Hasta La Gadget!

Have you managed to get your hands on Nikon’s elusive D4 full-frame DSLR? It should be smooth sailing from here, with the occasional firmware update being your only critical acquisition going forward. D4 firmware 1.02 brings a handful of minor fixes, but if you’re in need of any of the enhancements listed below, it’s surely a must have:

• Format memory card can now be added to My Menu.
• Gamut for Adobe RGB images displayed in the camera’s monitor has now been changed. This enables more vivid display of images.
• The stability of network connections when the FTP upload option is selected has been increased.
• When recording movies using a lens with an aperture ring in [P] or [S] exposure mode, and Aperture ring selected for Custom Setting f10: Customize command dials>Aperture setting, the minimum aperture was applied. This issue has been resolved.
• When a still image captured during movie recording with 1920 ×1080; 30 fps; crop, 1920 × 1080; 25 fps; crop, or 1920 × 1080; 24 fps; crop selected for Movie settings>Frame size/frame rate and Live frame grab selected for Custom Setting g4: Assign shutter button was displayed in Capture NX 2 or ViewNX 2, the position of the focus point displayed differed from actual recording position. This issue has been resolved.
• An issue that caused the camera to freeze when attempting to format a memory card (setup menu > Format memory card) while the camera was connected to a network in HTTP server mode has been resolved.

OS X and Windows users alike can hit up the source link below to get their download on.

Nikon releases D4 firmware 1.02 with minor display, formatting, network stability improvements in tow originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Jul 2012 21:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Back in April, Canon announced the EOS-1D C and the 500D, both capable of recording 4K video. The company didn’t announce pricing back then, but we’ll hazard a guess that neither camera will be cheap. If handheld 4K video is relevant to your interests, then new footage reportedly shot using the EOS-1D C might be worth a watch. The folks over at EOSHD have managed to get their hands on the footage, embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

The Vimeo clip isn’t the full 4K, however, instead encoded down to 1080p/24 H.264 from 4K/24 MJPEG. The footage is recorded at 8 bit 4:2:0, and a 32GB SD card can hold a grand total of eight minutes of footage. EOSHD doesn’t seem overly impressed with the native 4K video output, saying it’s a little on the soft side and lacking what other 4K video has. Still, for a camera of this size, it’s still very good, with EOSHD noting the video is a big step up from video found on other DSLRs.

There’s also the fact the camera this was pulled from is still an early prototype, and the footage hasn’t been color timed at all. The final product, and resulting tweaks, may yield video that looks completely different. EOSHD does mention though that Canon has used “a strong anti-aliasing filter … to prevent as much moire and aliasing as possible.” You can peek the video for yourself below, and EOSHD has some 1:1 crops of the untouched 4K footage on its site plus a very short 4K video sample.

[via Engadget]

Canon EOS-1D C 4K sample footage revealed is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Olympus has been struggling recently, reporting massive losses while those within the company have been struggling to get the brand back to profitability. There have been rumors that Panasonic was a potential saviour for the company, with a plan to invest around $635 million in Olympus as part of a rescue package. Panasonic quickly denied the rumors, saying there were no plans to invest. Now an Olympus executive has said that even if it does acquire much-needed capital from another firm, the company will try to retain its brand.

Yasuo Takeuchi, a senior executive managing officer at Olympus, said: “We understand we need to consider an increase in capital as one of our key management issues. The main premise is to fully preserve our Olympus brand.” Reports indicate that the ailing camera maker is currently in talks with another company for a ¥50 billion yen (~$629 million) cash injection.

Sony is currently rumored to be that company, and if the deal moves ahead it would leave Sony as the top shareholder in Olympus, with a stake totalling more than 10%. Olympus has faced financial troubles ever since it was discovered that the company hid ¥117.7 billion (~$1.48 billion) in losses that date back all the way to the 90s.

[via City AM]

Olympus to suitors: We’ll take your cash but not your name is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

There are some cameras that we absolutely love, some we find downright disappointing and others that get the job done, albeit with mediocre results. Samsung’s digital imaging devices typically fall within that last category — they’re moderately innovative, generally affordable and often well-designed, but when it comes to image quality and performance, we’re left… underwhelmed. So, when we first had a chance to try out the CE giant’s new NX200 at IFA in Berlin, we weren’t expecting a mind-blowing imaging device.

The NX200 is Samsung’s latest entrant into the interchangeable lens (ILC) category — it’s a mirrorless model, to be more precise, and a fairly impressive one at that — at least when you glance at the spec sheet. It’s the company’s latest ILC to use an APS-C size sensor, which is the largest we’ve seen in a mirrorless cam. This sensor type implies that the NX200 may have a chance at competing with Sony’s NEX-C3, which has been our top pick in the category, and its 20.3 megapixel rating suggests that Samsung wants to be taken seriously here, with a true contender on its hands. But has Samsung delivered a winner? Jump past the break for our take.

Continue reading Samsung NX200 interchangeable lens camera review

Samsung NX200 interchangeable lens camera review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Most of the interchangeable lens cameras we’ve seen to date seem to follow a standard mold: they have similarly sized bodies, comparable designs and either an APS-C or Micro Four Thirds sensor at the core. But recently, some manufacturers — namely, Nikon and Pentax — have begun shrinking camera bodies in an attempt to make them even more appealing to point-and-shoot users. The result: a smaller, lighter, more fashionable ILC — that also happens to have an itsy bitsy image sensor. Sensor size, not megapixel rating, translates directly to image quality, but also lens and body size, so you can either have an incredibly small body with an incredibly small sensor, or a larger body with a larger sensor. Are you willing to pay a premium for the “world’s smallest” interchangeable lens camera, even if it has the same size sensor used in many point-and-shoot cams available for a fraction of the cost? Pentax seems to think that you are — to the tune of $800.

The 12.4 megapixel Pentax Q is tiny — it’s so small, in fact, that you wouldn’t be alone in mistaking it for a toy. There is a fully functional camera inside that petite magnesium alloy housing, though it’s admittedly not as powerful as you’d expect an $800 camera to be. The pricey kit ships with an 8.5mm f/1.9 lens, and you can grow your collection from Pentax’s modest selection of Q-mount lenses, which also happen to have laughably small focal lengths (a 3.2mm fish eye, anyone?), due to the 1/2.3-inch backlit CMOS sensor’s massive 5.5x multiplication factor. So how does the Q fare when it comes to performance and image quality? Jump past the break to find out.

Continue reading Pentax Q interchangeable lens camera review

Pentax Q interchangeable lens camera review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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