Canon is showing off all sorts of crazy hardware at Canon Expo 2010 over in NYC. One of them is an omnidirectional camera (shown above) that shoots a 360° photograph in a single exposure. It creates the seamless panoramas using a 50 megapixel CMOS sensor and an aspheric mirror.

Note that this is a 360 degree panorama on a single plane, as if you used a tripod and turned it in every direction. I wonder how long it will be until there’s a camera that can literally shoot in every direction (i.e. up and down) to create a spherical panorama with single exposures. Maybe we’ll have spherical sensors and cameras in the future that somehow levitate and beam photos wirelessly?

(via Gizmodo)

Image credit: Photograph by Gizmodo

This adorable Pico projector concept which comes hot on the heels of Nikon’s more standard-looking S1100pj projector camera. The Pico, envisioned by René Wooram Lee, combines form and function in its anthropomorphic design: its blue “eye” is a projector lens and its greenish “eye” is the camera lens. The center smile is actually a microphone. The two feet not only double as a stand for the pico projector cam, but they also cover a mini-USB port and what looks like an audio jack. Brilliant!

(via Yanko Design)

It looks like tap tap tap’s Camera+ added one too many features for Apple’s liking. When the app developers tweeted a secret workaround that enabled the volume button to double up to control the shutter, Apple pulled Camera+ from the App Store.

Just this week, developer John Casasanta wrote in a blog post that an upgraded version of the app originally intended to launch the feature, VolumeSnap. VolumeSnap would have also allowed users to use the volume control on iPhone headphones as a remote shutter control. Pretty nifty.

But Apple rejected tap tap tap’s new version, citing this as a reason:

Your application cannot be added to the App Store because it uses iPhone volume buttons in a non-standard way, potentially resulting in user confusion. Changing the behavior of iPhone external hardware buttons is a violation of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement. Applications must adhere to the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines as outlined in the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement section 3.3.7

So tap tap tap left out the feature — at first. The app retained the feature, which was now hidden, but could be enabled by pointing the phone’s browser to a specific site provided by the developers. Read the rest of this entry »

The Flip Video camcorder has had a convenient built-in USB connector for quite some time, so why not compact cameras? Today Samsung announced the PL90, a 12.2 megapixel compact shooter that offers a convenient USB plug built into the body of the camera. Gone are the days of carrying around a separate cable or card reader, or having to have a computer with built-in card slots.

Aside from the nifty connection, the camera is pretty ordinary on other fronts. It has a 2.7 inch LCD on the back, offers 4x optical zoom, and supports 640×480 video recording at 30fps or 15fps (what? no HD?). It’ll hit the market next month at an entry-level price of $150.

We’ll likely see more and more compact cameras offering this kind of connection in the near future.

Everyone is expecting news of a new Canon 60D soon, and a leak yesterday by DxO seems to indicate that it will be in our hands by November of this year, meaning that Canon is probably planning to announce the new camera in late September at Photokina 2010.

The camera was listed with an assortment of existing lenses on the short-term roadmap for upcoming modules, along with dates for when it’s planned for.

Rumor has it that the camera will have 18 megapixels, 1080p video recording, and a swiveling LCD display. Any guesses as to what other improvements the 60D will offer?

(via Photography Bay)

Canon recently indicated that due to consumer demand for smaller cameras, they’re working on shrinking their traditional SLR system to make it more portable while retaining the mirrored design. It’s still possible, however, that they’re simultaneously working on developing their own EVIL camera to battle existing offerings and the camera Nikon is likely working on.

The above is a concept design by Idan Shechter over at Digital Photography Writer of what a Canon EVIL might look like. Do you think it looks better or worse than current EVIL offerings?

We’ve already got plenty of gadgets designed to facilitate photography: there’s auto-focus, face detection, and some crazy features in Photoshop that can effortlessly add and remove entire elements (and people) in photographs. So now why not have a camera that tells you whether you’re taking an aesthetically pleasing photograph?

Designer Andrew Kupresanin created this project camera that utilizes the Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine Acquine to judge photo quality even before you take a photograph. The screen in the back of the camera simply shows a percentage rating, in lieu of an LCD display. The camera is actually a Nokia N73 camera connected with a Mac over Bluetooth. Kupresanin seems to be using his experimental project to make a poignant statement about the automation of photography and aesthetics. Kupresanin says on his site:

Within pop culture and society artificial intelligence has been a topic that is approached with hope, fear, cynicism, curiosity and caution. However many intelligent devices have already been effortlessly absorbed into our culture and everyday lives.

Read the rest of this entry »