Padcaster Kickstarter Wants to turn your iPad into a Mobile Studio
A campaign just launched on Kickstarter for something called the Padcaster Mini—an ingenious case made to help turn iPad Mini tablets into fully featured video cameras and editing studios. Josh Apter created the original, full-sized Padcaster and released it earlier this year to great reviews. But Apter has taken to crowdfunding site Kickstarter to try and raise $30,000 to get production going on Padcaster Mini which is, obviously built for the diminutive iPad Mini model of Apple’s popular tablet.
From the video alone, you can see the potential the Padcaster has for those of us who like to create content with every tool available. While the iPad’s camera clearly wasn’t meant for large scale productions, there’s no shortage of creative people out there who are ready and willing to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of it.
This also reminds me of the recent announcement of Sony’s QX Smart Lenses for mobile phones. Those are largeish, DSLR-style lenses that hook onto smartphones and use the phone’s screen as a viewfinder. The Padcaster is the same idea, but for video. Needless to say, I’d be surprised if this campaign didn’t hit its goal relatively easily.
Of course, I could very well be wrong. The Padcaster Mini campaign has plenty of ground to cover over the next month. Having launched only a day ago, it has 11 backers so far. Between them, the campaign has raised $1,261 as of this writing. For $99, you can pre-order a Padcaster Mini, while $129 gets you the “new and improved Original Padcaster” at a $20 discount of the $149 price tag. Once I’m done writing this post, I’m going to send the link over to a couple friends of mine who both own iPads and do plenty of video production. I suppose they’ll be my litmus test for whether or not this campaign actually has legs.
What do you think? Is the Padcaster and the Padcaster Mini a product worth backing? Or is this too niche a product to really go anyplace? I suppose we’ll find out for sure in 29 days.