Did anyone catch 60 Minutes just now? Bob Simon—who always seems to get the really interesting international assignments—was invited to go along on a polar bear expedition at the top of the world. What he saw there was amazing and…robotic? More »
You know those scanners that peep your naughty bits at the airport? Well, a team of researchers have been working on a handheld camera that sports the same technology, and while they’re touting its future impact on stuff like cancer detection and aerospace engineering, we can’t help but squirm thinking about its Peeping-Tom potential. The camera currently takes 30 images per second by transmitting millimeter and microwaves to a “collector” on the other side of a subject, and then sends them to a laptop for real-time inspection. Aside from being able to see straight through your BVDs, it can also be used to detect defects in spacecraft insulation, find termites lurking in the walls of your apartment, and help in the diagnosis of skin disease. The camera’s creators are working on a smaller, one-sided version of the device that could have mass-market appeal — we just hope this thing stays in R&D long enough for us to get our bikini bodies back. Check out a video of its G-rated abilities after the break.
Handheld millimeter / microwave camera to see through walls, your underpants (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Mar 2011 11:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The iPad 2's camera shoots at less than one megapixel. Jon Snyder/Wired.com
It seems impossible for Apple to put a decent camera into anything but the iPhone, and despite many hopes, both cameras in the iPad 2 are about as rudimentary as you could get without having to load a roll of film in there.
In fact, the iPad 2’s camera has more in common with the low-res camera in the iPod Touch than it does to the rather excellent one in the iPhone 4.
The specs for the iPad’s rear-facing camera only lists one number: 720p. That should mean 1280 x 720 pixels, which gives a megapixel figure of 0.92, clearly useless for stills.
However, flip over to the iPod Touch camera specs and we see the following: “HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio; still photos (960 x 720) with back camera.” Yes, the Touch shoots stills at an even lower resolution than video, most likely because the wide-screen movie format is squared-off to shoot stills. The stills it produces are just shy of 0.7 megapixels, or about the same resolution as an early 1990s-era digital camera.
It’s extremely likely that the iPad 2 and the iPod Touch share the exact same camera (although we won’t know for sure until iFixit tears one open to see). It seems that it will be fine for movies, and bad for photos.
Then again, with the camera connection kit you can always just import images from a real camera. And for taking notes, snapping menus or grabbing pictures before grunging them up and sending them off to Instagram, it’ll do the trick.
Still, for a device that costs a minimum of $500, it would be nice to have a better image sensor, rather than these bottom-of-the-barrel ones Apple insists on using. Will we ever get one? It’s starting to look rather doubtful.
iPad 2 camera [Apple]
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Flip’s new Video Action Tripod lets you attach your camera to almost anything. The clever fold-out design, combined with velcro straps, keeps the camera-mount steady whether you attach to your helmet or your handlebars. And best of all, it uses a standard tripod-screw, so you don’t even need to have a Flip camera to use it.
The tripod folds out from a compact package and acts as a regular, mini three-legged stand. Add the included, adjustable straps and it can be clamped onto pretty much anything you can wrap those straps around. Once in place, you can adjust the angle of the head and lock it onto place with a thumbscrew.
The only thing I’d like to add would be some kind of safety strap. The Action Tripod looks like it will remain firmly strapped to whatever you have lashed it to, but tripod screws have a way of working themselves loose, especially when shaking and vibrating.
The Video Action Tripod is available now, for $25.
Video Action Tripod product page [Flip. Thanks, Sarah!]
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Pentax’s Optio S1 is good-looki g and pocket-friendly
Pentax’s humdrum Optio S1 has the good fortune to be announced on a day when no other cameras are on the news radar. It is also very pocketable, very cute looking, and has one cool little feature that makes it worth a look.
The specs: 14 megapixels, a 2.7 inch LCD, a 5x zoom (28-140mm equivalent), video capture at 720p, blink-detection and sensor-shift stabilization.
The cuteness: It comes in a few colors (including a rather hideous turquoise), but the real cuteness is in its simple styling. The smooth-edged, boxy design reminds me of an old 1990s Konica 25mm compact I owned, a fantastic — and tiny — camera at the time. The S1 is a camera you can slip into your pocket and forget.
And the cool feature? You can trigger the camera with an infra-red remote. You have to buy it separately, and it would be better if camera makers would just put a threaded hole into the shutter release like they did with film cameras, but a remote is a pretty handy thing to have around.
The S1 will be available this month, for $200.
Pentax Optio S1 product page [Pentax]
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The Olympus SZ-30MR can capture two images or videos at once
Olympus’ new SZ-30MR is pitched as a “super-zoom” camera, and with its 24x optical zoom (25-600mm equivalent) it certainly qualifies. But despite fitting such a big lens into a small body, the zoom is not the most interesting part of the camera. That award goes to the “Multi-Recording” function.
