Dejong's field of vision isn't totally black; he can distinguish light from dark, and had continued to take photos with the help of an editing assistant. But VoiceOver, which reads back anything displayed on the iPhone, has allowed him to use the (low-end, Dejong admits) camera and certain photo editing apps like Camerabag and TiltShift even without sight.

"With the iPhone and a lot of the photography apps that a lot of people are using, I have my entire workflow, and I can do it in five minutes," Dejong said. "In this way, the iPhone is a remarkable gift. I've had it for three weeks now, and it has really opened up my world, apart from the photography."

It's a pretty interesting story, and Wired's account goes into more depth with other blind photography techniques. I'd never really thought about blind photography before, but for someone like Dejong, for whom photography had been a vital part, I can see how VoiceOver and other new tools would be a godsend. [Wired]

The application is aptly called TiltShift. It costs $2, and while it doesn't use traditional tilt-shift lenses, the software adds some blur filters to create the illusion. The user selects the part of the image to be in focus/tiny, and the software feathers the surrounding area appropriately.

We're not sure that TiltShift's simple, even if effective filters are worth $2 to us, but the free clone app that's surely just days away will be a fantastic way to kill 10 minutes. [TiltShift via Wired]

The folks at Bent Image Lab also used a similar effect in parts of the video for Thom Yorke's "Harrowdown Hill":

And there's even more in this recent Metafilter roundup. Can't get enough of this right now. [Keith Loutit on Vimeo via Kottke, Metafilter, Bent Image Lab]

it looks like hasselblad, which makes these high-end cameras for masochists, fetishists, and pro photographers who don't know better is discontinuing its panoramic camera due to new EU regulations - wether or not they're keeping it in japan and the rest of the world was ambiguous, but it sounds like they're not. they're also saying that they'll announce a new, high-end, tilt/shift system at the photokina (told you it was interesting...)

t/s allows you to control perspective and plane of focus in camera, basically allowing you to make images with a shallower depth of field at small apertures, a deeper one at wide apertures, and to straighten building while you're at it, or to throw it completely out of whack and put on the "art" filter (it seems like one photographer in every country does this for the art market, which systematically ooohs and aaaahs as it rediscovers the amazing miracles of the "world looks like a model" effect that comes with it, i'll link to a couple of examples to refresh your memory).

They're also apparently speccing sensors now, and looking for someone to build it for them. they will likely be extremely expensive, and take good-quality pictures, but feature a mechanical human interface design that makes you feel like you're in a dungeon with Mistress Gustava, master of the leaky 120 back.

Wide of the marque [BJP-Online]