What lies beneath: Canon's latest dSLRs

Cameras have always been marvels of miniaturization, but with the switch to digital technology, engineers have had to squeeze electronics and computers into camera bodies already filled with mechanical and optical components. Most folks only see the outsides of cameras, but the insides can be works of engineering art, too. Canon's latest SLRs, the EOS-1Ds Mark III and EOS 40D, are a good case in point. Click on the thumbnails to uncover the story within each.

Eye candy for photographing children

Finally, a camera accessory that won't be doomed to rapid obsolescence: The Pez candy dispenser.

Federico Sartorio recommends some basic modifications to the candy dispenser that will let it slip into the hot shoe atop your camera that otherwise would be used for attaching a flash. Use it to grab the attention of children you're trying to photograph--as long as you have plenty of available light.

Be warned that trimming the dispenser's "feet" could reduce its resale value on eBay.

Via CNET Crave

Panasonic cameras offer auto auto auto mode

Some subset of photographers would like a compact camera with lots of higher-end features and manual controls. But a vastly larger quantity want their cameras to take photos with the correct focus, exposure, white balance and other factors without having to do more than press the shutter button.

Which is why Panasonic's three newest cameras, the Lumix FX-33, FX-55 and FZ18 are notable. For one thing, Panasonic is catching up with competitors such as Fujifilm and Canon by introducing face detection, which lets the camera guess more intelligently about what the photographer is trying to shoot and adjust settings accordingly. But more novel is what Panasonic calls Intelligent Scene Selector.

Intelligent Scene Selector, if switched on, replaces a common set of broad parameters that otherwise must be manually activated. It lets the camera take its best guess about whether the scene is one of five modes: Portrait, landscape scenery, macro close-up, night scenery and night portrait, said Alex Fried, Panasonic's National Marketing Manager for Imaging in North America. And when the camera is in portrait modes, it uses the face-detection technology for further refinement.

"All that takes place without touching a button," Fried said. "Consumers don't utilize scene modes to their fullest capability. A lot don't go that deep into the manual or into the menus."

All three of the new cameras feature the face detection and automatic scene selection as well as two earlier technologies, Panasonic's Mega OIS, which shifts the image sensor to counteract camera shake, and Intelligent ISO, which increases the camera's sensitivity to try to deal with moving subjects. Boosting ISO lets the camera use a shorter exposure to freeze action better, but it produces more off-color speckles called image noise.

Collectively, Panasonic calls the four features Intelligent Auto Mode. I suppose camera makers can be excused for attaching official names to their features, and now metafeatures, in the effort to distinguish their models from the herd. But I fear it causes brand exhaustion among camera buyers.

As my comrade Will Greenwald noted, the three new cameras are 8-megapixel models due in September and sporting zoom ranges that begin at a nice 28mm wide angle. The FX33 and FX55 are smaller, with 3.6x zoom lenses and LCDs measuring 2.5 inches and 3 inches, respectively. The FZ18 has a huge 18x zoom range, a notch longer than the predecessor FZ8, which began at 35mm and spanned a 12x zoom range. And for control freaks, it offers manual control and raw image support, Fried said.

 See more of the latest cameras for this fall

Via CNET Crave

Olympus could announce top-end SLR in October

Olympus publicly showed prototypes of its new top-end digital SLR in March, but a leaked document indicates the real thing could be announced in October and on sale in November.

An anonymous person posted a 27-page presentation at the FourThirds Photo discussion site that appears to be from an Olympus marketing presentation in June in Europe on the new camera, called the E-P1. Olympus didn't comment on the presentation Thursday, but the company did request another site,4-3system.com, remove the file.
Read more »

Fluid Mask 3 stands on its own

Vertus, the Boston-based developer of technology designed to ease the selection of specific elements in a digital photo, has released version three of its Fluid Mask software, the first time the product has been able to run as a standalone application and not just as a Photoshop plug-in.

Fluid Mask 3, costing US$239, attempts to reproduce some of the human mind's ability to naturally distinguish an element from its background, a task that's tricky when backgrounds are complicated or the element's border isn't well defined. The common, but notorious example, is hair.

The new version includes new edge-detection technology and new modes for blending selected areas and their backgrounds. Multiprocessor support speeds tasks by about 40 percent. Users can save settings for particular images for reuse later. And users can apply changes just to particular patches instead of to the whole image.

Photoshop includes its own selection, or masking, technology, and the new CS3 version includes a significant advancement in that area. But plug-in makers try to stay a step ahead of what's generally available.

Fluid Mask 3 is available as a stand-alone product or as a plug-in to Adobe Photoshop CS2 and CS3 or Adobe Photoshop Elements. It works on Windows XP and Vista and Apple's on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs.

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