With just the iPhone’s 2MP camera, Chase was able to capture—over the course of a year—some pretty interesting sights. Many of the photos aren’t high resolution quality works that you’d expect from a pro, and a lot of them look like Polaroids you dug up from a shoebox in the attic, buried from the ’70s, but they all serve a point.

We all have cameras with us, so if you’re looking to better your photography, even if it’s just with the camera you have attached to your phone, Chase’s book may give you some inspiration — if not on composition and style, then just on the fact that you can take decent enough photos with your phone. [Amazon]

Veteran Australian journalist Ray Martin has his LUMIX Life exhibition on show at the Global Gallery in Paddington, Sydney, at 2pm. Among the images on show are those from hot spots he has covered as a TV journo, including images taken of Aceh, a few days after the devastating tsunami struck on Boxing Day, 2004, and the photo of Paris, above.

Photographers from around the world were encouraged to shoot and upload images at www.lumixlife.com.au and share their story, creativity or passion. A new exhibition, featuring a collection of 10 images, will be hosted every few hours during the gallery’s opening hours. Each exhibition will be displayed on a Panasonic Full High Definition Commercial Plasma Display Panel, to ensure the images are magnificently presented.

Ray Martin is one of 50 photographers whose LUMIX Life exhibitions will be shown over the next month. Photographers were encouraged to shoot and upload their 10 best LUMIX images and share their story, creativity or passion. All exhibitions can also be viewed on the website via webcams that have been set up at the gallery.

The full list of the 50 selected photographers is online on the “Selected Exhibitions” page of LUMIX Life. A detailed daily schedule can be seen on the “Now Showing” page.

This is essentially a photo frame with an 8in (20cm), 800×600 LCD screen, around which is a hinged, leather-like cover to protect the display — necessary because this device is not for mounting on a wall or shelf, it’s to be handed around, either as a digital photo album of family memorabilia or, IMHO, more suitably as a sales tool.

Get your work seen
When I’m not holed up inside writing gadget reviews, I can often be found with camera and/or computer in hand, covering a sporting event and looking to sell prints. This weekend brought such an event, a suburban tennis tournament. Being able to pass the photo book around and let potential buyers scroll through pictures at their own pace and share the thrill with friends and family helped seal quite a few print sales. It’s certainly a better option than having prospective clients bunched around my laptop while I edit pictures. It’s not hard to imagine this device in the hands of a wedding photographer trying to close a booking or album sale.

Alright, enough gushing. You can probably tell I’m a fan. But the device could do with a few improvements. For a start, the 800×600 screen is a bit coarse and because of this a few viewers thought pictures that were sharp weren’t sharp. This is not unusual for a product in this space. Most digital photo frames, notwithstanding the high resolution frames you pay the big dollars for, suffer the same characteristic. I can live with that. However, proving a real nuisance was that even with the screen brightness and contrast adjusted, it was difficult to see the on-screen image under sunlight. You need shade or an indoor location to show off whatever it is you’re trying to show off.

One small niggle came from another user who commented that the icons on the small, backlit buttons on the unit’s control panel were difficult to see, thus introducing a small bump in getting to grips with using it. But it was ever so slight a bump. Didn’t bother me at all.

Using it is quite simple once you’ve figured the purpose of each button on the control pad, which sets this device apart from its digital photo frame cousins. It’s not a “dumb” terminal, so to speak. It’s designed to be handled and interacted with.

There is a discrete power button on the bottom panel. Down the right side of the front control panel is, from top to bottom, a menu button, back button, selection button, and a pair of buttons for zooming in and out of an image or adjusting speaker volume.

Pressing the menu button will control the media source and display options, with the choice of running a slideshow or manually scrolling through an image gallery, which can come from the unit’s 4GB internal storage or USB, xD, SD, SDHC, CF, MMC, Memory Stick or MS-Pro sources.

Support for RAW
A big plus in my books is its ability to read RAW files. The .CR2 files from my Canon 5D MkII screened up without a problem. More surprisingly, very quickly. After plugging a 4GB CF card in, the previews were up almost instantly, and a selected 24MB file filled the screen in a little over a second. Not bad performance at all. JPEGs screen up even faster. Here, too, lies another minor complaint. My CF card sat very proud of the device’s side panel and I was constantly concerned that people handling it would lever the card out or otherwise damage the CF slot. A deeper recess for the CF slot would be welcome.

