GadgetINN'

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro Review

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 10:00:00 +0000

The Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro is one of two new 100mm macro lenses in Canon's range, the other being the more expensive L-series optic, the CanonEF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, which has the advantage of a new Hybrid IS system.

This one may lack image stabilisation but, nevertheless, it's priced attractively and competitively specified.

It contains an internal focusing system, which has the dual advantages of maintaining the same working distance throughout its focusing range and keeping the front element static as this happens.

Focusing itself is carried out via a ring Ultrasonic Motor (USM), which Canon claims offers fast and quiet autofocus, while the further inclusion of a three-group floating system is said to ensure correction for aberrations throughout the lens's focusing range.

On the inside, Canon has incorporated a secondary diaphragm to block stray light when shooting at f/2.8, while a single Ultra Low Dispersion element is also included to help minimise chromatic aberrations.

To help improve light transmission and to reduce both flare and ghosting, Canon has treated the elements within the lens with its Super Spectra Coatings. This works by cancelling out the reflections from the surfaces of the elements, so that more light can pass through to the sensor and not bounce around inside to degrade image quality.

The lens incorporates a particularly broad rubber manual focusing ring on its barrel, which turns easily and makes clear when the ends of its focusing scale have been reached. It can also be used to override the autofocus system once focus has been confirmed.

This is joined by two switches next to the distance window - one that alternates between manual and autofocus and another that closes off the focusing range to 0.48m-infinity for non-macro photography.

The distance window, meanwhile, indicates the focusing distance in both feet and metres, and also shows the current reproduction ratio down the maximum 1:1.

The mottled finish of the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro's body is similar to that of some previous Canon EOS DSLR cameras, such as the EOS 600D and EOS 5D Mk II, although its design is a little dated when compared with more recent finish options from other manufacturers.

The mount is constructed from a solid metal for durability, and above it sits a large red lens mount index that indicates the mounting position clearly.

The only other external features of note are the 58mm filter thread at the opposite end of the lens and the grooves around it, which can be used to mount either an external lens hood or a macro ring lite flash.

At this price we don't necessarily expect an image stabilisation system, and for macro work a sturdy tripod is generally recommended as a better idea. However, since Canon lenses don't offer image stabilisation inside their bodies, this puts it at a slight disadvantage to similar lens/body combinations from other manufacturers when used for non-macro work.

This is particularly the case with APS-C bodies such as the Canon EOS 600D and EOS 7D, where its effective focal length rises closer to 160mm, and this omission also means that the viewfinder image isn't stabilised for more precise composition.

Performance

Thanks to the use of a piezoelectric motor, focusing noise is about as silent as expected as the lens travels between its two extremes, and it's able to quickly shift its focus between varying distances before promptly confirming focus.

Furthermore, the use of different text colours in the distance window makes it easy to differentiate between its three readings, while the size of the focusing ring means that it's easily adjusted with just a finger if required.

Its positioning towards the front of the barrel makes this manoeuvre a little more difficult for those with smaller hands, but in most situations the macro lens will no doubt be either left to autofocus or be manually adjusted more precisely on a tripod.

Control over distortion is good, and the absence of chromatic aberration in the centre of the frame is particularly impressive, although as you venture further away from the centre it's clear that there's room for improvement.

Although central sharpness at f/2.8 is impressive this slowly drops off to softness towards the edges. By f/8, however, all is forgiven as the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro records excellent sharpness right across the frame. Predictably, things aren't quite as good at its smallest apertures, although even here consistency is still reasonable.

Verdict

Overall then, this lens is a capable performer, with quick and silent autofocus system and generally good to excellent image quality. While more expensive then the Tamron SP AF 90mm F/2.8 Di Macro 1:1, it has the distinct advantages of an internal focusing system and a much quieter motor.

(Reviewed by Matt Golowczynski - TechRadar )

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

HDR :Better results from multiple exposures

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 09:52:00 +0000

The sensor in a modern digital camera has less dynamic range than the human eye. That's why we're often disappointed with photographs we take: we don't see the sky as washed out, or the shadows as dark as they appear in our photos.

Naturally, there are now ways to circumvent this using the power of the PC: enter the high dynamic range image processing algorithms.

When we purchase a digital camera, we're often concerned with the resolution of the sensor (the number of megapixels), whether it produces images in JPG or RAW format, and whether we can use different lenses to get images from close up or far away. We're not generally concerned with the dynamic range of the sensor in the camera – in other words, the range of light levels that the sensor can capture.

It turns out that old-style film has less dynamic range than a CCD (charge-coupled device) – the sensor that registers light information that's built into modern digital cameras. If you like, we've moved forward in terms of dynamic range and also, incidentally, in terms of noise: film is noisier at low light intensities than digital.

EYE VS SENSOR: How the eye perceives light intensity (blue line) compared to the way the camera does (red line)

Both types of camera perceive a narrower range of light levels than the human eye. That's why when we take a photograph of a landscape, for example, we get an image that doesn't register the cloud formations in the sky (the sky becomes washed out) and the shadows become undifferentiated black.

If you're anything like me, you tend to get a little frustrated and disappointed that the camera isn't recording what you're seeing exactly, but I dare say we've all become rather used to the problem.

What is HDR?
There is, however, a way around this called HDR image processing (high dynamic range). This is a set of algorithms that process images to increase their dynamic range.

With HDR, it's possible to produce an image that has a much greater range of light levels to approximate what the human eye can see, or even to make fantasy images that look nothing like real life.

However, I'll also note that you will run into some issues. For example, the monitors we use to view images also have a smaller dynamic range than the human eye.

