Cameras

Step aside, home photo printer! The age of the 3D printer is just beginning. But then what are you supposed to do with all those digital photos sitting on your hard drive?

Well, thanks to Amanda Ghassaei of Instructables -- who showed us how to make a 3D-printed record -- you can try printing them in 3D. Using an Objet500 Connex 3D printer that prints at 600dpi, along with ModelBuilder library and the Processing open-source programming language, Ghassaei converted her photographs into a printable topography.

How do they work?… Read more

For many of us, the video below of Matthew Gough falling 1,000 feet after his parachute malfunctioned during a BASE jump is like watching a common nightmare brought to life.

Remarkably, the video bears even more similarities to that horrible falling dream than first meets the eye, in that in the end, everything -- including 25-year-old Gough himself -- is just fine.

The entire thing was captured on film, including from the vantage point of Gough's own helmet cam, which looks to be a GoPro Hero3.… Read more

In just a few short years, smartphone photography has reached critical mass. It used to be the case that a camera module on a phone was a curious anomaly rather than the rule, but now you would be hard pressed to find a mobile device without a lens on it somewhere.

To demonstrate just how much mobile photography has permeated contemporary society, take a trip through any tourist venue and count the number of people taking photos. No doubt there will be a mixture of compact cameras, SLRs and mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras (ILCs). But just as many people will … Read more

Normally a two-year product cycle isn't that much for a camera targeted at advanced photographers. But in a field where technology mutates as quickly as it does for advanced interchangeable-lens cameras, that's a long time. So at 1.5 years since the E-P3, it feels like it's taken just a little too long for the PEN E-P5's debut, especially given the relatively catch-up feature set of the new model.

Not that there's anything wrong with the updates in the E-P5; there's plenty here that probably makes it a better camera. The most noticeable is … Read more

For a lot of people, the only thing that makes a point-and-shoot better than a smartphone for taking pictures is a zoom lens, and for many of those people, the more zoom range, the better.

That's how we end up with the Sony Cyber-shot HX300 and its 50x f2.8-6.3 24-1200mm lens. It's the same range found on the Canon PowerShot SX50 HS and the Fujifilm FinePix SL1000, but the Sony's apertures are wider at both ends (though just marginally more so than the SL1000's), making it a bit better in low light than the … Read more

A team of researchers at several universities around the world has created a new digital camera technology that takes cues from bug eyes.

The technology, which has not yet been named, is designed after the eyes found in arthropods. The camera is equipped with a a slew of image sensors and focusing lenses around a hemispherical base. With the sensors arranged in that way, the camera can take complete 180-degree pictures with no interpretive mistakes in image quality.… Read more

Continuing its full-court press in camera connectivity, Samsung introduced the NX2000 interchangeable-lens camera, which features a phone-like touch screen and easy Autoshare toggling.

Essentially a slightly more feature-rich version of the NX1100 (which in turn is the NX1000 with Autoshare capability and a bundled version of Adobe Lightroom 4, which also comes with the NX2000). Both are based on the same sensor as the NX210, though the NX2000 has an updated version of the image-processing engine. Samsung says that it results in better image quality and faster performance, and that autofocus performance falls somewhere between the NX1100 and NX300; it'… Read more

Continuing its full-court press in camera connectivity, Samsung introduced the NX2000 interchangeable-lens camera, which features a phone-like touch screen and easy Autoshare toggling.

Essentially a slightly more feature-rich version of the NX1100 (which in turn is the NX1000 with Autoshare capability and a bundled version of Adobe Lightroom 4, which also comes with the NX2000). Both are based on the same sensor as the NX210, though the NX2000 has an updated version of the image-processing engine. Samsung says that it results in better image quality and faster performance, and that autofocus performance falls somewhere between the NX1100 and NX300; it'… Read more

If you've always wanted a pair of HD digital binoculars, you could very well get some without shelling out the big bucks.

A new smartphone accessory called Snapzoom allows you to mate your smartphone camera with the optical scope of a pair of binoculars, dramatically increasing the reach of your handset. The iPhone 5, for instance, would get its normal 33mm focal length boosted to 330mm on a 10x spotting scope.

Compatible with most smartphones (with or without a case), the Snapzoom can be mounted on all single- and dual-eyepiece scopes, which include the usual binoculars, spotting scopes, telescopes, and even microscopes. … Read more