April 4, 2011

If you think the 5-megapixel sensor found on the iPhone 4 is good, wait till you see the camera found on the next iPhone -- it's reportedly going to be a 8-megapixel sensor made by Sony. The Street wrote back in 2010 that the next version of the iPhone to arrive in 2011 would pack an 8-megapixel Sony sensor rather than the 5-megapixel OmniVision one found in the current phone, and Sony's CEO Howard Stringer seems to have confirmed that today in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Nikon will reportedly announce the new D5100 DSLR tomorrow (late tonight for those in the US), and photographs of the camera were leaked onto the Interwebs today. We'll be reporting on the specs tomorrow, but an interesting rumor is that the camera will have a "Night Vision" option that boosts ISO up to a mind-blowing 102400, allowing you to shoot in near-darkness. Stay tuned for the official announcement!

Computer vision PhD student Zdenek Kalal developed a camera called "Predator" that learns from its mistakes while given difficult recognition and tracking tasks. It's a pretty interesting glimpse at how powerful the autofocus feature on consumer cameras might be in the future. Imagine being able to teach your camera to recognize a particular moving subject, then having all the photographs taken show that subject in perfect focus! Cameras already have simple facial recognition features built in …

Flash drives are a dime a dozen, but the Fuuvi Pick is a bit different -- it functions as a flash drive but doubles as a camera for both still photo and video! There a USB connector on one end, and microSD slot on the other. It shoots 1280 × 1024 (1.3 megapixel) photographs and 720 x 480 video at 30fps. To transfer photographs, simply plug the camera into your computer -- like you would with a flash drive or with a Flip camcorder -- and it will be recognized as a drive. You can pick one up …

Some friends of mine asked me to shoot a quick band photograph of them recently without any preparation or planning. Luckily, the location was pretty nice (we were at a hostel) and the weather was a bit cloudy so there wasn't harsh sunlight.

Did you know that flatbed scanners make fun portrait cameras as well? Just place your cat on the glass, do a quick scan, and you'll have a strange looking portrait shot from below! Apparently this is pretty popular among cat lovers -- a Flickr search for "cat scanner" returns thousands of results! This gives "cat scan" a whole new meaning!

When a fake camera technology is unveiled, it's normally called a "concept". When it's published on April 1st, however, it's called an April Fool's Joke (e.g. last Friday's Canon iPad monitor). The RE-35 is another fun idea that would be absolutely awesome if it actually existed -- it's a 35mm canister that transforms any 35mm film camera into a digital one using a flexible sensor. Simply load the canister into the camera as you would with film, shoot your photos, and download them by …