Back in the days of film cameras, it was possible to increase the dynamic range of a photo when you printed the image after developing the film. Photographers like Ansel Adams were experts at using this kind of image manipulation – known as dodging and burning – to produce the dramatic photos we've all seen and perhaps bought as posters.

Dodging decreases the exposure of the print making the area lighter in tone, whereas burning increases it making the area darker in tone. Recall that in film photography, the film is a negative version of the photo. Dark areas on the negative will show up as lighter areas on the print paper because the light-sensitive silver salts in the paper will be less exposed, and therefore appear lighter once the print is fixed. Light areas will show up darker on the print, because more light hits the silver salts.

To apply dodging to the print, the photographer would cut out a shape from some opaque material like card to block off part of the scene, and then expose the print paper with that card between the projector and the paper. Because less light hit that part of the scene, it would appear lighter.

Burning was done in a similar way, but this time the photographer wanted to expose part of the scene longer than the rest. They would cut out a shape that would block off the rest of the scene, letting the part to be brightened receive more light.

There are other techniques and materials that can be used, but as you can imagine, dodging and burning this way was a labour-intensive process and was usually only done for art photos and the like.

Another issue is that dodging and burning are physical manipulations that happen in real time, and it's hard to replicate the same effects across a set of prints so that the resulting images are all the same. With digital photographs and programmatic image manipulation, it's a lot easier to create images with a higher dynamic range.

The process goes like this. First you take at least three photographs of a scene. Ideally, these photos are taken with your camera on a tripod so that they all register exactly the same scene. I've tried using a hand-held camera and it just doesn't work as well during the HDR processing – there's always some obvious scene shake that can be seen.

Similarly, the scene itself should be as static as possible: any moving parts (like leaves fluttering in the wind, waves crashing on the beach, or cars or people passing by, for example) won't be the same in each image, causing scene shake in the processed HDR file.

Although the photos are of the same scene and have the same focus and aperture settings, you take them using different exposure times. For best results, you should shoot one photo as normal, and the others two stops either side. Increasing exposure by a single stop doubles your exposure time, and decreasing by a stop halves it.

The dynamic range in photography is the number of stops between the darkest part of an image where you can still resolve detail and the lightest part. DSLRs generally have about 11 stops of dynamic range at low ISO values, and point-and-shoot cameras a stop or so less.

The external Viewsonic monitor I'm using with my MacBook Pro has almost 10 stops, which means that the photos I take with my camera already have twice the dynamic range that my screen can show.

Some cameras, especially DSLRs, have a mode whereby you can shoot three photos as a set, the other two bracketing the first in terms of exposure. The different exposures are regulated by the camera automatically.

On my Canon Rebel XTi (also known as the 400D), this is AEB mode (auto-exposure bracketing) and I can set the required +/- 2 stops there. If your camera shoots RAW instead of JPG and your HDR image processing application supports it, it's possible to just use one photo. The results won't be nearly as good though.

Once you have your three differently exposed photos, it's time to process them. The first stage is to analyse all three photographs in order to merge them as a single HDR image.

Encoding photos

NORMAL EXPOSURE: Our scene normally exposed

Without getting bogged down in compression details, image formats and so on, traditional images (like an individual photo from our set of three) encodes colour information for each pixel as a set of three bytes, one for red, one for green and one for blue. Each colour channel for each pixel can therefore represent 256 different levels, and the pixel itself can be defined as a single 24-bit value.

An HDR image is different. In a simple sense, it encodes more bits per colour channel per pixel than a standard image, but that's not the entire story. To understand why, we need to understand what's meant by 'gamma correction'.

OVER-EXPOSED: Our scene over exposed. Notice the difference in colour tones to the normal exposure

Gamma defines the difference between a pixel's colour values and how bright it is actually perceived (its luminance). For a camera, if you double the amount of light on a sensor's pixel, a value twice the original is detected – the relationship between a pixel's value and its luminance is linear.

This linear relationship doesn't apply for our eyes. When we increase luminance at low light levels, we perceive a larger increase in light. At higher light levels, we don't perceive increases in luminance as well. Our eyes are more sensitive to changes in dark tones than changes in light tones.

Accounting for this difference is known as gamma correction. A camera will apply gamma correction to an image before it saves it as a JPG file. It's the same with image processing applications that work with RAW image files, when you save an image as a JPG. In other words, instead of encoding the values of the pixels reported by the sensor, it will apply a gamma correction (the industry standard value is 1/2.2) first.

Instead of recording the real values of the pixel colours, it will encode them as colour tones that we perceive as varying uniformly. In effect, the code that saves an image as a JPG file uses more bits to encode darker colours than lighter ones.

When you view such a gamma-encoded JPG on your screen, the screen software will apply the reverse gamma correction (a gamma of 2.2 usually) so that the image you see is roughly the same as the original scene. Lighter shades will have less variation than darker shades, though.

UNDER-EXPOSED: Again, notice the differences in colour between this and the first two shots

Notice also that merging three JPGs to produce an HDR image would necessitate that the gamma correction be reversed before the merge. JPG is already a lossy compression algorithm (we're losing image information when the camera creates a JPG, smearing out high-variation regions of the image), which means that our three differently-exposed photos should all be in RAW format.

Now back to the HDR image. It converts colours as tones using the gamma correction just discussed (so darker tones have more shades) and encodes them as a floating point number, using either single precision (32-bit) or double precision (64-bit). All three standard images are used in this conversion/encoding process, since each will have a different complementary set of tone information.

