Items tagged with photography
Remember when we used to carry around point-n-shoot cameras and Polaroids for taking photos? Some people still do (and DSLR cameras for serious photography), but for the most part, pictures posted to Instagram and other places are largely taken with cell phone cameras nowadays, and companies like Samsung are putting a lot of research and development into improving them. To that end, Samsung today announced its ISOCELL JN1, which it is says is the world's first 0.64-micrometer (μm) pixel image sensor. It is a 50-megapixel sensor with advanced technologies crammed into a small 1/2.76-inch optical format. And from Samsung's vantage point, the ISOCELL JN1 is also the most versatile image sensor...
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Nothing lasts forever, folks. Not the supposed 'Curse of the Bambino' that prevented the Boston Red Sox from winning a World Series title after the team traded away Babe Ruth, not Tom Brady's reign in New England, and not Toys R Us being the neighborhood toy store. Oh, and if another example is needed, Olympus is selling off its camera division. What makes this particularly noteworthy is that Olympus has a been a mainstay in the camera business for 84 years—the company released its first camera, the Semi-Olympus I, way back in 1936. And then for the next eight and a half decades, it continued to introduce new models, including many digital SLR cameras in the digital era. The ride is coming...
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It is surprisingly easy to amass a sprawling catalog of photos on Facebook, you just need to use the social media service for any length of time—all those lunch pictures, vacation photos, and everything else you upload from your phone, tablet, and/or PC quickly add up. Now you can copy them over to Google Photos, if you wish. The ability to quickly and easily copy Facebook pictures over to Google Photos for safe keeping is part of a larger initiative to foster sharing data between different services. "For almost a decade, we’ve enabled people to download their information from Facebook. The photo transfer tool we’re starting to roll out today is based on code developed through...
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There are a million and one potential projects for the Raspberry Pi (like retro gaming), the affordable little PC that fits in the palm of your hand. One of them is to make your own digital camera. If that is the goal, you may want to look into the new 'Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera' accessory, which works with every Raspberry Pi dating back to the original Raspberry Pi 1 Model B. The tiny add-on consists of a 12.3-megapixel Sony IMX477 camera sensor. It has a 1.55μm × 1.55μm pixel size (double the pixel area of the IMX219), a back illuminate sensor architecture, and an integrated back-focus adjustment ring and tripod mount. It runs $50 at the usual Raspberry Pi retailers, such...
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Our smartphones have become extensions of our eyeballs, able to capture detailed imagery with increasingly sophisticated built-in camera sensors. And last August, Samsung developed the first 108-megapixel sensor for smartphones, which found its way into Xiaomi's Mi CC9 Pro handset. What's next? Somewhere off in the distance, Samsung envisions releasing a 600-megapixel camera sensor. Samsung gave a glimpse of its thought process in a blog post, in which the company stated it is working on sensors that "go beyond our senses." What does that mean? Well for one, Samsung says our eyeballs are able to match the resolution of around 500 megapixels. "Compared to most DSLR cameras today that offer 40MP...
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Smartphone photography has grown leaps and bounds over the past several years, with flagship handsets these days wielding multiple camera sensors to take high quality shots. Software processing is important too, though. In that regard, Apple's acquisition of UK-based startup Spectral Edge Ltd. could give its future iPhone models a boost in photography performance. That's important because photography has become the main battle in the smartphone wars. The iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max, for example, wield a triple lens system on the rear, consisting of a 12-megapixel ultra-wide (f/2.4 aperture and 120-degree field of view), wide (f/1.8 aperture), and telephoto (f/2.0) cameras. Spectral Edge...
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Facebook is testing a new data tool that will enable its users to more easily transfer their uploaded photos over to Google Photos, if that is what they want to do. It is actually available right now to people in Ireland. Worldwide availability is planned for the first half of 2020, and in the meantime, Facebook said it will continue making refinements to the tool. "We want to build practical portability solutions people can trust and use effectively. To foster that trust, people and online services need clear rules about what kinds of data should be portable and who is responsible for protecting that data as it moves to different services. We hope this product can help advance conversations...
