Taiwanese electronics company BenQ isn’t a very big name in the digicam world, but its latest camera has something others don’t: “HDR” in the name. The BenQ E1260 HDR, slated to be released May 2010, captures photographs at 12 megapixels, shoots video at 720p, and has a 2.7 inch LCD. What we find most interesting is that they’re trying to market it as an HDR-capable camera. In their press release, the company states:

BenQ’s HDR image enhancement technology is designed bring out the finest details in the darkest and brightest parts of an image – allowing you to generate stunningly faithful photos under even the highest contrast lighting conditions. It is built to be more than just a backlight solution, and is the perfect tool to overcome high contrast lighting condition challenges.

However, this feature isn’t what most people think of when they hear HDR, which is bracketing multiple exposures and combining the resulting images. Instead, the camera offers some sort of processing feature that handles the light from high contrast scenes differently. Here’s a visual explanation provided on their product page:

A single line on the product page makes it clear that the feature doesn’t have anything to do with combining multiple exposures:

By ingeniously adjusting the way the camera handles light under high contrast conditions, the HDR image enhancement technology allows subtle details in the darkest and brightest parts of an image to stand out like never before.

The ambiguity behind how the technology actually works has confused news sources and gadget blogs, whose writers presumably saw HDR and assumed it meant multiple exposures. SlashGear is one that gets it wrong:

[...] the company’s HDR image enhancement technology [...] combines multiple frames to work around high contrast images having reduced visibility

Since the technology is still technically HDR, it’s not really BenQ’s fault for taking advantage of this recent fad by sticking it in the camera’s name. However, we still think the company should be clear enough about how it works to not fool people reporting on it.

After building up anticipation by releasing sneak peeks at upcoming features such as Content-Aware Fill and Puppet Warp, Adobe has unveiled Photoshop CS5, the latest version of its popular image editing program.

Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended are expected to start shipping next month at the price of $699 and $999, respectively. If you already own Photoshop and only need the upgrade, it’ll set you back $149 or $349.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the new features:

Better HDR

Companies like HDRSoft (makers of Photomatix) can’t be too pleased about this one. Adobe claims to have greatly improved the HDR capabilities in this new version. In addition to greater speed and accuracy, they now have ghost artifact removal (to combat camera shake) and the ability to emulate the look of HDR using single photographs.

New Painting Module

CS5 now features a painting module through which you can “paint” over a photograph. This feature flips photorealism around and allows you to turn your images into rather convincing paintings.
Instead of using an artistic filter, which can produce unreliable results, the painting tools allow for a more organic feel: the program shows a live view of the virtual brush tip as you paint.

Lens Correction Feature

Another major feature is almost a subtle addition compared to the other features, but it makes a huge difference in the way we can edit. Adobe is including a lens correction feature which corrects for distortion, chromatic aberration and vignetting based on what lens you used according to the EXIF data. The folks over at dpreview predict that CS5 will come with preset lens profiles – much like color profiles – for Nikon and Canon lenses. Photoshop also enables the ability to customize your own profiles with the possibility of sharing profiles with a larger community of users.

Adobe has also taken several pointers from community feedback with regards to the lens correction filter options.

Adobe Camera Raw 6: Non-Destructive Editing, Add and Remove Grain

Adobe Camera Raw 6 alone is plenty to get excited about. It uses the same processing engine as the Lightroom 3 beta and supports more than 275 camera models. It also allows nondestructive editing not only for raw files, but also for JPEG and TIFF.
There’s a new Grain feature which mimics the look of film grain, which provides an alternative to the film grain artistic filter, but is also nondestructive and can add an evenly dispersed grain to the entire image.
On the opposite spectrum, ACR also has improved noise removal controls that can prove quite handy when shooting at a high ISO.

Improved Edge Detection

In each iteration of Photoshop, Adobe has constantly improved its ability to distinguish edges for making selections and masking. CS5 has new adaptive selection-edge modification controls, such as Smart Radius, which selects the best edging style when selecting different types of subjects. Adobe has also added extra view modes to preview selections. The other features include Refine Radius and Erase Refinements, which can be particularly helpful when trying to reduce and remove background colors that show up through a subject’s hair.

Content-Aware Fill

Content-Aware Fill has received the most attention in CS5 preview coverage, and it’s no wonder why. This feature provides the ability to remove parts of a photograph and replace the void with a practically seamless filled area. You can either make a selection using Content-Aware Fill, or use the spot healing brush on the Content-Aware Fill setting.

Puppet Wrap

Puppet Warp allows elements in a photograph to be convincingly repositioned using anchor points.  Anchor points act like joints, and when appropriately placed, can be used to manipulate arms, legs, and other elements of an image composition. Like most of these new features, it’s another impressively powerful tool for creative individuals.

Constant Motion is a breathtaking time-lapse video by Redding, California-based freelance photographer Aaron Patterson that takes HDR to a whole new level. On his blog, Patterson writes,

This Video took roughly 600 hours of editing not to mention the countless hours of shooting. It is made of around 10k photos and took around 300 gigs of info. All of this was shot in 3.5 months which is about 6 hours of editing a day.

All that work definitely shows in the final product. Absolutely stunning.

Update: This giveaway has now ended. The winners have been randomly selected and are posted here. Thanks to everyone who entered this first contest!

Something I hope to do regularly on PetaPixel is give away gear, accessories, and software to my readers. Today I’m giving away seven (7) free licenses to Unified Color’s HDR PhotoStudio, each worth $149.99.

If you don’t know what HDR is, check out the Wikipedia article on it or take a look at the HDR Flickr group. Here are some sample images showing you what you can do with the software:

To enter this contest, all you need to do is answer the following question:

What is your favorite camera or lens?

There are two ways you can tell us your answer (feel free to use both methods to increase your chances, but one entry per channel please):

1. Leave a comment on this post
2. Send @petapixel a tweet on Twitter. Please hashtag the tweet with #photography

Winners will be announced in a week on the evening of June 20th, 2009.

Good luck!