Shipping next month, Apple’s iPad won’t include a camera, but a growing number of clues hint at future versions of the tablet gaining a webcam.

MacRumors received a tip regarding lines of code referring to camera characteristics in the iPad’s software development kit (screegrabbed to the right). The snippets of code allude to zoom, flash, and “front camera.” Added together, that sounds similar to the iSight webcams on MacBooks and iMacs.

Also hinting at a webcam, a job listing Apple posted earlier this month sought a quality-assurance engineer for the “iPad division” to test still, video and audio capture and playback.

The very first hint of a webcam was discovered in a demonstration unit of the iPad during Apple’s Jan. 27 event. The iPad’s Contacts app revealed a “Take Photo” button. However, developers tinkering with the iPad SDK say that button has since been removed.

Some have speculated that Apple could announce the iPad will ship with a camera before the device ships at the end of March. However, it seems unlikely that Steve Jobs would leave such a major feature unmentioned.

What I wonder is whether these hints of cameras appearing in future iPads will affect sales of the first-generation tablet. I would assume the average consumer will opt to wait for the second-generation of the device in the hope of it gaining a camera.

Updated 5 p.m. Wednesday PDT: MacRumors received the tip and screengrab of the code. Erica Sadun did not provide the code, as previously stated. Wired.com regrets the error.

See Also:

• Apple iPad May Ship With Webcam
• Ten Things Missing From the iPad
• Apple’s iPad Thinks It Has a Camera
• A Closer Look at Apple’s New Tablet, the iPad
• Hands-On With the Apple iPad

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Above, you see a Samsung NX10 with an adapter that lets you put almost any lens on the front, from Nikon, Minolta, Canon, Leica and others. The adapter could be the most disruptive widget in the camera market.

There’s one thread running through the PMA photography trade show this year: mirrorless, interchangeable-lens cameras. These cameras, pioneered by Olympus and Panasonic with their Micro Four Thirds format, have become very popular with pros and serious amateurs who want great results but don’t want to lug around a big DSLR. Samsung has already shown its commitment to its NX format with eight lenses announced in under two months, and Sony is also getting in on the game sometime this year with a mirrorless Alpha.

This is great news, but what does it mean for the DSLR, which has for years been the fastest growing sector of the camera market? A DSLR used to be the only way to go if you wanted a camera that had a big sensor and a reasonably responsive shutter. The other benefits, like interchangeable lenses, are arguably only there for the more serious. Take a look around you next time you’re in a tourist spot and you’ll see mostly sub-$1,000 SLRs with the kit zooms still on the front.

Now, those buyers can buy something like the Samsung NX10 or the Olympus Pen and have everything they need, in a much smaller package. This alone is enough to shake things up. But the adapter above, versions of which are also available for Micro Four Thirds cameras, is even more dangerous to the current market. You can now use pretty much any lens ever made on a modern digicam.

Adapters have been around for years, but they never worked well. The extra length they added to a lens meant that it would be mounted too far off the body, and couldn’t focus at infinity. But because these new cameras don’t have mirror boxes, their native lenses sit much closer to the sensor. Adapters, then, have to move DSLR lenses further away. This is why they work so well with these little cameras.

Traditionally, you never really bought into a camera brand. You bought into a range of lenses. Once you had a few grand’s worth of Nikon glass, you weren’t going to buy a Canon body. Now, if you’re willing to sacrifice some automation, you can swap as much as you like. For the enthusiast, this brings cheap old manual lenses back from the dead. Expect secondhand prices to rise.

Does this spell the end for the Nikon/Canon duumvirate? Not really. Both companies will surely release cameras soon, and they could have one big advantage. All they need to do is make their own adapters so that their legacy lenses can talk to the bodies, allowing autofocus and aperture control. That alone would make me buy a mirrorless Nikon in a second (I have a lot of Nikon glass).

The DSLR won’t die. But it could become a niche product, and the specialist tool of the professional.

Novoflex shows adapters for Samsung NX [DP Review]

Photo: DP Review

See Also:

• Sony Fights Micro Four-Thirds With Lens-Changing Compact
• 5 Reasons to Ditch Your Digital SLR
• EVIL
• EVIL camera: Not Actually Evil
• Hands-On With Panasonic's Leica-Lite GF1
• A Month With the Lumix GF1, And Why I No Longer Use The Nikon D700 …

It may not hold 200 years’ worth of silicon-stuffed porn, but SanDisk’s new SDXC card has one big advantage over Dylan Tweney’s desert-island-fantasy 188 petabyte CF card: you can buy it. If you have $350 to spare.

