High ISO Performance of DSLRs From the 2001 Super Bowl Versus Now
Want to see how far DSLRs have come in the past decade? Lee Morris of Fstoppers published these two photos taken at Super Bowl halftime shows. The crop on the left was captured in 2001, possibly with the Nikon D1H at 2.7 megapixels and ISO 800 (state of the art specs at the time). The...
Digg Founder Kevin Rose Interviews Instagram Founder Kevin Systrom
For those of you who are interested in the business and technology side of things, here’s an interesting 45-minute interview in which Digg founder Kevin Rose chats with Instagram founder Kevin Systrom: They chat about Systrom’s growing up with computers, his time spent at Stanford, and landing an internship at a startup destined to be...
The Truth About Fractional Sensor Size Measurements
Ever wonder why camera manufacturers these days are describing often sensor sizes with fractions instead of millimeters? Roger Cicala of LensRentals explains: [...] then we get into all of these fractional-inch-type-measurements for the smaller sensors. That measurement system originated in ancient times (the 1950s to 1980s) when vacuum tubes were used instead of CCD or...
5.4 Million Dot Electronic Viewfinder to Make Real Life Look Lame
While many photographers swear by optical viewfinders, it’s clear that much of the camera industry is shifting over to electronic — or hybrid — ones to offer high-tech features such as overlaid information displays. Thankfully, many of the old problems that existed with EVFs (e.g. low resolution) are starting to disappear. Case in point: French...
Scientists Shoot World’s Fastest Film at a Quadrillion Frames Per Second
German scientists have been awarded a Guinness World Record for “fastest movie” after successfully capturing two images of an X-ray laser beam 50 femtoseconds apart. One femtosecond is equal to one quadrillionth (or one millionth of one billionth) of a second. Here’s some science talk explaining it: [...] the scientists split the X-ray laser beam...
Jumping Spiders’ Eyes May Inspire New Camera Technologies
In a paper published in Science this week, Japanese researchers reported on a discovery that jumping spiders use a method for gauging distance called “image defocus”, which no other living organism is known to use. Rather than use focusing and stereoscopic vision like humans or head-wobbling motion parallax like birds, the spiders have two green-detecting...
Cell Phone Market Also On Lytro’s Radar
Yesterday we wrote that Steve Jobs had been interested in Lytro‘s novel camera technology during the final years of his life. PC World did an interview with Lytro executive chairman Charles Chi, who seems to indicate that Lytro is very open to the idea of partnering with cell phone makers and licensing light field technology...
Eye-Fi Says New SD Association Wireless Standard Violates Its IP
Perhaps lost amidst the excitement over new cameras at CES 2012 earlier this month was the SD Association’s unveiling of a new Wi-Fi data transfer standard. This new specification should make it easier for other memory card manufacturers to jump into the Wi-Fi-capable memory card game — an arena currently dominated by Eye-Fi (and more...
PressPausePlay – a documentary on technology in the digital age of artists – take time to watch this
Last week, I watched this fascinating documentary and then promptly sent it to my daughter who’s very interested in pursuing a career in some kind of art. It isn’t specifically aimed at HDSLRs, but it sure hits home to all kinds of artists including filmmakers. “The artist always comes after the technology… The artist didn’t...
Is HDR Acceptable in Photojournalism?
The Washington Post raised some eyebrows last Friday after running an uber-saturated front page photo with the caption stating that it was “a composite created by taking several photos and combining them with computer software to transcend the visual limitations of standard photography.” After emailing the photo editor, Poynter learned that the image was simply...
SanDisk and Lexar Not Planning to Jump Into the XQD Game Anytime Soon
At the end of last year a new format called XQD was unveiled as the eventual replacement for CompactFlash. About a month later at CES 2012, Sony announced the first XQD cards. If you’re not sold on the new format, here’s some good news for you: Lexar and SanDisk have both announced that they have...
Canon Face Recognition Feature Gives Friends Preferential Treatment
Canon’s latest compact cameras at CES this year have some fancy new facial recognition features that assist in portrait shots. Up to 12 people can be stored in the camera. Simply snap a photo of your friends face, provide the friend’s name (and birthday if you wish), and the camera will recognize your friend from...
