Hong Kong, March 4 — Ergonomics grip for smartphone photography aims at changing the way people take pictures with their cell phones. A new Kickstarter project is ambitious to make smartphone “real camera”, changing the way people take pictures with their smartphones.
“Smartphone is an important memory hub for all of us now – photos and videos of family gathering, travel, kids, friendship,” says Don Ng, the creator. “If smartphone has overtaken camera as the mostly used camera, then let’s make it a real one,” the veteran photographer added.
People take 1.2 trillion digital photos in 2017 , 85% of the them were taken by smartphones, according to BusinessInsider.
The creator name the product PHOTOG, a nickname of photographer. Features include:
– Extendable mount to fit any size of smartphones of any brands.
– Hot shoe to adapt light and microphone.
– Grip that lets you hold your smartphone one-handed for a genuine DSLR feeling.
– Grip has a shutter release button which works directly with smartphone’s default camera app via blue-tooth. (No need to work with an extra app)
– Grip is also a battery that provides extra power source.
– Grip is removable for battery replacement or remote shuttle release button.
Veteran photographer and filmmaker Don Ng is one of the creator of PHOTOG. He teams up with his brother Jacky Ng who happens to be an awards-winning product and toy designer and his colleague system engineer Jackie Lee to create PHOTOG. Don Ng is also the founder of Cokicker and Asia’s photo agency EYEPRESS – a photos partner of global news agency AFP.
“I see more and more journalists, not just photographers, use smartphones in their news gathering mission in the field,”Don Ng said. “In news situation, smartphone is a very good news gathering equipment but smartphone is not designed in a shape to handle rough situation, crowd, high-speed actions in the news frontline.” Don added.
An ideal add-on should be easy to carry, light-weight, ready-to-go, according to the project statement on Kickstarter, “that is the way we create PHOTOG – not only for news, but also for travel and daily life photography”, the statement continues.
According to the features description, the grip is also a 3000 mAh mobile charger which can always keep shooting job live without connecting smartphone with extra mobile charger.
“Smartphone is the most popular camera ever created in our history. We use them to capture our daily life 24/7 and more and more journalists use them to report breaking news across the globe,” Don said. “But still, there is still no such a easy way to grip the smartphone as a camera, we just pray it doesn’t slip out of our fingers and fall to the ground,” he said in the Kickstarter campaign.
Today smartphone engineers have offered us some of the most advanced photographic technology that already reached the image quality standards of professional cameras. That is why even seasoned pros are not ashamed to pull out their smartphones to capture a fleeting moment in the street or shoot for a professional mission.
But the problem is the physical shape of smartphone is never fit the way we hold a real camera. PHOTOG is built to bridge the missing piece between the beauty of smartphone and a real camera.
The rewards level begins from USD49.
