That satisfying clunk of the mirror swinging up and away, the rapid-fire clatter of DSLRs going into burst mode, could be on its last legs. Well, for Sony Alphas at least.
The company has confirmed that its translucent mirror tech, most recently confirmed to be coming to the A77 and earlier shown on the A55 and A33, will be coming to the entire Alpha line.
The sensor actually captures light through the mirror itself, which is just reflective enough to allow for real-time focusing even while capturing video.
It’s something of a bold move in the generally stoic DSLR market, and only time will tell whether it helps to boost Sony’s street cred up to Canon and Nikon levels.
A dark shadow has befallen the Sony NEX-3 interchangeable lens camera, the shadow of being described as “no longer in production” by its maker’s official website.
Coming out in June of last year alongside its more celebrated NEX-5 brother, the NEX-3 enjoyed some decent success with critics, mostly owing to its oversized 14.2 megapixel sensor, and showed no signs of struggling commercially, however Sony has seen fit to halt production within eight months of its introduction.
Reasons haven’t yet been given, though we imagine people were willing to spend the extra cash to upgrade to 1080p video recording and a magnesium alloy body on the NEX-5, which is what rendered the NEX-3 expendable.
At least we know the NEX-5 and the NEX-VG10 will keep E-mount lenses going into the future, so current NEX-3 owners should have little to worry about. If anything, their camera just became that extra bit more exclusive.
- Author: admin
- Filed under: General
- Date: Feb 4,2011
If you’ve seen our Hong Kong feature from awhile back, then you would’ve already heard about my favorite gadget hangout Sham Shui Po.
By chance, my post-flight stroll in said district yesterday coincided with Apliu Street’s Chinese New Year flea market, which featured many vintage items like jade figurines, paintings, jewelry, video tapes, vinyl records, etc.
Naturally, what really caught my attention were the old gadgets that were literally piled up along the street, and from just HK$30 (US$3.85), you could easily pick up an old classic such as a Sony Clié, an HP iPaq, a WonderSwan Color, an original GameBoy, a MiniDisc player, or even a proper old school laptop or camera.
Hell, some guy even had a couple of Nintendo Micro VS Systems (Donkey Kong Hockey and Boxing)! Read the rest of this entry »
We had a feeling the Olympus XZ-1 would be a winner, and Digital Photography Review seems to think so, too — it called the 10 megapixel, full-manual point and shoot “the best photographers’ compact currently available” at the end of a thorough review.
Most of the praise was heaped on that F1.8-2.5 Zuiko lens, providing an “unbeaten combination of range and brightness” whose potent, detailed low-light performance was practically enough to cancel out the publication’s worries about the lack of a adjustable noise reduction setting.
Though the publication admitted that the camera lacked the customization of certain Micro Four Thirds cousins, it didn’t miss most of the advanced controls, preferring the streamlined menus and manual dials for easy access to common adjustments. (Battery charging over USB and a dedicated movie button were also deemed nice touches.)
In fact, the only major ding DPReview had for Olympus was the complete omission of auto exposure and autofocus locks for focus-and-recompose shooting, but if you’re willing to snap shots using Olympus’s 11 AF points and aren’t looking to tote a set of expensive interchangeable lenses around, this might be the one. Dive into our source link to find out for sure.
Remember that patent for a manual-and-electronically-zooming Nikon lens?
The rumor mill thinks it knows where it belongs: in Nikon’s unannounced CoolPix P500, an update to the company’s already-ludicrously-lengthy P100 that adds a 36x optical magnifying glass and bumps the backside-illuminated sensor to a full 12 megapixels of resolution.
That camera will reportedly bow in February, but April is when Nikon will allegedly bring out the big guns — the EVIL, market-molding monster of a mirrorless camera it’s been teasing since last summer.
Hit up our source links for all the scuttlebutt you need.
Samsung just introduced a slew of new cameras at CES earlier this month, but it’s now already back with another batch, which consists of five low to mid-range point-and-shoots in its ST series.
Those begin with the $100 ST30 model, and move on up to the ST65, ST90 and touchscreen-equipped ST95, before topping out with the $230 ST6500 (pictured above), which packs a 16 megapixel sensor, a 5x optical zoom, 720p video recording, and the same touchscreen interface as the ST95.
As for the rest of the lot, you can expect to get between 10 and 16 megapixels, either a 3x or 5x optical zoom, and 720p video recording on all but the ST30. Head on past the break for the press releases with the complete specs, and look for all five cameras to be available in February or March.
All you have to do is take some photos which you never delete from your camera so when someone finds your camera at the bottom of the gorilla pit they are able to locate you and return the lost property to its rightful owner.
Let’s see those photos. Read the rest of this entry »
Panasonic’s just announced quite a handful of Lumix compact cameras, featuring both the new Venus Engine VI and Venus Engine HD II that claim to perform quicker with better noise reduction.
What’s more exciting is that these are all compatible with the forthcoming SDXC cards too, but check out their “Happy Mode” — it makes photos “more vivid and true to the color of the scene you memorized.” Yeah, as if we’d want photos that are more, um, real. Anyway, let’s break it down here (clockwise from top left; non-US model numbers in brackets): Read the rest of this entry »
Ever tried operating a handheld cam at 20x optical zoom? Without a tripod, your recordings tend to look like they were taken in the middle of an earthquake, so quite frankly, we ain’t so wildly impressed with Sanyo’s 23x-rated SH11 camcorder — okay, we are, but we thought we’d inform you that that silly large number comes with limited use scenarios.
Freshly announced, carrying 16GB of internal storage, and coming to Japan in late April, this is part of Sanyo’s Dual Camera series, as its CMOS sensor is capable of 4 megapixel stills as well as 1080i / 30fps video in MPEG-4 format. It’ll be joined there by the pistol grip-shaped CG110, which improves on the previous CGs by moving up to Full HD recording, adding 16GB of built-in storage, and even supporting SDXC cards. Check the source links for more.
