The world of camera lenses can be a bit daunting when you first start out, and so a videographer and photographer have joined forces to put together a fun (and funny) introduction to all the basic lens options, what they do, and what situations you might use them in.
Researchers at the University of California-San Diego are fine-tuning some new tiny camera technology that could dramatically boost the detail and field of view of smartphone cameras. Joseph Ford, a professor in the university's Jacob School of Engineering, describes the system in a paper to be presented next week at the Optical Society of America's annual meeting.
According to Ford, his team will soon have the system -- seen above next to a Canon 5D Mark III setup -- refined to a camera assembly with 85-megapixel resolution, 120-degree field of view and f/2 aperture, all in a package about the size of a walnut.
Short and sweet, the video above is also impressive. Although it might seem banal enough -- what's so special about a video of the moon going through a full rotation? -- what you're looking at is a super-high resolution time-lapse that shows all of the Moon, including the part that's never visible from Earth. And it was all made possible by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
You remember that one time when you wanted to put four of your 16:9 aspect ratio wide-screen TVs side by side and watch the game in super-panorama? Yeah, neither do we. But apparently Panasonic does, considering the 64:9 ultra-wide camera system the company has developed.
German photographer Christian Stoll's "Epic" series features epic wide angle photographs of futuristic locations. The spaces are immense and the scale dizzying.
The Pinwide is a new pinhole cap by Wanderlust Cameras that takes advantage of the mirrorless nature of Micro Four Thirds cameras by recessing the cap into the body of the camera, achieving a wide field of view and strong natural vignetting. The "lens" is the equivalent of a 22mm on a 35mm camera, and boasts a perfectly round pinhole "made with the same precision etching technology used to manufacture semicoductors" to ensure sharpness.
Sigma announced yesterday that the upcoming 8-16mm f4-5.6 DC HSM, first announced at PMA 2010, will have a retail price …