Perhaps in response to the growing capacities and falling prices of SD cards, the CompactFlash Association has announced a new format to replace CF cards for professional photographers. It’s called XQD, and has a size that falls between CF and SD cards (it’s thicker than SD cards, but smaller than CF cards). The interface used is PCI Express, which has a theoretical max write speed of roughly 600MB/s, though the target for real-world write speeds at first will be 125MB/s. It’ll start making public appearances at trade shows early next year, and will be licenced out to card makers around the same time.
Sharp recently announced its AQUOS SH-01D phone, which is one of the few phones on the market that feature optical image stabilization. The phone is powered by Android OS, and features a 12.1 megapixel 1/3.2-inch CMOS sensor. The demo above shows how effective the stabilization is at canceling out small movements of the sensor.
Xerox is showing off a new tool called Aesthetic Image Search over on Open Xerox (the Xerox equivalent of Google Labs). It’s an algorithm being developed at one of the company’s labs that aims to make judging a photograph’s aesthetics something a computer can do.
Many methods for image classification are based on recognition of parts — if you find some wheels and a road, then the picture is more likely to contain a car than a giraffe. But what about quality? What is it about a picture of a building or a flower or a person that makes the image stand out from the hundreds which are taken with a digital camera every day? Here we tackle the difficult task of trying to learn automatically what makes an image special, and makes photo enthusiasts mark it as high quality.
You can play around with a simple demo of the technology here. Don’t tell the Long Beach Police Department about it though — they might use it against photographers.
Major camera makers including Olympus, Samsung and Sony have all filed patents in recent days for liquid lens technology. Unlike traditional glass lenses, liquid lenses don’t have any moving parts. Instead, liquid is used to focus light, and different voltages are applied to the liquid to change the shape of the liquid, thereby controlling the image. In the video above, techie Ben Krasnow introduces the technology, and then shows off a device he made by ripping a liquid lens out of a USB webcam.
If you’re a fan of Fujifilm’s X100 and X10, then you might want to brace yourself: the company’s next camera might be the one mirrorless camera to rule them all. Fujifilm’s upcoming mirrorless camera will likely have the same sleek styling as the X100, but with one colossal difference: a revolutionary new “organic sensor”. Fuji has been developing the technology for years now, and the new camera — supposedly named the Fujifilm LX — is rumored to be the first to pack the sensor. Read the rest of this entry »
Ross Technology Corp. has developed an amazing silicon-based spray-on coating called NeverWet that can make almost anything completely waterproof. An iPhone sprayed with NeverWet still functions perfectly after being submerged underwater for half an hour. Spraying the coating on clothes causes liquids (e.g. water, oil, chocolate syrup) to slide right off. Read the rest of this entry »
Nikon is developing an X100-esque hybrid viewfinder for DSLR cameras. A recently published patent filing by the company describes and shows a DSLR with a viewfinder that can switch between optical and electronic modes. The purpose appears to be for providing the photographer with an optimal view of the scene — if the scene is too bright for the photographer (e.g. the camera is pointed towards the sun), then the camera switches to an electronic view that provides the user with a view that’s more suitable for their eyes.
Unlike the X100′s viewfinder, however, there is no electronic image overlaid on the optical one when in OVF mode.
Contrast detection is one of the two main techniques used in camera autofocus systems. Although focusing speeds continue to improve, the method uses an inefficient “guess and check” method of figuring out a subject’s distance — it doesn’t initially know whether to move focus backward or forward. UT Austin vision researcher Johannes Burge wondered why the human eye is able to instantly focus without the tedious “focus hunting” done by AF systems. He and his advisor then developed a computer algorithm that’s able determine the exact amount of focus error by simply examining features in a scene.
His research paper, published earlier this month, offers proof that there is enough information in a static image to calculate whether the focus is too far or too close. Burge has already patented the technology, which he says could allow for cameras to focus in as little as 10 milliseconds.
Japanese company Nippon Electric Glass has developed a new type of ‘invisible glass’ that drastically reduces reflections, rendering the glass almost invisible to human eyes. The secret is a special anti-reflection film that is formed on each side of the glass, which allows more light to pass through rather than bounce off. In ordinary glass, about 8% of the incoming light is reflected, but with this new glass, only 0.5% is. In the photo above, we “see” normal glass on the left and the new glass on the right.
Gadget blogs are salivating over the glass’ potential benefits for phone and computer screens, but we’re interested in seeing whether the glass may prove useful for photography. Perhaps it could pave the way for next-generation lenses and filters?
Google scientist Sam Hasinoff has come up with a technique called “light-efficient photography” that uses focus-stacking to reduce the amount of time exposures require. In traditional photography, increasing the depth of field in a scene requires reducing the size of the aperture, which reduces the amount of light hitting the sensor and increases the amount of time required to properly expose the photo. This can cause a problem in some situations, such as when a longer exposure would lead to motion blur in the scene.
Hasinoff’s technique allows a camera to capture a photo of equal exposure and equivalent depth of field in a much shorter amount of time. He proposes using a wide aperture to capture as much light as possible, and using software to compensate for the shallow depth of field by stacking multiple exposures. In the example shown above, the camera captures an identical photograph twice as fast by simply stacking two photos taken with larger apertures.
