Photography

BERLIN--Panasonic has offered high-end 3D videocameras as part of its effort to advance the premium technology, but now it's begun showing off a prototype for a 3D model from its Lumix line of still cameras.

"We are also developing a 3D compact camera for this winter," Takuya Sugita, vice president of Panasonic's AVC Networks Company, said here this week at a press conference at the IFA electronics show, which officially starts today. The company showed two prototypes under glass at the show.

The company has offered a couple tidbits about the coming 3D Lumix camera: it … Read more

BERLIN--OK, perhaps the headline is a bit of an exaggeration--I've seen companies give away hundreds of $1,000 SLRs at conferences. But I have to hand it to Samsung today at the IFA trade show here.

To show off that it's entering the flash memory card market in the United States, the company created a customized miniature aluminum suitcase. Inside was a foam pad holding an SD card and a MicroSD card. Here's a video showing it all:

The company presumably selected the design to impart a sense of ruggedness: the cards are billed as shockproof and … Read more

I'm probably going against the will of the people here, but I sighed heavily this morning when I read in The New York Times that Facebook plans to release filters to give photos artsy effects.

You know what I'm talking about--the shots with the heavily darkened corners that old cameras produced, the desaturated colors from faded Polaroids, the sepia tones and cyanotype blues from 19th-century photography techniques, the wacky hues when one type of film was processed with another type's chemistry, the smeary Vaseline-on-the-lens look of old portraits.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this kind of … Read more

By now it's a familiar pattern: Camera makers release new models that can shoot photos in the high-quality but labor-intensive raw image format, and Adobe Systems periodically catches up with a release to support those proprietary formats.

So it's no surprise to owners of Olympus' E-P3, E-PL3, Panasonic's G3 and GF3, and Sony's Alpha NEX-C3 and SLT-A35 that the release candidate for Lightroom 3.5 adds support for their cameras. The closely related Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in 6.5 release candidate, also issued, follows suit; usually it's a few weeks before the test versions are … Read more

The digital revolution has swept film cameras almost completely out of the market, but so far it's been a very different story with binoculars.

Optics have improved, electronically-controlled image stabilization has arrived, and a few models with digital image sensors have appeared. But for the most part, binoculars remain the same basic product they were decades ago: a handheld stereo-vision telescope that relies on your brain to record what you see.

Sony hopes to change that with two new digital binoculars it plans to sell starting in November, the $1,400 DEV-3 and $2,000 DEV-5. Each has a … Read more

Online note-taking specialist Evernote has acquired Skitch, a Mac app for annotating photos and otherwise editing images, and plans to dramatically expand the software's availability.

For starters, Evernote is making the $20 app free. In addition, "We are committed, not only to making the Skitch Mac app more awesome, but also to bringing Skitch to every desktop and mobile platform under the sun," Evernote's Andrew Sinkov said in a blog post today.

That expansion begins with Skitch's first mobile app, a free download for Android, Evernote said.

"Our goal is to make Skitch a … Read more

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I know that everyone's family is different, but in my family, we take a lot of photos and videos … Read more

Professional camera manufacturer Hasselblad, a storied company based in Sweden that's wrestling with the transition to digital photography, has been acquired by Ventizz Capital Partners.

Specifically, the medium-format camera maker is now part of the Switzerland- and Germany-based private equity firm's Ventizz Capital Fund IV, the companies said today. The firm will provide new capital for a growth strategy, Ventizz said.

"We are proud to have such an iconic brand in our portfolio and are convinced that with solid financial support and a suitable growth strategy, Ventizz can further strengthen Hasselblad's position as the first-class producer … Read more

Apple applied for a patent today for technology to use a mobile device's orientation sensors to help correct common photo problems.

One claim in the patent application involves using gyroscopes, compasses, or accelerometers to determine a device's orientation, then using that data to fix problems such as a tilt that would keep a horizontal line from being level.

A related claim involves a correction to distortion that can be caused when a camera isn't held vertically--for example when a view looking up makes the parallel vertical lines of a building converge. Here, a distance measurement to the subject could be factored in, too.

A photo could be corrected either after it was taken or on the fly as it's being taken.

The application is a new twist on hardware fixes for common photography problems. Modern digital cameras can move sensors or lens elements to counteract camera shake, and cameras or comptuer software can correct optical shortcomings of lenses. Start-up Lytro even hopes focusing errors can be avoided with light-field technology that lets people focus shots after they're taken. Smile detection technology can snap a photo only when you see the whites of their teeth, and face detection helps set exposure and focus.

The iPhone 4, with a backside-illumination sensor that's more sensitive than conventional models, is highly regarded as phone cameras go, and it's highly used, too, topping Flickr's camera usage charts. No doubt Apple would like to help its customers avoid those embarrassingly tilted oceans.

Now all we need is technology to ensure camera subjects look as healthy, vivacious, and beautiful as all the people in Apple's promotional illustrations. … Read more