sneakpeek

Sony A58, NEX-3N, and Lenses Outed as Leaked Photos Emerge

Sony has a couple of new cameras and a set of new lenses coming out, and we're starting to get a better idea of what we'll be seeing announced very shortly. Expect to see a new SLT camera called the A58, a new mirrorless camera called the NEX-3N, and a trio of A-mount lenses.

Twitter Retro Filters Coming Soon. This is What They Might Look Like

The mobile photo sharing wars are heating up, and two of the big players, Instagram and Twitter, are in the process of trading blows. Back in November, it came to light that Twitter is currently working to build Instagram-style retro filters into its smartphone apps. Instagram retaliated this week by announcing that its photos will soon no longer be embeddable on Twitter. The latest news now is that Twitter is trying to spoil Instagram's holidays by pushing out its new filters by year's end.

Eye-Fi May Soon Launch Its Own Cloud Photo Sharing Service Called Circ

It seems like we're saying this every week, but the cloud photo storage industry is becoming more and more packed. Heck, even AT&T launched its own service called Locker earlier this month. The next entrant to the arena looks like it will be a photography company we didn't expect: wireless SD card maker Eye-Fi.

Lytro Gives a Sneak Peek of Perspective Shift and Living Filters

We've known since last month that Lytro is planning to roll out at least one fancy new feature for its light field cameras (parallax-based 3D), but now the company has taken the wraps off the feature to give us a sneak peek at what they'll offer. The two new features that will soon appear in Lytro's Desktop software are called Perspective Shift and Living Filters.

JPEGMini to Launch Beamr: Speedy and Stylish Full-Res Mobile Photo Sharing

Since launching last year, JPEGMini has become a popular web-based option for trimming the file size of JPEG images without compromising their appearance. The web app magically shrinks photos by up to 5x while keeping the quality relatively unchanged. In May of this year, the company repackaged the technology for Macs as a simple space-saving app. Its next frontier? Mobile photo sharing and iOS.

A Sneak Peek of a Messy Photokina as Companies Scramble to Set Up Booths

I'm in Cologne, Germany covering Photokina right now. It's the day before the trade fair opens, and as I was walking through the exhibition center to a press event (which I'll write more on soon), I passed by some of the main exhibition halls. Instead of the squeaky clean "photographer's Disneyland" that guests enjoy when the fair is up and running, everything was a mess, as companies were working hard to set up their impressive displays.

Since this isn't a view that most people who visit the fair see -- after all, who wants to waste time walking around a day early? -- I decided to roam around and snap some photos of what Photokina looks like the day before opening.

Lunchbox Combines Online Photography Learning with Game Mechanics

Gamification -- the application of game design elements to non-game contexts -- is a pretty hot idea right now in the online startup world. More and more startups are introducing things like badgets, achievements, leaderboards, points, and progress bars to encourage users to do things such as visit new businesses, answer questions, and, of course, play games. One particularly interesting application of gameification is in the area of education, using fun to motivate learning.

Lunchbox is a stealthy startup that's planning to introduce this kind of learning to the world of photography.

PlayMemories Teaser Site Offers Glimpse into What Sony Camera Apps Will Be Like

We're in the year of the camera's app. Not the camera app, which you use on your phone, but the camera's app, which is found on your camera. A boatload of new cameras this year will have Internet connectivity and app support built right in, giving photographers access to all kinds of custom features and functions that weren't easily available in the old age of cameras.

While Android is one of the big operating systems manufacturers have gravitated towards, Sony has decided to go the Sony way and make its system proprietary. Instead of running Android, the Sony NEX-5R and the NEX-6 will offer apps through the PlayMemories ecosystem.

JVC and Sony Going After GoPro Market With New and Upcoming Action Cams

Where the action cam market is concerned, GoPro is king. For the last few years if you wanted to go sky diving, snowbording, mountain biking, or any other extreme sport and video tape yourself doing it, you'd probably be strapping a GoPro to one of your appendages. Sony and JVC, however, are looking to get in on some of the extreme sports action -- and both are doing it in style with new action cam offerings.

