There’s honestly not a lot of mind-blowing material in the video posted up after the jump, but it definitely delivers as advertised. You see, you’ve got Creative’s Flip Video-combating Vado cheapcorder all wrapped up, and over the course of 317 seconds, it manages to slip outside of its shell and get handled. Initial impressions are dished out too (hint: they’re surprisingly positive), so don’t skip out on hitting the read link while your cursor is down in the general vicinity.

We’ve got your summer crapcamcorders right ‘ere — three new RCA Small Wonder cams to make your Flips flop. Check ‘em out:

• Small Wonder MyLife, EZ200 (black) - 1.5-inch flip-out display, microSDHC with with 1GB microSD that does up to 30 / 60 minutes in high quality and web quality modes, $89 and due this summer
• Small Wonder Pocket, EZ205 (white) - 1.5-inch flip-out display, microSDHC slot with 1GB microSD that does up to 30 / 120 minutes in high quality and web quality modes, $100 and due this summer
• Small Wonder Traveler, EZ210 (green) - 2.4-inch QVGA display, SDHC with 2GB SD card that does up to 60 / 240 minutes in high quality and web quality modes, $150 and due this summer

Don’t worry, we’ll get to you mid- and high-enders soon enough, but we’ve got a feeling this week’s Ask Engadget question will appeal to the masses. Granted, we’ve shot this inquiry out before, but a lot has happened in the DSLR realm in 3.5 long years, wouldn’t you agree?

“Summer’s coming up, and that means vacation time. I want to get an entry-level DSLR in order to best capture some of my upcoming adventures, and while I’d like to keep the cost low, I’m not against spending a bit of cash to get a really solid setup. What camera (and maybe even what lens) would your readers recommend for a newcomer?”

Go easy on the guy — he even admitted that he’s fresh to the game — but don’t hold back on explaining your answers in order to really give a good idea of why one camera is a better pick versus another. Right after that, send in a question of your own to ask at engadget dawt com — but make it good, alright?

Permalink | Email this | Comments

This Photojojo made possible by…

~Have a cool photo product or site? Reach 185,000 photo fans

Finding photos on the internet is like being a tiny spacecraft adrift in a vast, starry galaxy. How will you ever find what you’re looking for in that cosmos of tags?
What you need, weary traveler, is a guide.
We hear Carl […]

	This Photojojo made possible by… ~ Have a cool photo product or site? Reach 185,000 photo fans

Finding photos on the internet is like being a tiny spacecraft adrift in a vast, starry galaxy. How will you ever find what you’re looking for in that cosmos of tags?

What you need, weary traveler, is a guide.

We hear Carl Sagan isn’t taking much new work these days, so allow us to present an alternative. Follow us to Tag Galaxy, where swirling solar systems of Flickr tags abound.

Say you want to find a memorable photo of poodles. Type in “poodle,” and it becomes a fiery sun, orbited by related tags like “dog” and “silly haircut.”

Click on more tag planets to create new suns (”poodles+noodles+strudel”). Or click on the sun itself to see all of the photos tagged with your search terms projected onto a rotatable spheroid planet.

All you need now is a turtleneck for your computer, and it’ll be just like having Carl at your side.

Find Photos with Tag Galaxy

Link to this | Filed under Websites.

Hey, we’ve seen quite a few gimmicky game control schemes in our day. We thought we were jaded, believed that we could no longer be moved emotionally by a few dorks in a lab, promising to revolutionize video games with their insanity. Until we saw Cam-Trax. You’ll get it in a moment by peeping the video after the break, but the basic gist is this: Cam-Trax offers highly accurate and responsive tracking of random colorful objects you hold in front of your webcam and tell it to track. Gameplay can be EyeToy-esque, but it can also be so much more, since the unit can track many objects in a full three dimensions. The video shows everything from a glorified game of pong to a FPS, and promises to control “any game” with “any webcam.” Show us more, Cam-Trax.

[Thanks, Chen D.]

Continue reading Cam-Trax is “coolest thing since ice,” can provide Wii-like controls with any webcam

Digital Camera 101: As manufacturers continue pushing the MegapixelMyth by stuffing more and more pixels onto rapidly shrinking sensors, the outcome is poor performance on top of poorly lit images of increasingly low quality. Now OmniVision, the largest CMOS image sensor manufacturer today, says they’ve solved the pixel size problem though backside illumination (BSI) technology. In essence, BSI helps maximize photon collection by circumventing obstructive metal and dielectric layers on the top-side of the sensor die. The result is improved light absorption, thinner overall camera modules, and increased sensitivity and F stops with reduced crosstalk. However, as EETimes’ crack staff of Electrical Engineering super-nerds point out, BSI is not a new technology. In fact, several manufacturers lay claim to BSI patents. However, OmniVision seems to be the first to take the tech to mass production for consumers. To prove it, they’ll release an 8 megapixel OmniBSI CameraChip sensor brimming with the new tech for sample in June. Couple it with a decent cameraphone lens and image processing circuitry and we might be in for a treat.

[Via EETimes]

Keyboard Shortcut Skins
Become a whiz at Photoshop, Aperture,
FCP, Pro Tools, and Logic with these
pre-printed keyboard skins. Buy now!

As seen on Boing Boing Gadgets, TUAW, CrunchGear,
Swiss Miss, Subtraction, and JoshSpear.com!

Until recently, if someone said the word “sharpening” to us, we’d whimper and hide under the table.
We mean, what the #$% is a threshold anyway?
Well, we […]

Keyboard Shortcut Skins Become a whiz at Photoshop, Aperture, FCP, Pro Tools, and Logic with these pre-printed keyboard skins. Buy now! As seen on Boing Boing Gadgets, TUAW, CrunchGear, Swiss Miss, Subtraction, and JoshSpear.com!

Until recently, if someone said the word “sharpening” to us, we’d whimper and hide under the table.

We mean, what the #$% is a threshold anyway?

Well, we finally got fed up with it, so we did some research. And you know what? Sharpening’s actually not that bad, and it makes a HUGE difference on digital images.*

Here’s our no-nonsense, jargon-free guide to sharpening your photos using Unsharp Mask. It’ll change your life. We promise.

*If you’re printing directly from film, feel free to be smug at this time. You don’t need to sharpen a darn thing.

Photojojo’s No-Nonsense, Jargon-Free Guide to Sharpening with Unsharp Mask

p.s. Hey San Francisco! Wanna help us out with the Photojojo Book? We need people to photograph and places to photograph them in. Check out our wishlist! We’ll make ya book-famous, baby!

(Continued…)

Link to this | Filed under Tutorials, Post-Processing.