cameras

Olympus today continued the game of cat-and-mouse that is the land of Micro Four Thirds cameras with their new PEN EP-2. The new shooter, which comes on the half-iversary of the EP-1, is chasing Panasonic's much-lauded GF1 but feels unlikely to overtake it.

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Astrophotography is hard. Astronomically hard. Everything has to be perfect. Your telescope, with camera attached, must track your target in precise synchronization with the rotation of the Earth. It can't shake. It can't even vibrate. You have to nail your camera's exposure settings or you'll be rewarded with an incoherent mess. Your targets are often so dim you can't even see them until after the image has been made, so focusing is a nightmare.

So why try? Because it makes the entities floating in the vastness of the universe much more real than any Hubble wallpaper on your computer desktop can.

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Less than a week after Nikon wowed with its D3S, with previously unseen light sensitivity up to ISO 102,400, Canon has unveiled their own night-vision pro DSLR, the 1D Mark IV. But where the D3S falls short in the video department, the 1D Mark IV pushes things forward.

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Night vision, you say? The Nikon D3S, which the company unmasked today, is a pro-level D-SLR built around an entirely new 12-megapixel CMOS sensor that allegedly works well past twilight.

The D3S's sensor has expanded ISO sensitivity up to 102,400 (that's quadruple that of its older sibling, the Nikon D3), which means seriously low-light shooting. In fact, Nikon claims ISO 102.4K can pick up details you'd miss with the naked eye. (Too bad it can't see through walls, though.)

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Starting next month, British citizens will be given the chance to watch a number of the country's closed-circuit security cameras in hopes of catching a crime and winning up to £1,000 as a reward. The "game," run by the website InternetEyes.co.uk, lets participants log in online, alerting officials in real time via SMS and/or email.

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We live in a world designed by Charles K. Kao, Willard S. Boyle, and George E. Smith. Their work on the physics of light made possible the fiber optic cables carrying this web page to your phone, and the digital camera on the other side. And on December 10th, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden will award them the Nobel Prize in physics for their work.

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Google is reported to have spent millions of dollars on its Street View project. Roy Ragsdale, a student at West Point, has done a pretty nice job of putting together a portable panorama camera setup that includes GPS and Google Earth file output for under $300, using exclusively open source tools.

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Scientists and students alike have previously launched low-budget balloons that rise to the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere, snapping unbelievable photos from near-space. But MIT's Icarus team managed the same feat using only off-the-shelf items, and for a measly cost of $150. Here's how they did it.

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If a Hummer died and came back as a camera, it would be a Leica -- for many reasons. First, they're built like tanks. Second, even the "small" ones are still huge. And, the most affordable ones are expensive. The just-announced M9 rangefinder and X1 compact are true to Leica form: they're both masterfully constructed cameras that are built to last. But at $7,000, the M9 should have a solid 24K gold shutter at the very least.

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