lenses

Samsung flexes young photo muscles with NX100

COLOGNE, Germany--Samsung, showing off its new higher-end compact NX100 camera, declared its ambition Monday to become a power in the camera industry.

"I believe the NX100 will be the catalyst for photo innovations in the digital camera industry and will propel Samsung forward to become one of the world's leading manufacturers," said Sangjin Park, president of Samsung's digital imaging division, speaking at press event at the Photokina show here.

Compact ILC (interchangeable lens camera) models are all the rage as the industry seeks to build new demand in a somewhat saturated market. Olympus and Panasonic led the way with their compatible Micro Four Thirds models, and Samsung and Sony have now arrived with models of their own featuring a larger sensor and their own proprietary lens mounts. These higher-end models aren't cheap: Samsung's costs $599 with a 20-50mm lens and $649 with a 20mm lens.

The ILC trend is still in its early days, though, and InfoTrends analyst Ed Lee believes it'll take the arrival of the industry's high-end camera powerhouses, Canon and Nikon, to truly legitimize the market.

But Samsung isn't waiting. Front and center in the effort to make more usable cameras is a new feature called i-Function to control camera settings that the company hopes will attain that holy grail, a camera that's easy to use but that offers a wealth of creative possibilities. Control over details such as shutter speed and aperture has never been simple, but Samsung promises i-Function will be different.

It works through a button on the side of an i-Function-compatible lens, of which Samsung plans a range that begins with a 20mm f2.8 pancake and a 20-50mm f3.5-5.6 zoom. Pushing the button cycles through various parameters that can be set--shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and exposure compensation--while turning the lens' focus ring changes the setting. … Read more

Olympus announces new Micro Four Thirds lenses

Olympus on Tuesday unveiled two new telephoto zoom lenses for its Micro Four Thirds system, and also updated its current 17mm optics with a new color chassis.

The company is touting the M.Zuiko Digital ED 75-300mm F4.8-5.6 lens as the smallest 600mm-equivalent lens (Micro Four Thirds cameras have a crop factor of 2x) on the market with a diameter of 2.8 inches and a length of 4.5 inches. Weight-wise, it tips the scale at less than a pound. This glass also comes with a new focusing motor that delivers silent and precise AF, which makes … Read more

Panasonic extends 3D into consumer camcorders, cameras

While TVs have been facing the 3D onslaught since last January's CES, we who cover cameras and camcorders have still been bumping along on the shallow-depth-of-field video bandwagon. Now there's another fad to compete for our attention.

Though Panasonic claims its HDC-SDT750 is the first consumer 3D camcorder, in fact DXG also announced Tuesday that its $599.99 pistol-grip dual-lens 3D Pocket Camcorder bundled with its 3D 7-inch Media Player is expected to ship via Hammacher Schlemmer on August 6. The DXG records at a relatively low VGA resolution, though.

The HDC-SDT750, however, is a tweaked version of … Read more

Sony announces trio of prime lenses, only tells Europe

I received a brief e-mail tonight, July 26 at 2 a.m. ET from my contacts at Sony: "On Tuesday, July 27 at 12:00 p.m. BST (British Standard Time)/4:00 a.m. PDT Sony Europe will announce three new lenses to be introduced in the fall of 2010. Although these models will also be introduced in the U.S. market, no announcement is being made at this time. The U.S. announcement will be made at a time that is closer to the models' market introduction. We apologize for the short notice, but wanted you to … Read more

Basic EXIF graphing

We possess some basic knowledge about photography and photo editing, but occasionally we encounter a photography-related program that we don't fully understand. Fortunately, one of us is married to a photographer, and he comes in pretty handy when we have questions. So it went with ExposurePlot. We understood that the program displayed EXIF info for groups of images in a bar graph format, but we didn't understand why.

"I don't understand why, either," said our photographer-husband as we looked at ExposurePlot together. The Overview tab of the program was displaying four bar graphs depicting the … Read more

Dial A for adaptive eyeglasses for the masses

It's costly when you have to regularly change your prescription lenses, particularly with heavy computer use leading to astigmatism. So the idea of adaptive lenses whose strength can be adjusted with a twist of the dial on the side is certainly a novel and inspired one.

Adlens' adaptive-lens eyeglasses have hollow lenses with a clear plastic sheet stretched across on the inside. Twist the dial, and fluid pumps in between the sheet and lens, creating a high refractive index. More fluid means more curvature, which means more powerful lenses. When the oil is pumped back out, the lens curvature … Read more

Gaga's Bad Romance video inspires bad eye trend

In a classic case of life imitating art, more and more girls around the world seem to be all gaga over circle contact lenses that make one's eyes look like an anime character on crack--a look now famously embraced by Lady Gaga in her music video Bad Romance (below).

This trend, described by The New York Times last week (one girl the paper interviewed owns and wears 22 pairs) and lamented by eye-care specialists across the news media, has the potential to scratch corneas and lead to a rise in eye infections and corneal ulcers that in turn could … Read more

Got glaucoma? Put a little vitamin E in your lens

The eye condition glaucoma, which afflicts some 67 million people and is second only to cataracts as the world's leading cause of blindness, is often treated with eye drops that relieve the unusually high pressure inside the eye.

Contact lenses with vitamin E, however, just might deliver more medication to treat glaucoma almost 100 times longer than current lenses, says Anuj Chauhan, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville who helmed the research team investigating this new treatment:

"The problem is within about 2 to 5 minutes of putting drops in the eye, tears … Read more

Samsung's NX lens lineup for 2010

Joining Sony in the fantasy-road-map department, Samsung finally, sort of, announced availability and dates for the first lenses for its as-yet-to-ship NX10 camera. However, of course, Samsung hasn't released pricing information for its NX lenses.

Lens Availability 30mm f2 pancake January 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 OIS January 50-200mm f5-5.6 OIS January 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 (no OIS) Spring 20-50mm f3.5-5.6 compact zoom Second half 2010 20mm f2.8 pancake Second half 2010 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 OIS tbd 50mm f2.8 macro tbd

I find it very interesting that Samsung is planning to ship a non-OIS … Read more

Optics start-up LensVector raises $30 million

LensVector, a start-up in Mountain View, Calif., that hopes its optical components using solid-state electronics will replace moving parts in consumer camera technology, said Thursday that it's raised $30 million in a third round of funding.

Institutional Venture Partners led the funding round, joining existing investors Menlo Ventures, Samsung, Silicon Valley Bank, Mitsui, and Kodak. IVP general partner Norm Fogelsong has joined the LensVector board, the company said.

"This financing will allow us to scale our manufacturing capacity and better serve this growing demand from our customers," Chief Executive Derek Proudian said in a statement. LensVector now … Read more