There's a lot of redundant information, so the most popular HDR format compresses the RGB tone data as three fixed point values, with an extra byte holding a common exponent.

Viewing the image

TONE-MAPPED HDR: And like magic, the final result shows more dynamic colours and contrast to the original photos

So now we have an HDR image whose tones are encoded in high fidelity using a special encoding scheme. To view it, however, we have to export it as a JPG again.

Because of the +/- 2 stops bracketing, the HDR image has a dynamic range of roughly 14 stops, which happens to be about as much as the eye can perceive, but we have to convert that wide dynamic range into the 10 stops of the screens we use.

We have to map the HDR tones into the range that can be displayed on a monitor. Since we're going to be removing information (or reducing the amount of data) in order to do this, tone mapping is a lossy one-way process. It also tends to be an interpretive process, much as dodging and burning was to the film photographers, requiring a good eye and attention to detail and lots of time tweaking and experimenting.

In any HDR image-processing application, there will be several knobs or sliders you can adjust to change the tone mapping, and thereby the look and feel of the finished low dynamic range image (sometimes known as LDR).

Some examples include exposure or brightness, gamma or contrast – sharpening tools that alter the local appearance of parts of the image. Some may come with presets that generate an LDR image according to the image style you want to show (Photomatix, the application I use, has a preset called Grunge and yes, the results are pretty grungy).

There are several tone-mapping algorithms that can process an HDR image to produce an LDR version (a hands-off algorithm), but it's a field that is being actively researched and is changing rapidly.

The biggest issue that automated algorithms have to solve is that tone mapping, by its very nature, reduces contrast (contrast is a difference in luminance: the higher the contrast, the greater the difference in luminance or tone). The earliest hands-off algorithms were global algorithms that acted on the image as a whole.

An example of global tone mapping is to take the tone (or luminance) information and scale it linearly to the required range. Luminance is a value on an exponential scale (each increase of one stop doubles the brightness), so the linear scaling is usually done on the logarithm of the tone values. The problem with this was that it paid no attention to areas within the image with local high contrast.

Other algorithms attempt to take into consideration regions of the image that have wide variations in contrast. The algorithms use a range of methods to generate an LDR image as a multi-pass process. Some, for example, tone map most of the image one way, then map the localised high-variation regions using another method to maintain contrast.

As you can see, the problem of HDR image processing hasn't been completely solved yet. Nevertheless, it's fast becoming an accepted way to process images with high contrast, and can produce some stunning photographs.

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

BlackBerry App News: Spotify finally arrives on App World

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:24:00 +0000

After yesterday's apologetic bounty of free apps, RIM has some good news on the app front today, with the announcement that Spotify is finally available for the BlackBerry platform. Finally.

Spotify has finally unleashed its Premium music streaming services on the BlackBerry-toting masses, by launching its mobile app.

Spotify mobile is already available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Nokia and even WebOS got some love from the Swedes before the BlackBerry App World is now getting a look in.

To make use of the app, just like on all of those aforementioned platforms, you'll need a Spotify Premium subscription, which costs a tenner a month.

Once you're signed up you'll have access to millions of songs, offline playlists stored on your handset and syncing of playlists between desktop and mobile versions. There's also track scrobbling to Last.fm.

The app is available to download in preview from the BlackBerry App World, but a full and complete version will be released very soon, according to RIM.

The launch of Spotify comes at an ideal time for RIM, which is looking to convince current users that it is worth staying loyal to the brand following last week's disastrous internet services outage which brought BBM down across the world.

Earlier in the week, the company says it was offering £63 worth of premium apps free for its users as an apology for the whole sorry episode.

Link: TechRadar

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

Beats Wireless headphones review Hands on

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:08:00 +0000

We got our hands on the Good Dr Dre's new wireless Beats headphone and they look like they're shaping up to offer great cable-free audio from the Compton lad

Whether you're listening to NWA's Straight Outta Compton or Jedward's Planet Jedward, Dr Dre's Beats by Dre headphones have become the premium brand headphones to be seen with in public. From Premier League footballers to the teenagers who hang outside our local branch of Lidl - everyone wears them. And now they're wireless. That's a great thing, right?

Well... these new cable free cans connect to any music playing device via Bluetooth, something that can cause a dip in audio quality compared to going wireless via WiFi or say Apple's AirPlay for iTunes. Nevertheless Bluetooth remains the most practical option and Dre's team are promising the quality Beats are known for has not been compromised.

Beats Wireless: Build quality

Smaller than the "classic" Beats Studio range that Beats By Dre have built their reputation upon, the Beats Wireless is essentially a tweaked pair of their smaller Solo 'phones. They're slightly weighty due to the batteries, controls, Bluetooth tech, and microphone built inside, but it's a good weight for the size of the product. It feels right in your hand, on your head, and crucially around your neck (where most people seem to wear Beats). The squishy ear pads, and smoothly folding arms add to the general feel that this is definitely a high end product.

Beats Wireless: Style

Even if you hate Dre (yes Ice Cube, we're talking to you here) you cannot deny that these new headphones look pretty damned beautiful. At a time when Beats have launched some neon coloured Studio headphones, these are gloriously black, minimalistic, with more curves than a zero. All the class of the Solo, with ear cup controls that are thankfully barely visible. The controls being as they are may make the headphones fiddly to use for some, but let's face it you're not looking at the buttons whilst they're on your ears anyway. Unless you're some kind of weird lizard or owl.

