Digicam clone from China

From the same country that spawned countless of iPhone clones comes a camera that looks too good to be true.

Chinese company Chinavasion is promoting its prosumer lookalike point-and-shoot, the ZKX-DC5010. While it looks suspiciously like Sony's H7 or Nikon's upcoming P80, the specifications tell another story.

It comes with an outdated 5-megapixel sensor, tiny 2.4-inch LCD display, fixed lens (with no indication on 35mm-equivalent focal length) and 4x digital zoom. All these tell-tale signs point to one thing: Unless you are really hard up on cash but still want to take pictures, stay away from it. If you are still interested, check out the promotional video on its Web site.

This shooter is more for wholesale than single purchase. One set costs US$125.60 and if you buy three, it's US$120.57. There are options to purchase 50 or more, but to find out the price we would have to register and be a member of Chinavasion. Thanks, but no thanks. We'll stick to the big boys.

Sony's Foam City camera ad

Ever since it released thousands of bouncy balls down a street in San Francisco in 2005, Sony has had big shoes to fill if it wanted to impress again. That prompted a few more of these big-scale advertisements including one with exploding paint and another with spools of thread down a pyramid. This time, instead of all the colors, Sony has gone with foam down a Miami street--lots and lots of foam.

Sony UK has a video on its site, and it has been put up on YouTube (embedded below) as well. Though the foam is all white, the visual impact is still amazing. In it, you see people on the street enjoying the sight, taking photos of the flood of foam using their Sony cameras. It may look like a lot of fun, but we pity the poor residents who had to clean up the mess. On the bright side, at least they probably have the cleanest street on the block.

Full-frame dSLR from Samsung?

Amateur Photographer has reported that Korean electronics giant Samsung is planning to join the ranks of Canon, Nikon, and Sony in making full-frame dSLRs.

The article states that Samsung is developing its own CMOS chip for this new camera. However, we won't be seeing this shooter anytime soon because the sensor has only just reached its design phase.

The dSLR is going to be a collaboration with Pentax, so we're guessing that Pentax should be announcing its own full-frame ambitions around the same time as Samsung.

There are no hints regarding the specifications, but the as yet unnamed dSLR should share the same mount as Pentax cameras so the lenses are interchangeable between the two systems.

Earlier, we reported that the successor to the GX20 would be introduced later this year at Photokina in Germany. Could this be the full-frame dSLR Samsung is alluding to?

At press time, Samsung couldn't provide us with any information regarding this news. But we will definitely update here once we get the information.

See like the birds

Ever looked up at the sky and wondered what birds see when they are in flight? One way of finding out is to scale the Himalayan peaks and you might get a rough idea. Over at CNET Asia, we prefer the slightly more high-tech approach--a camera mounted on a radio-controlled helicopter.

The Verhagen X2-Special 26Cam is not your typical toy R/C helicopter. Measuring 160cm in length, this "bird" can reach a maximum speed of 80kmh. It is powered by fuel, not batteries, and a full tank can let it fly for about 300km. A camera mounted at the front captures video feeds, which engineer Jan Verhagen said can be applied in various scenarios like rescue operations to documentary film-making.

However, the camera specifications are a little ancient. While the rest of the world has gone digital, the helicopter still deploys the super 35mm movie camera which requires special film cassette. The camera is mounted onto a pan/tilt head which can be controlled from the ground.

Although there is no indication on the pricing of this gadget on the Web site, it probably won't come cheap as each machine is hand-made. We think the Himalayas may be a cheaper option.

Adobe releases debugged Lightroom 1.4.1

After a debugging session to fix problems with the flawed 1.4.0, Adobe Systems on Thursday released Photoshop Lightroom 1.4.1.

Raw images from higher-end digital cameras have more flexibility and quality than JPEGs, but also require processing in a computer to convert to more useful formats. Lightroom handles that task, along with cataloging and other chores. Adobe also released the corresponding version 4.4.1 of Adobe Camera Raw, the raw-image converter plug-in for regular Photoshop.
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