The SDXC spec was announced a year ago, and has a theoretical 2 terabyte maximum capacity. But we wonder if anyone anyone will need them. The high-end cameras which need this kind of storage for their huge files all use Compact Flash cards, and anyone else runs into the eggs-in-basket problems of having all their images in one easy-to-lose place. Another problem: Where do you put these pictures? Filling up a 64GB card means that you’ll need to find somewhere to put all those pics, and your laptop’s hard drive will fill up pretty fast.

One more tip to all SD card manufacturers: Make these tiny slivers of plastic in brighter colors. Black may be more stylish, but it sure means I lose a lot of cards. I can’t find them in dark corners, and have to buy new ones. Or maybe that’s the point?

SanDisk Ultra SDXC Cards [SanDisk]

See Also:

• Toshiba Claims New 64 GB SDXC Card is Largest and Fastest
• Two Terabyte SD Cards Coming Soon
• Panasonic SD Card Worth 8-Times Its Weight in Gold

A Samsung press conference is two things: Packed with reporters (the lines to get in can be hundreds of yards long) and packed with products. This last is no surprise, as Samsung is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of anything that uses electricity.

Even so, I wasn’t quite expecting the number of lenses that formed just a small part of the Korean company’s PMA 2010 flood of products. The five chunks of glass are all destined to end up on the NX10 camera body throughout 2010 (and if you think there won’t be other – probably smaller – cameras in the NX range coming soon, you’re crazy).

The NX10 us the first of Samsung’s EVIL cameras, bodies with electronic viewfinders and interchangeable lenses. These have no mirrors inside, so they’re small, but they still use big imaging chips for better quality, less noisy pictures. They’re so hot right now.

The lenses can also be smaller, which means they need to be made especially for the new bodies. And as lenses are the most important part of any camera system, Samsung is popping them out like a chicken lays eggs. Here’s the list:

18-55mm ƒ3.5-5.6

20mm ƒ2.8 pancake

60mm ƒ2.7 macro

20-50mm ƒ3.5-5.6

18-200mm OIS ƒ3.5-6.3

It’s all fairly self explanatory, but I have a few thoughts. First, remember that the NX10 has an APS-C-size sensor, which gives a crop-factor of 1.5x. So while that Olympus and Panasonic’s 20mm lenses end up at a 35mm equivalent of 40mm (2x crop factor), this pancake is like a 30mm wide-angle, which makes the relatively slow ƒ2.8 maximum aperture normal for its focal length.

Second, these lenses join the three already announced at CES this year, one of which was a 30mm ƒ2 pancake (also a 50-200mm ƒ4-5.6 and an 18-55mm ƒ3.5-5.6). That lens is the real rival to the fast standard lenses from Panasonic and Olympus.

And third, these new lenses, which will start to show up in stores in the first half of this year, give NX buyers a pretty comprehensive lens system, running from 18mm (27mm equivalent) all the way up to 200mm (300mm equivalent), and everything longer than wide-angle has image stabilization inside.

Sure, there are gaps, but considering that the camera didn’t exist until about six weeks ago, it’s not bad going. That’s the advantage that comes of starting from scratch, and being the kind of company that makes everything from washing machines to cellphones (lots of factory space).

But being big isn’t all good. It means some things slip out that shouldn’t have. Take this snippet from the press release for these new lenses:

>Consumer research carried out by Samsung revealed that camera users want convenient and easy-to-use features which guarantee value and creative freedom through innovative concepts.

Meaningless.

Samsung Unveils Five New NX Lenses [Samsung]

See Also:

• CES 2010: Samsung Joins Rangefinder Fray With Large-Sensor NX10 …
• EVIL

Samsung’s new TL500 compact comes with a fast, wide zoom lens, and goes straight for the throat of Canon’s G11.

The lens has a fairly pedestrian 24-70mm range (35mm equivalent), but the maximum aperture runs from ƒ1.8 to ƒ2.4. That means, at its fully-zoomed, dullest position, the lens lets in more light than the G11 with an ƒ2.8-4.5 range (itself not bad for a compact).

The similarities continue with RAW capture, a hot-shoe, a flip-out LCD (3-inch AMOLED vs. the Canon’s 2.8-inch LCD), a CCD sensor and a top ISO sensitivity of 3,200. Amazingly enough, Samsung also mimics the G11’s terrible 640 x 480 movie mode, with no HD video available. The TL500 also matches the G11 for megapixels, packing 10MP.

Judging from the pictures, it seems that Samsung has also, thankfully, included lots of manual controls in the form of knobs and dials. If the camera handles as well as the Canon, Samsung could have a winner: That lens alone beats the G11 into the ground.

Samsung Launches the TL500 [Samsung]