Beats Wireless: In use

The built in Bluetooth technology wirelessly connects to your smart phone, tablet, laptop, PC, whatever. It does this with absolutely no fuss - our pair connected to our iPhone and started playing music without us even asking it to. Managing the volume, skipping tracks, and answering phone calls is all managed directly from the ear cups, which could take some getting use to. For a while you might be taking the cups off to remember what button does what, but that time will pass quickly enough. Recharging via a USB is simple and fuss free, and the quality of audio meanwhile is simply excellent despite our fears over what the Bluetooth might do to it. If we're being pernickety, we'd say it's perhaps a little bassy, but there's little distortion and the sound is anything but flat.

Beats Wireless: Verdict

A UK price tag has yet to be confirmed, but they'll no doubt be in line with other Beats prices (AKA not cheap). As with all 'phones however you pay for what you get, and Beats Wireless ooze quality, crucially in the key areas of audio performance and style. Hell, even the way they fold up feels so right. If it's priced sensibly, this could be one of the must have audio products of 2012.

Beats Wireless availability: later this year for purchase exclusively at Apple stores.

Beats Wireless price: TBC (US $279)

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 review

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:00:00 +0000

A flagship super zoom joins the Panasonic FZ line up. So what does the FZ150 offer to justify being priced similar to an entry level DSLR?

When you’ve used a camera with a large zoom lens bolted on the front, going back to a pocket model with a weedy 5x or even 7x lens can feel like trying to take a picture with one arm cut off. Closely resembling the feature set of the FZ48 model, and styled like a miniature digital SLR, the FZ150 – updating the FZ100 – likewise fields a 24x optical zoom, starting out at a wide angle 25mm equivalent, running up to 600mm at the telephoto end, and boasting grandly named Black Box Nano Surface Coating technology to minimise lens surface reflections.

We also get, as expected, Full HD 1920x1080 pixels video clips at 25fps (even its semi-pro G series interchangeable lens models are yet to stretch to 30fps) into the bargain, and a slot-on lens shield is provided in the box to minimise sun glare in bright conditions. It’s worth pointing out that, unlike a DSLR, the FZ150’s lens cannot be swapped however. But then again, an equivalent lens on a DSLR would be both prohibitively bulky and expensive, so with the FZ150 you’re getting greater portability, if not quite as sharp image quality.

As with the FZ48 camera we recently reviewed, the new FZ150 goes up against the slightly higher-powered likes of the Fujifilm Finepix HS20, Canon PowerShot SX30 IS, Olympus SP-810UZ and Nikon Coolpix P500, to name just a few competitors in its ‘super zoom’ category. Like the best of them the Panasonic incorporates stereo microphones just behind the lens barrel and incorporated within the housing up for the pop up flash, though stills resolution is again a modest 12.1 megapixels. Its maker has obviously thought 12 is more than enough for the consumer market and crowding a small-ish sensor with more pixels will only lead to more visible grain if shooting at top ISO3200 light sensitivity setting. It’s a sensible if hardly dynamic choice.

Hitting the shops this month (October 2011), suggested retail price for the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 is £469.99, so £120 pricier than its almost carbon copy in the existing £349.99 FZ48. Let’s take a look at how its manufacturer might justify this extra expense.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 Controls (ease of use)

Like its FZ series forebears this camera is chunky, which on the upside means a large and comfortable handgrip, with enough space between it and the lens barrel to prevent your knuckles chaffing against it. As well as a decent grip the camera benefits from optical image stabilisation to help counter-balance camera shake when shooting towards the extremities of the zoom. Feeling a little plastic-y to the touch, dimensions are 124.3x81.7x95.2mm, so the FZ150 won’t fit in a pocket. Weight is a reassuring 528g with rechargeable battery and SD card inserted, lending it that built-to-last quality.

The shutter release button that sits on top of the handgrip is large, obvious and springy, and is ergonomically encircled by a lever for operating the zoom; so in practical terms it’s easy to zoom in and fire a shot without having to take your eye off your subject. Alternatively a second, larger zoom lever is provided on the lens barrel, should you wish to zoom with your left hand and press the shutter with your right. A busy shooting mode dial contains 14 options, including intelligent Auto, which ‘recognises’ common subjects and implements the best settings for you, allowing for pure point and shoot operation, as well as the usual smattering of pre-optimised portrait and landscape modes. This being a Panasonic we also get a Creative Control setting, which allows the picture to be tweaked in camera. Choose the ‘Expressive’ option within this setting to boost the intensity of colour for example, which can work really well.

In summary there is the option here to use the FZ150 as a glorified snapshot, albeit one with a huge lens and so wide array of framing options, or get more ‘hands on’ and customise its features as you desire.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 Screen

The FZ150 differs from the FZ48 in that, happily, it features an angle adjustable 3-inch LCD screen, which can be flipped out parallel to the body as you would with a palm camcorder. Furthermore the screen can be flipped or twisted so that the 460k-dot resolution LCD is facing the body for added protection when inactive. While this is a boon for composition and certainly worth having for low and high angle photography, it’s a moot point as to whether it’s worth £100+ more than the fixed screen on the FZ48 alone.

Directly above the LCD is a smaller, lower resolution 201.6k dot electronic viewfinder (EVF) that juts out, but not far enough that your nose doesn’t squash up against the screen below when you bring an eye level with it. Although useful on models with a fixed LCD, we felt the larger angle adjustable screen here made the EVF slightly superfluous. A button is provided for switching between use of the EVF and LCD: an eye sensor for doing this automatically would have been even better. But as we say the LCD is so flexible the EVF here is even more secondary to use of the FZ150.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 Speed (performance, basically)

Though we’d have preferred Panasonic to have located an on/off lever surrounding the shooting mode dial, like on its GH2 model, whereby the camera might have been activated with a flick of the thumb, instead a simple power switch sits to the far right of the top plate.

