Dec 21
Holiday family gatherings are the ripest events of year for photo-documentation. Rather than leaving the task to Aunt Edna, take those reins yourself. You can capture the finest damn pictures this family has ever seen!
Dec 13
Samsung NX200 interchangeable lens camera review
Posted in: camera, digital camera, DigitalCamera, dslr, photography, review, Reviews, samsung, Today's Chili, video
There are some cameras that we absolutely love, some we find downright disappointing and others that get the job done, albeit with mediocre results. Samsung’s digital imaging devices typically fall within that last category — they’re moderately innovative, generally affordable and often well-designed, but when it comes to image quality and performance, we’re left… underwhelmed. So, when we first had a chance to try out the CE giant’s new NX200 at IFA in Berlin, we weren’t expecting a mind-blowing imaging device.
The NX200 is Samsung’s latest entrant into the interchangeable lens (ILC) category — it’s a mirrorless model, to be more precise, and a fairly impressive one at that — at least when you glance at the spec sheet. It’s the company’s latest ILC to use an APS-C size sensor, which is the largest we’ve seen in a mirrorless cam. This sensor type implies that the NX200 may have a chance at competing with Sony’s NEX-C3, which has been our top pick in the category, and its 20.3 megapixel rating suggests that Samsung wants to be taken seriously here, with a true contender on its hands. But has Samsung delivered a winner? Jump past the break for our take.
Continue reading Samsung NX200 interchangeable lens camera review
Samsung NX200 interchangeable lens camera review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
Dec 13
How fast can your camera shoot photos? 60 frames per second? Pah. 1,000 fps? Puh-lease. What’s that? You have a Phantom camera that’ll shoot one million fps? Whatever. MIT’s new camera will shoot one trillion frames per second.
Let’s put that in some perspective. One trillion seconds is over 31,688 years. So if you shot one second of footage on this camera, and played it back at 30fps, it’d still take you over 1,000 years to watch it. That’s one boring-ass home movie.
Of course, the “camera” can’t be taken on vacation, and even if it could, there wouldn’t be enough light on even the sunniest beach to support shooting so fast. What MIT’s device (designed by Professor Ramesh Raskar and team) does is to use “femtosecond laser illumination, picosecond-accurate detectors and mathematical reconstruction techniques” to illuminate a scene and then capture the pulses of laser light. And like all good magic, the kit also uses mirrors: in this case to move the view of the camera.
Nor does the camera run for a full second. The movies are 480 frames long, and show a slice in time of just 1.71 picoseconds.
The result is a movie of an advancing wave of light. The individual frames can also be colorized to show a rainbow of wavefronts:
If your jaw isn’t on the ground right now, then shame on you. If you want to see more, you should head the team’s project page at MIT where you can see such wonders as a single pulse of light traveling the length of a soda bottle in one billionth of a second, and wavefronts rippling over still-life setups as if they were waves of water lapping at a beach.
Visualizing Photons in Motion at a Trillion Frames Per Second [MIT Camera Culture]
Nov 01
The Polaroid Dua might be the company’s first desirable product in years
Polaroid, fresh from ruining its reputation in the instant camera game, has turned its attention to flashes. And lights.
The latest product from whichever consortium currently owns the Polaroid brand name is the Digital Dua, a combo flash and LED lamp for stills and video-cameras.
The top section contains a regular auto-zooming flash, which will zoom in and out with the lens on any Nikon or Canon SLR. This flash has a guide number of 45 meters (148 feet) at ISO 100, swivel and bounce head and output can be varied down to 1/16th of full output. It works in auto mode, but also looks like a decent manual strobist’s flash.
Then we look at the front and see another panel, this time lit by three 1-watt LEDs. This is the videographers lamp, and could theoretically also be used as a modeling light for the strobe up top. It will run continuously for an hour.
The Dua also comes with a diffuser and a reflector panel, and has a built-in slave unit for remote triggering.
SLRs have been shooting both video and stills for a while now, so it was about time somebody made a light that could do both. What’s more, it’s not too expensive. The Nikon version costs around $160, and the Canon-compatible model $200. Available now.
Polaroid Announces New Digital Dua Flash [PR Newswire]
See Also:
- Polaroid Stages Comeback With Instant Printing Digicam
- Review: Polaroid PoGo Printer Spits Pics on the Quick
Nov 01
In the future, cameras may be able to focus as fast and accurately as the human eye, making photos like this a thing of the past. Photo Charlie Sorrel
Why can humans glance at a scene and focus instantly on the subject, near or far, when a camera takes — relatively — forever? That’s the same question Johannes Burge and Wilson Geisler asked themselves, before developing an algorithm to do it.
