Cameras posts - Crave- Page 2

High-speed cam catches cool 3D shots of snowflakes

Now that winter has passed, those of us who live in cold climes can once again appreciate the beauty of snowflakes without feeling the urge to curse them for making us dig out the shovel. And if ever snowflakes looked lovely, it's in these images shot by a high-speed camera system developed specifically to photograph them in 3D as they fell.

"Until our device, there was no good instrument for automatically photographing the shapes and sizes of snowflakes in free fall," says Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah and one of the developers of the cam known as MASC, or Multi-Angle Snowflake Camera. "We are photographing these snowflakes completely untouched by any device, as they exist naturally in the air."

MASC -- under development for three years -- takes 9- to 37-micron-resolution stereographic photographs of snowflakes from three angles while simultaneously measuring the speed of their fall, a highly influential factor in the location and lifetime of a storm. … Read more

Neon waterfalls illuminate nature at night

There's something beautiful and futuristic about bright neon lights against a natural background.

In a stunning series of images called "Neon Luminance," San Francisco multimedia group From the Lenz used long-exposure photography to capture glow sticks traveling down a waterfall. The resulting pictures look straight out of a science fiction movie featuring a strange new world unlike our own. … Read more

Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Turn off the screens at our concerts

Go to any live concert these days and you'll see many audience members watching the performance through a small screen instead of their own eyes.

In response to this epidemic of diverted attention, indie rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs recently put the proverbial foot down on concertgoers with a sign that instructs those with a smartphone, tablet, and/or camera to "Put that s*** away."… Read more

Hands on: Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF6

Editors' note: The GF6 has not yet been announced in the U.S. This hands-on preview is courtesy of our sister site CNET Asia. The camera was subsequently announced in the US at a price of $599.99 for the 14-42mm standard zoom kit, and is expected to ship in June.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF6 comes as an update to the DMC-GF5. The new camera features a chunkier build and a sleek metallic design. With this iteration, Panasonic has added a few notable improvements such as wireless connectivity, a 180-degree tilting screen and a mode dial. This 16-megapixel interchangeable lens … Read more

Pocket Spotlight, for better photography lighting

Smartphones can take great photos, but we all know the on-board flash can produce harsh and ugly shadows.

Well, the Pocket Spotlight is an accessory that not only provides a softer and more flattering quality of light, but also lets you adjust how the light falls on your subjects before image capture.

The Pocket Spotlight consists of a bank of LEDs that's capable of generating a continuous stream of light for up to one hour on a fully charged battery. … Read more

Lightroom 4.4 brings Nikon D7100 support, Fujifilm fixes

Adobe Systems has released Lightroom 4.4 with support for two mainstream SLRs, Nikon's new D7100 and Canon's Rebel SL1, and with better image quality for a Fujifilm cameras with unusual sensors.

Lightroom is designed for editing and cataloging photos, especially those shot in cameras' proprietary raw image formats that offer higher quality but impose an image-processing burden on photographers. Adobe periodically updates the software to support new cameras -- and in the case of version 4.4 to fix problems with existing cameras such as the Fujifilm models.

Fujifilm's X-Trans and EXR sensors each vary from … Read more

Rhino Battery Holster keeps your batteries close

You know what they say... keep your friends close, and your batteries closer.

A Washington-based accessory maker has just created a Kickstarter project for its latest product, the Rhino Battery Holster. As the name suggests, the contraption allows you to holster your camera battery like a gunslinger in an old Western.

Capable of holding two Canon 2 LP-E6 juice packs, the battery holster has an integrated belt clip that lets you attach the holster to your belt, camera strap, or camera carrier. Alternately, there are brass inserts at the rear of the belt clip that let you secure the holster to anything using a carabiner. … Read more

Interactive panorama of Curiosity photos lets you take hi-rez Mars-walk

A stunning 4-gigapixel panorama of Mars, compiled from images captured by two mast cameras aboard NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, could be one of the most detailed views of our distant neighbor yet.

The panoramic picture of Gale Crater derives from 295 images that were digitally stitched together by Estonian photographer Andrew Bodrov. In its final form, the mosaic stretches out to an astounding 90,000 by 45,000-pixel resolution. … Read more

Craigslist sting: How a photographer got his stolen camera back

Boy meets camera. Boy loses camera. Boy launches undercover sting to recover camera. Photographer Jeff Hu became the star of his own version of the classic cop show "The Streets of San Francisco" when he took on the task of recovering his stolen Canon Rebel T2i camera.

Hu details his adventure in an article for PetaPixel that should act as a training manual for anyone who ever finds a stolen item on Craigslist.

The story begins innocently enough with a party that got a little out of hand. A group of close friends soon expanded to include some strangers. The next morning, the party-goers were gone, and so was Hu's dSLR.… Read more

Sorry, DNG iPhone app won't let you shoot true raw photos

Photo enthusiasts already pleased with the iPhone's generally superior camera can be forgiven for getting excited about the possibility of shooting photos in the higher-end raw file format.

Cypress Innovations on Wednesday released a new app called Digital Negative that might raise that very hope by offering a way to take photos that are stored in Adobe Systems' DNG format for raw photos. Alas, although the app does store uncompressed image data, it doesn't actually store the raw data taken straight from the sensor.

The Digital Negative app collects the uncompressed red, green, and blue color information for … Read more