The device also supports audio and video, so it can double as a personal entertainment device, and a slideshow can run with audio background.

Supported image formats are JPEG, BMP, TIFF, GIF and RAW. The product blurb says it handles RAW files from “a wide range of cameras” so you might want to check that your flavour of RAW works if this functionality appeals. Supported audio formats are MP3, AAC and WMA. Video? MJPEG, MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 SP.

It has a 1.4w speaker and runs on a rechargeable lithium polymer battery with about 2.5 hours battery life. I’m told the manufacturer is committed to providing firmware/software updates for it.

When shown at the Photo Marketing Association trade show in Las Vegas earlier this year, it was voted a “hot pick” by a panel of specialist retailers. After handling one, I can understand why. Here is a device that, while it has room for improvement, clearly had a good design team behind it. Finally, we have a functional digital photo frame that can be put to work to sell photos. Or whatever else it is you might want to show off in a visual format.

The Digital Foci Digital Photo Album is distributed in Australia by Garage Brands. Authorised retailers are Michaels, Myer City Centre stores and all Camera House stores. It’ll cost you $399.

It’s an incredibly easy process – you simply head to Rollip.com and start the process, select just how blown out you want your photo to be, select a frame style and add text, then upload the photo you want polaroided. Results are fairly decent, even if the process does suck the resolution out of your pic. But considering the service is free (although the developers do ask you to buy them a beer at the end there, which is really just the polite thing to do) and the fact that Polaroid isn’t exactly cutting edge tech anyway, do you really need that resolution anyway?

Another problem is with portrait shots – you can’t determine which part of the shot will fit the Polaroid’s smaller size, so with a polaroided shot of my dog, the top of his head was lopped off:

Here’s the original Harbour Bridge shot that I uploaded (although I’ve shrunk the resolution for posting. I uploaded the full size version):

[Rollip]

We’ve seen comparisons like this before and as we move into terabytes of digital storage they’re less and less useful (and interesting). But the move to the cloud is pretty intriguing: Facebook photos, YouTube videos, all that stuff is pretty much unlimited and will continue to grow. [Mozy]

And seriously, why would you? For $200 you can grab a proper flatbed Canon scanner for less than that, or a multifunction printer for just a little bit more. Sure, the Latestbuy model works with both Mac and PCs, scans up to 3600 x 2400 (600 DPI) and doubles as a webcam – but it’s pretty ugly in its design and pricey for what it does. And if you’re really buying a scanner because it can double as a webcam, you should probably sit back and reconsider your technology choices…

[Latestbuy]

To add your photos to the Flickr pool, just upload your pics to Flickr, click here to join the group and then start sending the photos to the group from your Flickr home page.

We want as many awesome gadget photos as you can take, so don’t be shy adding them. It doesn’t have to be only gadgets either – If you taken a truly breathtaking photo, or you’ve shot something completely random and funny, send it in to share with your fellow Gizmodians.

[Giz AU Flickr Pool]

Full details are here. It’s super easy and increases your chances of getting laid. Okay, I made that last part up, but we still want you to send us your pics…

[Gizmodo Flickr Pool]

It’s as easy as mocking k-Rudd’s street cred: All you need to do is be signed up to Flickr, then click here and then start hitting the “Send to Group” button on the individual pics you want to share with us.

Now, what type of photos do we want from you?

First of all, anything gadgety. That’s why you’re here, after all. Send us pics of your phones both old and brand new, your ultimate home theatre setup, your modded PCs, your oldschool Walkman collection or anything else you know we’d love.

Add to that any cool advertising you might see (preferably for something gadgety, but not restricted to that), cool stuff you see on the street, things that you reckon could be our Image of the Day, or anything else that is randomly cool. That doesn’t mean your entire collection of Fluffy, your Nanna’s new puppy. But if Fluffy happens to have an obsession with mobile phones, send in the evidence!

So come on – start sharing!

[Giz AU Flickr Pool]