How do you shoot a music video on a legendary Coney Island roller coaster? If you’ve got the budget, you could rent the ride for $6000 per day—double director Jeremy Johnstone’s budget for the entire video shoot. More »
The ContourRoam sports cam doesn’t mind getting its feet wet
The future of underwater videos and photos is likely to be the exact same as the future or all photos and videos: they’ll be take with your phone (in a waterproof case, of course).
But until then, we have cameras like Contour’s ContourRoam, a rugged sports-cam which isn’t scared of water. Well, water shallower than a meter (three feet) that is. In addition to enjoying the occasional dip, the ContourRoam shoots 1080p video at 25 or 30 fps, and captures stills with its 5MP sensor. Images come through a fixed focal length lens with a 170˚ field of view — that’s probably wide enough to capture the teeth of the shark as it bites off your head.
Otherwise, specs are competent: three-hour battery life (longer than you can hold your breath at least), 5.1-ounce weight (145 grams) and an instant-record switch round out the features you want to know about. Unlike the other two cameras in the Contour range, it doesn’t have GPS, but I guess that doesn’t work too well underwater anyway.
ContourRoam product page [Contour via Engadget]
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Carousel brings an optimized version of the Camera RAW rendering engine to iOS
Oh man. Apple’s PhotoStream can suck it. Adobe has just announced Carousel, an app which puts the Lightroom/Camera RAW rendering engine on the iPad and iPhone, and also lets you edit your photos and sync those edits between all your devices,
automatically.
Carousel doesn’t sync with your existing Lightroom library. Instead, you install the free Carousel app on your iOS devices and your Mac (Android and Windows versions are in the works) and the software syncs all photos and edits between devices, as well as storing a full-resolution copy on Adobe’s servers.
Here’s another shot of the interface, because I know you want to see it
You don’t get the full range of Lightroom’s power, either. Edits are limited to a variety of presets as well as basic image adjustments like saturation, exposure and cropping. But the exciting part is that it uses the same RAW rendering engine as Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW. This makes great-looking photos with low, low noise. It should also mean (although Adobe hasn’t said so) that you can import these images, with their non-destructive edits, into Lightroom.
The apps are all free, and the service is subscription-based, which makes sense as Adobe is storing your photos for you. Subs will be $10 per month or $100 per year, with an introductory price of $6/$60. The apps should be out any time now.
Adobe Carousel [Adobe]
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Nikon’s commitment to the new red color way shows in these super hi-res product shots. Photo credit Nikon
Want to buy an SLR for serious shooting purposes, but don’t want to leave behind the “quirky” personality that saw you covering your book-bag in Hello Kitty stickers (girls) or Scooby Doo patches (boys) back in high school? Well, good news! Now you can continue to assert your “individuality” by buying this red Nikon D3100 along with millions of other like-minded individuals.
Other than the color, which is the same color as the metallic red cropped bolero jacket I wore in the late 80s, the camera is a stock D3100. It has a 14.2MP crop-sensor chip, runs up to ISO 3,200 or ISO 12,800 if you don’t mind a noisy image, shoots 1080p video and does everything else you’d expect a modern entry level DSLR to do. And it also comes in red.
In fact, I wonder if Nikon might ever come out with a Hello Kitty or Scooby Doo-themed camera? Probably not. But Pentax might.
Nikon red D3100 product page [Nikon via Nikon Rumors]
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This unassuming plate of sushi appears to have been captured at Apple HQ with an iPhone 5. Image: PocketNow
This isn’t just any photo of a plate of sushi.
Although the EXIF data for this photo says it was shot with an iPhone 4, the rest of the data says otherwise. According to the data, it was shot with an 8-megapixel camera, as it originally had a resolution of 3264 x 2448 before being cropped to a 5.12-megapixel size of 2235 x 2291. It’s also fishy that the photo was taken at 4.3mm f/2.4, which is decidedly more point-and-shoot-like than the 3.85mm f/2.8 lens setting of the iPhone 4.
The last bit of proof that this shot wasn’t actually taken with an iPhone 4? It’s geotagged location is none other than the first building at 1 Infinite Loop, Apple’s headquarters.
You know the rumors. The iPhone 5 is expected to have an 8-megapixel camera, an A5 processor and a slightly larger, flatter form factor . Previous guesstimates had the newest iPhone coming this month, but it looks like we’ll see the iPhone 5 in October, and it’ll be available on Sprint in addition to Verizon and AT&T.
Caveats: It is possible the EXIF data isn’t entirely truthful. The photo also could have been taken with just about any prototype Apple device — like that iPhone 4S also rumored to debut at the same time as the iPhone 5.
Regardless, the photo looks great. So does that uni.
