cameras

The camera behind Google's Street View

If you've been playing with Google's new Street View feature--that $25 billion time suck--you may well have wondered how the heck they took those 360-degree images while driving down the street.

Well, wonder no more. Thanks to our good friend Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing, we now know that many of the images, at least those shot outside the San Francisco Bay Area--were shot using this fairly disco-ball-esque device by the outside contractor, Immersive Media.

What's not clear just yet is if Google used the same kind of camera in the Bay Area, where the company … Read more

Concept 360-degree panorama cam draws lots of interest, little understanding

Update, 5/30/07: I knew this wasn't the first concept of its kind, and sure enough, our own Candace Lombardi had covered one in a previous life. Cedric Tay's 360 Degree Digital Camera even won a European design award.

While it lacks the visceral impact of the film version shown to the left, designer Ye Chen's hypothetical digital camera optimized for shooting 360-degree panoramas has the advantage of being a lot smaller and cooler looking. The camera concept, posted today on the Yanko Design site, incorporates a rotating camera lens, essentially turning the entire camera body … Read more

Panasonic follows 12-megapixel trend

In a move bound to surprise no one after both Casio's and Sony's recent announcements, Panasonic has announced a new 12-megapixel compact camera called the Lumix DMC-FX100. However, this new Panasonic distinguishes itself from the competition with a 3.6X optical, 28mm-to-100mm, f/2.8-to-f.5.6 zoom lens, which should prove useful for snapshooters trying to compose photos of friends in tight quarters, such as a crowded nightclub. The new Lumix also includes Panasonic's Mega O.I.S. optical image stabilization, as well as a 2.5-inch, 207,000-pixel LCD screen.

Panasonic has reached new heights … Read more

Kodak's CMOS camera will be 5-megapixel

BOSTON, Mass.--Eastman Kodak plans to release its own CMOS sensor in a Kodak camera and several Motorola cell phones by the end of the year.

Kodak President Antonio Perez shared the info at the JPMorgan Technology Conference in Boston on Monday.

While Perez would not release details on the camera phone, he did say that the new Kodak camera would have a Kodak-developed CMOS chip and be a 5-megapixel camera. The Kodak CMOS camera will be released in time for the holiday season and the Motorola-Kodak camera phone with a Kodak CMOS chip will follow close behind.

Kodak has been known to be developing a CMOS sensor … Read more

Casio joins 12MP club

Casio has announced its plan to participate in the latest round of the camera world's now-futile megapixel war with its forthcoming Exilim Zoom EX-Z1200. The company's next top model will sport a 1/1.7-inch, 12-megapixel CCD imaging sensor. A 3X optical, 37mm-to-111mm equivalent, f/2.8-to-f/5.4 zoom lens will funnel light toward that sensor, while a 2.8-inch, 230,400-pixel LCD will let you view your work.

More exciting than this new camera's abundant pixel count is Casio's decision to include CCD-shift image stabilization. This is the first time the company has offered … Read more

Digital camera shipments up 6 percent

Digital camera shipments increased 6 percent to 4.9 million in the first quarter of 2007, market researcher IDC said Wednesday.

Top leaders were Canon at 21 percent of the market, Sony at 16 percent and Kodak at 13 percent. Samsung jumped from 4 percent in the year-earlier quarter to 11 percent this year, propelling it to a fourth-place finish, IDC said.

Kodak fared better, with shipments increasing 5 percent--the first growth in five quarters, attributable to its emphasis on compact cameras costing between $200 and $300, IDC said. Nikon, though, didn't fare as well.

"Nikon was seventh … Read more

Deal of the day: Canon PowerShot SD750 7.1 MP camera for $260

Sandwiched between similar 7-megapixel siblings--the PowerShot SD800 IS on one side and the PowerShot SD1000 on the other--the Canon PowerShot SD750 nevertheless manages to distinguish itself as a well-designed, practical option for snapshooters who favor big LCDs over optical viewfinders.

If you're the rebating kind, there are some impressive rebates associated with this offer, including two on printers and one on poster-sized prints from Shutterfly. Check out the seller's site for details.

What: Canon PowerShot SD750 How much: $259.95 Shipping: Free, varies Where: Amazon.com (via FatWallet.com) When: Through unknown date Click here for product review.… Read more

Panasonic designs Venus-worthy image sensor

I love press releases for really geeky stuff like image sensors, especially the releases declaring amazing breakthroughs. They're fun because there's usually some really interesting development buried in it, but the people who write the releases have no idea what it is. Ditto for many of the Web sites that write about them. So you end up with some verbatim quotes that are so dense, an electron couldn't tunnel through them. This brings me to today's announcement from Panasonic, featuring a rugged, new image sensor designed to withstand the deterioration caused by weather, heat, and ultraviolet … Read more

'Clip Cam' is a clothespin for flat monitors

It's can't compare with the "Happy Kids" Webcam in our opinion, but Brando's "USB Crystal Clip Cam" definitely seems versatile with its 180-degree rotation. Plus, the wide clip would make it pretty easy to position along the edges of any LCD monitor or laptop screen, and the camera has built-in LEDs to illuminate your night-vision chatting, though that's still more than we want to know. It won't be winning any awards for aesthetics, nor will its specs produce the best-quality photography, but at $18.50, it's hard to complain.

News roundup: StumbleUpon, Last.fm, Xbox 360 chat

StumbleUpon/eBay talks heat up. The Wall Street Journal is reporting (registration required) that a deal between eBay and StumbleUpon to acquire the social networking and content recommendation service is getting closer. No agreement has been made on price, but the rumored amount brings it somewhere near $75 million dollars. If acquired, StumbleUpon's content preference algorithms could be employed on eBay's auction listings to give eBay users a new way to get recommendations on things they might want to buy. ( CNET News.com Blog)

Last.fm launching video service. As reported by the Register in March, Last.fm … Read more