Hasta La Gadget!

It may only amount to a drop in Nintendo’s pockets, but an Australian provider of R4 cards used to copy Nintendo DS games has now been ordered to pay Nintendo $620,000 Australian dollars (or about $556,822 US dollars) in damages, and destroy all its remaining stock for good measure. While that company, GadgetGear, doesn’t seem to be commenting on the matter itself, Nintendo says that GadgetGear has “now acknowledged that game copying devices infringe both Nintendo’s copyright and Nintendo’s trademarks and that they are illegal circumvention devices,” adding that “GadgetGear and the directors have agreed to permanently refrain from importing, offering for sale and/or selling game copier devices.” Of course, it is just one provider of R4 cards that’s affected by the case, but Nintendo is no doubt hoping that the hefty fine will be enough to at least act as a deterrent to others.

R4 card provider ordered to pay Nintendo over $500,000 in damages originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sigma has announced a new portrait-tastic prime lens, the 85mm ƒ1.4 EX DG HSM, at the PMA show in Anaheim, California. It’s certainly not the only new product from Sigma, which has also launched updated compacts, re-released a DSLR (the SD15) and announced new lenses including an ultra-wide zoom, but it is the most telling of the company’s lens strategy.

The new super-fast 85mm has a nine-bladed aperture diaphragm, manual-focus override (meaning you can tweak the focus with a twist without having to flip a switch first) and a hypersonic focus motor for fast focussing. Sigma has realized that many pros and enthusiasts will almost always buy lenses from their camera maker, especially in the full-frame market. So it has taken a look at what us camera geeks want and tweaked its designs to give it to us.

Today, we buy these ultra-fast, ƒ1.4 lenses not for their light-gathering abilities (our high-ISO cameras take care of that) but for their shallow depth-of-field. Sigma designs its lenses to give great results when used wide open, whereas legacy designs only had these wide apertures as a last resort to get every drop of light onto the film. Those nine blades on the diaphragm also cater to modern photo-fashion, and the nice round hole they form should give great *bokeh*: the quality of out-of-focus highlights.

It’s interesting to see specialized lenses like this. And Sigma isn’t leaving out the users of crop-frame cameras out, either: the lens hood comes with a special extender to make it stick out a little bit further on APS-C bodies (although this could also, be taken to mean the lens is prone to flare).

The lens will come in Sigma, Sony, Nikon, Pentax and Canon mounts. Price and launch date to be announced.

Sigma releases 85mm 1.4 EX DG HSM [DP Review]

Quality cameras are about to get a whole lot smaller. Sony has revealed its plans for 2010, and alongside updates to the DSLR line comes a new interchangeable-lens compact to compete against the Micro Four Thirds format. Sony is using a larger APS-C sensor, the size seen in most DSLRs.

The camera, which will come out under the Alpha brand used for its DSLRs, sits between the Olympus Pen and Panasonic GF1 — with their small bodies — and the Samsung NX10 with its larger sensor.

The mockup has typical Sony style: a flat slab with a rather chunky, comfortable-looking handgrip and a lens-hole. The only actual spec Sony has given is for the sensor, a newly developed Exmor APS HD CMOS that will also shoot video (AVCHD-format). It’ll come with a small, flat “pancake” prime lens, presumably giving a 40-50mm equivalent focal length.

This segment, the high-quality “EVIL” (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) compact, will surely take off this year. So far, Panasonic and Olympus have had it all to themselves with the purpose-made Micro Four Thirds format, and Samsung’s only effort so far is the too-big NX10. With Sony in the game, we hope to see some great lenses (Sony uses Carl Zeiss glass) and some aggressive pricing, like that seen with Sony’s high-end DSLRs.

We wonder what Canon and Nikon will do about this. They’re certainly aware of the demand (I spoke to Nikon at CES and was told that there have been a lot of people asking about an EVIL camera), and both companies can easily squeeze one of their great APS-C sensors into a small body. In fact, Nikon used to make the rather good S-series of rangefinders.

The problem is the lenses. The advantage for Panasonic is that it has no heritage of lenses, and was free to start from scratch with M4/3. Both Nikon and Canon are heavily invested in DSLR lenses, and pretty much any Nikon lens ever made will fit on today’s cameras. My guess is that this is the holdup, and that we’ll see a small range of compact, purpose-made glass along with new bodies, coupled with proper adapters that allow you to use legacy lenses with autofocus and auto-exposure intact.

At least I hope so. Right now I can use most lenses ever made, from any manufacturer, on my Panasonic GF1, with a cheap adapter. If we don’t get at least that, why will anyone bother to buy a different brand?

Press release [Sony]

See Also:

• 5 Reasons to Ditch Your Digital SLR
• Hands-On With Panasonic's Leica-Lite GF1
• Olympus Pen E-P1
• New Olympus Pen Adds Flash, Loses Good Looks
• Adapter Puts Nikon and Pentax Lenses on Micro Four Thirds Cameras

You know what happens when we see a video pop on Nokia Conversations (Nokia’s official blog) featuring a senior VP from Nokia’s smartphone division? Everything stops — who knows what might be revealed during an informal, semi-scripted chat. When asked about Nokia’s future smartphone technologies and experiences, Jo Harlow, SVP of Smartphones dives right into a discussion of augmented reality as a means to enhance existing Nokia services like the Ovi Maps experience. She then shifts to an entertainment perspective since “everyone’s talking about 3D.” As she sees it, there’s an opportunity for mobile to be earlier to 3D than typical television development to mobile. That means content, specifically 3D games, which Jo says “could be very, very interesting in terms of enhancing that experience.” One can only imagine that what interests Nokia’s Senior VP of smartphones will ultimately interest manufacturers on the way to retail. And it’s not like Nokia’s been shy with its 3D prototypes in the past. Watch the discussion unfold in the video after the break.

Continue reading Nokia hints at augmented reality Maps and 3D smartphones in its future (video)

Nokia hints at augmented reality Maps and 3D smartphones in its future (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’ll be forgiven for just glazing over during CES and ignoring all those ebook readers that were raining down, but Liquavista‘s attempt at marrying the endurance of e-paper with the desirability of color is well worth another look. The company has now furnished its LiquavistaColor dev kit with a QWERTY keyboard and also recruited Texas Instruments into the fold, whose OMAP system-on-a-chip is doing the grunt work under the hood. The video after the break indicates that touchscreen interaction is also planned, but the most impressive thing has to be the total lack of any redrawing pauses, which may be the considered the biggest drawback to the many E Ink devices out there. For the more conventional monochromatic crowd, we’ve also grabbed video of the LiquavistaBright, which replicates the rapid refresh skills, but omits the keyboard and OMAP in favor of a more compact form factor and Freescale iMX5x hardware. Slide past the break to see it all.

Continue reading Liquavista demos its color e-paper display with a new QWERTY-equipped dev kit (video)

Liquavista demos its color e-paper display with a new QWERTY-equipped dev kit (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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