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Engadget

Sony Ericsson Patents Cameraphone Auto-Zoom Technology


It's a beautiful autumn day, and you're out in the wooded path beyond the railroad tracks just taking it all in and killing some time. Hey, what's that? Why, it's the cutest bunny rabbit you've ever seen! Time to pull out that 8-megapixel C905 and... oh, this sucks, you actually have to press a button to zoom in and out! Screw this noise -- you're a visionary photographer, not a manual laborer.

Happily, Sony Ericsson feels your pain, and a new patent application reveals that they're hard at work on a system to control your cameraphone's zoom level simply by moving it back and forth. Just get the phone closer to the subject, and boom, welcome to telephoto city, population one. We're still totally cool with the old-fashioned way of capturing Pulitzer-winning shots, but we're happy that someone's thinking of this type of stuff so we don't have to -- that'd be work. [Via Unwired View]
Engadget

MI6 Agent Forgets to Delete Work Records from Camera Before Selling on eBay

We'd swear this had to be some sort of spoof on the impeccable James Bond, but sadly enough, the whole thing is true. A secondhand Nikon Coolpix camera which sold on eBay for a mere £17 ($30) turned out to be a real bargain once its new 28-year old owner completed his first image dump. Along with decidedly decent snaps from his US vacation, he also found a number of "top secret" images, diagrams and sketches that have since been confirmed as MI6 material. We're talking photos of rocket launchers, hand-drawn graphics of terrorist links and all sorts of other information not at all intended for civilian eyes. 'Course, the whole thing could just be the act of one talented Photoshopper, but we highly doubt the agency would be so fortunate.

[Via Digg, image courtesy of WWII Airplane Model]
Engadget

Nintendo Launching Camera-Equipped DS By End of Year?


Whoa, whoa -- what's this? A fresh report from Nikkei is pretty confidently talking about a new Nintendo DS destined to hit "within the year," though we aren't claiming to be full-fledged believers just yet. To be fair, this isn't the first we've heard of such a beast, though the translated description is pretty far out there. For instance, the new model will reportedly boast a camera that will be used heavily for games and offer a stronger wireless signal. Even crazier is the bit about "competing with cellular phones" and "exceeding the frame of the game industry." The article mentions that the device will eventually ship for ¥20,000 ($189) or less, though it doesn't say what kind of sauce the author hit before writing commenced. [Image courtesy of Techeblog, thanks RS]
Engadget

Creepy 'Third Eye' Pinhole Camera Exposes the Dead


Here you have latest pinhole camera by artist, Wayne Martin Belger -- a good boy raised on a steady diet of crucifixion imagery and the scorched-earth wrath of divinity. This work entitled Third Eye, a study of "the beauty of decay," uses precious metals like titanium and silver to expose the memory of time onto film, sheering the 150 year old skull of a 13 year old girl. Sample image posted after the break for those who dare.

[Via Make: and Art Diabolique]

Neck Mounted Camcorder Redefines Hands-Free Shooting

Neck Mounted Camera for Hands Free POV
Point of view (POV) filming isn't just for war movies and sleazy porn films any more. Now, it's for obnoxious home movies and YouTube videos (assuming these shorts don't already fall in to the former two categories). Johan Frossen has designed a wireless neck-mounted camera with a fish-eye lens for capturing everything around you as it happens. The camera can be paired with a cell phone, and any video stored there for editing or transfer to another device.

Now your friends can shoot their own shaky POV videos, in nausea-inducing fish-eye style. Lets just hope they keep it to skateboarding accident videos and don't start showing you their own personal porn. [Source: Wired]
Engadget

Polaroid Digicam to Feature Built-In Printer in 2009

We had this inkling that it was only a matter of time before a PoGo-infused camera came to market, and at long last, we finally know (well, sort of) how long we're talking. Sometime in 2009, the aforesaid company will be pushing out a digital camera that includes an on board printer based around the Zink technology. The device will be capable of ejecting 4- x 3-inch prints, and curiously enough, it sounds like you could actually have a say in what it looks like. No, seriously -- hit the read link and have a look. [From: Amateur Photographer via Wired]
Engadget

Camera Drones to Monitor Future Battlefields?


As the military industrial complex surges forward, so do advances in technology for the public sector. At least that's how the cold-war wisdom goes. Case in point: QinetiQ is developing a lens-less, mirror-less, battlefield imaging system with some help from your DARPA's deep pockets.

The LACOSTE project (Large Area Coverage Optical Search while Track and Engage) aims to set aloft high-altitude (about 20km) drones and air-ships fitted with a special, thousand-strong microscopic sensor array (a "first of their kind," according to QinetiQ), a "mask," and image processor to decode the scene and extract an image of the quickly changing conditions on the battlefield or, you guessed it, city streets.

The resulting lightweight and highly-durable system should feature a "super resolution" mode with the ability to "detect and simultaneously track large numbers of moving vehicles in dense urban areas with a high degree of accuracy, 24-hours a day."

And here you thought CCTV was intrusive.

[Via BBC]
Engadget

Thief Caught After Stolen Wi-Fi Camera Sends Images Home



It was inevitable, really.

We've seen quick-footed thieves swipe GPS units that eventually led to their arrest and a bank robber who didn't even bother to close his clamshell while holding up the joint. Now, in the latest example of thieves caught by stolen gadgets, it looks like the nifty $100 Eye-Fi card -- which automatically and wirelessly uploads images to the Web from any camera whenever it hits a Wi-Fi hotspot - - is really paying off.

According to Reuters, Long Island resident Alison DeLauzon had her entire stash of camera gear (over $1,000 worth) stolen while taking a load off in Florida. Upon returning home and checking things out, she noticed that all of the snapshots taken prior to the theft were uploaded to the Web, and, upon closer inspection, she even noticed a clear shot of the remarkably idiotic crook.

After syncing up with the boys in blue, all of the gal's equipment was eventually returned, and some semblance of normalcy was finally returned. How's that for a feel good story, huh? [Source: Reuters]

[Image courtesy of Al]

How to 'Geotag' Your Photos



Taking pictures with digital still cameras has been popular for years. Now GPS devices are the johnny-come-lately of the tech you cool kids want. So what happens when you combine the two capabilities? Why, geotagging your photos, of course!

Geotagging is the process of marking on each digital photograph the geographical location of where you took the shot. This information can be used to enhance how you review pictures from a vacation, maybe viewing them on a map online or comparing them to pictures taken by other people who have similarly geotagged their shots. It can be both fun and informative.

One easy way to geotag your photos is to use a new SD memory card introduced by Eye-Fi (read our post on this announcement here). This SD card automatically detects where you are and writes this information into the image file as you take a picture. Ingenious, we say!

We also liked learning how Flickr, the online photo-sharing site, lets you drag and drop your photos onto an online map to identify where they were taken. (We'll admit we could spend hours doing this.)

And these were just two of the easy methods. Read the whole article for more. [Source Wired]
Engadget

Nikon Debuts Slim, Wi-Fi-friendly Fashion Camera


Nikon is fleshing out its "Style Series" of shooters with the COOLPIX S52 and S52c (pictured) compact cameras. The two cameras are pretty much spec-for-spec identical, other than the Wi-Fi capabilities of the S52c, which allow it to upload shots wirelessly to services like Flickr or Nikon's own "my Picturetown." Otherwise, you're looking at a pair of fairly standard compacts, with 9-megapixel sensors, 3x zoom, optical image stabilization and so forth.

Both will be available in May, with the S52 retailing for $250, and the S52c arriving at $280.



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