Hei hei everyone! It's Victor with our December update.
We hope you're all getting ready to enjoy a wonderful Christmas holiday with your families & friends! Everything is going well on our end.
Manufacturing progress
The most important thing: We remain on track for our updated schedule, i.e. shipping beginning in May/June '22. Over the Christmas holidays, our manufacturer will be assembling and testing parts of the Fjorden Grip's control panel (shutter button, dial, multi-function button). We've ordered silicone parts with different hardness ratings in order to fine-tune the force needed to press the buttons.
We've also been choosing textures for the Grip:
Our industrial design team has been hard at work coming up with different packaging concepts, which we have already shared in our Fjorden Community:
The Fjorden Community's feedback was a mix of "Sleeve" and "whatever is easiest for you". As one of our backers with experience working for USPS and UPS (thanks George!) pointed out, the Box (Alt 3.) is most likely to escape the shipping unscathed. It's also the easiest one for us - so that's the one we're planning to go with. Apologies to the Sleeve fans out there!
Fjorden iOS App progress
As we shared in our October update, we've been re-designing the App UI to make it even more intuitive and easier/faster to control one-handed. We've also been implementing our custom Fjorden font. The result looks fantastic - we've been using the new UI in our internal builds. There are still some rough edges, but we're hoping to roll out this new version to our beta testers soon! If you want to join the iOS beta test, please enter your name and email at https://fjorden.co/testflight. Ideally, use the same email address you used when backing us on Kickstarter/Indiegogo or pre-ordering at our shop.
Here's a photo I took from my kitchen window yesterday. The Norwegian winter sunrise colours are one of the big perks of living here! Shot on Fjorden, iPhone 13 Pro, Tele lens, Full Auto, ProRAW. The viewfinder:
The shot, edited in Darkroom:
Last-minute Christmas gifts: Fjorden Gift Cards
If you're still in need of a very, very last-minute gift, we've got you covered! Our Fjorden Store now has Gift Cards:
You can email them directly to the lucky recipient, or you can send them to yourself, print them out, and place them under the Christmas tree.
BackerKit surveys coming in January
We've been promising to send these for a while - sorry that it's been taking us so long! We're nearly finished, but we need to tweak some details and get them reviewed by BackerKit. We should be ready to send out the surveys in early January, enabling you to choose your iPhone case size and wrist strap, upgrade your pledges, get other add-ons, and update your shipping address.
And the winner of our Polaroid Prize Draw is...
In our November update, we had asked you to fill out a survey on your style of photography, and how you plan to use Fjorden. As a thank you, we entered all 339 survey respondents into a prize draw for the Polaroid Now+ Starter Pack. And the winner is...*drumroll*:
Congrats Hunter Boone! Hunter is a filmmaker and creative director based in Brooklyn, NY. We'll be in touch to send out the Polaroid.
That's all for now. Merry Christmas!
We'll be taking some time off between Christmas and New Years' Eve, so apologies in advance if we're very responsive to emails & messages over the holidays. Merry Christmas to you all, and wishing you a great start to 2022!
Cheers and greetings from Oslo,
Victor