Cheesy photo filters. You know what I’m talking about. Those horrid, unusable, who-the-fuck-coulda-invented, one-button smears of digital feces that have infested Photoshop like cockroaches. For this week’s Shooting Challenge, Gizmodo readers mastered the tacky photo filter to create…art? More »
The Camera Day Pack won’t break the bank, or your back
Having just spent a week walking around cities and towns in North Africa, I can tell you a thing or two about carrying a camera in a shoulder bag. It boils down to this: Pain. I took the Gadget Lab Stealth Bag with padding removed, and even then the weight of a Panasonic GF1, a lens and a few sundries cut into my shoulder and cricked my aging back after a few hours. If only I’d had the garish plastic Camera Day Pack from Photojojo.
Big enough, but not too big. A Goldilocks among bags, if you will
The bag is designed to carry an SLR with a flash, and the main compartment can be divided into two or three sections, or left as a single big cavern for larger setups. Crucially it also has a bunch of pockets (five) scattered variously around the edges for carrying other essentials like your wallet, memory cards and phone.
The nylon bag also zips shut to keep out dust and rain (and pilfering fingers), and has a pad on the strap so you don’t suffer the same shoulder-crushing fate as I did.
Stealthy this bag is not, but it is certainly practical and comfortable looking. And at $60 it’s cheap, as photo gear goes. Available now.
The Camera Day Pack [Photojojo]
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Canon’s high-end PowerShot S-series is a mighty special breed, so we’ve been rather excited about the company’s new S100, which we were told to expect in November with a $430 sticker price. Now it looks like the S95 successor may slip out of the warehouse a month earlier than promised, with Amazon estimating ship dates as early as October 3rd. In an industry where delays are much more prevalent than quiet early releases, this is certainly welcome news for the highly anticipated pocket cam, which packs a 12.1 megapixel CMOS sensor and f/2.0 (variable) zoom lens. Shipping estimates are always subject to change, so don’t count on any miracles until that FedEx tracking number hits your inbox.
[Thanks, Don]
Canon S100 gets early October estimate from Amazon, likely to ship ahead of November release originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Canon sneaks a brand new lens and sensor into its new S-series digicam
Take a popular camera line, whether compact or entry-level SLR, and you can be sure that it’ll be updated every year. Whether it needs to be or not. Sometimes, though, these incremental updates hide some genuinely big changes. So it is with Canon’s new S100.
On the surface, it looks like the S100 isn’t much different from 2010’s S95, itself a rather pedestrian upgrade from the S90. But despite the similarity of specs, there’s a lot to like.
The most obvious addition is GPS. The S100 will geotag your images for you as you shoot. The next big leap is the DIGIC5 processor chip, apparently six times faster than the DIGIC IV, and with 100% less Roman numerals.
But the real changes come in the sensor and lens. The pixel count for the CMOS sensor jumps modestly, from 10 to 12 megapixels, but according to Canon it uses “EOS technology,” including bigger micro-lenses and on-chip noise-reduction to help low-light performance. At 1/1.7-inches, the sensor is still relatively large compared to most digicam sensors, and now shoots up to ISO 6400 quite happily. It can also capture 1080p video, up from the S95’s 720p.
On paper, the lens also looks virtually unchanged. The maximum aperture is still ƒ2.0, and the zoom range now runs from 24-120mm instead of 28-105mm (35mm equivalent). But the lens elements are of an all-new design, and the image stabilization now features seven (seven!) different modes. One lame-ification of the new design is that the maximum aperture when zoomed to the longest focal length drops from ƒ4.9 to ƒ5.9.
There is also the obligatory smattering of new special FX. One of these is actually pretty useful, allowing different white balances in different parts of the frame to correct for mixed lighting.
The Powershot S100 will cost around $430.
