Cameratico is a new “humanized camera recommendation engine” that’s being developed by Brasília, Brazil-based photographer and programmer Fábio Pili. Sick of camera comparison websites that only dealt with specifications, Pili decided to create one that takes into account real world usage experiences.
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You know that feeling of extreme excitement when an Internet package arrives in the mail? That’s what a guy named Jalal felt recently after ordering a Canon 5D Mark III and 24-105mm f/4L kit from Dell.com. Unfortunately for him, what he received wasn’t quite what he had expected.
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Check out the two memory cards above. One of them is a counterfeit card while the other is a genuine one. Can you tell which is which? If you can’t, we don’t blame you. Japan-based photography enthusiast Damien Douxchamps couldn’t either until he popped the fake card into his camera and began shooting. The card felt a bit sluggish, so he ran some tests on his computer. Turned out the 60MB/s card was actually slower than his old 45MB/s card.
While it’s not unusual to come across counterfeit memory cards — it’s estimated that 1/3 of “SanDisk”-labeled cards are — what’s a bit concerning is how Douxchamps purchased his: he ordered the cards off Amazon — cards that were “fulfilled by Amazon.”
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The Consumerist writes that a guy named Nate recently had a negative experience with Amazon’s Trade-In program. After sending in his Canon Digital Rebel and not being satisfied with the quoted trade-in value ($62), he asked for it back. What he received was “an invisible camera”:
It was all the manuals and CDs for my camera. There was NO CAMERA. The reason I didn’t connect the dots when UPS came was because the box was not even large enough to hold the camera! [...]
Luckily for me, I was able to get [Amazon] to give me the $97. I felt bad for Amazon since it’s a third party company who takes the trades and stole my camera. But what would have happened if I would have been trading a MacBook or iPad worth several hundred dollars? Would they have been as willing to give me the credit? I’m afraid to trade anything in now!
The original Digital Rebel was released back in August 2003, and was the first DSLR to have a price tag under $1,000 (it cost $899 for the body only). Amazon is willing to buy them now for $97 if in “Like New” condition, $62.25 if “Good”, and $20.50 if “Acceptable”.
Amazon Trade-In Trades My Camera For Invisible Camera [The Consumerist]
Thanks for sending in the tip, Phil!
Nikon has done quite a refresh of its DSLR lineup so far in 2012. It released the D4 as a flagship camera and the D800/D800E as a high-megapixel camera for pros, the D3200 as an entry-level camera for consumers, and the D600 as a more-affordable full-frame DSLR. The company isn’t done yet: Nikon Rumors reports that within the next few weeks, Nikon will be announcing a fifth DSLR: the D5200.
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Want to enjoy some of the world’s latest and greatest news photographs on your iPad? Reuters has a new app designed just for you. Called The Wider Image, it’s a photo experience that’s designed to bring beautiful photojournalism to life in your hands.
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Here’s something interesting that we spotted over at Nikon Rumors: Nikon has an F rating with the Better Business Bureau, suggesting that the company’s customer support leaves something to be desired.
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Brooklyn-based photographer Henry Hargreaves teamed up with food stylist Caitlin Levin on his project “Deep Fried Gadgets”, which — as its name indicates — shows various electronics deep fried. The purpose of the project is to highlight the wastefulness of consumer culture and its rapid consumption of the latest gadgets.
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Choices is a Warhol-esque (or Gursky-esque) project by photographer Richard Stultz, who visited various stores to document the mind-numbingly large number of choices consumers are faced while shopping. He states,
When we shop, we are presented with aisles of thousands of different products. There are shelves with an endless variety of similar items, often just a variation on the ones next to them. Other shelves display large quantities of identical products. We may find 50 types of beer, hundreds of jars of bleach, or graphic displays of soap. There are cans of dog food with descriptions that sound as appetizing as anything we might cook for ourselves. There are so many shades of hair coloring that we can’t distinguish between many of them.
Beyond the astounding quantity and selection, retail displays are often visually interesting with striking design elements, color, and repetitive patterns. But as we shop and try to find the perfect product, we often don’t see the perverse beauty of these choices.
Hyperspectral cameras are capable of collecting and processing information across the electromagnetic spectrum and beyond what the human eye can see. The technology ordinarily costs a fortune to get a hold of, but scientists at the Vienna University of Technology have figured out how to create a hyperspectral camera using an ordinary DSLR (the Canon 5D) and an adapter made of off-the-shelf parts (PVC pipes, a gel filter, and three camera lenses). The camera still has a ways to go in many areas — it requires several seconds to exposes images rather than milliseconds — but it’s a big step towards showing what’s possible with consumer camera technology.
(via Vienna University of Technology via The Verge)