These are likely to sell out in no time, but if you’re in the market for a beautiful old Polaroid camera, then Photojojo has managed to round up a small batch of SX-70s and will let you have one for $290.
The SX-70 was “The original, wondrous, never-to-be-topped SX-70. The first folding SLR, the first camera to take integral instant film, only made up until 1977.” Photojojo acquired them through Hong Kong-based MINT, who presumably constructed a time machine to go back and pick these up, and then restored them so they’re as good as new.
The specs of this metal-and-vinyl piece of art as as bad as you’d expect of a camera from the dark days of the 1970s: the fixed 116mm lens starts at a squint-inducing ƒ8, and the fastest shutter speed is 1-175th/sec — you won’t be shooting action or low-light photos with this camera.
But then, this is a camera that never needed to be fast: you could have spent a day taking a shot and you’d still have it back faster than the schmucks who had to get their films processed at the local drugstore.
And thanks to the Impossible Project, there is still film available for the camera, at $22 for ten frames.
No, it’s not cheap, but the SX-70 is a piece of history, and also a beautifully made artifact the like of which we never see today.
Limited Edition Polaroid SX-70 [Photojojo]
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The idea is cute, and the execution flawless in Kirsty’s Camera Desk Lamp. Photo Kooyootoo/Flickr
What would make the perfect work lamp? A firm, steady base which can be adjusted to any height, and any surface? A multiply adjustable light which can be locked into any position? A big, bright lens which can throw the light wide or narrow?
The answer to all of these is “yes,” and all of them are a available if you put a light inside camera on a tripod.
This is just what Kirsty of Kootooyou did, ending up with this amazing lamp fashioned from a tripod, an old Cosina 35mm film SLR and a light bulb. Kirsty isn’t letting on about the details of the design — she’s readying the plans for sale next week — but as there is no visible cable, and the light is nice and warm, I’m guessing that there’s an old-fashioned, tungsten-bulb flashlight tucked inside the camera.
It seems a little mean to call something so handsome (and clever) a novelty, so we’ll just call it what it is: a fantastic maker project. Get down to your local Goodwill, charity shop or op shop (depending on where you are in the world) and grab the ingredients now.
Camera – light – action… [Kootooyou via Make]
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Day and night. They’re two polar ideas—complete opposites. But the following photos capture day and night simultaneously, two times occurring in the exact same spot. How is this possible? Some say sorcery. Others, simply GIMP. More »
It’s been almost two years since we first got a peek at the specs on RED’s EPIC-X, and the 5K-shooting, roughly $30,000 rig is just now shipping out to customers. That’s not terribly shocking considering the company’s notoriously long development cycles and, if you ordered one, you should be too excited about getting a new toy to worry about how long it took to build. Lets just hope the first batch of folks to start capturing gorgeous footage with this thing have a little more luck than Mark Pederson — RED can’t be handing out $100,000 bounties every time it releases a new product.
RED EPIC-X starts shipping to lucky shooters with deep pockets originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Sep 2011 00:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We really like Fujifilm’s X100 — it’s a solidly-built camera, with an APS-C sensor, f/2 lens, and a rather unique hybrid optical / electronic viewfinder. But the X100 carries a $1,400 sticker price, and that 23mm lens — as sharp as it may be — is permanently fixed to the mount. That’s why we were rather exited when Fuji announced its X10 earlier this week. Would this be a much more capable (and affordable) replacement for the X100? Turns out it’s not — well, not exactly — though this latest model is certainly a better fit for the consumer market. We had a chance to go hands-on with an early prototype on display at the company’s IFA booth, and while some features (notably the pop-up flash) weren’t yet functional, we’re told it’s a rather accurate representation of what we’ll see when the X10 hits stores in late October, priced within the €499-599 range (about $715-860).
The first thing you’ll notice with the X10 is that, well, there’s nary a power button in sight. Instead, you’ll rotate the 28-112mm f/2-2.8 manual zoom lens to fire it up. There’s also no aperture ring, unlike its more powerful sibling, and manual focus is handled electronically, instead of directly on the lens. Upon closer inspection, you’ll find that the X100’s slick hybrid viewfinder has been replaced with a strictly electronic one. And what about image quality? We weren’t able to take away any sample pics, but with a much smaller 2/3-inch sensor, we haven’t a doubt that images won’t look nearly as good as those shot with Fuji’s better-equipped model. To compensate for that, the camera’s EXR mode can bump the resolution down from 12 megapixels to six, in turn capturing higher quality images in low light. We’re looking forward to checking out a production version sometime this fall, but in the meantime, thumb through the images below, or jump past the break for a video overview.
Gallery: Fujifilm X10 hands-on
Continue reading Fujifilm X10 hands-on (video)
Fujifilm X10 hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Sep 2011 12:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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