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Photography is an art form in every sense, and taking great looking photos can be challenging even when lighting conditions are ideal. Bad lighting will really test a photographer's skills, and night photography is especially tricky. That's what makes Google's Night Sight technology on its PIxel phones so awesome—it allows casual users to snap great looking photos of the night sky and other dark scenes. How exactly does the magic happen, though? Google provided some insight into its Night Sight feature in a new blog post, which explains how astophotography with Night Sight on Pixel phones is accomplished. This is not a brand new feature, of course, but as Google explains, this year's implementation...
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Google recently launched its Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, which are its two newest flagship Android smartphones. The Pixel 4 family brings a number of new features to the table including 90Hz displays, Face Unlock, and radar-driven motion/gesture sensing tech, but one of the most talked about features of any Google Pixel phone to date is its namesake, the camera. Or in the case of the Pixel 4, its cameras, plural. While our full review of the Pixel 4 XL will be forthcoming shortly, we thought that we'd give you a brief preview of what this new high-end smartphone has to offer with its new cameras. For the first time ever, the Pixel is offering two rear cameras: a 12.2MP primary sensor with an f/1.7...
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Just as expected, Canon on Wednesday expanded its camera lineup with a couple of new models for amateur photographers, including the EOS 90D (DSLR) and EOS M6 Mark II (mirrorless). While different in construction, design, and function, both new cameras feature a next-generation 32.5-megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor. Canon EOS 90D Several other features are the same for each camera as well. For example, both are powered by a Digic 8 image processor and can record video at up to 4K at 30 fps (1080p at up to 120 fps). They each offer a dual-pixel CMOS AF in Live View with 5,481 manually selectable AF positions, they both have an electronic shutter (up to 1/16,000th), and they each offer built-in Wi-Fi...
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As some astute observers had already noticed, Google is rolling out a text recognition feature to Google Photos. This allows uses to search and sort through their vast libraries of photographs by blurbs of text, something that was not previously possible, but the functionality does not stop there—Google has another trick up its sleeve. After Google finds whatever photo you are looking for, you can tap on the "Lens" button to copy and paste the text. For example, I searched through my own library of photos for "Pepsi" and Google Photos found a snapshot of a Mountain Dew sign I recently took, as shown in the image at the top of this article. After clicking on the Lens button, I was able to...
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It appears as though Canon is getting ready to launch a couple of new cameras. Canon Australia posted a pair of promotional videos to YouTube, one depicting an unreleased EOS 90D APS-C DSLR and the other showing an EOS M6 Mark II mirrorless APS-C camera, which also is not yet available, nor has it been officially unveiled. Apparently uploaded and made available to view in error, Canon Australia quickly realized its mistake and yanked the videos offline. However, like Las Vegas, what happens on the Internet stays on the Internet (only not in secret, because unlike Las Vegas, practically everyone is already on the Internet). The folks at Canon Rumors had the foresight to download and re-post the...
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Security researchers have discovered it is possible to hack a digital SLR camera with Wi-Fi capabilities (fast becoming a common feature in modern DSLR cameras) to install ransomware, thereby hijacking a user's photographs. Just as it happens on a PC, the photos would be encrypted, with the attacker threatening to permanently delete them if a ransom is not paid. "Although most users connect their camera to their PC using a USB cable, newer camera models now support WiFi. This means that what was once a PTP/USB protocol that was accessible only to the USB connected devices, is now also PTP/IP that is accessible to every WiFi-enabled device in close proximity," Check Point says. According to Check...
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Samsung on Monday introduced its new ISOCELL Bright HMX image sensor for smartphones, and it is capable of capturing a staggering 108 megapixels. It is the industry's first mobile image sensor to top the 100 million pixels mark. Interestingly, the nifty new shooter will make its debut in a Xiaomi smartphone before it finds its way into a Galaxy device. While the ISOCELL Bright HMX sensor belongs to Samsung, the company says it was designed in "close collaboration with Xiaomi," which announced last week that an upcoming Mi handset will feature the new 108MP shooter. "For ISOCELL Bright HMX, Xiaomi and Samsung have worked closely together from the early conceptual stage to production that has resulted...
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We all have that one friend or family member who absolutely hates having their picture taken. The litany of excuses range from their hair being messed up or makeup smudged, to wearing the wrong outfit or bad lighting, and everything in between. Well, they are going to despite an upcoming handset by Redmi, which features the world's first 64-megapixel camera on a smartphone for highly detailed photographs. On the flip side, photo bombers are going to lose their you-know-what at the new level of visual fidelity. At least it pertains to the number of pixels, anyway. Granted, there is more to camera performance than the raw pixel count, but a 64MP sensor sure does have the potential to be something...