A finger flick of said button and the FZ150 is ready for your first photo or video in two seconds. Should users desire, the camera is capable of up to 12 frames per second (fps) continuous stills capture, and impressively at full resolution too, up from the 3.7 fps of the FZ48. Also a boon for sports photography is 220fps high-speed video, which provides slow motion results. Even in normal single shot mode the camera is fast, locking onto target in an instant, but officially 0.1 seconds.

Otherwise the camera responds fluidly to each button press and menu selection, the lens barrel adjusting from maximum wide angle to extreme telephoto in all of four seconds if you hold a finger down on its zoom lever. Fortunately the full extent of the optical zoom can be used for video as well as stills.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 Battery

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 comes supplied with a chunky DMW-BMB9E rechargeable lithium ion battery, with mains charger and plug provided in the box. This is good for approximately 410 pictures from a single charge, so marginally better then the FZ48 that uses the exact same cell, according to industry testers CIPA. The ability to eek out power over roughly a week’s occasional use means that this is a good option for a jack-of-all-trades camera to take on holiday with you, should an autumn or Christmas break be planned.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 Pictures and video

We sometimes find regular stills from Panasonic cameras to be a little flat, so the ability to occasionally add a sense of dynamism with the Creative Control modes, indicated by the artist’s palette on the shooting mode dial, is welcome. Here we enjoyed the ability to swap between retro (slight yellowish tint), high key (high contrast), pinhole (Box Brownie type shaded edges), and the now ubiquitous miniature effect, being able to see what effect they would have before we fully squeezed the shutter release. Like most digital cameras that are, at their heart, point and shoot snapshots, it’s best to stick at ISO800 or below to avoid image noise, and though we did occasionally get soft shots shooting at maximum zoom, the image stabilisation feature means that there’s a higher chance of getting usable results with it switched on than without.

As we noted earlier, the zoom can be used when shooting video, though the built-in mics do inevitably pick up the sound of the lens barrelling through its focal range, with an audible ‘clunk’ as it comes to a stop. This will be less noticeable in busier environments. Though a dedicated video record button commences shooting automatically, a manual or ‘creative’ video mode found on the top dial also lets users adjust exposure and colour for video shooting – so if you’ve wanted to shoot a black and white epic, this could be the camera for you.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 Verdict

The FZ150 is a good option for anyone looking for the one camera that does it all. Though it is not particularly cheap or portable, you’re not going to be considering this bridge camera – so called because it forms a ‘bridge’ between the simplicity of use of a compact and the relative complexity of a digital SLR – unless a large lens takes priority over everything else anyway. If you’re not bothered about a tilting LCD screen or faster shooting speeds for action photography though, save yourself £120 and go for the FZ48.

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

Motorola Razr review Hands on

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:52:00 +0000

With a Motorola Razr UK release date pegged for early November – just weeks away - T3 has gone hands-on with the new Android Gingerbread version 2.3.5 powerhouse.

In spite of the official unveiling of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich yesterday alongside the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Motorola has confirmed that its 7.1mm thick Android device will be powered by the older Android Gingerbread version 2.3.5 of the Google mobile OS.

However, Motorola has confirmed that the Motorola Razr will be upgraded to Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich, in the first half of 2012. The official Motorola Razr UK price is not yet known, especially network pricing, but a host of retailer pre-orders are already live.

Motorola Razr Screen.

Measuring 4.3-inches across the new Motorola Razr plays host to a Super AMOLED Plus display that is stunningly sharp, vibrant and responsive. Featuring well contrasted and beautifully bright colours, the Razr’s screen is of comparable quality to those lining up on the new Apple iPhone 4S and T3 Gadget Award winning Samsung Galaxy S II.

Although visibly slim the Razr’s minimalist form factor does not transfer to its feel within the hand with the ultra wide 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display feeling large despite the device’s disconcertingly light form factor.

Motorola Razr Camera

Boasting an 8-megapixel rear-mounted camera with 1080p video recording capabilities the Razr’s snapper falls, on first impressions, slightly short of expectations. Whilst viewing the camera’s live view on the expansive and vibrant display, content appears grainy and lacking clear definition.

Once snapped, however, shots are of an acceptable standard with little blurring and a broad arrange of vivid colours. Sampled under low light conditions the Razr’s camera requires further in-depth testing before writing off its on paper possibilities can even be considered.

Motorola Razr Specs

Responsive and zippy thanks to its high-end handset required 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM the heavily skinned Razr looks fantastic with the Kevlar rear panel appearing luxurious and a welcome break from the standard black plastic.

Whilst the scratch resistant, life surviving Gorilla glass screen coating and splash proof nano technology could not be tested during our hands-on review of the Motorola Razr, the display technology appears not to affect the AMOLED’s brilliant picture quality or responsiveness.

Are you impressed with Motorola’s latest foray into the mobile market? Is Moto back on track? Let us know what you think via the comments box below.

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

Samsung Galaxy Nexus launched

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:26:00 +0000

Well the waiting is finally over, Samsung and Google have brought forth the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and as if that wasn't enough it's running a little thing called Ice Cream Sandwich

Google have just unveiled the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, their latest 'true' Google phone, and yes, it comes running Ice Cream Sandwich the brand-new Android OS from Google.

