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› archive for July, 2010

Canon changes website, beats Roberts by a nose.

Ever wake up in the morning, stagger through your ritual and realize something is completely different? Like, your spouse has changed hair color or the dogs aren’t arguing with the neighbor’s alarm clock and there’s a doorway at the end of your hall where there was only a wall before?

Ok, Canon’s new website isn’t quite that distressing, but dang it is different. Instead of the seamless white aesthetic they featured in times past, they’ve moved to a black-to-gray top-to-bottom gradient behind a blog-type layout.

Our enormous team of web designers is hard at work chopping up a perfect new site for yours truly, a glimpse of which you may see below, compared to the current.

The current design (L) compared to the developing design (R)



New Carmel Store: Grand Opening August 6 – 7

Hey everyone! Roberts wants to welcome you all to the grand opening of our gorgeous new store in Carmel. What’ll be going on, you may ask? Well, we’ll have more details about all the festivities in the weeks to come (just keep your eyes peeled for posts adorned with that good-looking logo up there), but for now, why not just go ahead and pencil that into your calendar. And, if you haven’t been out to it yet, take a look at our new building in the gallery below.



Gorillapod Focus and Ballhead X at Engadget

Among Joby’s more recent offerings in the Gorillapod spehere are the big, metal Gorillapod Focus (designed to take the weight of pro bodies and big, chunky, fast-aperture pro zooms), and it’s matched ball head, the extremely named Ballhead-X.

Combined, they can support up to 11.1 pounds of weight in almost any situation: hanging of a street sign, hanging from a tree branch, ceiling fan… one time with the Gorillapod-Zoom I managed to hang it off a wall using just the door jamb.

So, if you’re interested in this quirky, sometimes-a-life-saver sometimes-just-gimmicky system, why not give the recent review by the fine folks at Engadget a read-over? Hit the external link below.



Engadget gets a hands-on with the NEX-VG10 interchangeable lens camcorder

In pretty much no time after the information came out, Engadget had the chance to fondle up Sony’s next NEX entry -the NEX-VG10 camcorder. While I think they whine a bit about having to rack the lens manually to zoom -it’s an 18-200mm objective lens, boys. I suppose it’d be nice to have a motor do it, but keeping it quiet for AF during video recording seems like it’d be a lot harder. Anyway, check ‘em out on the source link and clear your inter-tubes so you can watch their HD footage on youtube.



Canon Announces VIXIA HF M32

So, while maybe not quite as exciting as Sony’s NEX-VG10 announcement, Canon has also brought us a new camcorder today, the VIXIA HF M32. And, while it may not be as ground-breaking as Sony’s, Canon does bring significantly more toucan to the table. Which is all right by me, I rather like toucans.

An update to its solid VIXIA line, the M32 puts in a 64GB flash drive, straps on a 15x zoom, and has all the other usual things like a touchscreen, HD recording, etc. It is compatible with SDXC, and Eye-Fi, so, you have some card options there.

Price is being quoted at about a grand, also out September(ish). Engadget has the full press release, which is among the shorter I’ve seen lately.



Sony Announces NEX-VG10 Camcorder, Makes Derek Choke On Coffee

OK, so, make no mistake here, we’re all very interested in Sony’s kinda revolutionary new camcorder. It combines things we like, like big ol’ Sony Alpha sensors, BIONZ processors, and the ability to take those new E-Mount lenses that we’re coming to be duly impressed with on their NEX-3 and NEX-5 still shooters. So don’t get us wrong, this is cool.

But, it’s hard to read a statement like this one from the press release and not have a bit of a laugh:

“The NEX-VG10 takes Sony’s Handycam line to the next level by allowing unprecedented artistic expression that isn’t possible with conventional consumer video cameras,” said Andy Bubala, director of Sony’s camcorder business. “With this camcorder, video enthusiasts and photographers can now capture cinematic full HD movies and premium stereo sound.”

Yeee-up, way to call it Sony, tackling those impossible things like premium sound and HD. Certainly those were way more difficult to bring to a consumer level than say, insanely shallow depth of field relative to even most professional camcorders, or the comparatively affordable flexibility of the well-made, sharp, and reassuringly metal-clad E lenses. For reals, yo.

We jest. We do. Sony’s been cranking out nothing but stellar things for a bit now, and they were already one of the very best in consumer camcorders. This can only be a remarkable device once it finally gets here, and if the still equivalents are any indication, it’s performance will float somewhere around “magic-like.”

Oh, and it’ll take Memory stick or SDHC/SDXC. And did we mention full HD video and premium sound? Yeah?

Sony’s saying “September” and around “$2,000″ in their press release. We’ll see what happens.



Indy Air Show Photo Contest Entries

So, it has been pointed out to us (by my own father, nonetheless), that there was no actual link pointing to where you can look at all the entries that got submitted before the deadline for the Indy Air Show Photo Contest. This lead to some serious face-palming, and there’s now a nice big graphic when you first land on the blog. You can also hit the link below and go off to review all the photos, and you can even give ones you like/dislike thumbs up/thumbs down. The contest is closed, though, so it’s all just looking now. Winners will be announced on here the first week of August.

http://blog.robertsimaging.com/indy-air-show-2010-gallery/

[UPDATE: The link is broken because both entries and community voting for the contest are closed. Please visit The Indianapolis Air Show's official Flickr page to view this year's entries.]



Sony NEX Firmware Adds 3-D Panorama

Alright! Now Sony’s showing us how it’s done right here, folks. No wussy firmware update fixing boring things like problems, bugs, or the intermittent inability to turn on. No sir, such things are not fit for the likes of the NEX-3 and NEX-5s. You know what you need? New features so that you’ll buy one of them there new Bravia TVs with 3-D support, that’s what.

And, so, it’s lucky for you that Sony has bumped both current NEX models up to firmware v 02, adding 3-D sweep panormas t the existing sweep panorama mode. As far as we’ve heard, you’ll be needing one of those Bravia TVs to play the result back, but that’s a small price to pay for coolness, right?

Got a jonesing for some firmware? Looks like Sony Europe’s got the goods up already.



Olympus E-330 Finds Cancer

So, many of you might not remember this guy over here, Olympus’ E-330 DSLR. But, when this 7.5 megapixel shooter debuted back in January of 2006, it was the first DSLR to offer live view, the ability to view off-the-sensor on the back LCD. At the time it was dismissed as a novelty, a sort of solution with no problem. Obviously, times have changed and now almost everyone and their brother are putting live view into DSLRs (to be fair, its usefulness is still just as hotly debated).

And, now the E-330 gets another feather in its cap, having been used by researchers at Rice University to distinguish cancerous cells from healthy ones. Now, Olympus is certainly no stranger to the medical world (its a large manufacturer of medical imaging equipment as is), but even so this has to be a bit exciting.

In the new study, the team captured images of cells with a small bundle of fiber-optic cables attached to a $400 Olympus E-330 camera. When imaging tissues, Richards-Kortum’s team applied a common fluorescent dye that caused cell nuclei in the samples to glow brightly when lighted with the tip of the fiber-optic bundle. Three tissue types were tested: cancer cell cultures that were grown in a lab, tissue samples from newly resected tumors and healthy tissue viewed in the mouths of patients.

Well, how about that? And, if you’re wondering why mod a four year old DSLR to do this:

“Consumer-grade cameras can serve as powerful platforms for diagnostic imaging,” said Rice’s Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the study’s lead author. “Based on portability, performance and cost, you could make a case for using them both to lower health care costs in developed countries and to provide services that simply aren’t available in resource-poor countries.”

Hit the external link for the full statement from Rice. Kudos, Rice, and congrats, Oly.




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