How many times have you rolled your eyes at those "zoom... enhance... zoom in closer... I SAID ENHANCE!" scenes on television shows? Well, Google is attempting to unroll your eyes with a pair of neural networks that can intelligently "enhance" images using a source image that is just 64 pixels.
Four engineers who pioneered the creation of digital image sensors have been awarded this year's prestigious Queen Elizabeth Prize, which comes with a hefty £1 million award. The prize is considered to be one of the world's most prestigious in the field of engineering.
Sony just debuted a new type of 3-layer CMOS sensor that captures images with incredible speed. At full tilt, the sensor can capture 1080p Full HD video at a blazing-fast 1,000fps, and all but eliminates the rolling shutter effect when shooting fast moving objects.
FujiFilms’s X-Trans III sensor has been out since the X-Pro2 hit the scene in March 2016. It was joined recently by the X-T2, and presently the X-T20 and X100F are about to be unleashed upon the world in February 2017.
When an object breaks the sound barrier—accelerates to the point where it's moving faster than the speed of sound—it creates pressure waves that result in what is called a "sonic boom" and Mach cone. Now, scientists have managed to captured a similar phenomenon for light itself.
Sometimes people ask me why I started shooting videos on a phone and the answer is not that easy. I believe the best camera is the one we always have with us, in our pocket. Maybe it's not the most powerful of course, but at least we can bring it with us all the time.
This year's Super Bowl will be the first to use high-tech camera technology to offer a never-before-seen view: a look at plays through the eyes of players.
Back in 2014, the light field camera company Lytro unveiled the $1,600 Illum, a camera of the future that shoots 40 "Megaray" photos and lets you refocus photos after they're shot. The tech specs were fancy, but no one bought the camera, leading to massive price cuts and eventually a complete change of direction by the CEO. The 5-minute video above is a hands-on look at the Illum.
For its new nature documentary TV show, Spy in the Wild, BBC One deployed a wide range of spy cameras made to look like realistic animals. Using the creepy-looking robotic spies, the show was able to capture rare and impressive shots of wildlife up close.
In addition to working on a voice assistance for photo editing, Adobe Research has a number of other image editing projects brewing that it's showing off demos for. The 30-second video shows one technology that allows you to rotate faces in static photo portraits.
Many materials show internal stress when illuminated with polarized light and photographed with a second analyzing polarizer. This unique property of materials is called birefringence. Some of the more common material that exhibits this property is glass, ice, and most plastics.
Intelligent virtual assistants like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa are quickly picking up skills and popularity. But what if your Adobe apps had a similar feature? What if Adobe designed a virtual assistant that would let you edit photos using voice commands?
If there are still photojournalists around in the year 2030, they'll be begging their editors to buy this strange concept car designed by Dillion Kane. Like the ultimate gear bag on wheels, it'll carry your cameras, scan the environment with myriad sensors, and houses its very own drone in the roof.
Virtual reality cameras just got real. Literally. The D3-U is the world's first physical "camera" device that's designed to take photos in virtual worlds.
At CES 2017 in Las Vegas this week, Razer showed off Project Valerie, the world's first triple display laptops. Instead of a single screen, you can feast your eyes on three separate 17.3-inch 4K screens arranged panorama-style.
Often when scoping out digitization projects, devising complementary conservation treatments that assist in digital photo capture are challenging aspects of overall workflow design. And so it has been the case with our recent efforts at UConn Library on a set of 19th century Latin American newspapers from the University's archives and special collections.
Every time you upload a photo to Facebook, the social network analyzes it and adds tags so that a computer can "describe" your photo to any visually impaired friends who run across it with their screen reader. Now, you too can see what Facebook is "seeing" in your photos.
What's your computer's favorite photo? It seems like a ridiculous question, but EyeEm recently asked their AI something similar. Since no single human could possibly go through the millions of images uploaded to their service last year, EyeEm let their special EyeEm Vision AI pick the Top Photos of 2016.
Magic Lantern may soon release their most popular feature since RAW video. A few of the folks who constantly improve the Canon software add-on have just found a way to generate 14-bit lossless DNG RAW files in-camera!
Sphere is a new lens that's designed to turn any DSLR camera into a 360-degree camera. It captures a full 360-degree view horizontally and a 180-degree field of view vertically.
The Taiwanese company STC Optical has created a slide-in filter for Canon and Nikon full frame DSLRs that can reduce light pollution in astrophotography. It's called the STC Astro-Multispectra Clip Filter.
Variable neutral density filters allow you to choose the amount of light entering your camera. What if it were just as easy to adjust your softbox for portrait lighting? A new "Active Diffusion" technology may soon make that concept a reality.
Curved sensor mania first took over the blogosphere back in 2014 thanks to Sony and their curved creation. But while that sensor never really came to anything worthwhile—although it was used in a "camera"—two Canon patents are sparking interest in this technology once again.
