Hasta La Gadget!

The handsome EPL3 has the same sensor and internals as the top-of-the-line EP3

In addition to the new top-end EP3, Olympus has also announced a pair of smaller Micro Four Thirds cameras. These are more like Sony’s NEX range, or the new Panasonic GF3 than their big brother, but they’re still pretty capable cameras.

First is the EPL3, and update to the EPL2. It has a new tilting three-inch, 460,000-dot LCD in a slimline metal body. It also sports the same new 12.3MP sensor and processor found in the EP3, which means 1080i video capture and low-light shooting at ISO 12,800.

The Pen Lite also has the same sensor, in an even tinier package

Next up is the EPM1, or Pen Lite. This tiny thing will slide into your pocket, and yet still has the same sensitive sensor and circuitry as the other cameras. And of course it will work with any Micro Four Thirds lens available.

It’s good to see Olympus adding to its range with these smaller, simpler cameras, instead of going the Panasonic route and just forgetting about the enthusiast and pro users and concentrating instead on the lower end.

Unlike the EP3, the prices and availability of the EPL3 and the Pen Lite have yet to be announced.

Pen Lit and EPL3 press release [Olympus]

Pen System product page [Olympus]

See Also:

• Olympus Pen EP-2, Now in Retro-Tastic Silver
• New Olympus Pen Adds Flash, Loses Good Looks
• Olympus Tweaks 'Pen Lite' With Faster, Quieter Lens, Higher ISO …

Ad agency parasites now have even more control over poor photographers with Capture Pilot

Normally I’d complain about an iOS camera triggering app which requires a computer as well as a camera to make it work, but when that camera is loaded with the Phase One back, which pumps out 80MP images, you’re going to need somewhere bigger than the iPad to put them.

The app is Phase One’s Capture Pilot with Camera Control, and it works in tandem with Capture One Pro 6 on your computer. In its free form, the app lets you view, tag and rate images as they are snapped in-studio. This feature is aimed less at the photographer and more at those people who bother him as he tries to go about his work.

Imagine: You’re taking meticulously set-up photos of, say, the hot new cellphone, and the ad agency sends someone to look over your shoulder. Only now, instead of having to sit at your computer, they can lounge around on your couch with their iPad and order you around from there. Or worse still, thanks to the feature that allows the app to be used from “remote locations,” the parasite can sit in the coffee shop across the street and have their lackey call you and direct the shoot.

Once these morons have left for the day and gone for some egg-white sushi, or whatever the hell it is they eat, you can make a $15 in-app purchase and gain full remote access over your camera. You can control exposure settings and see on-screen readouts for ISO sensitivity, exposure mode, shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation, and so on. You can also trip the shutter.

And this will work with pretty much any Canon or Nikon SLR, along with (of course) Phase One gear, and also Leaf and Mamiya cameras.

Capture One 6 Pro costs $400. Capture Pilot with Camera Control is free, plus $15 to get the features you’re actually interested in.

Capture Pilot [Phase One. Thanks, Kathy!]

Capture One Pro 6 [Phase One]

See Also:

• What Would You Do With 80 Million Pixels?
• DSLR Camera Remote HD for iPad
• Hands-On With DSLR Remote for iPhone

If you could fly, life would look a lot like these 71 photos from this week’s Shooting Challenge. Well, we’re pretty sure, at least. No one on staff can actually fly to fact-check that point. More »

The utilitarian AMP II camera can capture a huge 20 stops of dynamic range

Great news, at least for filmmakers who like the candy-colored, eye-searing effects of HDR photography. The AMP II is a triple-sensor camera which will shoot high dynamic range video in real time.

In principle, the AMP II works like a high-tech Technicolor rig. The light coming through the lens is split into three beams and each is sent to a different image sensor. These sensors record highlights, mid-tones and shadows, and the three outputs are combined to make an HDR image. This is then “tone-mapped” to shrink the HDR data into an range that can be displayed on screen. It is this tone-mapping stage where the horribly bright colors can be introduced.

The prototype AMP records up to 17 stops of dynamic range, and the new AMP II 20 stops. This compares to 9 stops for a typical digital SLR sensor. The images are also recorded in full-resolution RAW format and processed in real-time, so you could shoot live TV in HDR if you wanted to (the signal is output through HDMI). These RAW streams can also be accessed separately for post-production tweaking.

