Hasta La Gadget!

Ladies and gentlemen, please disengage your budget conscience for this post, as hearing things like “the Leica S2 seems to be quite the happy medium” when discussing a camera that costs north of $31,000 (body only!) will never make much sense otherwise. Matthew Harrison, aka The Leica Guy, has gotten his hands on what he calls the first commercially available S2-P and performed a loving unboxing and preview of the luxurious shooter. With a 56 percent larger sensor than the stellar Canon 5D Mark II (stretching all the way to 37 megapixels), fully weather-sealed casing, sapphire glass monitor screen, and Platinum Service for the discerning photographer, the S2 certainly has a spec sheet to match its price. Matthew’s impressions only confirm the supremacy of this beast, and you can hit up his site below for sample pictures. Don’t forget the video unboxing after the break, which includes (at 3:53) something that might cause real distress to bona fide DSLR junkies — you’ve been warned.

Continue reading Leica S2-P unboxed on video, produces sample shots

Leica S2-P unboxed on video, produces sample shots originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 08:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Axon head-mounted camera records what police see when they keep an eye on Mayberry originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This is not the first time we’ve heard about a robotic hummingbird, but they’re still a rare enough species to warrant our attention. Japanese researchers at Chiba University near Tokyo have developed a new bot which behaves much like the quick-winged bird, which is controlled by an infrared sensor. The little birdie weighs in at less than an ounce and can fly in a figure eight, moving up, down, left and right. Next steps for its development — which the researchers say will arrive by 2011 — include the ability for it to hover mid-air, and have a small camera attached to it. Ultimately, its creators see the robot (which has cost around 2 million dollars to develop) being able to help search for people in dangerous situations, such as destroyed buildings, or aiding in the search for criminals. We haven’t gotten a look at the little guy yet (the above photo is merely to whet your imagination), but we anxiously await its arrival.

Japanese researchers develop robotic, heroic hummingbird originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 12:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s not impossible to find a camera with integrated WiFi out there, but your choices are unquestionably limited. Thankfully for those in the market for such a device, it seems as if Samsung is gearing up to release quite the formidable opponent. Without so much as an official press release, the CL80 has emerged on the outfit’s website packing a 14 megapixel sensor, optical image stabilization, a 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen (capacitive with haptic feedback), a 720p movie mode (H.264), microSD expansion slot (groan…), USB 2.0 connectivity and an above-average 7x optical zoom. The Instant Upload feature enables users to upload their shots to Facebook, Flickr, Photobox or Picasa, and for those who prefer to capture motion clips, it’ll also shoot your videos to YouTube when a hotspot is found. Nary a word has been spoken regarding price or release, but we’re going out on a limb here and surmising that much more information will be revealed at CES.

Continue reading Samsung’s 14MP CL80 packs integrated WiFi, 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen

Samsung’s 14MP CL80 packs integrated WiFi, 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Dec 2009 04:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Hipstamatic, contrary to its name, isn’t a camera to be used whilst wearing tight pants, showing your underwear and doing elephant trunk skids on your fixed-gear track bike. Instead, it is an iPhone application which will apply all manner of image degrading, film-like effects to your pictures.

Hipstamatic is certainly not the only Lomo-fication application in the iTunes Store, but it is notable for its wonderful interface, which lets you choose from various films, add flash-gel effects and swap “lenses”. For instance, swapping lenses is done by swiping across the front of the camera body, and changing films is achieved by flipping the on-screen camera open and choosing which one to use. Thankfully the visual metaphor doesn’t continue as far as making you engage the sprocket-holes. When you are all set, you flip the camera back around and view the action through a tiny, low-contrast, on-screen “viewfinder”.

The app itself comes in at $2, and further effects packs can be bought from within. The Williamsburg (ho ho) pack, for example, comes with a Helga Viking lens, Pistil film and a three-pack of gels (shouldn’t that be a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon?) These bad puns are to be found throughout Hipstamatic, and spotting them is part of the fun.

Perhaps I will give this to myself as an early Christmas gift, to remind me of the plastic-lensed, light leaking camera that was part of the Starsky and Hutch kit I got for Christmas so many years ago.

Hipstamatic Application [Hipstamatic]