Category Archives: News

News

Enhance! Photo analysis finds faces reflected in eyeballs

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Devin Coldewey. NBC News Dec 27th, 2013 (http://www.nbcnews.com)

It’s the stuff of sci-fi, or at least of “CSI”: British researchers have demonstrated a technique whereby faces reflected in a person’s eye can be extracted from a picture. Zoom in far enough, it turns out, and that twinkle in your eye turns into a full-blown portrait.

Movie buffs may remember something like this appearing in the 1982 sci-fi classic “Blade Runner,” in which a photo is “enhanced” to an unreasonable degree — and of course many a cop drama or mystery has relied on such photographic tricks as well to produce evidence. But this time it’s for real.

Psychologists Rob Jenkins, of the University of York, and Christie Kerr, of the University of Glasgow, show that in the proper conditions, reflections off the pupil of the eye can contain enough details to identify faces. Potential applications aren’t far off from the fictional representations: A picture of a victim might hide details of the attacker or surroundings.

Full article and pictures at the source>

94x zoom lens patented—is a Canon SX100 planned?

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By Mike Tomkins, December 27, 2013 (http://www.imaging-resource.com)

Photographers looking for the ultimate in image quality might avoid zoom lenses like the plague, but the popularity of increasingly long-zoom cameras suggests that some people just can’t get enough telephoto reach. If you’re in their number, you may find the promise of a recent patent filing by Canon Japan to be rather thrilling.

Admittedly, most patents make for somewhat dry reading, but this one, uncovered by Japanese engineering blog Egami, suggests that Canon could soon offer a camera with close to a 100x zoom range. (Given that the existing Canon SX50 HS sports a ~50x zoom, Egami cheekily suggests the name Canon SX100 HS for a followup, tagging its image on the lens diagram with the moniker.)

Full article at the source>

Cameras becoming part of police’s uniform

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By  Lori Kurtzman The Columbus Dispatch Dec.15, 2013 (http://www.dispatch.com/)

The police officer rounds the corner of the house, his flashlight searching out the young girl standing quietly on the back deck. She is 10 and barefoot and holding a butcher knife.

“Can you put the knife down for me?” the Greensboro, N.C., cop asks. The girl is still. “Can you lay the knife down?”

Without warning, she hurls the blade like a dart. The officer ducks. His partner walks quickly across the deck and snaps handcuffs on the girl’s wrists, and what he says next — to the girl who just threw a knife at a police officer — might be unbelievable if the entire incident hadn’t been recorded.

“You OK, honey?”

Full article at source>

2013 Best Cameras. Find the Top Cameras Released in 2013

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By  (http://cameras.about.com/)

2013 was another very good year for digital cameras, with plenty of innovations. As they have for several years, prices continue to drop, giving photographers more value for their dollars. Advanced fixed-lens cameras have been especially plentiful from manufacturers, offering a clear set of advantages over point-and-shoot models and cell phone cameras. Interchangeable lens camera, both DIL and DSLR models, also have been popular in 2013.

Having had a chance to fully test and review several cameras during the year, and having had a chance to informally test and consider dozens more models, here are some of the best cameras I’ve seen during 2013.

Full article at source>

Click! Google rebuilds Android camera base for better photos

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Rebuilt software plumbing in Android should give new power to camera apps — once Google makes the interface available to other programmers besides its own.

by Stephen Shankland. November 25th, 2013 (http://news.cnet.com)

Want a better camera on your Android device? Google does, too.

For that reason, the company has overhauled the mobile OS’s plumbing. Google has built deep into Android support for two higher-end photography features — raw image formats and burst mode — and could expose those features so that programmers could tap into them, the company said.

Evidence of raw and burst-mode photos in the Android source code surfaced earlier in November, but Google has now commented on the technology. Specifically, spokeswoman Gina Scigliano said the support is now present in Android’s hardware abstraction layer (HAL), the part of the operating system that handles communications with a mobile device’s actual hardware.

“Android’s latest camera HAL (hardware abstraction layer) and framework supports raw and burst-mode photography,” Scigliano said. “We will expose a developer API [application programming interface] in a future release to expose more of the HAL functionality.”

Full article at source>

Nikon Announces the Revolutionary Retro Style DSLR Df Camera with Special Edition AF-S NIKKOR 50mm F1.8G Lens—Now Available for Pre-Order at B&H Photo Video

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The Nikon Df is designed exclusively for taking still photos, enabling high reliability, advanced functions and elegant camera control in Nikons thinnest, lightest FX-format DSLR. Dedicated mechanical dials for shutter speed, ISO sensitivity, exposure compensation, exposure mode and release mode all help to focus on what matters—achieving creative vision.

 

NYC, NY (PRWEB) November 05, 2013

The new Nikon Df is a thrilling FX-format DSLR with a unique mechanical operation system and classic styling, along with Nikon’s flagship digital camera technology. A perfect blend of classic and modern, the Nikon Df offers a more personal shooting style that will inspire a new relationship with the camera—which one may have known and lost over the years—and reawaken the joy for taking photos.

The Nikon Df DSLR features an FX-format 16.2MP CMOS sensor and the EXPEED 3 image processor. The Df has an expanded sensitivity of ISO 50-204800, 5.5 fps continuous shooting, and a 39-point AF system with nine cross-type points. Dedicated exposure control dials along the magnesium-alloy body enable intuitive handling, the pentaprism viewfinder and 3.2″ 921k-dot LCD avail a choice of means for monitoring, and a metering coupling lever permits the use of both AI (Aperture Index) and non-AI lenses. This means that in addition to supporting current AF-S, AF-D, and AF NIKKOR lenses, past manual focus, non-AI lenses can also be used without any modification.

The Nikon Df is designed exclusively for taking still photos, enabling high reliability, advanced functions and elegant camera control in Nikons thinnest, lightest FX-format DSLR. Dedicated mechanical dials for shutter speed, ISO sensitivity, exposure compensation, exposure mode and release mode all help to focus on what matters—achieving creative vision.

Full press release, photos and video at source>