Camcorders

Last year Panasonic started up a mini-camcorder line with one device, the HM-TA1. It wasn't very good, but Panasonic decided to press on, announcing three dual-camera pistol-grip models (HX-WA10, HX-DC10 and HX-DC1) and HM-TA20 and HM-TA2 candy-bar-style models.

For the HX-series models, they look like the continuation of Sanyo's dual-camera Xacti line (Panasonic announced total acquisition of Sanyo in December 2010). The WA10 is the highest-end dual-camera model (they have separate video and photo capture buttons) and features waterproofing good down to 10 feet for up to an hour; a backside-illuminated CMOS sensor; 16-megapixel photo capture and full … Read more

If you want to know what's going on at night in your house, "Paranormal Activity"-style, now there's a affordable solution.

D-Link today introduced its Mydlink-enabled Wireless-N Day/Night Network Camera (model DCS-932L). According to the company, with a built-in CPU and Web server the DCS-932L offers a complete monitoring system for homes and small offices, at resolutions of up to 640x480 pixels.

D-Link says that the new camera is simple to install and has an intuitive Web-based interface. Consumers can integrate it into an existing network and view the streaming video from a PC, … Read more

GoPro, which specializes in rugged cameras that can be attached to snowboarder helmets and surfboards, has begun selling its new system for recording 3D video.

The $99 3D Hero System is a water-sealed enclosure that holds two of the company's video cameras and links them with a synchronization cable. The dual cameras, which record 1080p video with an infinite-focus fisheye view, are sold separately at $260 each.

GoPro announced the 3D system at CES earlier this year, but now it's shipping. The camera housing is 5 inches wide and 2.5 inches tall and attaches to the company'… Read more

The latest lens accessory Lensbaby pulls out of its quiver targets pickier users who want better build quality and smoother focus and tilt operation than the company's previous products offered. The Lensbaby Composer Pro will come in two configurations: $300 equipped with the Double Glass Optic, or $400 with the Sweet 35 Optic. The older Lensbaby Composer will remain available at a lower price of $250 (with the Double Glass Optic).

If you've never heard of Lensbaby's products, they're adapters for a variety of dSLR and Micro Four Thirds lens mounts which deliver relatively inexpensive manual-focus … Read more

LONDON--A new type of image sensor that's been flipped front to back is beginning to give photographers a better view of the world.

The new sensors use a technology called backside illumination, and chipmakers including Sony and Samsung are leading the charge to build them into a variety of cameras. And though it's a premium feature today, it's spreading rapidly across the market.

"It's more aggressive than we expected even two years ago," Yole Developpement analyst Jerome Baron said in a talk last week at the Image Sensors Europe conference here.

Image sensors are … Read more

Goldilocks Episode 9 was edited on and uploaded from an iPad 2.

I first ran into Anna Elizabeth James and Michael Koerbel, the aspiring movie-industry duo of Majek Pictures, through the short film "Apple of My Eye" recorded and edited last year entirely on an iPhone 4.

Since last June, the team has been busy. They've since produced eight installments of similarly produced action series called Goldilocks and an app that lets people download new episodes. And starting Friday, they upgraded their editing studio: two iPad 2s running Apple's new tablet version of iMovie were used to produce Goldilocks episode nine.

"The iPad 2 is definitely more fun than editing on an iPhone," James told CNET in an e-mail. Regarding iMovie, "the feature requests we posed to Apple were pretty much all addressed in this version."

Apple's product demonstrations are designed to elevate people's expectations and aspirations, but don't expect average Apple product owners to be able to reproduce what Majek Pictures did easily. But do take it as evidence that the "post-PC era," no matter how much I don't care for that particular term, will extend well beyond playing Angry Birds and posting updates on Facebook. … Read more

Valentine's Day is this coming Monday. I tend to forget such things or put them off to the last minute, which makes sites like Animoto pretty great to have around.

Basically, Animoto takes your photos and video clips, edits them together with some music--theirs or yours--and produces a finished video for sharing. A recent site redesign makes the process easier and shortens your "time to video."

I detailed the ins and outs of the site in the slideshow below, but it's really pretty straightforward. Animoto lets you create movies up to 30 seconds long at a … Read more

First, congrats to Surendra of Rego Park, N.Y., for winning the Pure Oasis Flow in last week's giveaway. Now, for this week's giveaway, we're moving into the video realm with Toshiba's new mini camcorder, the Camileo S30, which Toshiba has donated to the Crave giveaway cause.

Here's what Toshiba has to say about the Camileo S30, which has a beefy feature set and comes with 128MB of built-in memory and an SD/SDHC/SDXC card slot that accepts memory cards of up to 64GB (see full specs here):

Hmmm. Earlier today, both Zeiss and Schneider announced plans to manufacture lenses for the Olympus/Panasonic-brainchild Micro Four Thirds (MFT) mount for ILC (interchangeable lens) cameras. Hours later, a note from Sony has popped up in my inbox stating that it will open its competing E-mount specification up--free of a license fee--to all lens and adapter makers, starting in April.

When you think about it, Sony really didn't have much of a choice. Whatever inroads MFT has made in the market is partly attributable to the availability of lenses and adapters for legacy lenses. But it's also worth … Read more