Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips
B&H now has the price listed for the Sony NEX-FS700 at $7999 for the camera body. And, the price with the 18-200mm kit lens is $8599.
We kinda expected a pricepoint in this neighborhood; however, now that I’m actually looking at it, it’s hard to believe that Sony is delivering 240fps at full 1080p for $8k. And, to boot, it’s going to capture 4K via an external recorder.
No pre-orders yet, but stay tuned. I’ll let you know as soon as they open up.
Contour, which I checked out at NAB 2012, announced 5 new camera mount kits today for its ContourROAM and Contour+ HD cameras. Additionally, there’s a new watersports kit that includes the ContourROAM camera in a ready-to-shoot kit.
The mount kits retail from $59.99 to $99.99 each. The new ROAM Watersports kit retails for $249.99. You can find Contour cameras and mounts at B&H Photo.
Complete details in the press release below. [Read more…]
The Magic Lantern guys look to be hard at work on development of custom firmware for the Canon 5D Mark III. A couple of days ago, one of the developers tweeted the above image of a 5D Mark III displaying a “Hello world” message to Planet5D and others.
While the 5D Mark III is quite the step up for video users when compared to the 5D Mark II, there are still some key concerns in what it is lacking. Two of the top “missing” features are 1080/60p frame rates and clean HDMI output for external recorder capture. No doubt if the Magic Lantern crew can get these two features cranking reliably on the 5D Mark III, there will be a lot of happy shooters out there.
TriggerTrap is an iPhone/iPad app that works in conjunction with a special camera connection cable to trigger DSLRs in a variety of different ways. There are 12 different triggering modes, including two different flavors of timelapse, distance-lapse, motion detection, sound, magnetism and vibration sensors, and a facial recognition sensor. [Read more…]
The ToughTech Duo from CRU-Dataport is a portable and robust little RAID hard drive. It has connectivity options for FireWire 800, eSATA and USB 2.0. The drive is bus powered over FireWire 800. [Read more…]
It looks like the full specs for the Sony NEX-F3 and A37 entry-level cameras are now out in the wild with a release date of May 17, courtesy of SonyAlphaRumors. Leaked images vis Yangcanggih. Check out the spec lists below.
One thing that doesn’t jive with the specs and the leaked images is the MP4 codec listed in the NEX-F3 specs. The images clearly showed the AVCHD logo on the camera body. Likewise, a 1080/24p and 1080/60i frame rate suggests an AVCHD 1.0 codec. If anything, I think the MP4 codec would be for a 720p option (like the NEX-C3) – although, the NEX-F3 appears to offer full 1080p HD video capture in addition to a possible 720p MP4 mode…
With the recent NEX models sporting the AVCHD 2.0 codec, it looks like Sony will differentiate the video capabilities on entry-level models by sticking with a max 30fps frame rate at full 1920 x 1080 resolution via the AVCHD 1.0 codec. This should make the NEX-F3 a perfect consumer camera with great 1080p video. And, if you want to get your overcranked footage on for smooth slo-mo, you’ll need to step up to the NEX-5N or higher.
The A37 looks to be very competent as well for an entry-level shooter. Frankly though, unless you have to have the phase-detection AF system of the SLT models, I would suggest most people to choose the NEX-F3 as an entry-level go-to camera over the A37.
I’ll have more concrete thoughts on these models once they are officially announced and I get my hands on them.
Stay tuned.
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has designed a 3.2 BILLION pixel camera that it hopes to build in order to “capture the widest, fastest and deepest view of the night sky ever observed.” The above rendering of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) shows just how big this 3 ton camera will be next to a person. [Read more…]
It’s time for our weekly break from the gear for a few minutes so we can enjoy another round of reader photos from the Photography Bay Flickr Group.
Check out the rest of the photos below. [Read more…]
Planet5D picked up the below video (crafted by Jeff Farmer) in Apple Motion using a 3D composite of 4 still images of clouds captured with a Canon Rebel T2i.
This is a great little technique that’s doable with basic 3D compositing skills in Motion or After Effects, or any other editor that gives you access to z-space adjustments. The great thing about working with still images in 3D composites is the ability to reframe the massive images for delivery at 1920 x 1080 resolution. The T2i delivers a 5K still image, so there’s a lot of room to work with or only to use a portion of the image for no loss of quality in an HD video.
If you are interested to learn more about this kind of work, there’s a great tutorial on some very basic 3D compositing at VideoCopilot.net.