Unveiled early this morning at an event in Hong Kong the Galaxy nexus has arrived after weeks of speculation of its appearance and whether it would contain the impressive sounding specs that many had hoped for. With Ice Cream Sandwich under the hood and a 4.65inch screen it's certainly out to impress and with features such as NFC and face-recognition its got the brains to boot.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus Specs:

The first thing that many will probably notice is the huge 4.65inch sAMOLED screen which offers 1280x720 resolution, making it one of the first phones to offer a true 720p HD screen.

Underneath that screen is a 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM and while it may not be the 1.5GHz that everyone was hoping for it's certainly not going to have any problems with deep integration expected between the processor and Ice Cream Sandwich.

In terms of storage you'll find two models a 16GB and a 32GB which will be plenty to store music, apps and of course photos and videos which can be taken on the 5MP snapper on the back. Offering zero shutter lag, panoramic imaging and 1080p video recording the camera is seated neatly in the center of the back of the phone while a 1.3MP snapper on the front allows video-calling and of course, the face recognition.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus Features:

Featuring a gently curved screen the Galaxy Nexus certainly shares some of the design cues of the Samsung Galaxy S2 with the slight bulge at the bottom being a prominent feature.

Sitting neatly inside all this is Android's latest OS, Ice Cream Sandwich, offering up an entirely new UI based loosely on a combination of Gingerbread and Honeycomb. With more clean cut lines and simpler menus the whole experience has been aimed at increasing productivity and enhancing the usability of the phone.

Most notable of the new features is the face-recognition which uses the front-facing camera to recognise the owners face and then automatically unlock the phone, meaning no more passwords or shapes to draw.

With NFC technology built-in the Galaxy Nexus also features Android Beam, an application that allows you to share web pages, apps and YouTube videos just by touching the two handsets together. Google has also seriously ramped up their use of cloud-services claiming that all data can now be backed up to the cloud with contacts, bookmarks, settings, however whether all of this will be coming to the UK remains to be seen.

With the Motorola RAZR having just been announced, which one takes your fancy more? Let us know what you think in the comments box below...

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

ELGATO VIDEO CAPTURE REVIEW

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 10:50:00 +0000

While it’s been long enough that some of us have probably sold our VCRs at garage sales or tossed them with all of our tapes in the garbage long ago, there are still a select few (myself included) who have hung on to some of those VHS cassettes for sentimental value or to hold on to personally-recorded memories of events and family gatherings. With the Elgato Video Capture, any computer running Mac OS X or Windows 7 can now convert these antiquated black video monoliths into the sleek, convenient digital age. iPhones and iPods are also supported, allowing you to take any video you may have taken with these devices and convert them into formats that are easier to share and distribute amongst friends.

The device itself is small and lightweight, with a USB connector for the PC, and composite outs as well as S-Video. Also included is an adapter for converting a SCART port (for any European hardware) to the supported standard composite jacks. The wire lengths and size make it just as ideal for carrying around in a laptop bag as it is for home usage. It does heat up a small bit while in use, but not enough to be uncomfortable or dangerous to the touch.

As a Windows user, when I received the Elgato Video Capture I was required to use the packaged version of CyberLink PowerDirector 8 which came with the device. Since then, Elgato has released a Windows-compatible version of their software for PC users (free for download on their website) so I will be covering both options. First, using PowerDirector is great, as it comes with plenty of options and is an otherwise complete program for doing more than just converting and capturing video. Edits can be made, a specific file format and compression rate can be selected, and charts are present to let you know up to the minute just how big your video is going to be. There are a lot of options present, which can be a little difficult to get used to, but the overall experience is rich and customizable.

As for Elgato’s proprietary software, the key here is simplicity. Once the software is started it basically walks you through a wizard, having you test the video and audio first, then recording what you want. At the end of recording, the beginning and end of the file can be cropped down and then saved. There aren’t a whole lot of options here as far as what kind of video you can make or what to do if you wanted to trim something that was in the middle without stopping there and creating two separate videos. Still, using the Elgato software is as easy as it gets. With just a few mouse clicks you’ll have a captured video, and it’s virtually impossible to make any mistakes.

Purchased purely as a video converter from older formats, the Elgato Video Capture is a fantastic device that delivers on its promise and does so quite well. The packaged software is not so flexible when it comes to doing more than that(PowerDirector certainly has many more options, but neither is great for creating streaming content or using as an alternate video source), and so it feels as if it might limit the product. Obviously, it will function perfectly well in conjunction with other programs like Skype or webcasters as a viable audio/video feed, I was just disappointed that the enclosed software didn’t give me those options out of the box. Overall, the Elgato Video Capture will definitely help you bring what’s left of your older media into the new formats, and would be just as easy for your parents or grandparents to put to use.

Pros:

Perfect for converting VHS tapes to digital format with absolutely no added artifacting, looks just as good as the tape
Small, compact, and effective, the Elgato Video Capture does its job without getting in the way
Elgato software is so easy to use, once you’re installed you can convert videos within minutes

Cons:

Small amount of available file format options means you’ll either wind up with some big files or bad looking videos
Neither packaged software solution is really ideal for using as a live feed, so people looking to stream content or use in a presentation setting may want to look elsewhere
As a converter first, the Elgato Video Capture has no inputs for more modern types of cables like component or HDMI

The Elgato Video Capture is available on Amazon for $82.

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

Samsung UE60D8000 review

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:19:00 +0000

Design and Specs
Samsung's presence at the IFA technology show in Berlin this year was suitably grandiose but most of the fun was kept for the mobile and laptop divisions, with the announcements of the Samsung Note and Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7in, among others. When it came to TVs, though, there wasn't quite so much to get excited about. In fact, the Korean brand announced only one new TV: a 60in addition to its already well-received D8000 flagship range. And it’s this leviathan we’ve got sprawled across our test benches right now.

