Surely you remember Panny’s new duo of camcorders that featured the so-called 3MOS technology. No? At any rate, Panasonic’s HDC-SD100 has just been reviewed by the cool cats over at TrustedReviews, and while we’re not sure if all that MOS was the reason for its success, critics were generally pleased with the performance (at least in good lighting). They noted that point-and-shoot fans would likely be thrilled, but the professionals in the crowd will probably wish for a few more manual controls. Still, at the end of the day, reviewers proclaimed that if you’ve been “holding out for an AVCHD camcorder with the full gamut of professional features, this could be your dream come true at last.” You hear that? Dream come true, son.

Toshiba is offering up a nice respite from the inane quantity of LCDs and, um, more LCDs at IFA this year. The SD Multi Tool and the SD Photo Editor are two touchable handhelds, offering up some beefy features where similar devices lack, and also skipping over some of the more traditional MID OS features that might put these over the top — a confusing mix, but again, not an LCD, so we’re hooked. The SD Multi Tool is the real wild one, offering dual 3.5-inch touchable (finger or stylus) LCDs, rated at 960 x 480 each if the spec sheet is telling the truth — that could be a combined resolution. The device offers wireless connectivity of some sort, and can handle web browsing, email, videos, photo editing and pretty much anything else that isn’t an actual phone call — though it can’t be tough to squeeze some VoIP in there. Meanwhile, the SD Photo Editor really earns its “SD” moniker with dual SD card slots, while the Multi Tool just has one microSD slot. The Photo Editor runs a similar OS, but seems distilled down to mainly the photo browsing and editing functions, with a bit of PMP functionality thrown in we hope. A 5-inch WVGA screen with 16 million colors should be plenty of room to work your magic. No word on what OS is under the hood, but it seems to be mostly homegrown Toshiba fare. We know the Multi Tool does HDMI out, and we’d hope the Photo Editor does as well, since they’re both supposed to hit in 2009 for a similar price point: around $300 US. If the shots below aren’t enough for you, check out the coverage at Engadget Spanish.

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Red CEO, Jim Jannard, is stirring up trouble in the RED User forums, J. Wong-style. His latest volley discusses the new Mysterium “Monstro” sensor program, the next evolution (and future free upgrade) to the Mysterium X sensor slated for RED’s 5k Epic. The most interesting revelation though is this little nugget: in addition to Epic, RED plans to place Monstro into, “another camera aimed squarely at the DSLR market.” He later adds, “Future cameras will shoot ultra-high resolution stills and motion…” Now, considering that the second generation, full-frame, ~25 megapixel Mysterium X is already a serious challenge to 35mm film, we can only imagine what this DSLR with a third generation RED sensor might offer. Hear that Nikon? Your D90 is just the beginning of this story. Let’s just hope that televisions and monitors, already struggling to reach 4k, Quad HD can keep pace.

[Thanks, Jundai]

The phrase “full frame” brings a smile to the face of anyone remotely familiar with photography, and the term “D700” is likely to do the same for shooters with three large to plunk down on a new body. Still, even with its long list of drool-worthy features, we’re certain that anyone who dropped the aforementioned dough on this beauty has a few things to say about it. Are you satisfied with the live view implementation? Any problems with its reliance on CompactFlash? Oh, and is the image quality alright? Sound off below!

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Toshiba is pulling an EyeToy, minus a diabolical plan to actually sell the thing and make a killing off of collectable elemental decks. The company’s Cambridge-based Research Lab has some new video camera-based feature they’re prototyping for possible eventual TV implementation. The real highlight is a fist-based cursor control — just stick out your hand, make a fist, and control a cursor on-screen for navigating the TV’s functions. You can also put up your palm to stop the madness, and even rotate 3D images on-screen, but it’s all a little shaky for now. Another thing we saw was picture recognition: hold up a cue card to the TV with an image on it and the TV recognizes it and performs a pre-assigned function. Tosh is also working on speech recognition and some other things; not really changing the world, but some fun stuff all the same.

