Hasta La Gadget!

As predicted, a 4th of September event has been offered up in invite form from the folks at Sony this week for play during IFA 2013. This event invite doesn’t offer any clues on what devices will be shown specifically, but based on what rumors and tips we’ve been privy to this week, there’ll be […]

We saw a bit about the Hasselblad Stellar camera back in late-July, though at the time what we were looking at was leaked information. The Hasselblad Stellar is a custom modded Sony RX100 camera with features to include special handgrips and other tweaks such as the “H” logo. Those earlier leaks did include some pricing […]

Smartphone cameras are getting better each year, but they still don’t hold a candle to the optics of dedicated cameras. But if SonyAlphaRumors is correct, Sony will soon release two very unusual cameras that bolt onto a smartphone. Will these “lens-cameras” give you the best of both worlds? Or will the whole be less than the sum of its parts?

Supposedly, on September 4 Sony will announce the DSC-QX10 and DSC-QX100 lenses. Each lens will have a “built-in sensor, Bionz processor, Wifi/NFC wireless connection and SD card slot”, but no LCD or controls. Those last two bits will supposedly be provided by your smartphone. SonyAlphaRumors said that the DSX-QX10 has the same 20.2mp Exmor R sensor and Carl Zeiss lens as the DSC-RX100 camera. The DSC-QX100 on the other hand will have a 10x zoom lens and the same 18.2mp Exmor R sensor that’s in the DSC-WX150.

The lenses will supposedly connect to smartphones via NFC and Wi-Fi, but I don’t know if the cameras will be compatible with all (modern) smartphones or just with Sony phones. Perhaps they will even be limited to one Sony phone: SonyAlphaRumors points out that the phone included in these leaked images is the Honami i1, which Sony also hasn’t officially announced yet.

I guess we’ll know if these cameras are real or not soon enough. But assuming they are real the biggest question here is pricing. The hardware has already been proven in previous devices so the quality is pretty much a given. But how much will people be willing to pay for a camera that seems like it would be useless without a smartphone?

[SonyAlphaRumors via Engadget via OhGizmo!]

Even in prime locations, vacant stores can go tenantless for months or years, costing landlords quite a bit in uncollected rent. One real estate owner in Sherbrooke, Quebec is hoping to move a property a bit more quickly, though, using a creative hack to attract attention to an otherwise ordinary “for rent” (à louer, in this case) sign. A standard red placard is mounted to a motorized horizontal track, with a camera keeping tabs on passersby. As pedestrians walk down the sidewalk, the sign slides to match their position. It’s a clever trick for sure, but with “many abandoned shop fronts” in the area, according to Niklas Roy, the project’s lead, it may be entertaining tourists for some time to come.

Filed under: Household, Peripherals, Alt

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Via: PSFK

Source: Niklas Roy

Several press images have appeared this afternoon with three of Sony’s upcoming photo-friendly products in plain view, the first of them being the Sony Xperia Honami. This fabled phablet-sized iteration of the Sony Xperia Z has been tipped to be working with a 5-inch AH-IPS display with 1080 x 1920 pixels across its front, and […]