Hasta La Gadget!

No matter how fast that piece of Jell-O landed on the floor, you’ll be able to review the journey in all its slow motion glory with the newly announced Phantom v1610 and v1210 cameras. Vision Research is calling the latest entries in the Phantom line the “world’s fastest one megapixel digital high-speed cameras.” The v1210 is capable of capturing 12,000 fps to 16,000 fps, with its higher end buddy the v1610 capturing between 650,000 fps and one million fps, if you sacrifice resolution. Shooting 1280 x 800 widescreen images (at regular speed), the v1210 boasts 12GB, 24GB, or 48GB of segmented memory, while the v1610 can hold 24GB, 48GB, or 96GB of segmented memory. Other features include an image-based auto-trigger, ethernet port, SMPTE & IRIG timecode, genlock, 28 micron pixel size, 12-bit depth pixel depth standard, and an HD-SDI output. No word on pricing, but if you have a budget like NFL Films, let the epic sports montages and Truffle Shuffling commence. Check out some slow motion footage captured on the Phantom HD Gold after the break.

Update: pricing starts around a cool $100,000.

Continue reading Vision Research’s Phantom v1210 and v1610 do slow motion in style (video)

Vision Research’s Phantom v1210 and v1610 do slow motion in style (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Aug 2011 22:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Using DSLR Controller, Android owners can direct their phones to take photos of posters of hot girls on dorm-room walls

DSLR Controller by developer Chainfire is a pretty good example of the difference between iOS and Android.

To control a camera with an iPhone, you need to first tether the camera to a computer or use some funky, limited BlueTooth triggering. With Android, you just plug in a USB cable.

Chainfire’s Android app does just that, allowing you to stream a live view (at about 15 fps) to a phone or tablet, and control the camera directly. And you can control almost everything, from exposure compensation (swipe to adjust) to focus point (yes, you can touch-to-focus on your SLR, just like the iPhone), toggle a histogram and of course take a photo. And if only Android had Instagram, you could process and send you photos on their way. Here it is in action:

To use it, you’ll need an Android phone or tablet with with USB host support. Currently this means the Samsung Galaxy S2 phone, or pretty much and Android tablet running Honeycomb. You’ll also need one of the following Canon SLRs: 600D, 550D, 60D, 50D, 7D, 5D MkII, or 1D MkIV.

Also unlike anything on iOs, the app is available to the public for sale in its beta form, due to popular demand. It currently costs €6 ($8.50) in the Android Market.

DSLR Controller [Android Market via PetePixel]

See Also:

• DSLR Camera Remote HD for iPad
• USB Knob Adds Remote Focus-Pulling to Canon SLRs
• DIY IR SLR Trigger Is Simple, Easy, Cheap
• GPS Bluetooth Dongle Controls SLRs with iPhone

Vivitar’s new camcorder costs $60, and shoots underwater. What more do I need to say?

Vivitar’s latest addition to the groaning shelves of adequate cameras is the 690 HD, a small and very cheap waterproof camcorder.

At $60, you’re probably not expecting much in the way of features, and Vivitar doesn’t disappoint. That’s not to say the camera is bad — just stripped down to the bare basics. There’s no auto-focus, no HDMI-out and no optical zoom, but everything important is included.

Video is motion-JPEG in an AVI wrapper, recoded at 720 x 1280 and 25fps. It is recorded onto an SD card and powered by its own rechargeable lithium battery. There’s a big LED lamp around the lens for shooting in the murky depths, and a 2-inch LCD screen to view your masterpieces. You can also hook the camera directly to a TV via an AV cable.

Not bad, right? And remember, nobody will care about the fixed focus or anything else, because all of your movies will be shot underwater. Up to ten feet under, to be precise.

As I said, the 690 HD is just $60. At that price, its hard to argue against grabbing one for your vacation. Available now, in a rainbow of color choices.

Vivitar 690 HD product page [Vivitar. Thanks, Kelly!]

See Also:

• Underwater Camera Is Cheap Enough to Drown
• Kodak Underwater Sports-Cam Almost Cheap as a Disposable
• Agfa Rises From the Depths with Cheap Underwater Camera
• Liquid Image Underwater Camera Goggles: Upskirt Action for the …

Forget about those faux tilt-shift effects. When a special effect is baked into almost every consumer digicam out there, it has clearly donned a leather jacket and a pair of swimming trunks, hopped onto some waterskis and jumped over a shark.

Instead, why not try the real thing? A proper, architectural tilt-shift lens is a precision-engineered and expensive piece of gear, but Photojojo’s Tilt-Shift Camera has a real shifting lens, and costs just $150.

Technically, it should be called the Tilt Camera as it lacks the “shift” part which lets you moves the lens up and down like you would slide the two sides of an Oreo over the melted filling within. This lets the photographer correct converging verticals, which you probably don’t care about anyway.

Moving the angle of the lens moves the angle of the focal plane, which is usually parallel to the “film” plane. Thus you can make people and buildings look tiny, or you could make the whole top of your dinner table be in sharp focus, from end to end.

You pictures are recorded onto a 5MP sensor, shutter speeds run from 1/4 to 1/3000 sec, and you can even shoot tilt-shift video at 640 x 480 pixels. Round back there’s a 2.4-inch LCD, up top you’ll find a flash, and you can also mess with your photos using some built in Instagrammatical effects.

It looks like a lot of fun, and the resulting images seem to make much more convincing miniatures than software-based filters. The Tilt-Shift Camera is available now.

Tilt-Shift Camera [Photojojo]

See Also:

• Tilt-Shift Comes to the iPhone
• Tilt-Shift Van Gogh
• How to: Miniaturize a Scene
• Cheap Digicam Has Built-In Tilting Lens
• Plungercam: DIY Tilt-Shift Lens
• Lensbaby Tilt Transformer Marries Nikon Lenses to Micro Four …

This is what happens when you let someone like me choose colors

Given that Leica’s D-Lux 5 is little more than an overpriced re-badging of the Panasonic LX5, there might actually be a market for Colorware’s re-painted version. If somebody is willing to pay an extra $370 just to get Leica’s red-dot logo on their camera, surely they’d also be dumb enough to pay another $400 to have the thing resprayed?

The premium point-and-shoot will go from dull black to pretty much any combination of nausea-inducing colors you like. The explosion in a paint factory you see above was arrived at using the randomizing “Brainstorm” button on the Colorware site. I dare you to come up with something worse.

Don’t have a lovely Leica that you’d be willing to sacrifice? Colorware will charge you a mere $1,200 and supply the camera, too. That’s not so bad. At least Colorware isn’t charging a markup on top.

So go ahead and get customizing. And if you do come up with something more hideous than the monstrosity at the top of this post, then attach it to an e-mail and send it to someone you hate. Whatever you do, don’t send it to me. Please. I beg you.

Colorware Leica D-Lux 5 product page [Colorware via Uncrate]

See Also:

• Colorware Offers MacBook Air Paint Jobs
• Custom MatteBook Pro: $6000
• IPhone: Now Available in Black. Kinda