With the SZ-30MR, you can capture two things at once. Thanks to some computer wizardry inside the TruePic III+ image processor, the camera can spit out two simultaneous streams from the same sensor. Thus you can shoot a full-resolution still whilst recording an HD movie, or shoot two movies together — the example posits shooting a wide-shot and a close-up at the same time. This of course relies on a digital zoom, but as you are only taking a 1080p stream from a 16MP sensor (1080p = 1920 x 1080 = just over 2MP) then you don’t lose much.
There are some more goodies, too. You can shoot 3-D stills by just panning the camera, and the computer brain grabs the second shot automatically and combines it with the first to make a 3-D image. You can also shoot at up to ISO 6400, and the dual-mode (sensor and lens shifting) image stabilization takes some of the shake out of that 600mm zoom.
The only thing missing is a decent maximum aperture (it’s just ƒ3 at the wide end) and RAW capture. Otherwise this isn’t a bad bet for $400. Available April.
Olympus SZ-30MR product page [Olympus]
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The world looks different upside down…and it’s not always just that it looks upside down. Things look…different…sometimes even weightless. And 86 photos from this week’s Shooting Challenge celebrate that phenomenon, without the head rush. More »
The Sweet 35 is the first Lensbaby to have an adjustable aperture diaphragm
Lensbabies lenses are just about the most fun you can have with your camera with your clothes on. Right up until you come to change the aperture, that is. The new Sweet 35 optic drops into your existing Lensbaby and adds a proper, adjustable diaphragm to the distortion-mongering lens.
Lensbaby lenses are low-fi optics which creatively blur all but a sharp sweet-spot of your photo. They do this with a pivoting front element which can be twisted around by hand, moving that sweet-spot to anywhere in the frame. The effect is unpredictable, analog and fun. I have a few, and I love them.
But to change the aperture you need to dig out a little case containing rubbery, magnetic rings. You then use a magnetic tool to remove the ring from the lens and replace it with one of a different diameter. It is, in short, a real pain. And because the aperture affects not just exposure and depth-of-field but also the size of the sweet-spot, you would — ideally — want to change the aperture often.
The Sweet 35 comes to the rescue. Like other Lensbaby optics, it drops into the Composer, Scout, Muse, and Control Freak lens bodies. Unlike other optics, it has a manual aperture dial which controls the 12-blade diaphragm, from ƒ2.5-ƒ22. The lens is a four element-design and
has, as you may have guessed, a 35mm focal length.
Sweet 35 product page [Lensbaby]
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The biggest feature of Photojojo’s Ring Flash Adapter is its price. At just $40, it costs less than many home-made solutions.
Like any other adapter, the Photojojo RFA uses the light from the flashgun you already own to provide illuminations. This light fires into the plastic interior and is channeled into a loop around your lens. Thusly redirected, the light now projects evenly onto your subject, giving the tell-tale ring-flash look.
And what is that look? The point of a ring-flash is to give even illumination. Because light comes from every point around the lens, shadows cast from one side are filled by light from the other, giving a flat effect with kind of shadow “halo” behind your subject. It is really meant for macro work, but gives some great effects for all kinds of photos.
A ring-flash adapter will succeed or fail depending on its efficiency. A real — and expensive — ring-flash has its own lights and offers the best, most even coverage. As an RFA uses light being pumped in from the side, it has to hold onto as much as it can as it redirects it. Looking at the example shots on Photojojo’s site tells us that this cheap adapter gives us a somewhat uneven result, somewhere between the harshness of a bare, on-camera strobe and a more expensive adapter. It also has a chunk missing between the 11 and 1 o’clock positions, which adds a shadow to the top of the picture.
Still, it’s $40, and at that price you can forgive almost anything. It’s also light, at just 1.5 pounds (700 grams). That’s not as light as the 18 ounce (500 grams) Orbis RFA, but then, it’s $160 less.
The Ring Flash Adapter [Photojojo. Thanks, Jen!]
Photos: Photojojo
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Giant and Midget by Ryuji Nakamura
Ryuji Nakamura decided that he’d turn himself into a giant. A virtual giant. With some paper, a sharp blade and a few minutes of careful cutting and folding, Nakamura came up with this webcam covering house, which makes any video conferencer look as if they are a huge monster, peering one-eyed through the window of a tiny home.
Nakamura’s model comes complete with a minuscule dining suite of table and chairs, and was built for the DesignEast exhibition at the end of last year. What I like best about the piece, called Midget and Giant, is that the outside is as carefully made as the inside. You can’t see the overlapping roof or any of the upper floor from the webcam, but they are there, cutely propped atop an old iMac.
While you could just snap yourself as a giant and forget about it, there may be more practical uses, too. I imagine a miniature replica of the office to use when chatting to my editor, Dylan Tweney, via Skype, or a virtual cocktail bar to make me look more cosmopolitan when I send pictures to dating sites. It seems foolproof, except for one thing. I’ll have to explain why I have grown so huge. Dylan should be easy to fool — I’ll just tell him I’m testing out a new shrinking machine and it went wrong. The dating site? Well, that could be a little trickier.
Giant and Midget [Ryuji Nakamura via Unplggd]
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