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This automatic lens cap will change your life

Taking a lens cap off to snap a photo and then replacing it afterwards is such a chore. Is there any good reason we should have to do something so tedious in an age of Roombas and shoot-to-kill remote control drones? No. Which is why the folks at Japanese company Un-Ltd have come up with an automatic, retractable lens cover for the Olympus XZ1.

The cap assembly fixes onto the lens by way of Allen-wrench grub screws, and sits in place keeping dust and debris away from your precious glass. Then, when you switch the camera on, the lens extends and pushes away the three leaves that make up the front face of the cap. They sit off to the side and then spring back into place when the lens retracts.

And it costs $72.

The units are hand made, and surely fill a market niche, but why doesn’t the XZ1 have this already? With interchangeable lenses, you can understand the use of lens caps. But surely a compact digicam should have it built in. Canon’s G series manages it, and so do many others.

Still, if you do want one (and don’t go for the alternative of leaving a UV filter permanently attached) then dust off your PayPal account and head over to the Un-Ltd site to spend your hard-earned ¥5,800, plus shipping.

Olympus XZ-automatic retractable lens cap [Un-Ltd via DP Review]

See Also:

• Home-Made Protection: Rear Lens-Cap Pad for Stackable Storage …
• DIY Lens Cap Saver Is Ingeniously Inventive
• White-Balance Lens Cap. Possibly Pointless?
• Stereo Lens-in-a-Cap for 3D Digital Photography

What do you do after you’ve bought the most powerful smartphone to yet grace the Android universe? Some timid folks would urge you to just enjoy it, but if you’re like us, you’ll probably want to know just how high that dual-core Exynos 4210 birdie could fly. The processor inside the Galaxy S II started off life at 1GHz, then got sped up by Samsung to 1.2GHz just before release, and has now been taken all the way to 1.5GHz thanks to coolbho3000 over on the xda-developers forum. He’s been nice enough to provide the source code and instructions necessary to reproduce this stable overclock on your Galaxy S II, but don’t rush off just yet — there’s video of the GSII romping through Quadrant and Linpack after the break.

[Thanks, Mike and Sam]

Continue reading Samsung Galaxy S II overclocked to 1.5GHz, used to obliterate benchmarks (video)

Samsung Galaxy S II overclocked to 1.5GHz, used to obliterate benchmarks (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 May 2011 04:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Right on schedule, Panasonic’s gone and made its thinly-veiled Lumix DMC-G3 Micro Four Thirds shooter official. The camera succeeds the G2 with a 16 megapixel sensor, support for 1080p AVCHD video recording with stereo audio, 4fps burst shooting at full resolution, and an articulating, 3-inch touchscreen that supplants some of the dials adorning the last-gen model. In addition to poking around menus, you can touch that display to focus on your subject, and slide your finger to tweak exposure, white balance, and depth of field — all in all, not unlike how you might interact with a smartphone camera. And, at 11.8 ounces, the aluminum-clad body weighs about ten percent less than its predecessor. Look for it in June for $700 in brown, red, and white — in addition to your garden-variety black. In the market for something more compact? Panny also trotted out the Lumix-FH7, a 16 megapixel point-and-shoot with 4x optical zoom and 720p movie recording. Oodles of photos below with a press release after the break.

Continue reading Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3 ups the interchangeable lens ante with fancy new touchscreen

Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3 ups the interchangeable lens ante with fancy new touchscreen originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 May 2011 04:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember that Ava telepresence bot that we were gaga over at CES? Well Google has decided to lend iRobot a hand in getting the tablet-topped automaton rolling with some Android apps. The two companies have teamed up to create Ava specific programs that can be run from an Android slate perched on the extending neck of this silicon-brained companion. Apparently any ‘ol tablet will do, so you’ll still be able to play Angry Birds, but where’s the fun in that? The exciting stuff will be apps that can communicate with the robot and pass it directions, meaning we need to figure out what our new, mechanical best friends should do for us. We’ve already got plenty of options for killing and beer serving — how about one that folds our laundry? Oh, wait. Well, we’ll think of something. While we ponder you check out Ava’s cameo at Google I/O and the PR after the break.

Continue reading Google and iRobot team up to put Android apps on Ava telepresence bot

Google and iRobot team up to put Android apps on Ava telepresence bot originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 May 2011 03:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Get ready for it speed freaks, Samsung’s toggle Double Data Rate 2.0 MLC NAND chips are now in production — an industry first. The 64 gigabit flash chips manufactured using 20nm processes boast an impressive 400Mbps transfer rate. That makes these toggle DDR 2.0 chips about three times faster than toggle DDR 1.0 (a 133Mbps interface) or ten times faster than the 40Mbps SDR NAND flash in widespread use today. Look for ’em in future teardowns of tablets, SSDs, and smartphones.

Continue reading Samsung’s 64Gb toggle DDR 2.0 NAND flash memory with 400Mbps transfer rate hits production

Samsung’s 64Gb toggle DDR 2.0 NAND flash memory with 400Mbps transfer rate hits production originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 May 2011 01:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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