up and faces forward, but it can also tilt at various other angles, enabling below-the-waist or overhead shooting, too. The mode and lens dials had a reasonable amount of resistance, and the camera focused quickly and accurately. We can't speak to image quality, unfortunately, but shots we captured appeared to be sharp and properly exposed based on what we were able to gather from the display. Overall, the Exilim EX-ZR1000 seems to be a pretty capable shooter, and we're eager to see how it performs after it makes a formal debut this November. Catch our hands-on gallery below, followed by a video walkthrough after the break.
Visualized: here's looking at you, fanboy!
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to mock the above self-portrait without resorting to obvious jokes about the iPhone needing a bumper, the iPad lacking a camera of its own, or prefixing insults with the letter i. Come on, it's Christmas, let's be a little more like San Diego and keep it classy. For his part, David Polette, the author of this piece, admits to no Photoshop trickery whatsoever, having relied simply on his camera, Apple gadgets, and no small amount of patience to line things up just right. Android users, care to play along as well? [Thanks, David] Update: Ask, and ye shall receive! Tipster Antonio did up his own version of this with a Galaxy Tab and a G2. Check it out below!
Video: Self-Portrait Machine binds your hands then bends your will
Drawing faces is hard; and as children suckled at the teat of MTV we posses neither the patience nor the discipline required to learn the skill. So imagine our surprise to discover the Self-Portrait Machine, a device that snaps your photo and then forces you to draw your own face by dragging your bound hands around until the portrait is complete. Jen Hui Liao's project is the result of an observation that "our personal identities are represented by the products of the man-machine relationship." So it's like art and the intersection of philosophy... only it's not -- it's just a robot too lazy to make the portrait itself. See the video after the break.
