World’s Smallest DSLR Measures Just One-Inch

If I popped open a Christmas Cracker and this tiny little camera-kit dropped out instead of the usual crappy plastic novelty, I’d be a very happy boy. As the Mini Model Camera actually costs $28, more than a whole box of the traditional exploding British tubes, this is unlikely. That hasn’t stopped me from writing to Santa about it, though.

The teeny SLR is made to 1/6th scale and the body measures just one inch by one half inch. Yes, the body: this miniature camera actually comes with three interchangeable lenses, complete with lens-hoods and, on the telephoto, a little tripod mounting-ring in case things get a little to heavy.

The knobs and dials don’t actually move, but they are all represented in Oompa-Loompa-sized detail (only with less orange). The brand isn’t specified but the models are clearly based on Canon gear, with the monster-sized telephoto lens in Canon’s signature beige colorway.

Yes, it’s just a trinket and no, it won’t actually shoot pictures, but it is cute as hell, and could also double as a marker in that other Christmas family-favorite, the game of Monopoly. It would certainly be better than that stupid old boot, or worse, the clothes-iron that I always seem to end up with.

$28, available now in time for my Christmas gift.

Mini Model Camera [Photojojo]


Ricoh outs rather rugged, water-resistant G700 point and shoot

Ricoh’s released a new point and shoot, the G700. This little camera’s water and dust resistant, it will supposedly withstand a drop of up to 2 meters, and its resistant to chemicals such as ethanol and hypochlorous acid, so shooting pics of the chemically-driven, zombie-infested apocalypse shouldn’t be much of a challenge. Other than that, you’ve got a 12.1 megapixel sensor, a 5x optical wide-angle zoom lens, a 3-inch color LCD, and password protection. You know, so the zombies can check out your shots! This baby will be released on September 10th in Japan, but as of yet, there’s no word on pricing or a US release.

Ricoh outs rather rugged, water-resistant G700 point and shoot originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fong iPhone 4 Tripod Adapter as Ugly as it is Practical

Gary Fong, the company behind those plastic-cup-like attachments you see atop many a photojournalist’s flashguns, has come up with an iPhone 4 tripod mount. The plastic adapter looks like it was given roughly a minute’s thought before a back-of-the-napkin sketch was put into production.

Thanks to the squared-off shape of the iPhone 4, almost no custom-shaping is needed to make a snug-fitting holder. Thus, Fong’s adapter is little more than a C-shaped plastic strip with a metal tripod-bush in the base. That is it, and it’s just the kind of thing that you’d make were you scratching around the junk-drawer for a home-made solution.

But despite its basic design and almost complete lack of fancifying, it could be the most practical iPhone tripod mount we’ve seen. There is no need for suction cups, permanently-attached stick-on adapters or even damage-inviting dock-connectors. You simply slip the iPhone in when you need to take a steady picture. Easy. The adapter should be live on the Fong site on Friday September 3rd for $20.

One final thing: The product pictures raise one really big question. Just where on Earth did Gary Fong get ahold of a white iPhone 4?

Fong website [Gary Fong. Thanks, Zach!]

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Canon Creates 120-Megapixel Camera Sensor

In what’s a sure sign that the megapixel race in cameras is out of control, Canon has announced that it has developed a 120-megapixel image sensor.

That’s 13,280 x 9,184 pixels packed into a rectangle about 29 millimeters x 20 millimeters–or 1.4 inches x 0.7 inches . It’s the highest level of resolution in a sensor of its size, says Canon.

Most cameras today used either a CCD (charge-coupled device) sensor or a CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) sensor. Canon’s latest innovation is for a CMOS sensor.

The 120-megapixel sensor is about 7.5 times larger and offers a 2.4-fold improvement in resolution over Canon’s highest comparable commercial sensor. Canon’s highest-resolution commercial CMOS sensor is currently the EOS-1Ds Mark III and EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR cameras. That sensor incorporates approximately 21.1 million pixels.

Cramming more pixels into a sensor is not necessarily indicative of the quality of the photos. Many consumers think more megapixels in a camera means better photos. But sometimes packing more light-sensitive pixels on a tiny sensor can result in greater noise in the photos. Cameras also require strong processing capabilities to take all the data from the sensors and translate into a beautiful picture.

With most CMOS sensors, camera makers use parallel processing to read data at high pixel counts. But that has to be balanced against problems such as signal delays and deviations in timing, all of which can affect image quality.

Canon has modified the method to control the readout circuit timing to get about 9.5 frames per second. This can support continuous shooting of ultra-high-resolution images, says Canon.

The newly developed CMOS sensor also includes full HD video (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) output capability.

For now, the 120-megapixel sensor is a proof-of-concept. It’s an engineering flight of fancy but it shows camera makers are trying to find ways to pack in greater capability into increasingly smaller sensors.

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Photo: CMOS sensor/Canon


Cosina Joins Micro Four Thirds Team, Announces ƒ0.95 Lens

Cosina, the camera giant responsible for many rebranded cameras and lenses, along with its own Voigtländer brand, has joined the Micro Four Thirds (MFT) team. That means it will begin making lenses for the cameras from Panasonic and Olympus.

This is pretty big news. While the lens line-up for the large-sensor mirrorless cameras is growing, with even a Leica-branded lens on sale, it is doing so rather slowly. Adding Cosina to the team means that we should soon see a whole lot of interesting glass which will work fully with the cameras, and without adapters.

Not convinced? The first MFT lens from Cosina is its amazing Nokton 25mm ƒ0.95 prime, a 50mm equivalent lens which can see better in the dark than you can. It will be on sale in October for Around $1,100.

