You remember Radiopopper - the RF piggyback units that are designed to extend your range beyond that you can get with existing systems inside the Nikon or Canon flashes. There were a few different units, set to be released in a staggered schedule - but the news of them has been received with suspicion amongst many pro shooters who already use similar systems. Many claim they are vaporware - hardware that will never be approved for use in North America and thus, never see the light of day.

Radiopopper might beg to differ - and has several new images posted that show off the design of the little unit.

Engadget reported earlier this week that Canon had an “eye-based biometric photo watermarking system” patent pending. That is, the camera will have a sensor which will read the user’s iris and will record a registration code embedded in the image at the moment of power-off. » MORE

In the photography post processing software world, Adobe reigns supreme. There aren’t many competitors to Photoshop, and Lightroom - but Apple’s Aperture is one of them, and it’s giving Lightroom a run for it’s money with a brand new update.

The Apple Store has been down for a little bit, but when it came back up… it had Aperture 2 details, with a lower price point at $199 plus a redesigned interface with some new shortcuts. Let us know your impressions if you get a chance to use it.

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The “magic lens” is Adobe’s first crack at manufacturing camera hardware. The company is well known and respected as a software developer, but this could signal a shift towards gear, or it could end up being a one-off experiment for Adobe.

The lens (video of it after the jump) is actually 19 lenses piled together and aimed at slightly different angles. The result is an image that lets you control the perspective (a little bit) and the depth of field in post processing. » MORE

Every week, we round up a bunch of the best and most interesting links we’ve found in the online photography world, and deliver them to your doorstep. So, as promised, here is your regularly scheduled link snapshot for the week.

• It’s a sad day - and we should say a moment for Polaroid film. The photo company is closing their instant film factories, and after next year, it will be impossible to buy.
• Interesting article on Canon repair estimates, and what you can expect if you have a damaged camera.
• Loosing pictures sucks, and backing up sucks too. The Lightroom-Blog explains the process for automating a catalog backup in Adobe Lightroom.
• There are 52 days left to contribute to issue 16 of JPG Magazine.

If you’ve ever wanted to print a wall poster from your photograph, the only option (unless you have a very large format printer) is to take it to a lab to have them print it out.

Now you can do it on a standard 8×10 printer using an online service called Blockposters. » MORE

A picture is worth a thousand words, but even with such a verbose image, capturing the feeling of motion and freezing it in time is still tricky.

One of the best ways to do that is through the use of panning - by blurring out the background while keeping the moving subject in the foreground in focus. You’ve likely seen the technique in pictures a hundred times, but here’s how you do it. The first thing you need to realize is that this technique requires practice. You’ll find that about 1 in 10 pictures comes out looking right. This success ratio will improve over time, but it’s really hit or miss a lot of the time.

Set your camera to continuous shooting mode. If you’ve got an older or less expensive camera you’ll end up shooting two or three frames a second. With a higher end camera, you can shoot more than eight or ten frames per second. The idea is to shoot lots. The more you do, the better your chances of getting that 1 in 10 shot. » MORE

Every week, we round up a bunch of the best and most interesting links we’ve found in the online photography world, and deliver them to your doorstep. So, as promised, here is your regularly scheduled link snapshot for the week.

• Sony has decided that their new 25-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor should be used in one of their DSLR’s first, and Gizmodo has a picture of it. The full-frame contenders so far are Canon and Nikon, so Sony is hoping to keep people interested in their SLR’s by joining the full size club.
• Lifehacker has a quick and dirty (and cheap!) way to make a DIY camera stabilizer to help smooth your shooting experience.
• Jobo is a German company that has a GPS enabled hotshoe adapter that will record latitude/longitude information for every shot you take. DPReview has some pictures of it from PMA.
• There are 6 days left to contribute to issue 15 of JPG Magazine.