Hasta La Gadget!

Apart from the crazy pixel count, the NEX7 is hot, hot, hot

Oh, Sony, what are you doing? Didn’t you get the memo that the megapixel race is over? What? We should have sent it on a MemoryStick? Whatever.

The NEX-series of camera is Sony’s equivalent of Micro Four Thirds — large sensor (in this case APS-C sized) in tiny, mirrorless bodies. The previous top of the heap was the NEX5, with a sensible 14.2MP allowing the pixels some space to breathe.

But after such a smart move, Sony is up to its old tricks, and has squeezed a ridiculous 24.3MP onto that sensor, making it much more crowded. It still manages to go up to ISO 16,000, though.

Other than this, the camera sounds amazing. Despite such a diminutive body, it manages to pack in a hotshoe, a pop-up flash and a pair of nice chunky command dials onto the top plate, and still finds room for a 2.4 million dot OLED electronic viewfinder. This is the highest resolution finder ever in a compact. To put that number into perspective, the average hi-res LCD has “just” 900,000 dots. This more than doubles that, and shrinks them down to viewfinder size. Clearly Sony is getting very good at putting lots of pixels onto tiny chips.

The NEX7 also has a flip-out rear screen, shoots 1080p video and can be easily lost down the back of the couch.

Finally, there’s rather excellent news for anyone who hates shutter lag. Sony has put in an electronic “first curtain” shutter. Normally on a live-view camera, the shutter needs to be closed before it can fire and take the picture. No longer. Sony says that this cuts the shutter lag from 100ms to a startlingly good 20ms.

This doesn’t come cheap, though. The body will be $1,200 on its own, and if you opt for the 18-55mm lens, you can have both for $1,400. Available November.

NEX7 press release [Sony]

See Also:

• Pentax 645D: 40 Megapixels, $10000
• Sony Squeezes 16.4 Megapixels onto Camera-Phone Chip
• Sony's New Compact Mirrorless Camera, the NEX-C3
• Sony NEX Camcorder Revealed: SLR Sensor in $2000 Package

It might look the same as the P7000, but the new P7100 actually works properly

Nikon’s new Coolpix P7100 is an update to, you guessed it, the P7100. It’s not a big update, feature-wise, but the bits that Nikon has added are essential. If the P7000 was Nikon’s beta attempt to copy the Canon G-series cameras, the P7100 is the proper v1.0

The P7000 was known as slow and buggy. Poor response times and oddly behaving menus were the problems, and Nikon says it has fixed them. Here’s the sentence from Nikon PR “Enhanced high speed performance, quick response, a new user interface and HD movie recording.”

New: A flip-out LCD

The other main differences are the pop-out, rotating LCD on the back (still the same 921,000-dot model as before, only you can now move it) and a new command dial on the front, which will be good news for anyone who is used to a Nikon SLR.

Otherwise, things remain much the same. The same 10.1 MP sensor, the same maximum video resolution of 720p, and the same optical viewfinder. But these features were always good, so we’re glad Nikon let them be.

The P7100 will ship in September, for $500.

Coolpix P7100 product page [Nikon. Thanks, Geoff!]

See Also:

• Nikon's Stages Compact Comeback with Flash-Friendly P7000
• Canon G12: G-Series Regains High-Def Video at Last

Shadows. They’re our dark doppelgängers tracking our every step. They’re also excellent subjects for your photographs from last week’s Shooting Challenge. More »

A (non-Kodak) film canister. Photo Brian Turner / Flickr

If you have a hankering to take a teeny tiny packed lunch along with you, and you happen to have some old film canisters around the house, then Kodak has good news. While the plastic tubs aren’t FDA approved for food, Kodak reckons that they’re safe enough, despite not going so far as to actually recommend the practice.

After having made roughly 10 gazillion of the handy little pots over the years, Kodak knows a thing or two about them. The bodies of these canisters are made from high density polyethylene (HDPE), used in kitchen utensils amongst other things, and the lids are LDPE (guess what that stands for), which is also commonplace.

So, while kids might choke on the lids, human adults should be fine if they choose to store and carry food inside the watertight containers. There are no toxic or chemical residues from the film that was once therein, and the containers are “exceptionally clean” upon manufacture.

Which leaves us with one problem. What to put in there? Flakey Maldon salt is one idea, and a lollipop might fit in if you cut off its neck. You could even store a few cherry tomatoes inside for an impromptu (and minuscule) salad. After that, though, I’m stumped. Film-canister picnic ideas in the comments, please.

35mm Film Containers [Kodak via PetaPixel]

See Also:

• USB Film Rolls Hold Thousands of Photos

I’m watching you…

I’m watching you…

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Now you too can track down Sand People and hunt the horizon for lonely, brown-robed old Jedis with Sony’s new NEX binoculars. The binos, named DEV3 and DEV5, pack a CMOS sensor, two lenses and two electronic eyepieces instead of the usual light-folding optical prism design. Because of this all-electronic pipeline, you can also snap stills, along with 2-D and 3-D video.

Both models have constant AF to follow the subject, and both have image stabilization, while the DEV5 has GPS to geotag your photos and videos.

When it comes to zooming, things get a little confusing. Both have optical zooms of 10x, and while the DEV3 stops there, the DEV5 will add in a digital zoom to boost the max to 20x. If you want to record 3-D, then the maximum magnification drops to 5.4x.

These are specialist tools to be sure, and the prices reflect this. The binoculars will go on sale in November, at $1,400 and $2,000 for the DEV3 and DEV5 respectively, so you might seriously consider separate cameras and binoculars. And if you go for manual binoculars, you won;t have to deal with the three0hour battery life while recording.

Sony DEV3 and DEV5 Binoculars Capture Stills and HD Video [Press release / Photography Bay]