Humans and animals focus their eyes by estimating the blur in a scene, and then snapping the eye into sharp focus almost instantly. Contrast-detection AF in a camera is much slower, hunting back and forth and comparing the contrast as the lens’ focus shifts until it settles on the sharpest version.
Geisler and Burge noticed that — whatever the scene — some forms of blurriness, sharpness and detail were consistent. They then used computers to detect these elements, and found they could tell just how out-of-focus they were. Using this and the varying chromatic aberration of the lens, they can not only tell the degree of focus blur, but also its direction.
This tech could let cameras know exactly what to do to focus the image, simply by looking. No hunting, no trial and error. Just pin-sharp focus, instantly. Which could mean I no longer take blurry photographs like the one above.
Optimal defocus estimation in individual natural images [PNAS via Science Mag and PetaPixel]
See Also:
- Ren Ng Shares His Photographic Vision: Shoot Now, Focus Later …
- Lytro Camera Lets You Focus Photos After You Take Them
Oct 31
Recursion: An Instagram photo of a calendar printed from my Instagram photos. Try not to get dizzy.
Keepsy is yet another service that lets you print books and albums containing your Instagram photos, and it has just added a calendar-printing service, just in time to force all your photos of your breakfasts and pets on unwilling family members this Christmas.
However, there’s a twist. Keepsy will let you use your friends’ Instagram photographs in the calendars. Thus, you can surprise them with a calendar containing their photos as well as yours.
The service works like any other. You grant Keepsy access to your Instagram account, and then pick the pictures, choose a layout and generally while away many hours having fun. A message can be added on the back cover, and you can pick the region the recipient is in so that the holidays and dates are correct.
But what about stalkers? The folks at Keepsy have thought of that. You can only access the photos taken by people who are following you. The thinking goes that if they follow you, they’re likely enough a friend. Blake from Keepsy puts it best:
This limits the scope of givers and receivers to close friends and relatives — which is perfect for the gift scenario — but doesn’t allow, say, Justin Bieber or Snoop Dogg fans to go create celebrity fan books, or for errant creeps on the service to just highjack your photos without permission
Quite. Keepsy sent me a calendar and it’s pretty cool. The paper is more like heavy card, the calendar part is clean and non tacky-looking, and the photos are — of course — amazing. It has holes top center of each page for hanging, and is spiral bound like all calendars, ever.
A calendar will cost you $20 for 12 months, and $26 for 18 months, plus shipping (available internationally). For a truly original calendar, I suggest taking photos of kittens in fishbowls, or the local firefighters dressed only in their helmets, with their axes hiding their choppers. Classy.
Keepsy books and calendars [Keepsy. Thanks, Blake!]
See Also:
- Instagram 2 Ruins Almost Everything
- Instagram Hacks: How to Get More Out of (and Into) the Electronic …
- Instagram for iPhone, Like a Lomo-Twitter for Your Photos
- Blurb Turns Your Instagram Photos Into Real Physical Books …
Oct 31
Panasonic GFX Photos Leaked: GF1 Successor At Last
Posted in: leaks, lumix, Panasonic, rumors, Today's Chili, video
Panasonic may be on the cusp of launching a true pro-level successor to its excellent GF1, according to leaked photos.
Ever since Panasonic started watering down its GF range of Micro Four Thirds cameras after the first model, curmudgeon’s (like me) have been griping. While Panasonic chased the point-and-shoot crowd with the GF2 and GF3, people who like knobs and dials on their cameras (like me) were left considering a move over to the Olympus Pen range.
Now 17 leaked shots (since removed) at the Chinese Mobile01 forum show the GX1, which looks a lot more the GF1 than anything since. The layout of the buttons on the rear panel has changed, and the dedicated trash/DOF-preview button has been replaced by a programmable function button. Up top, the mode dial has lost the video mode, and the top plate gains an iA button for enabling Intelligent Auto. And rumors have it that the camera will have a touch screen.
There are also a pair of stereo mics, and the lens, with its motorized zoom, also looks geared towards video.
Inside, I’d expect the 12MP sensor found in all the other GF cameras to be updated, and video will likely be 1080p. We won’t have to wait long. These same rumor mongers have the product announcement date as early as November 8th.
