optical

Apple is interested in developing a way for its Pencil accessory to be able to sample both the color and texture of real-world surfaces via an optical sensor in its tip.

Destin Sandlin of SmarterEveryDay was out shooting the recent Super Blue Blood moon when something weird happened. As soon as the moon "touched" the tip of a model of the Saturn 5 rocket in Alabama, USA, a dark line appeared in his photos.

Canon just published an interesting patent that combines the benefits of both an optical and electronic viewfinder to help your camera auto focus like a champ.

When Google announced its Pixel smartphone last week and boasted about its "best smartphone camera ever," there was one notable thing it lacked compared to the iPhone: optical image stabilization. Instead of physically stabilizing shots, the Pixel uses readings from the phone's built-in gyroscope to compensate for shake.

Here's a look at the optical quality of the Yongnuo 35mm f/2 for Canon EF. There’s only so much that can be tested at home without fancy gear (MTF charts and the like) so I did a few tests that gauge common aesthetic qualities, using techniques that are often recommended for testing at home.

Panasonic might have found the last piece of the puzzle keeping many DSLR users from switching over to mirrorless cameras.

The above image is taken from a patent that diagrams the basics behind adding an optical viewfinder to mirrorless cameras. Even more interesting, the viewfinder would be able to change focal length when synced with any Micro Four Thirds lens.

Smartphone cameras have improved exponentially since their introduction to the world, but one company still believes there's plenty of room for improvement. That company is DynaOptics and their latest tech is promising to pack optical zoom into more smartphones without adding any bulk to the phones at all.

Dr. Hubert Nasse has been working in optics for almost 30 years. A ZEISS master, many of us dream of sitting down with a man of his optical know-how and just having a conversation in which he enlightens us (pun intended) on the basics of lens design.

Fortunately, photographer and photo educator Matt Granger is making that dream come true for us today with his video interview with Dr. Nasse from Photokina.

Image stabilization is a tricky business. There are a plethora of ways to do it: optical image stabilization, algorithmic stabilization and, more recently, hybrid options that combine the best of analogue and digital input.

A great example is Instagram’s new Hyperlapse app, which gathers data from the accelerometer built into your iPhone and uses that data to digitally correct for camera shake and give you smooth footage.

And now, an upcoming product called SteadXP wants to do the same thing for your DSLR or GoPro.

Samsung recently sent out an invite to media regarding an April 29th event. As you can see from the image above, Samsung makes use of a bit of a pun to tease the new device, which has already been leaked, both in pictures and specs.

Sharp recently announced its AQUOS SH-01D phone, which is one of the few phones on the market that feature …

The Image Fulgurator is a brilliant device created -- and patented -- by Berlin-based artist Julius von Bismarck. It's an optically triggered slave flash that fires through the back of a camera, projecting a message or image on the film through the lens -- basically, it's an optically triggered projector. What this allows von Bismarck to do is prank unsuspecting photographers by adding random pictures or words into their photographs whenever they use their camera's flash.

TDK has unveiled a monstrous 1 terabyte (1000 gigabyte) optical disc at CEATEC 2010 (the Japanese equivalent of CES), which wrapped up a couple days ago. The disc has 16 layers on both sides that each store 32GB of data, and is the equivalent to about 213 of the recordable DVD discs that you might be using to back up your image files.