Posts in Digital Cameras
COOLPIX CONNECT: Email your Nikon
Edvarcl Heng | Mar 30, 2007
Alongside Singaporean telco SingTel, which is the third telco in the world that Nikon is partnering with to provide outdoor Wi-Fi access to its COOLPIX CONNECT service. For COOLPIX S50c users, that would mean that they can now openly access Singtel Wireless Surf Zones in Singapore, in addition to using private wireless networks, to send and store pictures over the Internet using just their cameras.
Currently there are two components to the COOLPIX CONNECT service: Picture Mail and Picture Bank. The first allows the user to upload pictures via the Wi-Fi-enabled S50c to a Nikon server before sending an image URL to other recipients.
But we think it's the second service that's a lot handier and would appeal to travelers the most. With Photo Bank, once you are running out of storage space and battery life at the end of the day, you can simply upload the pictures to a server with a Wi-Fi connection while charging the camera at the same time. By the next day, your camera would be fully ready for action. And the price of usage? A Nikon COOLPIX S50c because it's the only camera that supports the COOLPIX CONNECT service at the moment.
More on the Nikon Coolpix S50c here
Sanyo Xacti CG65: Tapeless camcorder extraordinaire
CNET.co.uk staff | Mar 20, 2007
Sanyo's ever-funky tapeless camcorders have a new family member here at CeBIT. The Xacti CG65 maintains the same pistol-grip shape and pocketable dimensions as previous models, but shoots better video.
You can shoot 640 x 480-pixel MPEG-4 videos at 30 frames per second straight to the SD card, so there's no need to faff around rewinding tapes. Your movies are shot in 16:9 widescreen, so they'll look like Hollywood epics on your flat-panel screen at home.
A gyro sensor ensures that any camera wobbles are corrected before they can ruin your mini-movies, which look blinding on the 64mm (2.5-inch) screen. There's a 6-megapixel sensor for stills, and you can take pictures at the same time you're shooting video. A 5x optical zoom gets you close to the action, while pictures in low light shouldn't be a problem, thanks to the ISO7,200 mode.
There's another twist in the tail for anyone still thinking this is an ordinary tapeless camcorder--a built-in music player. It's primarily intended for listening to podcasts on, but you can use it to listen to any AAC music file. The Xacti supports the new SDHC flavor of SD cards, and you can fit 4 hours of the highest-quality video on a 4GB card.
More CeBIT tidbits here
Canon powers on: Launch of A460 and A550 in Singapore
Edvarcl Heng | Mar 19, 2007
While the A460 garnered an unspectacular review score, the jury is still out for the A550. Both cameras are outfitted with Canon's DIGIC II processor as well as direct print functions. The A550 (S$369) has a meatier 7.1-megapixels compared to the A460's (S$279) 5-megapixels sensor.
Compare them here
More pictures of both cameras here
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Vertus Fluid Mask: Cut out images like a duck to water
Edvarcl Heng | Mar 19, 2007
One of the favorite tricks that camera-toting dads like to fiddle with, is to change a picture of the kids at the beach to them spacewalking in their swimwear. But there's a lot of hard work involved, like painstakingly lassoing the kids' outline in a photo-editing program before deleting the background of the beach and swapping it with outer space. And when it comes to perfect outlining, it can take hours, especially when there are a gazillion individual hair strands to etch around.
So imagine our incredulous gasps, when we saw a demonstrator load a portrait shot of a shaggy-haired man in a forest into Photoshop, and wiped out the background with some quick strokes of a brush tool. It looked brilliant. The software is Fluid Mask and it is available as a plug-in only for Adobe Photoshop programs at the moment. According to Steve Nelson, marketing manager for Vertus, Fluid Mask is able to make short work of masking as it analyzes pictures in three ways: By contrast, color and pixel edges. "In fact, it helps the computer look at pictures the way the human eye does," he added.
During a software demo, Fluid Mask first evaluated and mapped out areas in a picture with similar properties. Next, the user moves a brush over the mosaic to delete most of the background. Finally, another brush tool is broadly traced over the general edge of the subject to be isolated. The software will then process the final image and remove the background right up to the edge. The result? Even at 600x magnification, we could see that hair strands were finely outlined. Impressive.
Read more CeBIT tidbits here
More screen shots of Fluid Mask here
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Gadget Lab's cyclopean camera
Mike Yamamoto, Crave.CNET.com | Mar 12, 2007
The disturbing trend of technological mutation that has taken hold of the computer industry has apparently been extended to cameras. Case in point: The "120 Tri-lense Stereo Camera".
Why would anyone want or need three lenses, especially in a camera that uses film? According to Gadget Lab, China-based 3D World claims that its camera can produce two slides that "combine to produce an image that gives an illusion of three-dimensional depth". There's apparently a catch, though, as you need one of its viewers to make the whole thing work. But that's the best part, because Gadget Lab says one of them is coin operated!
Read more camera gizmos here | Latest PMA 2007 coverage
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