Not that sprawl is the right word to use. For it implies laziness and unkemptness, neither of which remotely relate to the stunning design of the UE60D8000. For what it appears to be at first glance is a 60in screen magically floating in space. Glorious.

Closer inspection reveals that there IS actually a bezel around the huge expanse of screen. But man, is it narrow - less than one centimetre. What’s more, this slimness applies to all four sides; there’s no sign of the chunky bottom edge commonly found with flat TVs.

The irresistible - and space saving - design is finished off to perfection by the application of a glinting silver metallic finish to what small amount of bezel there is.

The UE60D8000’s connectivity is also first rate. Where video is concerned, the main attractions are four HDMIs - all ready to take in full HD 3D signals from Blu-ray players (or side by side Sky 3D broadcasts). But it’s the multimedia options that really stand out, as we uncover three USBs, a D-Sub PC port, a LAN port, and built-in wi-fi. It’s a treat not to have to cough up for an optional extra wi-fi USB dongle, and the TV integrated with our network effortlessly, ready to both stream in video, photo and music files from our DLNA PC, or take the TV online to access Samsung’s 2011 Smart TV platform.

We’ll come back to Smart TV in a moment, but first we should add that the USBs can additionally be used for playing back multimedia files or recording from either of the UE60D8000’s built-in Freesat HD or Freeview HD tuners.

Samsung’s Smart TV service is in many ways the most cutting edge online television system in the AV world. Its Smart Hub onscreen menu offers an inspired means of accessing all your myriad content, and it offers a content-rich mixture of video streaming and more app-like services.

Highlights include the BBC iPlayer, LoveFilm, AceTrax, Facebook, Twitter, Skype (via an optional extra camera) and Samsung’s own 3D ‘channel’, giving you an instant and free source of (admittedly often quite eclectic) 3D video.

As noted in earlier reviews, rather too many of the smaller, non-video apps are a bit pointless. But we did notice a growth in apps aimed at children, which feels like the right direction to be going in.

The full HD panel inside the UE60D8000’s infeasibly slim body is driven by edge LED lighting - a fact which makes its tiny bezel seem even more impossible. The set also enjoys Samsung’s ‘800Hz’ motion engine, which combines a native 200Hz refresh rate with a scanning backlight and frame interpolation processing to deliver a potential 800Hz effect. This could prove particularly beneficial to the UE60D8000’s 3D performance.

The set ships with two pairs of Samsung’s Bluetooth active shutter 3D glasses included, leaving you to spend as much as £100 a pair for any extra glasses you want.

The UE60D8000 isn’t endorsed by the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF), but that’s not to say it doesn’t have plenty of calibration tools. There’s a degree of colour management, gamma controls and white balance adjustment, as well as a lengthy list of processing features aimed at boosting everything from colour and contrast to sharpness and motion clarity.

You need to be careful with many of these latter processing tools, as most come with negative as well as positive side effects. But some of them can improve pictures with certain types of content, so long as you only use them on their lowest ‘power’ settings.

As usual with Samsung’s latest generation of edge LED TV, the first word that pops out of your mouth as you behold the UE60D8000 in action will likely be ‘wow’, as they clearly appear calibrated to continue the policy of ‘shock and awe’ started by the design.

Starting with 2D images, they are astonishingly bright, despite the tiny amount of space provided for the edge-based LEDs. This brightness ensures that colours are driven off the screen with exceptional aggression, making them look vibrant and pictures generally look almost insanely punchy and dynamic.

What’s really surprising/impressive about the potency of the UE60D8000’s pictures, though, is the fact that it’s achieved while maintaining one of the deepest black level responses in the LCD TV world. Being able to combine lots of brightness with good black levels suggests a native contrast performance that most if not all other brands can only dream about matching - outstanding! This is a particularly great feature for film lovers.

Also impressive is how few reflections we could see on the screen despite its size (clearly there’s some clever filtering going on somewhere), and how sharp and detailed HD pictures look. Really big screens like the UE60D8000 are usually the best ones for highlighting HD’s quality versus standard definition, but Samsung’s new giant does even better than most king-sized rivals in this respect. In fact, it occasionally goes a touch far, to the point where edge-stressing and fizziness appear. But careful tweaking of the set’s sharpness settings - and turning off edge enhancement - can usually solve this.

We do have a couple of issues with the UE60D8000’s 2D pictures, though. First, the provided picture presets prove less than helpful, as they tend to push contrast and brightness too hard for comfort, leaving pictures looking noisy and tiring. Fortunately, it doesn’t take too much work to sort the presets out. But no amount of tinkering fully dealt with our other 2D UE60D8000 problem: inconsistent backlighting.

As soon as we heard about the UE60D8000 we’d been worried that this issue - where parts of dark images look slightly cloudy due to the screen not being able to achieve a consistent backlight - might trouble such a large edge-lit TV, and our worries prove at least slightly well founded.

For if you’re watching a dark movie scene on the UE60D8000 in a reasonably dark room - something many potential buyers would probably want to do fairly regularly - you can make out ‘jets’ of light sneaking a few inches into the picture from each corner.

The UE60D8000‘s backlight inconsistencies are not as aggressive as we’d expected they might be with such a large edge LED TV, especially if you reduce the set’s backlight to its 9 or 10 level (on Samsung’s 0-20 scale), and keep the brightness no higher than 50 out of 100. But the fact you can see areas of inconsistency at all means they have the potential to distract you from what you’re watching, especially if you start looking out for them once you’ve seen them a few times.