And it’s not just lenses. It’s possible that we could see a Voigtländer camera-body in the near future, too. Given that Voigtländer is a name closely associated with rangefinder cameras, which are the spiritual ancestor of the Micro Four Thirds cameras, this is pretty exciting stuff. An MFT camera with chunky metal body and all-manual knobs and dials? Yes please. Welcome aboard, Cosina!

Cosina Joins the Micro Four Thirds System Standard Group [Olympus via DP Review]

Micro Four Thirds Nokton [Cosina]

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Frankencam: EOS D60 Rises From Canon’s Parts-Bin

It’s clearly the season for new camera gear, and today it’s Canon’s turn in the spotlight. Along with a few new lenses comes the EOS 60D, a “replacement” for the two-year-old 50D. Those looking to upgrade from their 50D should look elsewhere, though, perhaps to the 7D, as this new camera is more for consumers than enthusiastic amateurs.

The magnesium body of the 50D is now plastic, and the 60D uses SD-cards instead of Compact Flash. It also gets a slew of gimmicky image processing features (Toy Camera, anyone?) and the obligatory video capabilities.

In fact, video seems to be what this camera was made for. The rear screen is the pop-out, tilt-and-swivel type, Canon’s first on an SLR, and has the over a million dots of resolution (or around 330,000-pixels). Video is shot at varying sizes and speeds. 1080p is available at 24p, 25p or 30p frame rates. Drop to 720p resolution and you can shoot at up to 60fps. Whatever picture you choose, you get full manual control, including sound with 64 audio-levels.

The 18MP sensor (like the LCD panel) is the same as that found in the 550D (or Rebel T2i), the AF system comes from the old 50D and the 63-zone exposure meter comes from the 7D. It’s almost like the Canon engineers just picked through a shelf of existing parts and snapped them together like Lego, producing what seems like a pretty sweet-looking camera.

The 60D will go on sale in September for $1,100 body-only, or as part of a $1,400 kit with a 18-135mm lens.

EOS 60D product page [Canon]

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Canon 60D Impressions: The Perfect Video DSLR Is Just a Little Bit Closer [Digital Cameras]

The 60D, Canon’s new midrange DSLR, is a whole lot like the Rebel T2i inside—still fantastic. It’s what’s outside that’s better, a flip-out swivel screen and more rugged body that tug the camera closer toward video DSLR nirvana. More »

369 Absolutely Adorable Pet Wallpapers [Photography]

Cats. Dogs. The occasional lizard, pig or rock. These are your pets, Gizmodo readers. And for this week’s Shooting Challenge, you photographed them brilliantly. More »

Sony’s Transparent-Mirror Cameras Repackage 1965 Canon Tech

Sony has announced a camera with a new kind of mirror that gives it the fast-focussing of an SLR and the shooting speed and live-view of a mirrorless camera. Sony claims this technology as “ground-breaking”. The problem is that Canon already did it back in 1965.

The new A33 and A55 cameras use a semi-transparent mirror, wedged at 45-degrees inside the body, just like in an SLR. An SLR sends all the light up into the viewfinder and phase-detection autofocus sensor, and then flips the mirror to let that light hit the photo-sensor. Sony’s mirror lets almost all the light onto the sensor, allowing for live-view on the rear screen, and reflects just enough upwards to use phase-detection AF instead of the slower contrast detection usually used in mirrorless cams.

It’s ingenious, and because the mirror doesn’t have to flip out of the way for each exposure, the cameras can shoot at up to 10 frames-per-second. The lack of a flipping mechanism also makes the camera smaller.

But it is far from “ground-breaking”. Canon made the Pellix 45 years ago, a 35mm SLR. It, too, used a semi-transparent, or pellicle mirror, allowing faster, quieter shooting. The mirror was made from silvered Mylar-film, the stuff used to make carnival balloons, and sent two thirds of the light to the film and one-third to the viewfinder, resulting in a dark finder and the loss of 1/3-stop of light for the picture. Also, the mirror would deteriorate over time, growing dirtier and dimmer.

These days, when a camera has a life of just a few years, this deterioration shouldn’t be a problem, and the Sonys get around the issue of a dim finder by using an electronic one.

The A33 and A55 are almost identical, save for the sensors (16.2MP vs. 14.2MP respectively) and speed of shooting. Both have three-inch tilt-able LCD-screens, AVCHD 1080i video (and thanks to the mirror, full AF while shooting it) and shoot up to ISO 12,800.

The prices are $650 and $750, and the cameras will be available in September (A33) and October.

Press release [DP Review]

Pellix photo: sebilden/Flickr

Leaked Sony A33 photo: PetaPixel

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World’s First Digital Camera Used Cassette-Tapes for Storage

Take a lens from a Super 8 camera, a whole stack of ni-cad batteries, a digital to analog converter from a voltmeter, a highly experimental CCD and what have you got? Kodak’s first digital still camera, cobbled together with hand-soldered wires and circuits. And the storage? Amazingly, images were recorded onto the cassette-tape you see on the side of this historical Frankenbox.

This happened way back in 1975, when the inventor of the digital camera, Steve Sasson, and his team of technicians tinkered this machine into existence. Want some specs? The camera captured a 100-line image onto that cassette-tape, yet even that tiny picture took a mind-numbing 23 seconds to write. Playback was possibly clunkier still, using another tape-player hooked up to a frame-storing devices that interpolated those 100 lines to an NTSC-compatible 400-line image and then showed it on a regular TV-screen.

Viewers wondered why anyone would want to look at pictures on a screen. The invention was patented in 1978 and then remained unknown to the public until 2001, although it stayed in Sasson’s possession. After that, we all know what happened: Now, if you show a film camera to somebody young enough they’ll wonder why anyone would want to look at a photo on a piece of paper.

We Had No Idea (2007) [Kodak Pkugged in log via Adafruit and The Boss]