Hasta La Gadget!

Earlier, we reported that Apple’s iPhone 5 seemed to have some issues with purple flaring when taking photos with a light source just in or off frame, as reported by a number of users and duplicated in tests. Today, Gizmodo reader Matt Van Gastel received a response from Apple’s engineering team routed through a support representative which essentially says that behavior isn’t cause for concern. According to the email from Apple:

[W]e recommend that you angle the camera away from the bright light source when taking pictures. The purple flare in the image provided is considered normal behavior for iPhone 5′s camera.

Of course, long-time Apple watchers will recognize this approach to dealing with what seem to be hardware problems with iPhones, since it’s very similar to what the company initially said about the iPhone 4′s reception issues, which was basically ‘you’re holding it wrong.‘ But in this case, there’s reason to believe Apple might actually be correct. TechCrunch reader and photographer Adam Panzica explains in a note posted to our original story:

As many others have stated, this kind of thing happens very frequently in cameras of all types. I actually remember there being a firmware update to my Canon 7D to address this issues with certain less and lighting combinations. It’s a result of certain light frequencies being reflected/refracted in the lens from the off-angle light source. It might look like lens flare on a larger glass, but on something this thin it’s probably always going to look like a purple haze. You simply cannot beat the laws of physics. High end DSLRs have whole image processors a hell of a lot more advanced than the one in a cellphone dedicated to removing this kind of thing. But it still shows up from time to time, especially with new glass.

The bad news, as Adam points out, is that it’s largely unavoidable, at least in terms of getting rid of it completely. The good news is that as mentioned, it’s the type of effect that’s been addressed or improved elsewhere via firmware update, so Apple could potentially develop a way to compensate for it occurring in iPhone 5 in later versions of iOS, and it might even go away with time.

In the meantime, this is more of a nuisance bug than a game-ender; I’ve yet to have it happen to my photos in the general course of taking pictures, other than when I was trying to make it happen. The response from Apple’s customer support team may not be particularly comforting to those who are seeing this problem with any frequency, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the last word from Apple on the matter of the purple haze.

Sony has squirted $640m into ailing Olympus, collaborating on imaging sensors for new digital cameras, and forming a new medical business for surgical cameras and more. The alliance will “combine Olympus’s lens and optical technologies, as well as the strength of its brand and R&D, with Sony’s broad range of technologies including digital imaging technologies and apply them in the rapidly growing medical market” the pair say [pdf link], in addition to Sony providing image sensors for future Olympus cameras, in exchange for lenses and mirror cells.

In return for its 50 billion yen, Sony will get 34,387,000 Olympus common shares, giving the company an 11.46-percent voting right. The first bunch of shares will be passed over on October 23, with the second due sometime between then and February 28.

Someone of Sony’s choosing will also be appointed to the Olympus board, or at least Olympus “will make every effort” to ensure that happens.

The name of the new medical business venture has not been decided upon, though it will have four Sony-nominated directors and three by Olympus; each will suggest an auditor and a representative director, while Sony will elect the president and Olympus the deputy president. Kicking off with a 50 million yen investment – 51-percent from Sony, the remainder from Olympus – it will focus on 4K-resolution (or higher) surgical endoscopes that may also include 3D support, together with the hardware needed to use them.

Eventually, Sony says, it expects the medical business to become a consolidated subsidiary of its own, though there’s no telling when, exactly, that will happen. The goal is a market share in excess of 20-percent by 2020.

$640m gets Sony 11% of Olympus: New 4K medical camera company formed is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple‘s built-in camera app is great — it’s simple and gets the job done, but sometimes it’s nice to have a little more control over your camera’s settings. This is where Camera+ comes in. It’s one of the best camera apps for the iPhone, and it updated today with iPad support, iPhone 5 support, and iCloud syncing capabilities.

We know taking photos on an iPad is pretty ridiculous, but if you absolutely have to, you have no reason to not use Camera+ anymore. The new iPad version takes advantage of the iPad’s 10-inch display and offers all the great features that iPhone users have been taking advantage of for a while now. Plus, the iPad now makes a great editing suite for your photos thanks to Camera+’s advanced editing features.

iCloud syncing is also now supported, which means any photos you take on your iPhone can be automatically synced to your iPad, and vice versa. This allows for an easy and productive workflow for mobile shooters, since users can take photos with their iPhone and have them automatically appear on their iPad, where they can then edit the photos using the iPad’s more-ideal larger display.

9 million people have downloaded the Camera+ app for iPhone so far. Developer of Camera+, Tap Tap Tap, says that the iPad and iPhone apps should pose as a challenge to Adobe, which offers their own suite of Photoshop apps for editing photos on the iPad, and has their own cloud storage service as well.

Camera+ for iPad is on sale for $0.99 and is available now in the iTunes App Store.

[via The New York Times]

Camera+ updates with iPad support, iCloud sync is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It looks like Nokia’s controversial marketing move, which involved using pro DSLRs to “simulate” low-light shooting, was even less necessary than the smartphone maker may have thought. During our visit to the company’s Tampere, Finland research and development complex, we were given access to a comprehensive testing suite, enabling us to shoot with a Lumia 920 prototype and a handful of competing products in a controlled lighting environment. Technicians dimmed the lights and let us snap a static scene with each handset at just 5 lux — a level on par with what you may expect on a dimly lit city street in the middle of the night. The 920 took the cake, without question, but the iPhone didn’t fare too poorly itself, snatching up nearly as much light as the Nokia device. The 808 PureView also performed quite well, but the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S III yielded unusable results.

It’s one thing to snag proper exposure, though — capturing sharp details with little noise and superior color balance is an entirely different beast, and the Lumia managed to do just that, as you’ll see in our 100-percent-view shots further on. Later in the evening we hit the streets of Helsinki for a real-world shootout. The 920 did present some issues with exaggerated shake and other rapid movements, but it offered up excellent results overall, even in scenes that were too dark for us to make out any details with our own eyes. Our nighttime shoot can be found in the gallery below, followed by plenty of comparison photos after the break.

Continue reading From the lab: Lumia 920 low-light shootout with Nokia 808, iPhone 5, HTC One X and Galaxy S III

Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Mobile

From the lab: Lumia 920 low-light shootout with Nokia 808, iPhone 5, HTC One X and Galaxy S III originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Innovative camera company Lytro is kicking off international sales from early October, along with broader availability across the US. The so-called light field camera – which allows the focus in the resulting images to be re-set, despite what the photographer was paying specific attention to when originally framing the shot – will hit Target, Best Buy, and Amazon US online from October 9, with CityTarget in-store availability from November.

Further afield, however, shoppers in Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, and Singapore will also get their chance to snatch up the Lytro. Canada’s Future Shop will offer the camera from October 9, while Australia will get retail availability from October 10.

Mid-October, meanwhile, will see sales begin in Hong Kong and Singapore. Those outside of the currently-announced countries can register their pre-interest and hope that Lytro sees fit to bless them with a camera at some point.

Lytro differs from existing cameras by capturing not only the light hitting the sensor, but the angle at which it hits. By preserving that data, the photo can subsequently be manipulated by calculating different focus settings; so, you can switch the point of focus between a subject in the foreground and what’s behind that subject, simply by clicking on different parts of the image.

However, while early reviews of the camera praised its innovation, the actual photo quality itself proved less impressive. That’s likely to change as Lytro rolls out more professionally-minded models; the first camera was built to target a relatively unthreatening price point of $400, given its unknown status in the market.

Lytro goes big: In-store US and international launches in October is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.