Light—the makers of the 16-module L16 camera that purports to put 52-megapixel DSLR quality in your pocket—get a lot of questions about how exactly their wonder-cam will work. So they made a video that explains it in plain English.
My name is Jeff Cable, and I'm a photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. I previously spent many years of my life as Director of Marketing at Lexar dealing with the ins and outs of the memory card business. And in all that time, I have never written about the do's and don'ts of memory cards. Now that I am not on that side of the business any more, I feel that I can write this objective piece for you without any conflict of interest.
Want a digital camera battery that can be recharged in just seconds and power your shots for days? That dream maybe become a reality thanks to new advances in battery technology.
GearEye is a new smart gear management system that can help photographers keep an "eye" on the gear in their camera bags. It uses RFID tags to track each of your precious items, alerting you if anything is absent from the roll call.
It turns out Canon's 200-400mm f/4L with the 1.4x extender built-in wasn't just a gimmick or a one-off. The Japanese camera giant has patented another, similar lens, that will give users three focal lengths in one.
No glass? No problem! At least that's Hitachi's goal. The Japanese company has announced development of a lensless camera that uses moire fringing and math instead of a lens to capture images. What's more, those images can be focused after you take the shot.
Google scientists are brewing technology that could one day help you to "enhance!" photos with sharper results than current software on the market. Called RAISR, the system uses machine learning for intelligent upscaling.
'Spray and Pray' photography is being taken to as yet un-dreamt-of heights thanks to a new sensor from CMOSIS. This full-frame sensor not only packs 48MP worth of resolution, it can apparently capture 8K video at 40fps, and 4K at 60.
Over at Adobe MAX 2016, Adobe gave a sneak peek of a new technology they're brewing called SkyReplace. The feature makes it extremely easy to replace the sky and look of a photo with just a few clicks and zero Photoshop knowledge. You can watch it in action in the 5-minute demo above.
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.
The iPhone 7 Plus has a new Portrait mode that artificially blurs backgrounds using info captured by the two rear cameras. If you want a similar look but don't have an iPhone 7 Plus, check out the new Patch app for iOS. It uses neural networks to generate faux depth and blur.
A trio of scientists from MIT's Media Lab decided to get creative for Halloween ... and just maybe scare the pants off of you. So if you're wondering how Kermit turned into undead Kermit, meet the aptly-named 'Nightmare Machine.'
Apple has just announced its latest generation of Macbook laptops. In the week that marks the 25th anniversary of the company's first notebook, Apple is trying to redefine the modern notebook again with the introduction of a new "Touch Bar" secondary display above the keyboard.
Photolemur is a new photo-editing program that claims to be "the world's first fully automated photo enhancement solution." It uses artificial intelligence to auto-enhance any photo with minimal human involvement.
One of the challenges (and rewards) of managing a digital production lab for a university research library is working with the wide assortment of analog formats that are collected within its archives, special collections, and map library holdings. For instance, we've recently begun conversion work on a 2002 aerial survey of Connecticut that was originally shot on 9"x9" positive black and white film.
Canon is planning to launch a miniature satellite into orbit, and onboard will be a space camera that's based on the Canon 5D DSLR.
The CompactFlash Association announced the development of a brand new family of high-performance memory cards last month. And even though the so-called "CFexpress" storage is still very much in development, these blazing fast cards should have photographers very excited.
There are stickers and covers out there that can overlay Photoshop shortcut icons over your keyboard, but those may soon be unnecessary. Apple is reportedly interested in the dynamic E Ink keyboard created by Sonder, a keyboard that can instantly change what's displayed on each of the keys.
Google has announced a new update for Google Photos that brings four new features for finding, animating, and rotating your precious memories.
Choosing the right hashtags for your Instagram photos can make a big difference in how many eyeballs see your work. If you find yourself constantly struggling to come up with the best relevant hashtags for your photos, there's a new web tool designed just for you. It's called Display Purposes.
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.
An Italian astrophotography company called PrismaLuceLab has launched a modded version of the Nikon D5500 DSLR. Called the "D5500a Cooled," the camera uses a special cooling system mounted on the back to chill the sensor and reduce noise during long-exposure photos.
Want to have your photos critiqued... by a computer? Keegan is a new online personal photo coach that can do that. Show Keegan one of your photos, and he'll do his best to give you technical feedback to improve your photographic skills.
It isn’t often that your hobby and your career collide but recently that is just what happened to me. Photography is my hobby. Fraud and Security management is my profession. So when I learned that cameras were used to launch one of the largest cyber attacks in history, I was intrigued.
If you're the technical type, or your just love to understand your photo and video history, you'll definitely want to check out this straightforward explanation of NTSC vs PAL, or why your camera shoots 29.97, not 30fps.
Earlier this week, we showed you some really interesting image editing research from the University of Edinburgh, calling it a peek at the future of Photoshop. Well, it turns out we were more right than we realized.
This fascinating short demonstration of a neural network-powered photo editor might offer a small window into the future of Photoshop—a fully automatic future where massive changes are made in a single brush stroke.