Powershot S100 product page [Canon]
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Sometimes it’s the simplest questions that lead to the most important innovation — other times it’s more that they’re just plain fun to answer. Take the one asked by Grand Rapids, MI-artist, Sam Blanchard: what would the Wachowski Brothers’ bullet-time effect look like, were it shot on, say 20 Polaroids, instead of a room full of expensive digital devices? The answer, naturally, can be found in the Polaroid Matrix, a circle of cameras on display at Maker Faire in New York, this weekend. The Kickstarter success story arranges the cameras into a circle — a subject can be sat in the middle, or the cameras can be oriented outward, to take a panorama of the surrounding environment. Once the rig is fired up, the cameras make that familiar Polaroid warm up hum — times 20. The actual photographing happens almost in an instant, with 20 flashes. The photographer walks around the circle and collects 20 photos, which are bound into a photographic flipbook. Check out a video of the Polaroid Matrix in action, after the jump.
Continue reading Stepping into the Polaroid Matrix at Maker Faire (video)
Stepping into the Polaroid Matrix at Maker Faire (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Sep 2011 20:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sony’s imaging wing has been on a roll lately, with the brilliant NEX-7 and equally impressive Alpha A77 DSLR simply blowing us away with brand new features and excellent image quality. But these $2,000 digital binoculars? Yeah, we’re not so sure. We went hands-on with a pre-production sample of the 3D binocs, which replace the traditional optical finders with a pair of high-res LCD EVFs. But when you consider that high-end binoculars are a joy to use because of their excellent optical viewfinders, swapping in an electronic version puts the DEV-3 ($1,400) and DEV-5 ($2,000) in a completely new category — if an excellent (and traditional) viewing experience is what you’re after, these “cost-competitive” optics really won’t hit the spot. Jump past the break for our impressions.
Continue reading Sony DEV-5 Digital Recording Binoculars hands-on (video)
Sony DEV-5 Digital Recording Binoculars hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Oh, what’s this, Canon? You want your turn in the spotlight as well? Well, we suppose a hint of an announcement is better than a non-announcement, so bring it on! The imaging company just sent us word of a presumably star-studded SoCal event on November 3rd, giving its cameras a chance to walk the red carpet in a rather surprising Hollywood role reversal. We’re not sure exactly what Canon plans to unveil that night — a new mirrorless camera, or perhaps some fancy pants camcorder, destined for Hollywood’s elite? But assuming the company isn’t crying wolf, we’ll be there with a live report from the red carpet.
Canon plans Hollywood event, ready to roll out the red carpet on November 3rd originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 18:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Today, we’ve got a pair of Canon point-and-shoots to show you. The S100 is the successor to the highly regarded S95, while the SX40 HS takes on the super-zoom market with its 35x lens. Both cameras use the company’s new DIGIC 5 image processor, which brings high-speed burst shooting and 1080p video to the party. The S100 features improved low-light performance thanks to its f/2.0 lens and new, larger 12.1 megapixel CMOS censor (gone is the CCD of yore). It also has a GPS receiver for embedding location data in your photos. The SX40, more or less, slaps the new processor and sensor into last year’s somewhat disappointing SX30 IS. Hopefully, those internal upgrades will solve some of the SX line’s problems with image quality and noise. Both cameras will cost $430, with the S100 set to ship in early November and the SX 40 HS in late September. Check out the gallery below as well as the PR after the break.
Gallery: Canon PowerShot S100 and SX40
Continue reading Canon unveils PowerShot S100 and SX40 HS high-end point-and-shoots
Canon unveils PowerShot S100 and SX40 HS high-end point-and-shoots originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Canon’s S95 was our favorite pocket camera. Um, it’s probably not anymore. Meet the S100. What’s new? Oh, Canon’s first Digic V processor. A wider 24mm zoom lens. A 12-megapixel CMOS sensor (up from a 10MP CCD). 1080p video. And GPS built-in. More »
Sure, that TwitPic you posted was dope, but could it ever be as snazzy as a photo taken from space? Although doubtful, now at least there’s the NASA Photography Training Program handbook to help you achieve such levels of awesomeness. The guide provides tips on operating the official camera of the space agency, the Hasselblad 500 EL/M, responsible for some of the most extraterrestrial shots this side of Pluto. Pointers on how to best operate the electric film lunar surface data camera include what type of lens to use and how to best use available light. Study up at the source — after all, privatized space travel is just around the bend.
Visualized: NASA’s Hasselblad photography manual originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 06:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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