The full-frame camera has been synonymous with the most high-end DSLRs—the biggest, the priciest. Not anymore. A new breed of camera that’s light on its feet but packs the best image quality outside of pro-grade gear is here, and it starts with Sony’s new A7 series
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If you—or the people you take photographs of—always look bad in images, then help is at hand. Professional portrait photographer Peter Hurley suggests you squinch next time you have your picture taken.
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Samsung’s Android-powered interchangeable-lens camera is clearly positioned as a niche device, due in no small part to its sky-high $1,600 body-only price tag, but deep-pocketed early adopters can pick up a Galaxy NX at US retailers beginning today. The 20.3-megapixel ILC has a 1.6GHz quad-core chipset and Jelly Bean under the hood, so you can install thousands of applications for editing, storing and sharing images captured through the 16-55mm kit lens. We can’t say we’ll be queueing for the opportunity to pick one up, though — while it’s a fine camera, the NX is significantly overpriced, especially considering that you’ll soon be able to take home a full-frame Sony Alpha 7 for just a few hundred dollars more.
As people find more creative uses for GoPro cameras, the device’s biggest drawback—paltry battery life—becomes more and more glaring. Thankfully, there is now a device that lets you use Canon DSLR batteries to give your GoPro a whole lot of extra juice.
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Lytro delivers a new 3D living picture experience across mobile devices, desktop PCs and 3D-capable TVs. Extols its camera as the first that allows photographers to create a 3D image with a single exposure.
Android has come a long way as a platform in the last couple of years, but one drawback of the phones is that for the most part their cameras lag behind
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Nokia may be the first to have delivered RAW photography in a smartphone, but there’s evidence to suggest that Google isn’t too far behind. A month-old batch of code, recently spotted by app developer Josh Brown, reveals that work has been underway on a new Android camera API that could allow smartphones to store uncompressed images alongside JPEG ones, drastically increasing the amount of correction and manipulation that can be accomplished after an image has been captured.
A second snippet from the API suggests that Android may get some level of stock support for modular or external cameras, perhaps like Sony’s QX10 and QX100, although the meaning of the words is slightly ambiguous:
The camera device is removable and has been disconnected from the Android device, or the camera service has shut down the connection due to a higher-priority access request for the camera device.
Ars Technica has pointed out some other potential changes that are buried in the documentation, and rightly suggests that any imaging-related improvements would be a good thing for Android right now. Even with Sony’s Xperia Z1, which contains one of the most powerful sensors currently found in an Android phone, it’s the software that holds things back more than anything else, so extra features in the underlying OS could provide manufacturers with just the nudge they need.
Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Mobile, Google
Via: Ars Technica
Source: Google Git, Josh Brown (Google+)
Lomography has just launched holiday-inspired versions of its popular La Sardina and Diana F+ film cameras. Dressed up in Scandinavian-style patterns these two cameras are a fun way to capture some great analog holiday shots.
See those gorgeous twins up there? The ones with retro-styled magnesium bodies and massively megapixeled sensors? Known as the Alpha 7 and Alpha 7R, they’re the latest objects of desire from Sony’s imaging wizards, and I got to spend a few days shooting with both of them.
Sony’s betting big on its mirrorless camera business. The company helped to grow the market for these compact Interchangeable Lens Cameras (ILCs), releasing regular (and significant) NEX updates since their introduction a few years back. To date, those compact models have been limited to APS-C sensors — image quality was quite good, but the camera maker recently began pushing the limits, sprinkling much bigger, full-frame sensors elsewhere into its lineup. Now, it’s finally time to meet Sony’s new full-frame ILCs. But are they worthy of our affection, particularly when you consider that the 24.3-megapixel A7 will cost $1,700 and the 36.4-megapixel 7R will go for $2,300 (both prices for the bodies only) when they hit stores next month? Read on to find out.
Samsung’s flagship interchangeable-lens camera, the NX300, is by far the company’s most impressive shooter to date. It offers stellar hybrid-autofocus capabilities, excellent image quality and integrated WiFi, and it retails for a hair over $550. For all intents and purposes, it’s a very competitive option, if not one of the best deals on the market today. It’s frustrating, then, that Samsung opted to price the Galaxy NX — an Android-powered camera based on the NX300 — at an obscene $1,700, lens included. If you’re not a deep-pocketed early adopter, it’s absolutely a dealbreaker. But I still enjoyed my two-week test with the Galaxy NX, and if you manage to overlook the MSRP, you might just fall in love.%Gallery-slideshow121859%
Source: Full-resolution sample images
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