Meet the Panasonic GX1 [MU-43]
See Also:
- A Month With the Lumix GF1, And Why I No Longer Use The Nikon …
- Hands-On With Panasonic's Leica-Lite GF1
- Panasonic Falters With Button-Light Lumix GF2
- Panasonic Announces Tiny, Feature-Lacking GF3
- Tiny Olympus Micro Four Thirds Camera Body Leaked
Oct 28
Google Plus has just added some pretty impressive editing tools. Photo Charlie Sorrel
Google Plus has added Instagram-like controls to its photo section. The service has always had basic editing, and because Google Plus shares its photo albums with Picasa any edits made there would propagate back from there.
But building them in makes things so much easier.
The new controls only work in the desktop version, and is accessed by pressing clicking the edit button when you’re in the full-screen light-box view and selecting “Creative Kit.” You are then launched into an editor which is powered by PicNik.
From here, you can crop and tweak your photos, but you can also apply Instagram-style filters, and perform some pretty powerful edits. The “Sunless Tan” tool, for example, does what it says. You use a brush to apply the tan and it somehow works out where the edges are and turns anyone into a Florida retiree.
Right now there is also a seasonal toolkit: Halloween. This lets you add blood spatter, gravestones, “Dracula Dermis” and other fun nonsense to your pictures.
The Creative Kit uses Flash to do its magic, so even if you manage to sign in to the non-mobile version of Google Plus from an iPad you can’t use it. If any readers have Flash-capable Android tablets, try it out and let us know how it goes. On the other hand, this is good enough to be a Photoshop replacement for many people, and that, combined with speed, may be scary for other sites like the neglected Flickr.
The Creative Kit is available now to Google Plus users.
Google+: Popular posts, eye-catching analytics, photo fun and… [Google Blog]
See Also:
- Everything You Need to Know About Google Plus and Photos …
- Instagram Hacks: How to Get More Out of (and Into) the Electronic …
Oct 27
Find new ways to bore your Twitter and Facebook friends with the Delen table
This table is so gorgeous that I’d want it even if it didn’t come with a camera suspended above it. The Delen Memory Table is made from solid oak, and up on that pole is a wireless time-lapse camera that can be set to snap photos at specific times or intervals.
The table then uploads the photo to your social network of choice, allowing you not just to Tweet about your breakfast, but automatically post a photograph of it.
Of course, the table has less annoying uses. You could make a stop-motion time-lapse of something you make, for example. Or you could just replace the camera with a lamp to make a workshop desk. And the table is practical, too, with two glide-out drawers — one at each end.
You cannot buy the Delen table, but if you contact its maker, David Franklin and ask him nicely, you never know.
Delen Memory Table by David Franklin [Design Milk]
See Also:
- Beautiful Table Future-Proofed With Digital DNA
- Monolithic Gaming Table. High Design With a High Price
- 'Table Connect' Turns iPhone into (Fake) Big-Ass Table
Oct 27
It’s round. It’s a flash. It’s RoundFlash!
The RoundFlash is — not surprisingly — a round flash. To be more specific, it’s a tent-like collapsible ring-flash adapter that also works somewhat like a softbox. The trouble is, the results aren’t really what you’d expect from either.
A ring flash is a donut of light that sits around the camera’s lens. Because the light comes from all directions, the shadows cancel each other out. Almost: One of the signs of a ring flash is a dark halo of shadow around the edge of the subject.
A softbox works by making the light much bigger, thus softening the shadows it casts and flattering the subject.
The RoundFlash kind of does both, but ends up looking a lot like a regular on-camera flash with a diffuser. A few of the sample shots are impressive, though, and if you regard this as whole new kind of light modifier then you’re likely to have some fun.
The unit weighs just 227 grams, or 8 ounces, and folds out from a pocket-sized pouch into a 44cm (17-inch) diameter cylinder. It’s held taught by removable rods, like a tent, and is light enough to just slip over the lens and flash and hang there via its pentagram-shaped web of shock cords.
I’d certainly play around with one. Or rather, I’d certainly consider making my own, as the RoundFlash costs $160. Available now.
RoundFlash product page [RoundFlash via PetaPixel]
See Also:
- Hands-On With The Orbis Ring Flash Adapter
- Frio Coldshoe Is a Hot, Handy Holder for Strobists
- $40 Ring-Flash Adapter Cheaper Than Home-Made
Who's in charge here?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.