Welcome To The Design Laboratory

" Here at Flapoflex Camera in Bull Creek Prefecture, we dare to design camera no-one else will touch ". Our advertising department has promised to improve that slogan and we eagerly await their advice. Until then, here are some of the projects that our design teams have been working on: a. The Grip And Grin accessory grip. The one digital camera accessory that every working press photographer needs. Assuming that you are a working press photographer, and have not been thrown into the street by the Murdoch or Packer families, with your hat after you, you'll want one of these. The G&G attaches to the bottom of a DSLR or mirror-less camera. It takes the place of the normal battery grip that your maker - Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, Olympus, or Sony - make but it does what you need rather than what they need. It does not have a second or third lithium-ion battery like the proprietary grip - it doesn't attempt to supply extra power so that you can run your continuous shot mode for 15 minutes. We assume you know when to shoot and when to run for it. One battery in your camera will give you more than enough shots to document the balloon going up or the dirigible going down and if you cannot get it in 30 seconds of shooting you might as well grow a beard and become a barista. The G&G has four lithium-ion AA batteries and an output socket so that you can lead it from the grip to your Speedlight. It also has the basic shutter button and a couple of wheels that duplicate the control wheels on your camera. We realise that you may need to change something while in portrait orientation and this is the easiest way to do it. The only easier way is to use a wide-aperture Leica lens and if you can afford one of those suckers, you do not need to work for a living. The G&G has the unique feature of a fully-plumbed hot shoe at the right-hand side of the grip. TTL and all - it has a cable that clips right into the hot shoe of your camera. Thus, you can lock your speedlight onto the portrait hot shoe, shoot with the combo, and get a perfect Weegee exposure the first time. Then you can make a run for it to the nearest WiFi hot spot or cocktail bar and download your Pulitzer Prize-winning image. Just give us a credit when you do your acceptance speech. b. The Ling Right. This was suggested by the staff member who does macro photography. The one that people avoid at company cocktail parties. Mr. Ling. He saw that the light pattern thrown by the average flash was always going to be too high, too bright, and too harsh to be of much use to the people who take pictures of small objects close to the lens. Taking inspiration from the Olympus company who have conquered this problem in their new underwater cameras, Ling made the prototype of a simple clip-on soft plastic toy that looks like a translucent doughnut. It simultaneously redirects the light of an average flashgun, attenuates it, and spreads it out. Users simply clip it onto their pop-up flash, drape it over their lens, and shoot away. Ling has been hailed simultaneously as a genius and a fool as the thing works well but costs very little. c. The Flapoflex Brick. Taking our inspiration from the Argus C3, Flapoflex have produced the Flapoflex Brick. It is the shape of a ...err... brick. It is available in one colour - brick colour. It is entirely sealed. The only moving part that you have to be concerned with is the flexible surface on the top that is the shutter button. It does not zoom. It does not change mode. It does not shoot raw, or video, or continuous shots. One press on the red dot yields one picture in JPEG. It does not open. The battery charging is by induction on the Brick Pad. The Brick Pad takes the images off via WiFi and feeds them to wherever you wish via good old USB. Once it downloads the 32 GB memory in the brick, it resets the memory for another 32 Gb. It has no password. You do not get to choose a size, resolution, white balance, or any other criterion. This means you do not need to choose a size, resolution, or any other criterion. You are freed from the need to either think or worry. It is waterproof to a depth of 10 metres. You are not. The Water Police would appreciate it if you would remember this. The Brick can be reasonably expected to survive you by a considerable margin in most environments.