cameras - page 18

You sometimes here people talk about the iPhone 4S as if it’s a minor upgrade, but even if you’re not wooed by Siri, the camera on the iPhone 4S makes it worth a whole new phone in itself if you have even the most cursory interest in photography. The 8MP back-side illuminated sensor provided by Sony is a marvel — arguably the best camera sensor on a mobile phone outside of the crazy new Nokia PureView 808 — and a serious, serious upgrade over the 5MP OmniVision sensor found in the iPhone 4.

But don’t count OmniVision out for Cupertino’s iPhone 5 business. The Californian digital sensor maker have just announced a crazy 16MP back-side illuminated sensor that could theoretically put the iPhone 4S’s image quality to shame. Even better? Since they are capable of shooting video in 4K resolution at 30 frames per second, they’d take perfect images and videos for those rumored new Retina Macs we’ve all been hearing about.

Pentax new K30 SLR might be just the camera for you if you a) have a collection of K-mount lenses knocking around and b) you like to knock your camera around. The headlines: The K30 is a tough, weatherproof DSLR with a 16MP APS-C sensor, a top shutter speed of 1/6000sec, 1080p video (at 24p and 30p) and a maximum ISO of 25,600.

“Oh. Oh. Oh!” was the ejaculative ‘sentence’ I uttered when I saw the press release for this new Micro Four Thirds lens. It comes from Panasonic, and runs from 12-35mm, or 24-70 in old money, and also packs in image stabilization.

That’s fine. But the reason I’m excited is that the maximum aperture is a constant ƒ2.8 along the whole zoom range — a first for mirrorless systems says Panasonic.

Imagine that you could buy a tiny USB-powered box that detected your motion like Microsoft’s Kinect, only instead of watching you jump around a room, it watched your hands and fingers. Imagine that the box was sensitive enough to track the tip of a pencil tracing out letters in a 1cm square of space, and to turn that into accurate handwriting on the screen.

Amazingly, that box is available for preorder right now. It’s called the Leap, and it works with your Mac.

FreezePaint is a very neat iPhone app that lets you “remix” the world around you. Or rather, it allows you to make a scrapbook of anything you see, just by pointing your iPhone camera at it and painting in the parts you want to keep. And don’t be put off by the photos on the site — they’re a little cheesy, but when you actually start playing with the app, you’ll be surprised by its potential.

Lomo, the surprisingly successful maker of crappy plastic film cameras and accessories, has just launched a 110 film for its Orca camera. The emulsion is called Orca 110, and it is a high-contrast B&W film rated at ISO 100.

CloudPic is a great new Kickstarter project which connects your DSLR to your iPhone using Bluetooth 4. By plugging a dongle into the side of the camera, a fast connection is formed and you can beam photos to the iPhone, and from there have them upload automatically to the cloud service of your choice.

Just announced this week are two new Alpha-series interchangeable lens cameras (ILC) and two new lenses from Sony, the digital SLR SLTα37 and NEX-F3 compact camera, and their accompanying stand-alone zooms SAL18135 and SEL18200LE, respectively.

Sony has announced a pair of new cameras today. One is the A37, an “SLT” (like an SLR, but without the flipping mirror) and the other is the NEX F3, a new mirrorless model.

We have our full review ready and coming to your screens in a few hours (11:30 PST), but for a quick look at the details, read on.

When snapping digital photos with our cameras and phones, it’s easy to forget what’s actually happening inside to get the light from your subject into the camera, and then up on its way to Instagram. So, if you ever wondered how a CCD sensor actually works, and how light is turned into electricity and shifted off the sensor, watch this great video by Engineer Guy Bill Hammack.

I have a love/hate relationship with destruction videos. Love because, well, who doesn’t love seeing how tough our gadgets really are? And hate because smashing up perfectly good items shows everything that is shameful and bad about our wasteful modern society.

So it is with mixed feelings that I bring you Kai W of DigitalRev TV and his series of ever-more-cruel ordeals for the Canon 7D SLR.

Leica seems to be on a roll, at least when it comes to making up crazier and crazier prices for its cameras. And nothing screams “overpriced” more than a special edition. Well, nothing except a special edition with “Hermes” in its name.