The camera is due to be ready for commercial use in at the end of summer 2011, but you won’t be able to buy one. These boxy cameras are more like advanced experiments than finished products, but it’s possible that AMP’s patented tech could be licensed to other manufacturers. Imagine a super-high-res RED camera with AMP tech inside. Also, the name RED AMP is plain awesome.

AMP FAQ [AMP via Photography Bay and PetaPixel]

See Also:

• Creepy HDR Video Shot with Two DSLRs
• New Gigapan Shoots HDR Images, Works with Bigger Cameras
• How To: HDR Photography
• Review: Sony HD Camcorder is a Gift From the Video Gods

Ren Ng, the founder of Lytro, is passionate about light field photography and making the technology available to consumers. Photo: Christina Bonnington/Wired.com

After buying his first digital camera, Ren Ng tried to snap a shot of a family friend’s vivacious 5-year-old daughter. Like many young, active children, it was incredibly difficult to focus the image properly and capture her fleeting smile in just the right way.

And then it came to him — what if you could take a picture, and then adjust the focus later?

That’s the story behind Ng’s startup Lytro and its revolutionary plenoptic camera, which lets users adjust the focus of a photograph after the fact thanks to an array of micro-lenses over the camera’s sensor. The result is a remarkable “living picture” (an example of which is included below. You can click around to change the focus of the image).

“There’s something about light field photography that’s just magical,” Ng says. “It very much is photography as we’ve known it. It’s what we’ve always seen through cameras — we just had to fix it. We’ve had these kind of pictures floating on our retinas, for as long as we’ve been humans.”

The implications for light field technology are very broad; they’re not just limited to consumer photography and picture taking. There are medical and scientific applications, for instance with microscopy, which is currently being studied at Stanford. It could also be used in industrial settings. “Anywhere that you need to take a picture and you have a lens in front of a sensor, you can do new things,” Ng says. Of course, 31-year-old Ng loves how light field photographs can capture a bigger picture of an event than conventional cameras. Not in the size sense; in the informational sense.

Ng was doing theoretical research at Stanford University in light fields at the time he tried to photograph his friend’s daughter. After sitting in on a research meeting discussing the design of a light field camera (which was formerly composed of an array of about a hundred digital cameras attached to a supercomputer when the technology was first introduced in the 90s), he thought to himself, “That sounds really cool, but that’s not going to be very practical.”

So Ng was prompted to switch his emphasis to cameras, specifically how he could shrink light field technology down into a commercial-size package. He spent time studying optics and working with electrical and mechanical engineering professors to put the camera together, since as a computer science student, he didn’t have that training.

After getting his Ph.D. (and receiving honors like the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award in the process), Ng set out to put his research to use by starting a company that would produce light field cameras that everyone could enjoy. Four years later, Ng’s solo endeavor has expanded to over 45 employees, and his “competitively priced” camera will be available to consumers later this year.

Ng explains that these light field photographs are the same as what we had in the past, but now they have a bit more life, and this opens up all new kinds of creative avenues. The picture can tell a story.

“I just love taking pictures,” says Ng.

Light field cameras provide higher performance at a lower cost than could ever be possible in the past. However, details like the exact megapixel count and storage size of photographs taken with Lytro’s camera (and its exact price) are still under wraps until the product officially launches.

A Lytro camera, hidden under the furry shell of a stuffed animal shark, snaps images of guests and circus performers at the company's launch party.

“The megapixel war in conventional cameras has been a total myth,” Ng says. “It’s taking us all in the wrong direction. Once a picture goes online, you’re throwing away 95 to 98 percent of those pixels. Light fields can use all that resolution, those megapixels, harness them, and drive them into the future.”

Light field technology simplifies the hardware of a camera, since the processing is all done with advanced software. But the resulting interactive images don’t require any dedicated software. Lytro integrates HTML5, Flash and other native app technologies to create a simple, unified experience that anyone can view or work with. The company does have a Facebook app coming out soon, though.

So will we be seeing Lytro’s light field technology anywhere else soon, say in smartphones?

“Smartphone technology is very important and is directly applicable to light field technology, but as a startup, our focus at this stage is just on our own camera for now,” Ng says.

Although partnerships with existing camera or smartphone manufacturers is potentially quite a ways off, at least we can look forward to Lytro’s camera later this year.