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We got a look at Sony’s new HD-shootin’, 10.1 megapixel Cyber-shot T500 today, and it seems to do what it says on the box. There was no Memory Stick in the display version, so we couldn’t test out any HD recording, but the touchscreen interface did seem responsive, and mode switching from stills to video is a snap. Perhaps it was the lighting we were under, but the large LCD did seem to flicker a bit, and wasn’t stunningly bright either, but otherwise we’re big fans of the build quality of the device. Fashioncam this is not — there’s some heft, bulk and sharp edges here that will keep it away from your skinny jeans — but the T500 is a fine entry from Sony, and at $399 it’s pretty well priced for what it can do.

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We’ve seen pictures of Sony’s ODO Twirl N’ Take, wind-up camera before. Here in Berlin, we actually had a chance to take this eco-friendly digicam for a spin. Ha, get it? We said spin to refer to this kinetic concept camera! Amazing.

Anyway, enough with our overly-tired, undernourished gibberish, the full-on hands-on is posted after the break.

Continue reading Video: Sony’s ODO wind-up camera really works

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It’s no D90, but Sony has a new compact stillcam for your snapping pleasure, the Cyber-shot T500, and it’s touting an HD movie mode just like any good bandwagon hopper should. The 10.1 megapixel camera offers up a 5x optical zoom, 3.5-inch LCD and Optical SteadyShot, but most of the attention is likely to be lavished on the 1280 x 720 30 fps h.264 movie mode. You can grab 720p stills while you shoot, and you can expect to store about an hour of video on your 4GB Memory Stick… you do have a 4GB Memory Stick, right? The T500 hits this October, no word just yet on price. Oh, and she comes in colors.

Small monkeys madeAugust’s Photojojo possible. (Really)
~Have a cool photo product or site? Reach 210,000 photo fans

We love Josh Poehlein’s photography portfolios, “Unstill Lives,” and “Ghosts” because they don’t show us everything.
Wait, what? Sure, photography’s all about revelation. But sometimes the best photographs are of the things you can’t see.
Poehlein takes this one step […]

Small monkeys made August’s Photojojo possible. (Really) ~ Have a cool photo product or site? Reach 210,000 photo fans

We love Josh Poehlein’s photography portfolios, “Unstill Lives,” and “Ghosts” because they don’t show us everything.

Wait, what? Sure, photography’s all about revelation. But sometimes the best photographs are of the things you can’t see.

Poehlein takes this one step further by taking one step back. Let us explain: he scratches off the emulsion from his prints in order to add another image, often of what you’d imagine would be in the photo but isn’t. A stream of water from a dry showerhead, birds in an empty nest, a giant boat in the distance of a still lake.

The results are even more awesome if you can draw. Which we can’t. Still, we had fun making our own scratch-n-see works of art. And they turned out pretty great, if a little amateur next to Poehlein’s genius. (That’s our monster on Coit Tower, in case you couldn’t tell by the, ahem, difference in skill.)

Scratch-N-See: Vandalize Your Photos in the Name of Art!

(Continued…)

Link to this | Filed under Photo Projects, Photojojo Original.

It’s hard to say when we, the consumers, will actually see any real benefit from the latest noteworthy discovery from Northeastern University, but we can only imagine that Srinivas Sridhar and team aren’t wasting any time moving things forward. Said crew has recently created a “new microlens that focuses infrared light at telecommunication frequencies,” and if you’re looking for specifics, it can focus an infrared beam to a spot just 12-micrometers away from the surface. The science behind the discovery is probably only digestible by those that understand rocket science, but the long of short of it is this: the “research shows that it is possible to create smaller, ultra-compact infrared optical components that can be integrated into existing semiconductor technologies while not sacrificing image quality.” Now that’s something even the layman can appreciate.

[Via Physorg]