technology

H.266 Codec Unveiled: Same Quality, Half the File Size

Fraunhofer HHI, the company behind the H.264 and H.265 video codecs, has just unveiled its latest creation: the aptly-named H.266. Just as the world has finally gotten around to adopting HEVC/H.265, we get a newer version that will offer the same quality at about half the file size.

This Obstacle Avoiding Drone is So Fast it Can Play Dodgeball

Researchers at the University of Zurich have created a custom drone that's so good at obstacle avoidance it can play dodgeball. The drone uses a special camera that allows it to react to incoming objects in just 3.5 milliseconds, about 10x faster than anything on the market today.

These are the Highest Resolution Images Ever Taken of the Sun’s Surface

The National Solar Observatory has just released the highest resolution images and video ever taken of the sun's surface. The images, captured with the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, capture the sun in unprecedented detail, revealing features as small as 18 miles (30km) in size for the first time ever.

New Lithium-Sulfur Battery Could Quadruple Camera Battery Life

Researchers at Australia's Monash University have developed what they're calling "the world’s most efficient lithium-sulphur (Li-S) battery," an ultra-high-capacity design that could quadruple camera battery life and run a smartphone for 5 consecutive days without a charge.

NVIDIA AI Can Turn Your Pet Into Other Animals

NVIDIA researchers have been doing groundbreaking work at the intersection between photography and AI -- things like removing noise, transferring styles, photo reconstruction, turning doodles into photos, and creating realistic photos of imaginary people. The company's latest AI app, called GANimal, lets you instantly turn your pet into any other animal.

How Canon’s New Defocus Smoothing Gets You Ultra-Creamy Bokeh

Canon announced the new RF 85mm f/1.2L DS IS lens for its full-frame mirrorless cameras today, and the $3,000 lens is the very first Canon lens to feature a new technology called Defocus Smoothing (DS). If you're curious about the new lens tech, check out this 1.5-minute video by Canon that introduces it.

Watch Anduril’s Battering-Ram Drone Knock Other Drones Out of the Sky

Anti-drone tech has run the gamut from radio-frequency bazookas to trained eagles. But the latest anti-drone technology from controversial security company Anduril is actually... another drone. The Anduril Anvil is a "battering-ram drone system" that is tailor made to knock other drones out of the sky.

The DSLR vs Mirrorless Debate is Silly, Here’s Why

Photographer Ted Forbes of The Art of Photography recently published a well-reasoned and logical response to the Mirrorless vs DSLR debate that recently peaked with the announcement of the Nikon D6. In his video, Forbes offers a much more nuanced take than many of the arguments you've probably seen in various corners of the Internet.

Incredible Real-Time Visual Effects Tech Replaces Green Screens with LED Walls

Real-time in-camera VFX might sound like a pipe dream, but Unreal Engine has just published a demo that shows exactly that with Project Spotlight. Using "next-generation virtual production tools," Project Spotlight is able to render and manipulate real-time environments with startling realism, replacing green or blue screens with LED walls.

Full-Frame vs Everyone Else: Searching for the ‘Ideal’ Image Sensor

Like it or not, much of the conversation around image quality these days revolves around sensor size. When Sony announced the a7R IV, it boasted image quality that “rivaled medium format.” When people defend Micro Four Thirds, they show off their ultra-portable system and claim the images are “indistinguishable from full-frame.”

Canon Patents Eye-Controlled AF and Wireless Charging for Cameras

Canon is one of the most prolific companies in the world when it comes to filing patents, making it hard to judge what's actually coming down the pike. But we really hope its two most recent patents—one for Eye-Controlled Autofocus and another for Wireless Charging—become a reality.

Researchers Developed an AI that Can ‘Relight’ Portraits After the Fact

A group of researchers and engineers from UC San Diego and Google have trained a neural network to "relight" portraits after the fact "according to any provided environment map." In other words: their system can take any photo and adjust the lighting at will—including the direction, temperature, and quality of the light.

How Google’s Handheld Multi-Frame Super-Resolution Tech Works

Since there are physical limits to how large sensors can be in smartphones, companies like Google have been pushing heavily into computational photography, the use of digital rather than optical processes to improve the capabilities of a camera. Here's a 3-minute video that explains how Google's super-resolution technology works.

Samsung AI Can Turn a Single Portrait Into a Realistic Talking Head

There have been huge advancements in recent years in the area of AI "deepfakes", or fake photos or videos of humans created using neural networks. Fake videos of a person usually require a large number of photos of that individual, but Samsung has figured out how to create realistic talking heads from as little as a single portrait photo.

This is Real-Time In-Camera Beauty Retouching

Think modern day Photoshop beauty retouching is impressive? In the future, your professional-grade camera might be able to retouch subjects for you in real-time. Here's a 30-second video that shows this technology in action.

Why Dedicated Cameras Will Always Be (Optically) Better than Smartphones

It’s September, which means another generation of Apple iPhones. This year, the iPhone XS (pronounced “ten ess”) adds a slightly larger sensor plus significantly more computing power via the A12 Bionic Chip to enhance the phone’s image signal processing.