camera

Five great enthusiast camera deals for less than $500

When it comes to holiday shopping, I tend to take a conservative approach: decide what you want, then look for good prices. That makes you a little less likely to be swayed by faux bargains, like bundles with mediocre bags or accessories you really won't use. The one exception is for lenses -- provided they're ones you'll actually use -- which do increase the value of a bundle, though you don't want to buy a mediocre body just because the two-lens kit is cheap. With that in mind, I found a handful of models that take … Read more

Some find problems with Wii U update

You don't have to wait long for Monday's CNET Update:

Sales of the Nintendo Wii U system began Sunday, following a midnight launch event at the Nintendo World store in New York. But anyone getting a Wii U will need some patience before getting started. A required 5GB firmware update can take an hour or two to download, but be sure to not turn it off once the update has begun! Some users that turned off the console before the download was complete have "bricked" the machine and need to exchange it for a new one. … Read more

Compact cameras for advanced shooters (roundup)

Editors' note: This story was originally published on November 21, 2011, but has been updated to reflect more-recent reviews. The latest update adds the Fujifilm X100S and the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1.

It's a common complaint: you want the photo quality of a dSLR but find you're leaving the camera at home because it's so large.

The compromise is a compact camera with a sensor larger than a typical point-and-shoot -- sometimes even the same size as a consumer or midrange dSLR -- raw file support, and sufficient manual control over aperture and shutter speed to allow for … Read more

Samsung reveals Black Friday camera deals

Samsung still doesn't have much of a name when it comes to cameras, but it's managed to compete with other manufacturers with one feature: Wi-Fi.

For that reason, people shopping this holiday season for a camera for someone who is addicted to shooting and sharing should check out these Black Friday deals.

Anything that's branded as a Smart camera will have Samsung's built-in 802.11n wireless, which can be used to connect to your Wi-Fi network for automatic backups to a Windows computer or Microsoft SkyDrive, viewing photos and movie clips on DLNA-equipped devices, or sending … Read more

Take great pix and more with your Android device with Camera360 Ultimate

It's easy to see why PinGuo's Camera360 is one of the most popular camera apps for Android: just look at your screen. This free app is a great choice for handling snapshots and other basic camera duties, but it also lets you apply and preview all kinds of cool effects before you save an image. You can download and apply Scenes to create your own photo postcards and displays. Camera360 also manages your image galleries, including batch processing. We tried the latest and greatest version of this Android freeware, Camera360 Ultimate. Among its many upgrades is the Camera360 … Read more

Get old-school photographs with CamWow Retro

CamWow Retro is an iOS app that lets you take photos with antique effects applied to them. Whether a sepia-tint or grainy black-and-white images, there's a lot of effects you can apply. CamWow Retro is a free app and installs easily.

The CamWow Retro interface is based on a larger app called CamWow Pro and works the same way. When activated, the app opens an interface with four panes. One shows the image from the camera natively, and the other three panes show various effects in real time. You can scroll through a few screens of effects to find … Read more

Flayvr for iOS brings organization to your Camera Roll

Note to Apple: Nice job with the cameras and all, but Camera Roll? Not so great.

See, browsing photos on an iDevice kind of sucks. You're stuck either swiping through tiny, disorganized thumbnails or paging through endless full-screen snapshots to find what you're after.

Flayvr for iOS turns your Camera Roll into nicely organized albums, offering a much cooler way to view and share your snapshots.

When you run the app, it automatically groups your photos by date and presents them in a scrolling list. Each dated group (or "flayvr") consists of a title and four … Read more

Lytro adds more ways to interact with its living pictures

Photos taken with Lytro's light field camera (aka living pictures) were already more interactive than a regular snapshot, letting you endlessly refocus the images by clicking on different parts of them. An upcoming software update takes the interactivity up a notch, letting you change the perspective of your shots, too.

The free Lytro Desktop software update, which rolls out December 4, adds this Perspective Shift feature, enabling Lytro users to slightly change the point of view of a living picture by clicking and dragging it in any direction.

For example, click and hold on the picture at the top … Read more

Trick out your camera's shutter release with a ProDot

Custom SLR is no stranger to Kickstarter; its C-Loop camera strap mount and M-Plate Pro tripod plate both got their start there. The usefulness of those products was easy to see, but its latest project, the ProDot, perhaps strays a bit into as-seen-on-TV territory.

The ProDot sticks right on your camera's shutter release, adding a soft, raised, textured surface to it. It is not unlike the trackpoints used on business laptops but considerably squishier.

While Custom SLR's Ivan Wong spins it as giving you more control and less fatigue, the greatest benefit is probably shock absorption. If you tend to push a little too hard on your release, the ProDot will lessen the vibration.

Plus, having used one for a bit, it's just fun to touch and makes it easier to blindly find your shutter release. … Read more

AT&T, Samsung announce pricing for Galaxy Camera

Editors' note: This story has been updated to clarify purchasing requirements.

Are you ready to buy a camera with a data plan? AT&T sure hopes so.

After announcing in October that Samsung's connected Galaxy Camera would be coming to its network, AT&T kept quiet about pricing for the 16-megapixel, 21x zoom point-and-shoot. That's no longer the case, as AT&T will start selling the Android 4.1-based camera on November 16 for $499.99 with or without a data plan.

However, for a limited time, AT&T customers can get up to $… Read more