Archive for the ‘Cam Gadgets’ Category
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 |
If you enjoy going scuba-diving and you really support Aquaman and the aquatic flora and fauna, you clearly have to have a waterproof camera. In case you don’t have such devices, you’d better take a look at the new Sea Life cameras.
The new DC800 from Sea Life has an 8 megapixel CCD sensor capable of producing extremely sharp images even at depths of up to 200 feet. However, DC800 is not “aquatic-only,” so you can remove the slim camera from its waterproof housing and you got your compact digital camera ready for dry conditions. Additionally, the camera acts more like a DSLR when it comes to shutter times, as it features a quick-start mode which provides virtually no shutter lag. Check out some of the other features:
• Sea mode with 3 UW color correction settings
• Ext Flash Auto mode for automatic exposure settings
• Ext Flash Manual mode for manual aperture and shutter speed exposure controls
• Spy Mode automatically shoots continuous pictures at set time intervals
• 2.7″ LCD display
• 20X zoom - 4X optical zoom plus 5X digital
• SD/SDHC memory card slot
• 22 Land modes
• 640 x 480 video recording
The SeaLife DC800 is scheduled to retail in May for about $549.95 and it is, obviously, compatible with the entire SeaLife line of accessories.
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Monday, April 21st, 2008 |
How many times did you happen to get your camcorder soaked in the midst of a large wave on the beach? None? Hmm, you sure are careful with your things, way too careful maybe. But if you are Aquaman and still want to record some of the marine wanders I give you the latest ultraportable camcorder from Sanyo.
The new Xacti is waterproof and you can take it down to 1.5 meters deep and use it there for up to an hour. On the camera side, you’ll find an 8MP CMOS sensor with new “face chaser” technology that even works underwater. The camcorder is able to record clips in MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 formats at up to 60 frames per second at a VGA resolution. You also get a 5x optical zoom so you can get up, close and personal with some nasty shark grinning at your sight.
This camera appears to be almost exactly like the DMX-CA65 one, but waterproof. It’s pretty good feature-wise, but we can certainly use a 1080p version to capture the marine majesties. Oh yeah, and Sanyo, please make it waterproof down to 50 m .
The waterproof Xacti hasn’t even been officially announced as of yet so we might not see it at work until later this summer.
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Thursday, April 17th, 2008 |
I’d really want to experiment with the latest military gear. No, I wasn’t referring to guns, but to those cool gimmicks like the LED contact lenses, robots and weird armors. Oh yeah, and spy cams… like this one over here.
This is a high-resolution 450TVL camera which can be attached to a helmet as well as to one of your ears. It comes equipped with a tiny 4.3mm lens that gives it a reasonable 80°viewing angle and it also has a built-in microphone for audio recording. Unfortunately it doesn’t support any night vision options. The CCD image sensor is only ¼ inch wide and it provides both NTSC and PAL TV signals.
It can be used as a deterrent in hostile situations making it a great item for police patrols, door supervisors and army ops. But you can also wear it while skiing, paragliding, mountain biking, paint balling, rock climbing and many other adrenaline-pumping situations. You can couple it with a portable recorder to produce high quality recordings of the above situations. In this sense, the camera comes complete with power and cable accessories to offer output to a variety of portable devices.
The tactical camera can be found at Maplin for only £229.99 .
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Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 |
Last summer I managed to get myself an 1080p TV (which I actually use as a monitor). All cool and smooth, video game graphics are crystal clear and HD movies are so musch better now. But still, most of the older movies are only remastered in 1080p and a fair number of new films are still produced using film-based cameras, which make the digital recoding process a pain in the neck. I remember sometime in 2007 a digital video camera named Phantom was released, but that cost too much even for those respectable guys over at Hollywood. Now, RED comes along and launches all sorts of super-HD digital video cams.
RED has recently announced their EPIC flagship video camera which uses a new, full-frame S35mm Mysterium X sensor. The Mysterium X is said to provide the same quality, if not higher, as a 35mm film at 5k resolution (that would be around 12.5 Megapixels in wide format). The EPIC can shoot videos at up to 100 FPS so you can perform cool slow mo’ effects in post-production.
Check out the other cool specs:
* UP TO 100 MB/SEC. REDCODE RAW AND RGB RECORDING TO REDFLASH
* FULL SIZE DUAL LINK HD-SDI, 2-XLR AUDIO INPUTS AND HDMI
* WI-FI CONTROL
* FIREWIRE 800 and USB2
* 6 POUND FULLY MACHINED ALUMINUM BODY WITH HYBRID STAINLESS PL MOUNT
* COMPATIBLE WITH MOST RED ONE ACCESSORIES
* FULLY UPGRADABLE SENSOR, BODY, BOARDS AND MOUNT.
RED Epic is scheduled to be released sometime at the beginning of 2009 and it is supposed to cost more than $17,500.
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Monday, April 14th, 2008 |
You all know about the Terminator, no doubt about that. You might also remember the cool retinal HUD that we got to see in T2: Judgment Day. That type of display is no longer a cool sci-fi gimmick. Yes, the Japanese pulled it through once again.
Japan-based Brother Industries is responsible for the development of a wearable, portable version of its retinal imaging display (RID) technology, which gives people the chance to see things Terminator-style. The RID display was first included in a special pair of glasses, so that wasn’t quite at the retinal level. The new RID prototype attaches to a basic set of spectacles and works by focusing light onto the retina, moving it at high speeds to generate images that look like they exist right in front of your eyes. Although the glasses have become a tad lighter, the source box that feeds the actual image data to the glasses got bigger and can’t really be called portable, unless you carry it in a car or something.
Here’s how the RID system works. It is composed of three parts: the light source, the light scanner and the eyepiece module. The new prototype of the light scanner is about the size of a bulky Buetooth headset. That would be 1000 times smaller than the version Brother showed at EXPO 2005 in Aichi, Japan. As I’ve previously noted, the only thing that would pose big problems as far as portability goes at least, remains the light box.
Brother said that the huge light box could get as small as a portable drive by 2010, when it also plans to commercialize the system.
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