Hasta La Gadget!

So what if Thanko’s ¥5,980 (about $62) Spy Button Camera doesn’t look exactly like the other buttons on your shirt. Anyone inclined to wear such a device to covertly record VGA video at 15fps (or 1280×1024 stills) to 4GB of internal memory isn’t likely to get noticed in a crowd anyway. At least the magnetic on/off switch gives renewed purpose to your wedding ring while offering evidence of your continued poor decision making skills. Just be sure to bring your inhaler to keep your breathless excitement in check.

[Via Akihabara News]

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Thanko’s Spy Button video camera, because you’ve already failed originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NewEgg.com, one of my favorite destinations for buying computer hardware, is celebrating our nation’s birthday with an Independence Day Sale. The sale, exclusive to NewEgg.com e-mail subscribers, features a bevy of discounted prices in computer hardware, electronics, peripherals, and accessories–all with free shipping, no less. Discounted prices and/or promo codes are valid until July 6.

I chose four products from NewEgg.com’s special sale and compared their prices to other retailers and online stores. Find out if you should buy that Epson printer, Crucial RAM stick, Lenovo notebook, or Canon PowerShot camera from NewEgg, after the jump.

Kodak’s already taken some steps to cut down on counterfeiting of its batteries, and it looks like Panasonic is now taking some fairly drastic measures of it own, which could leave some users of its cameras a tad unhappy. Apparently, the company has determined that some third-party batteries amazingly don’t meet its own rigid safety standards, so it’s now released a new firmware update that can detect said batteries and prevent them from working. At the moment, that only includes cameras that use DMW-BCF10, DMW-BCG10, or DMW-BLB13 battery packs (some sixteen cameras in all), but it seems safe to assume that this’ll soon be standard practice on all Panasonic cameras.

[Via Slashdot]

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Panasonic starts locking out third-party batteries with new firmware originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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To think, we’ve been waiting on the edge of our seats since January to get our hands on Ecamm’s BT-1 wireless, Bluetooth-enabled webcam for OS X. Sure, 640 x 480 / 15fps H.264 video quality is comparable to what our MacBooks get anyway, but hey, at least you can be a little more artsy on your Skype calls without losing that prime display viewing angle. All that waiting doesn’t matter now, anyway, since it’s finally shipping out. Price is $150 and it includes a mini-tripod and USB charger cable — can’t seem to get rid of wires entirely just yet. As for Windows support, it’s still not there officially, but we’ve no doubt some intrepid young coder with an afternoon to spare will fix that.

Filed under: Digital Cameras

BT-1 Bluetooth webcam for Mac finally shipping originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s much to love about the new Olympus E-P1, but the hip new thing for the DSLR market is video, and Panasonic has already demonstrated with the Lumix DMC-GH1 that Micro Four Thirds cameras are in some ways even better suited to the demands of high quality point-and-shoot video. The folks at Digital Photography Review have some samples up now of the E-P1’s video performance, and while we’d like to see how the camera fares indoors as well, the outdoor samples they’ve posted are very promising. The colors seem just a touch washed out, but there’s great motion and clarity, and solid manual controls. It is interesting to note that while the camera does include some built-in effects, most of them dramatically reduce the frame rate — making them more or less useless. Most unfortunate, however, is the fact that there’s no auto focus in video mode, which is where the DMC-GH1 still reigns supreme in DSLR land. Hit up the read link for the videos, or if that’s not your style check out the bemusing Blendtec advert for the E-P1 after the break — it’s a real viral meets meta mashup, or something like that.

[Thanks Richard L.]

Update: We’ve heard conflicting word on auto focus. According to Photography Review‘s preview, the camera doesn’t have auto focus in video mode, but according to the Olympus press release, as Super Marxio pointed out in comments, there is auto focus during recording. Perhaps Photography Review was looking at a non-final version of the camera. We do know that the camera does auto focus using contrast detection, like a regular compact camera, and while that’s the same method used by the GH1, DP Review claims it’s slightly inferior — though they did state they were working with a 0.9 firmware.

Continue reading Olympus E-P1 video samples posted, camera turns up in ad-within-an-ad Blendtec spot

Filed under: Digital Cameras, HDTV

Olympus E-P1 video samples posted, camera turns up in ad-within-an-ad Blendtec spot originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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