Mark Best » Cameras

Floating camera probably just a lot of hot air

Mark Best — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:37:26 +0000

(Credit:
Imregun Erturk)

How many cameras can float in the air and take pictures of you automatically? None, and there probably won’t be any for some time to come. This is how skeptical I am of the Wagabond conceptualized by Turkish designer Imregun Erturk.

According to Erturk, the Wagabond …

Canon 7D photos can show traces of earlier shot

Mark Best — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:37:23 +0000

Canon has warned that traces of one photograph taken with the company’s new higher-end EOS 7D SLR can sometimes be seen in the next.

Canon's EOS 7D

(Credit:
Canon USA)

The good news: new software for the camera should be able to fix the problem at some …

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Sony photo printer has a large screen

Mark Best — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:37:22 +0000

(Credit:
Joshua Goldman/CNET)

Sony will be bringing its S-Frame DPP-F700 printer to the U.S. in January, the company announced Thursday. It’s basically a dye-sub snapshot printer, but with a 7-inch LCD. The screen can be tilted up when the printer is in use and then folded flat …

Firmware upgrade adds tethering, remote shutter to Epson P-6000/7000

Mark Best — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:37:16 +0000

(Credit:
Epson)

Are you an owner of the Epson P-6000 or P-7000 Multimedia Photo Viewer? If so, the new firmware available at the end of this month will interest you.

Previously, users had to take out the flash media from their cameras and plug it into the gadget to start …

Speed and image quality core to Lightroom 3 beta

Mark Best — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:37:12 +0000

The Lightroom 3 beta will look familiar to current users, but there are changes under the hood. In addition, Lightroom catalogs can be synchronized with Flickr.

(Credit:
Adobe Systems)

With the release of its first beta version of Photoshop Lightroom 3.0 on Wednesday night, Adobe Systems is trying to improve the heart of the photographic editing and cataloging software.

“With Lightroom 3, we’re looking at a performance and image quality rearchitecture,” said Product Manager Tom Hogarty. Those two goals are in opposition, since better image quality demands more computing horsepower. But Hogarty said the software is more responsive when moving among photos, and images look better with new noise reduction and sharpening abilities.

There are other changes, too, though: a revamped import process for importing photos into the software catalog; built-in connections to upload photos to online services and keep them in sync; a more flexible mechanism for laying out photos to be printed; new abilities for stamping watermarks onto photos; and the ability to export photos and music as a video file.

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Originally posted at Deep Tech

Canon to give 5D Mark II a cinema boost

Mark Best — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:37:08 +0000

It counts only as a footnote compared to today’s announcement of the professional EOS 1D Mark IV camera, but Canon also had a nice nugget of news for those who’ve invested $2,700 for the 5D Mark II SLR.

Canon's EOS 5D Mark II

(Credit:
Canon

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Originally posted at Deep Tech

Lexar plays the UDMA 6 card, too

Mark Best — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:37:06 +0000

(Credit:
Lexar)

Lexar follows close on the heels of SanDisk’s announcement of its 90MB per second Extreme Pro CompactFlash card with its own player, the Lexar Professional 600X. Like SanDisk’s, these expensive, ultrafast cards aren’t for everyone; as detailed in the Extreme Pro post, you really need to be shooting with a fast, high-resolution camera recent enough to support UDMA 6 or frequently downloading lots of files with a fast reader to see the benefit.

I repeated the casual testing I did with the SanDisk card, and while the Lexar seems to be faster overall than the SanDisk, there are two things to keep in mind: different capacities will frequently perform differently and Lexar doesn’t make the same durability claims or seem to invoke the error-correction algorithms SanDisk touts; the latter probably add some performance overhead, and might be a valuable trade-off for some shooters.

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Canon brings video, improved autofocus to EOS-1D Mark IV

Mark Best — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:37:00 +0000

(Credit:
Canon USA)

With the winter Olympics looming on the horizon, Canon’s announcement of an update to its pro sports-shooting mainstay, the EOS-1D series, comes as little surprise. While the buzz will probably center around the incorporation of a similar video-capture engine to that of the 7D, (thanks to slick, promotable-at-launch pro videos like this) or the incredibly high max sensitivity of ISO 102,400 (like the D3S), neither of those matters much if it can’t deliver on its core mission of fast, accurate autofocus (AF) and low noise in the midrange sensitivities.

Canon EOS-1D Mark IV photos

The reputation of the EOS’ AF system has taken a beating over the past couple of years, and Canon seems to have pulled out the stops to redeem itself–of course, only time and testing will tell if it’s succeeded. On paper, though, with more cross-type AF points, enhancements to improve low-light/low-contrast AF, and an update to its predictive AF tracking algorithms, it has the potential to outpower the veteran system in the D3S.

Here’s where it stands on the key specs:

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Vintage camera robots have ’60s panache

Mark Best — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:24:38 +0000

(Credit:
Cat Bishop via Etsy)

Designer Cat Bishop is hawking some pretty cool modified cameras on crafts site Etsy that look like robots from the ’60s. Each limited-edition piece has other objects attached to it, such as a pool ball for a head and domino pieces for the legs.

Surprisingly, …

Indecent Exposure 66: Inferred extracurriculars

Mark Best — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:24:04 +0000

Flummoxed by film scanning, finding white balance where there is none, and they only come out at night (to shoot).

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EPISODE 66

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Originally posted at Indecent Exposure Podcast