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Orlando's city cameras catch man allegedly smoking pot

I had always thought that it was the Brits who most enjoyed using technology to spy on their citizens.

The country seems to have even more cameras than baked beans. But Britain has a cultural excuse. When you find it hard to express yourself, what else are you going to do other than spend your evenings watching others fail to express themselves too?

And yet it seems that the often overly expressive America is also into the spy-camera thing.

The city of Orlando, for example, employs IRIS cameras, which are ostensibly there to capture bad people doing bad things, or … Read more

Recover partitions and lost photos with TestDisk and PhotoRec

TestDisk and PhotoRec from CG Security are freeware utilities bundled together in one portable download. TestDisk is a simple but powerful tool for analyzing and recovering disk partitions, including some unusual selections such as Xbox and Mac partitions. PhotoRec is designed to recover lost files from your digital camera's memory or any similar memory device. It can handle most memory types, including USB, CompactFlash, MMC, and SmartMedia as well as optical disks and your hard drives. Though PhotoRec and TestDisk are bundled, they're separate utilities with separate executables.

PhotoRec is designed to be totally safe to use, and … Read more

IFA 2012: Big reveals for Sony, Samsung

Time to learn German for Wednesday's tech news roundup:

Tons of devices being unveiled at the IFA trade show in Berlin. The highlights from Wednesday include:

• Sony releases its first 4K TV, the 84-inch XBR-84X900. No official word on cost or availability, but expect to pay close to $30,000 to own one. Here's an explainer on what a 4K TV is, but no need to worry about new formats just yet. Afterall, what movies do you own in 4K? • Sony showed the Xperia S tablet, available Sept. 7 starting at $400. It has several TV-ready features, Android
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Samsung bets on Android-powered, networked camera

BERLIN -- Smartphones are taking over the point-and-shoot camera market, but Samsung today announced a product it hopes will reverse the trend by building phone technology into a 16-megapixel camera.

The Samsung Galaxy Camera is an Android 4.1 device with a large touch screen on one side, a 21x zoom lens on the other, and networking abilities in the middle. That last point is key: one of the big advantages of smartphones is that you can do something with the photo immediately after taking it -- sharing with friends on Facebook, for example.

And though camera makers have made … Read more

Alleged iPad Mini cases reveal spot for rear camera

Apple's purported iPad Mini could offer a rear camera if the latest scuttbut is on the money.

Alleged Chinese cases for the much-rumored 7-inch tablet posted by Giz-China.com show a plastic clip on the rear cover, a sign that the iPad Mini could provide a rear-facing camera but one without an LED flash. On the front would be a FaceTime camera at the top center of the screen, just like on the 9.7-inch iPad.

The cases also seemingly reveal a thinner bezel than the one on the larger iPad. The volume control would rest on the right … Read more

Prizefight: Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS4 vs. Olympus Tough TG-1 iHS

It's a Prizefight throwdown showdown! We're throwing two of the best point-and-shoot cameras that were made to outlast the elements. It's the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS4 versus the Olympus Tough TG-1 iHS!

Panasonic's TS4 brings a sleeker design that's still rugged with better image quality results. Olympus' TG-1 is chunkier, but it brings a larger feature set and is even crushproof.

Both of these bad boys are waterproof, shockproof, and freezeproof; which do you think deserves to be crowned the Prizefight King of the Ring?

Cast your vote!

Olympus joins the 40x club with the Stylus SP-820UZ iHS

Giving it a lens your neighborhood stalker of, um, squirrels is sure to love, Olympus today announced the Stylus SP-820UZ iHS featuring a 40x f3.4-5.7 22.4-896mm lens. Nikon's Coolpix P510 and its 42x zoom lens still beat it, but hey, it's nice to have options.

Unlike the Nikon, however, the 820UZ iHS is more of a fully automatic camera with no manual or semimanual shooting modes. Its high-sensitivity 14-megapixel CMOS sensor and Olympus TruePic V image processor will let you capture 1080p HD and high-speed video (240fps HSQVGA) clips, though, and you get multishot HDR … Read more

Quikdraw your lens for fast shooting

We've heard of holsters for cameras, such as the Roberu leather holster or the Spider holster, but what about one for dSLR lenses?

Compared with typical lens holsters -- which are basically small nylon bags that carry a single lens -- the Quikdraw system allows shutterbugs to quickly swap between multiple lenses.

All you need to do is to strap on a belt and you'll be able to hang several lenses from your waist. The lenses are mounted on the Quikdraw units and dismounted with a twist-and-lock motion, just like what you do when mounting lenses on a camera body. … Read more

Tie one on with the Camera Strap Necktie

We all know how gaudy, camera-branded neck straps can stick out and sometimes clash with an outfit at formal events.

Made from soft, cotton tweed, the Camera Strap Necktie is a quirky neck strap that can doubles as a necktie. It is adjustable to a maximum of 3.9 feet long and measures just less than an inch wide. This neck strap supports cameras that weigh up to 4.8 pounds -- it'll work whether you are carrying a dSLR with a 70-200mm telephoto lens or a midrange mirrorless interchangeable lens camera (ILC). … Read more

Tiltpod Mobile adds an iPhone tripod to your keychain

Your iPhone comes packing a pretty decent camera, but there's no camera on the planet that doesn't benefit from the stability of a tripod.

Just one problem: Tripods tend to be long, large, unwieldy accessories, not the kind of the things you can just slip into your pocket.

Until now. Photojojo's Tiltpod Mobile puts an iPhone tripod on your keychain.

If the name sounds familiar, you might be thinking of the original Tiltpod, which combined a magnetic tripod-mount screw head with a small base designed to be worn on your wrist. It was built for small point-and-shoot … Read more