OK. There is one thing more expensive, a special edition Leica, with “Hermes” in its name, and with the whole thing written in French. Behold: the “Leica M9-P ‘Edition Hermès Jean-Louis Dumas’,” a camera that costs just $50,000.

Is today’s new $8,000 M Monochrome a little too rich for you? Then why not have a taste of Leica’s other new camera, the cheap-o ($2,000) X2?

The X2 is a fixed-lens camera with a 16.2MP APS-C-sized sensor — the same size found in most DSLRs. The lens is a 28mm, which works out to 36mm in old money, and the ISO goes up to 12,500.

Leica’s new rangefinder camera, the M Monochrome, is colorblind. That is, it will only shoot black and white images. What’s that you say? You can totally shoot color images with any camera you like and turn them into awesome B&W photos later? That’s true, but there are some advantages to doing things Leica’s way.

As my esteemed colleague Charlie pointed out yesterday, Polaroid releasing an “official” app that takes Polaroid-style pictures now is a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Then returned, bolted again, walked at a leisurely pace to an airport 2000 miles away, paused for a week, gone trekking in Bhutan, spent some time finding itself in Goa, and finally bolted some more for good measure.

So let’s all just agree that this app is woefully late, because there are already twelve dozen Polaroidish apps on the App Store, many of them very good at their job. So is Polamatic actually any good? The answer’s yes. Yes it is.

SynchroCam is an app that uses the cameras of two iDevices to snap a stereo photo. It then combines the two images into one animated GIF, the kind that flick back and forth and give a trippy 3-D effect.

I have mixed thoughts on home-monitoring systems. On the one hand, you get some peace of mind knowing when the house is empty. But on the other, if the worst does happen, you get to watch the burglar burglarize your home, live, as it happens. I guess at the very least, you do have a warning not to use that toothbrush ever again. Not after the burglar stuck it in his [That’s enough! -Ed].

Still, if you’re going to add cameras to the house, then Logitech’s new “Alert 750n Indoor Master System – with Night Vision” looks pretty good. It uses your home’s powerlines to both power the camera and connect it to the network, and you can monitor it from an iOS app.

Speaking of Polaroid, the ailing-but-once-awesome instant photo company has come out with its own iPhone app. And guess what? It’s yet another Instagram clone, only it’s not free and it even has extra in-app purchases.

The app is called Polamatic, and it lets you snap photos, add filters and grames, and then upload them to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr or Instagram (just like Instagram!). The schtick here is that the frames aren’t just any old Polaroid-ish
frames. No, they’re actual scans of “new, used, and vintage Polaroid frames.”

BlackRapid’s new LensBling is a product that could be emulated with 100% efficacy in just seconds, using nothing but a whiteout marker. However, thanks to the biases of customers who look down upon anything appearing even vaguely home made, pro photographers can instead spend $8.50 per lens.

Remember the Glif? It was probably the first Kickstarter project to take off, and of course it was an iPhone photography accessory. The original Glif probably went on to make its creators — Studio Neat –billionaires, and now it’s back, in the form of the Glif Plus. And what’s more, it comes with a bunch of bad new typography-based puns.

Today we have the perfect video to satisfy a very particular demographic. If you love the whole 8-Bit aesthetic, and yet remain confused by the interactions of the three basics of photographic exposure — aperture, shutter speed and ISO — then sit back, relax and hit the play button on the Vimeo video above.

TriggerTrap is another app which works with an accessory cable to remote trigger you DSLR. Compared to other trigger app/cable combos, TriggerTrap distinguishes itself by also triggering the iPhone’s own camera, should you wish, and by its crazy range of triggering modes.

VSCO’s Cam is a film emulation app for the iPhone and iPad (pixel doubled). It is also one of the new generation of “serious” iPhone camera apps which capture uncompressed JPG files before applying filters, for a much higher quality end product.

If you have been thinking about dipping a photographic toe into the contrasty, blurred waters of Lensbaby’s lenses, and you happen to have $750 (but not $805) lying around the house with nothing to spend it on, then perhaps you might consider the Pro Effects Kit, a bundle of some of Lensbaby’s funnest gear, all in its own special bag.

SloPro is an app that magically makes the iPhone’s video camera shoot at 60 frames per second. And while the developers are being coy and refusing to reveal the mechanics behind it, the product does indeed let you double the camera’s frame rate, and therefore let you shoot some excellent slow-motion footage.