A CASE THAT WILL KEEP YOUR IPHONE SECURE
Sector 5 Black Ops iPhone cover, www.elementcase.com, $200
Unless you carry a Bushmaster combat rifle around, the Sector 5 Black Ops iPhone cover from Element Case is likely to be the most polarizing accessory you own.
The case is made from a resin called G10 and designed by a company best known for its premium handgun grips, VZ Grips. The back of the case bears a checkering pattern common to handguns, and it has a rim of machined aluminum that is anodized with a nonreflective coating.
The designers even throw in a knurled power button and "tactical holster" for affixing your phone to your belt.
As with many Element Case products, the price is high: $200. Element Case has made a business of creating expensive covers from premium and exotic materials, like its $200 Ronin case made with a bumper of resin-impregnated wood.
The weaponized iPhone case certainly courts controversy, but thanks to the remarkably grippy pattern on the Black Ops model, you may not give it up until they pry it from your cold, dead hands.
DIGITAL CAMERA SAYS
NO MORE TO MOIRE
Fuji X20, www.fujifilm.com, $600
Fuji has reached into film history to tweak a digital light sensor technology that appears in the new $600 Fuji X20 consumer camera.
A camera's light sensors are made of an array of tinier photo sensors. Those smaller sensors are most often laid out in an orderly grid pattern called a Bayer array.
That causes a problem. When the orderly array of sensors takes a picture of some equally orderly patterns, say, a houndstooth jacket, or close parallel lines, an irregular wavy shadow or rainbow seems to appear over the image. That is called a moiré pattern.
To avoid the moiré pattern, some cameras degrade picture quality, often by making it a little fuzzy, with a translucent filter that restricts light.
Old-fashioned film didn't get a moiré pattern because the crystals in film are irregular. That randomness breaks up the moiré effect.
Fuji's X-Trans sensor lays out the red, green and blue photo sensors in a way that simulates the randomness of film. It gives photos more resolution, says Fuji.
NEW YORK TIMES
