Cameras

Mermaid hunters (or merman hunters for that matter) have another photographic weapon to add to their arsenal.

The new Nikon Coolpix AW110 is waterproof down to 59 feet, shockproof from up to 6.7 feet, and freezeproof to 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Its predecessor, the AW100, was protected down to 33 feet, could survive 5-foot drops, and could also continue operating down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

It has built-in GPS that can be used to geotag photos as well as display and embed points-of-interest data and keep a log of your path while you shoot. Nikon also popped in Wi-Fi that, … Read more

Nikon hasn't lacked for full-frame wide-angle zoom lenses -- the 14-24mm f.8 is a yumburger -- but with the shipping of the D600 new Nikon adopters faced a rather limited choice of lenses that didn't cost as much as the camera. Nikon rectifies that with a new AF-S 18-35mm f3.5-4.5 FX lens which is better-priced to go with that camera at $749.95.

The lens is ostensibly designed to be compact and lightweight (about 13.6 ounces) to match the lighter D600 body as well. Other specs include a minimum focus distance of about 11 … Read more

Sony adds to its E-mount lens line for the Alpha NEX series of cameras with a 20mm f2.8 pancake (30mm equivalent) that will ship in April for $349.99. Sony currently only offers one other pancake lens, a 16mm f2.8 (24mm equivalent). From a size standpoint, the pancakes are a nice complement to the skinny NEX bodies, but you'll usually get better image quality --and faster apertures -- out of their not-so-slim counterparts.

Sony also took the opportunity to announce standalone pricing and availability for the 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 power zoom E-mount lens that it unveiled … Read more

When it comes to yesterday's inauguration, forget about high-def videos, transcripts, images from space, and all that jazz. The best glimpse of the ceremony resides in a gargantuan panorama that lets you zoom around the action that took place on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

The image, captured while Obama gave his inaugural speech, required 13 minutes of straight shooting using a dSLR and the Gigapan Epic Pro panorama-capturing device. To create the stunning mosaic, the Gigapan shot 305 high-resolution photographs of different areas in the scene, which were then stitched together to make the zoomable picture. … Read more

Good news for shutterbug travelers with limited luggage space: Popular tripod maker Giottos has just released a new range of "YTL" tripods that utilize a new Y-shaped center column design that's 30 percent smaller than the cylindrical columns found in typical tripods. This allows the tripod legs to be tucked into the center column closer, making the tripod more compact and allowing it to be easily stowed.

While the center column sees a reduction in size, the company claims the new design does not compromise the tripod's stability and strength. The new tripod range can support … Read more

OK, let's just say you decide to walk the length of Europe and Asia and bring all your social-media peeps along for the journey. What devices would you bring with you to keep in touch and document your epic stroll?

These aren't questions most of us will ever be faced with, but Michael Lee Johnson is thinking very hard about the answers right now as he prepares to embark on a half-decade long sojourn by foot from Beijing to London later this year.

A developer from England who has also worked in social media (he had a moment of notoriety when Facebook nixed the 1-cent ad he purchased to promote his Google+ account), marketing and a few startups, Johnson tells me he's treating his trip as a sort of startup of its own.

In fact, the idea for a major overland trip was originally conceived as a marketing stunt for a startup. The startup is no more, but Johnson's dream of sharing the near-entirety of an epic personal journey lives on.… Read more

The Lomography Smartphone Film Scanner lets you conveniently scan your negatives with a smartphone so you can easily share those '70s summer camp pics on Twitter. Created by the same people behind Lomography, this portable scanner can scan a variety of 35mm film -- color slides, color negatives, black and white film.

Besides the scanner, all you need is a smartphone and the included free Lomoscanner app (compatible with iOS and Android). The app not only scans your film, but lets you stitch images together (for panoramas, for example), as well as animate 35mm analog movies shot using the Lomography … Read more

LAS VEGAS--It's been an exceptionally busy and newsworthy past 12 months for cameras -- budget full-frame models, 4K action cameras and cinema cameras, full-frame compacts. Unfortunately for CES 2013, most of that happened at Photokina this past fall. So while this show brought a few nice, potentially ownworthy updates to existing product lines, none of it really stands out as particularly whizzy.

In advanced cameras, the most common update has been to autofocus systems, with combo phase-detection/contrast AF starting to take over in camera lines that have traditionally had rather slow performance -- new models like the Fujifilm X100S … Read more

As product names go, BCM7445 is as boring as it gets. But if you want better video, the Broadcom chip might get you excited.

That's because the processor, designed for Net-connected video devices and announced at the CES show today, is among the earliest to support a new video compression technology variously known as H.265, MPEG-5, and HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding). It's the successor to the very widely used H.264, aka AVC and MPEG-4 Part 10.

H.265 brings two notable features. First, it can match the quality of H.264 with half the network bandwidth, … Read more