Scalado Remove Helps You Un-bomb Your Photobombed Photos

Last year imaging company Scalado showed off an app called Rewind that lets you create perfect group shots by picking out the best faces from a burst of shots and then combining them into a single image. Now the company is back with another futuristic photo app: it's called Remove, and lets you create images of scenes without the clutter of things passing through (e.g. people, cars, bikes). It works like this: simply snap a photograph, and the app will outline everything that's moving in the scene with a yellow line. Tap that person or object, and it magically disappears from the scene!

New Leaked Photos of the Retro Olympus OM-D Camera

New photos have emerged showing the retro OM-styled EM-5 Micro Four Thirds camera that Olympus is planning to unleash on the photo world. It's the first camera in a new OM-D line, and offers a beautiful old school SLR aesthetic. The image above, which looks like some kind of ad, reads,

A new digital SLR era is about to begin. Digital SLRs, which simply replaced film with an imaging device did not change significantly in terms of size, weight and user interface. The revolutionary, new mirrorless camera, the OM-D, has an exceptionally light and compact body. Its Electronic View Finder enables photographers to check the Art Filter effect, color temperature, and exposure levels in real-time. When shooting, you can instantly "create" a truly unique world and preserve it in exceptional quality. The "world" will be transformed from something you see to something you "take part" in.

The OM-D is a groundbreaking, new digital interchangeable lens camera perfect for people who want to "take part," "create," and "share."

You can see a higher-res version of the ad here.

Adobe Pixel Nuggets: Search Your Photo Library for Similar Features

Adobe's amazing Image Deblurring demo was the star of the Sneak Peeks event at Adobe MAX 2011, but it was just one of the many demos shown that night. Another interesting photography-related demo was for "Pixel Nuggets": a feature that lets you search a large library of photos for features (e.g. people, landmarks, patterns, logos).

Before and After Comparisons of Adobe’s Amazing Image Deblurring Feature

Last week we shared a sneak peek at some jaw-dropping image deblurring technology currently in development at Adobe. The video wasn't the best quality and was captured from the audience, so we didn't get to see the example images very clearly. Adobe has now released an official video of the demo, giving us a better glimpse at what the feature can do.

Lytro Camera Used in a Fashion Shoot

After reading about the revolutionary "shoot first, focus later" Lytro camera that's currently in development, Canadian fashion model Coco Rocha reached out to the company to ask if they could work with a prototype.

Leaked Photos of the Panasonic GF3

Observant Micro-Four Thirds fans recently spotted a strange looking camera in a promo video on YouTube (which was quickly taken down). The camera is most likely Panasonic's new Lumix GF3, a camera that's expected to be officially unveiled on June 13th. Its rumored to pack the same 16 megapixel sensor as the G3, not have a hot shoe, and to have a touchscreen-based interface. The company also seems to be taking the "large sensor in a small body" thing quite seriously -- this camera is tiny!

Photos Found on Memory Card Offer a Glimpse Inside B&H Photo Video

Photographer Linhbergh recently purchased a used camera from B&H Photo Video and found a Compact Flash card left inside the camera containing photographs taken from inside the store offices. They offer an interesting glimpse into the operations at the largest non-chain photo equipment store in the United States.

Sneak Peek at the Fujifilm FinePix X100’s Awesome Hybrid Viewfinder

When Fujifilm unveiled the upcoming FinePix X100 back in September, the sleek retro design was enough to cause many photo-enthusiasts to start drooling and saving up money. Now, more details about the technological advances incorporated into the camera are becoming available, undoubtedly causing more camera lust. One of the big features offered by the camera is a novel hybrid viewfinder that can toggle between optical and electronic modes with a single touch, which overlays even the optical view with a sweet "heads up display".