The Petzval Lens is revived to shine again

My son Christopher alerted me to this Kickstarter project with a difference. It's a great project in Vienna, Austria which is going to be a great piece of equipment for portrait photographers. Its only been up for a couple of days (according to the Kickstarter Page) and is already nearly 6 times oversubscribed. I think it's partly due to the great video they made to explain the project. Good luck to them. This is clearly going to succeed.

In the 19th Century, the vast majority of photos were shot with the extremely popular Petzval lens. The lens was invented by Joseph Petzval in Vienna in 1840 and had a huge impact on the development of photography. Photos shot with a Petzval lens are immediately recognizable for their sharpness and crispness, strong color saturation, wonderful swirly bokeh effect, artful vignettes and narrow depth of field. The totally distinctive look of Petzval photos is all about the fantastic lens design that gives you the satisfaction of the instant optic experience that goes far beyond using photo editing software and filters.

For this Kickstarter project, we are reinventing the Petzval Lens for 21st century photographers and videographers. It doesn’t matter whether you shoot analog or digital; the brand new Lomography Petzval Portrait Lens is designed to work with Canon EF and Nikon F mount cameras. So, for the first time, you can easily get the fantastic Petzval photographic look with 35mm analog cameras and DSLR cameras too. This will bring with it a whole new world of possibilities; from shooting Petzval photos with your 35mm SLR or DSLR, to creating amazing DSLR movies with the lens!

The Petzval Portrait Lens is a high-quality glass optic; it's a must-have lens for anyone looking to enhance their creative potential and turn every photo into a timeless artwork.

Expected delivery date of the lenses is on February 2014. However, we are confident to have the first 1000 lenses shipped out by December 2013.

The retail launch price of the lens is currently planned as $499/€499 and the Special Edition at $599/€599, so you can make some great savings by backing us on Kickstarter! When the lenses are ready, you'll be able to pick whether you want a Canon or Nikon compatible Petzval lens. Each lens looks absolutely fantastic attached to DSLR cameras and analog cameras! 

Poikos Takes Vienna by Storm

Eleanor Watson wins Vienna with Poikos. (Some rights reserved. Photo by Heisenberg Media)

Great news from the Austrian capital. Startupbootcamp Alumnus Poikos picked up its second major award in a single month. I've been working closely with Eleanor on deconstructing and building their story over the last six months.

Mike Butcher of Techcrunch fills us in with the details.

The Pioneers Festival kicked off in Vienna this week and by the looks of the 2,300 attendees at the amazing Hofburg Imperial palace, the conference is shaping up to be a stand-out event in Europe, not least because it is enormously upbeat and positive. Something we need more of in Europe. With a palace as a setting, art installations and a Croatian-born electric super car in the foyer (the Rimac), this is quite a ‘European’ event. The location of Vienna also means it’s attracting a lot of German, Austrian, Central, Eastern and Southern European startups. Hell, they can drive or get a train here from just about anywhere in Europe.

Poikos a startup with a technology for imaging and measuring the body in 3D, was the overall winner in the startup competition, winning €25,000 in prize money. Klash won the audience choice. Helioz won second place and BeamApp won third place. 

Applause for Poikos in Vienna, Austria (Some rights reserved. Photo by Heisenberg Media)

Poikos
Their winning pitch: Poikos is a computer vision systems house which has developed a revolutionary patent-‐pending technology for imaging and measuring the body in 3D, using consumer grade hardware such as smartphones, tablets and PCs. We are developing a platform for the delivery of our technology to partners within the fitness, entertainment, health and e-‐commerce sectors, for a range of amazing new capabilities across all industries. The processing is cloud-‐based, and we have worked with 9apps.net to ensure the scalability of our infrastructure. In terms of revenue, we charge app developers service and support charges on-‐going, commensurate with use. For corporate clients, we have an expected revenue-‐based licensing fee structure. We already have some of the largest e-‐commerce companies in Europe and beyond signed up to license our technology. We have massive interest from the bespoke apparel, and also health & lifestyle sectors.

Eleanor tweeted from Vienna. And we'd like to add congratulations from all your Startupbootcamp colleagues.

Transport of Delight - a personal discovery

Arrived too early for an appointment on a glorious day in Amsterdam. Since we haven't been blessed with this much sun in a long time, I took a stroll south of the former Olympic Stadium in the direction of some beautiful houseboats moored along the side of a small lake.

That's when I did a double-take. Wasn't that a Viennese tram stop by the side of what looked like a disused railway track? Yes, it definitely was. Stuck on a lamp-post nearby was a clue, in the form of a tram timetable for the Amsterdam Historic TramLine. It seems they have no less than 7 kms of track, most of it running through the Amsterdam Woods area in the South of Amsterdam and Amstelveen. They have vintage trams for various European cities, including ones I recognise from Vienna and Prague. Actually the website doesn't do anything like justice to what they have collected. And the site goes crazy if you try to select the English option. I guess the volunteers have better things to do - like running a tram service.



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They maintain a regular service throughout the summer and certain holidays. But the reason I have never discovered this before is simply that it's a Sunday only service and I have never been to that part of Amsterdam on a Sunday, except for the Labor Day weekend BBQ from the American Business Club. Must make a note to make a date - and take the camera. They charge 4 Euro for a round-trip or 10 Euro for a day-pass. That must be the best bargain in Amsterdam, bearing in mind parking in the city centre now costs a staggering 55 Euro a day. Google Streetview allows you follow the tracks from Amstelveen as it snakes northward and eventually into Amsterdam Haarlemermeer station. It seems that a few of the vintage vehicles also ride through the city centre on Line 20 on Sunday afternoons. They charge real money and give out real tickets. Which is a welcome relief to the new fangled RFID cards which are now used on all public transport.

Boom goes AM Radio

AM Radio is booming. Booming in the sense that more and more AM (medium and shortwave) transmitter sites are being dismantled across Europe. Curtain antennas at one of the large shortwave sites in Germany (Juelich) are being taken down. Meanwhile, the mast of one of Austria's most famous mediumwave stations just north of Vienna was dismantled in the more usual way. A controlled explosion. There are more than a dozen videos on Youtube. This one seems to be the highest quality. Interesting that people applaud when it is over. Everyone likes a firework display. But I think some engineers would rather burst into tears! Thanks to Eniak for sharing the Juelich photos and to Kai Ludwig for spotting them. I am also reposting the RFE/RL antenna explosions in March 2006.