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I can no longer scroll through my Facebook or Twitter feed without seeing an image of someone I know who has been digitally aged, or altered in some other way. That's because FaceApp has gone viral again. In case you missed it (impossible at this point), this mobile application lets you apply various filters to your selfies and photos, and the in-thing to do right now is to use the Age filter and post the result. While hugely popular, there are some privacy implications that come with it. It is not just your Facebook friends and family members who are goofing around with FaceApp—celebrity actors, athletes, and musicians are also partaking in the fun. And yes, it is fun (and funny). One...
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The ability to capture a wider color gamut could be headed to Google's upcoming Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL handsets. If so, photographers would be able to snap and display even better looking photos than what is already possible on the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, potentially taking the Pixel 4 family to a whole new level of photographic fidelity. Google hinted at this last month when it announced that wide color photos are coming to Android. In a blog post on the subject, Google noted that we are at a point where the sRGB color gamut with 8 bits per color channel is "not enough to take advantage of the display and camera technology" on today's flagship phones. "At Android we have been working to make...
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Samsung on Thursday announced a pair of new ISOCELL pixel image sensors that will likely find their inside the company's future phones, paving the way for higher resolution and sharper photographs. One of them, the 64-megapixel ISOCELL Bright GW1, could end up in the company's flagship Galaxy S11 next year. The other ISOCELL addition is a 48-megapixel ISOCELL Bright GM2. Both of them are 0.8-micrometer pixel image sensors. With these two new sensors, Samsung offers a lineup of 0.8-micrometer pixel image sensors ranging from existing 20 megapixels all the way up to now 64 megapixels. "Over the past few years, mobile phone cameras have become the main instrument for recording and sharing our everyday...
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The humble SD card has evolved in a number of ways since its introduction two decades ago. While early SD cards could hardly store more photos than a roll of film, modern cards may offer the capacity to contain hours of high-quality HD video. SD cards have also become commonly used as boot drives for lightweight operating systems, powering everything from Raspberry Pi's to server hypervisors. SD Cards, and MicroSD cards in particular, can also be useful for expanding the storage of cell phones and even laptops. Samsung introduced its blazing fast EVO Plus UHS-I MicroSD cards last year, featuring capacities from 64GB to 256GB and write speeds approaching 90 megabytes per second. We were impressed...
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Smartphone makers have wisely prioritized camera performance as a top feature on their high-end handsets, and even some mid-range and entry-level phones boast solid photo taking capabilities these days. One of the best phone cameras we've played with is on the Pixel 3 series. Well, rumor has it that Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S10 will feature an upgraded camera that is every bit as good as the Google Pixel 3 in low light situations. We don't know this for a fact, of course, and it will be impossible to know for sure until we've spent some hands on time with the Galaxy S10. Obviously we can't do that at the moment. However, there is evidence to suggest that Samsung is working on a "Bright Night"...
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Sony has announced a new digital camera that it claims to be the world's smallest compact camera with a 24-720mm zoom lens: the Cyber-shot HX99 (DSC-HX99). The small size of the camera makes it well suited for travel, yet the high zoom rate allows you to get closer to far away subjects. The lens is a ZEISS Vario-Sonnar T 24-720mm High Magnification Zoom lens with Optical SteadyShot integrated. Image stabilization is important at high zoom levels, or you end up with close up, blurry images. Sony integrates a Zoom Assist function that makes it easier to zoom accurately and keep distant subjects in the frame by temporarily zooming-out to show the shooter a wider area. A BIONZ X processing engine...
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Early this month we discussed leaked images claiming to show what the next generation of GoPro cameras would look like and gave up some details on the devices. Those cameras have now gone official confirming the details of the leak. GoPro has three versions of the camera that are differentiated by their color and the features supported. The cameras include the Hero7 Black, Hero7 Silver, and Hero7 White. The Hero7 Black is a camera capable of recording 4K video at 60 fps, 2.7K video at 120 fps, and 1080p video at 240 fps. It can also shoot still images at up to 30 fps and has what GoPro calls HyperSmooth video stabilization. A vertical portrait mode supports social media, and the camera...
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