lens

Pentax 'pancake' lens to hit full-stack status

Pentax's emphasis on compact SLR cameras and lenses yielded its "pancake" lenses, tiny lenses so thin they can be mistaken for the camera body cap that's put on just to keep the dust out.

The Japanese camera maker has released three such models, but it began showing a fourth here at the Photo Marketing Association trade show.

The new lens is a 35mm F/2.8 macro, said John Carlson, imaging systems product manager, in an interview here. He declined to offer details on price, availability date, or how closely the macro lens will be able … Read more

Sony shows new SLRs, expands lens range

LAS VEGAS--The ability to change lenses is one of the chief advantages of SLR cameras, and Sony is trying hard to build out that part of its SLR line. The company already has introduced 21 lenses, and it plans to sell more than five new lenses this year, the company said here at the Photo Marketing Association trade show.

At a news conference Thursday, Sony described three of the lenses in some detail--a 24-70mm F/2.8, a 70-300mm F/4.5-5.6 and an 18-250mm F/3.5-6.3. But at its booth, it showed eight new models.

The … Read more

DxO revamps photo editing tools for Vista

LAS VEGAS--DxO has updated two photography programs, releasing DxO Optics Pro 4.2 with Windows Vista support and adding new options to its FilmPack 1.1.

DxO Optics Pro is a stand-alone application or Adobe Photoshop plug-in that lets users adjust color, correct lens geometry problems, reduce noise. The new version 4.2 is compatible with Windows Vista and adds a feature called SmartVibrancy that increases color vividness without throwing skin tones out of whack. The company announced the moves at the Photo Marketing Association trade show here on Thursday.

The company also is working on a DxO plug-in to … Read more

Call a Sherpa: Sigma's 200-500mm lens

LAS VEGAS--When it comes to SLR cameras, there are big lenses with a long focal length, there are fast lenses with a wide aperture to gather lots of light, and flexible lenses with a wide zoom range.

Squeezing all three into the same lens is tough, but Tokyo-based lens maker Sigma has done just that with a model with a 200-500mm zoom range. It's got a wide aperture, F/2.8, for taking higher-speed shots.

But there's a catch: the lens weighs 40 kilograms, or about 88 pounds.

The company is showing off a prototype here at the … Read more

Lensbabies makes the jump to medium-format cameras

LAS VEGAS--Lensbabies, a manufacturer of lenses that focus selectively on small portions of an image, has made the jump to medium-format cameras.

The company's Lensbaby 3G model now is available for Pentax 67 and Mamiya 645 camera bodies, the company announced here at the Photo Marketing Association trade show. Medium-format cameras use film or an image sensor larger than with conventional SLR cameras for higher-quality images.

The three-year-old Portland, Ore.-based company announced the new $380 models at the Photo Marketing Association trade show here Wednesday. The 3G model for SLR cameras is a notch cheaper at $270 for … Read more

Panasonic, Leica tout monster SLR zoom

LAS VEGAS--Panasonic and its lens-making partner, Leica, announced a zoom lens with a whopping 14-150mm range Wednesday at the Photo Marketing Association's trade show here. The $1,000 lens is due to ship this month.

The lens, formally graced with the name of Leica D Vario-Elmar 14-150mm/F3.5-5.6 Asph. Mega O.I.S., is a member of the Four-Thirds system. That means it can attach to digital SLRs from Panasonic, Leica and Olympus. It also means its focal length equivalence is 28-300mm on a 35mm film SLR camera.

The lens offers some direct competition to Nikon's … Read more

The key to credit-card-thin cameras?

The biggest origami news of 2007 has nothing to do with Microsoft or ultramobile PCs.

Instead, thanks to centuries-old telescope technology reapplied to camera lenses by engineers at UC San Diego, the origami lens takes the cake.

At just one-seventh the thickness as a traditional lens, the origami system could significantly raise the resolution bar for camera phones. It might also make today's slimmest ultracompact cams seem like anvils.

The system borrows the folded optical system found in Cassegrain telescopes, but uses a single, diamond-cut optical crystal instead of a series of mirrors. The origami system bounces light through … Read more

A video lens for the Borg in you

Not long ago, the idea of a video lens built into a pair of eyeglasses was little more than science fiction. Now, a Japanese company wants to make it a reality and even relatively affordable.

The "Teleglass" from Arisawa Manufacturing is a quarter-inch LCD that yields an image that's the equivalent of a 21-inch screen from about a yard away, according to I4U News. That's about half the size and distance of products such as RelaxView's glasses, but the Teleglass allows you to maintain your regular field of vision at the same time. (We must … Read more

A telescope for your phone

As we've noted frequently in the past, ill-advised tampering can make some technological experiments go terribly awry. But sometimes, the need for certain functions supersedes all in the evolution of the handset.

That, at least, is how we view the mobile phone telescope from Brando. In fact, Shiny Shiny (a closet birder--who knew?) even admits to lusting after this gadget "possibly more than I've ever wanted anything in my life." Wow.

With such strong convictions, we find it difficult to fault this latest genetic permutation--even if it does make a perfectly decent phone look like the … Read more