To put some perspective on this, you can’t see the backlight inconsistencies at all when watching bright material, or if you’re watching in a typical amount of ambient light. So it’s only ‘serious movie nights’ that are likely to be affected by it.

Running a couple of 3D movies into the UE60D8000, first impressions are overwhelmingly positive, as that eye-popping nature of the picture noted while watching 2D helps the screen produce arguably the brightest, most richly coloured 3D pictures we’ve seen on an active 3D TV. We didn’t notice any flicker from Samsung’s comfortable standard issue 3D glasses either - so long, at least, as we watched in a fairly dark room.

Detail levels are extremely high too, as the 60in screen size together with some impressively crisp motion handling combines to deliver fully on the full HD resolution the active 3D format was developed to deliver.

The screen delivers a great sense of depth without looking forced too, and even its 2D to 3D conversion works decently - certainly better than any similar engine offered by other brands right now.

The UE60D8000’s 3D pictures do, however, suffer with a flaw: crosstalk noise. This doesn’t affect bright scenes much, thankfully, but if there’s a dark scene with bright elements in it, those bright elements more often than not suffer with the familiar double ghosting noise.

The UE60D8000 is no worse in this regard than other D8000 models. But the size of the screen makes the crosstalk stand out more, plus the set’s relatively late arrival compared with the other D8000 models means we now have a wider frame of 3D reference to judge it in. And compared with, for instance, the recently reviewed Panasonic P65VT30, there’s unquestionably much more crosstalk in the UE60D8000’s pictures.

The Samsung’s 3D pictures are brighter, but if push comes to shove, we’d take less brightness and no crosstalk over more brightness but some occasionally obvious crosstalk.

If you're a gamer, the UE60D8000 is a very impressive console monitor, as its contrast and motion handling strengths join with a very respectable 35ms of input lag.

Wrapping up with the UE60D8000’s audio performance, we were actually quite impressed by it. For despite having practically no physical bodywork to work with, its speakers manage to go reasonably loud without distorting, and deliver an open mid-range, good treble clarity, and even a little bass. Obviously the soundstage doesn’t rival the scale of the screen, but it’s much more easy on the ear than expected.

Overall

8/10

Scores in detail

Value: 7/10
Sound Quality: 7/10
Features: 10/10
Design: 10/10
3D Picture Quality: 8/10
2D Picture Quality: 8/10

Features

60in edge LED TV
Active 3D playback
Smart TV functionality
USB video recording and multimedia playback
Freeview HD and Freesat HD tuners

Pros & Cons

Pros

Jaw-dropping design
Phenomenal brightness and colour
Excellent multimedia features

Cons

Backlight inconsistencies
Limited viewing angle
Some crosstalk with 3D

Manufacturer

Samsung

Reviewed by John Archer

26 September 2011

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

What if Apple to Get Sexy Curves in 2012?

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:50:00 +0000

According to a report coming from Taipei, Apple and its competitors are possibly implementing curved touchscreen glass displays in their line of 2012 handheld devices. Inside sources from the glass manufacturers claim that:

“Suppliers of the non-Apple camp are working on products with curved cover glass in attempts to gain a competitive edge in the handheld device market dominated by Apple.”

Much to the chagrin of the competition, Apple has already allegedly bought glass polishing equipment for its curved glass suppliers that are rumored to include Lens Technology, Fuji Crystal and G-Tech.

We’ve already seen curved glass on the Nexus S line of phones, though the screen’s aesthetic and ergonomic divergences from the mainstream of flat panels leads us to believe that it will be quite some time until curve glass makes a serious splash. Even if curved glass displays do catch on, the stint will most likely be a brief one.

With an emphasis on larger screens with enhanced resolutions, it seems farfetched to place any bets on curved glass at this point in time. But we all know if Apple does it, everyone else must partake in order to remain competitive. Diagnosis? More lawsuits ascertainable along the encroaching Curved Glass shore lines!

[Via: DigiTimes]

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

Minecraft: Pocket Edition Due on Android September 29th

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:41:00 +0000

Starting this Thursday, September 29th, the Android version of Minecraft: Pocket Edition will be available. The game will only be playable on devices supporting Android version 2.3 and up.

The video above details the touchscreen controls for the non-Xperia Play version of the game. This was originally an Xperia Play exclusive, but has since been announced as coming to both the Android and iOS platforms. While today’s news is that this game will launch this Thursday for Android, the iOS versions have not been given a release date.

This game will be updated in the same rolling fashion as the computer counterpart. It is set to launch for $6.54 and will feature, according to the Android Market page, the following:

Randomized worlds
Build anything you can imagine
Build with 36 different kinds of blocks
Invite and play with friends to your world (local wireless network)
Save multi-player worlds on your own phone

I’ve often complained personally about how much I hate virtual d-pads and joysticks. Folks, my addiction to Minecraft is so fierce that I’ll be buying this even after seeing firsthand that it may be a little awkward to use.

Anyone else picking the Pocket Edition of Minecraft up on Thursday?

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

28% of Nintendo 3DS Users do not Like Device’s 3D

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:21:00 +0000

Gamespot has it from a survey done by Interpret that a significant number of Nintendo 3DS users do not like the 3D capabilities of the device. Actually, as the headline of this article indicates, 28% of the more than 1,600 adults surveyed reported that the 3D illusion detracted from the quality of the experience on the handheld.

The statistic, and a host of others we’ll go over in a bit, came from last week’s 3D Gaming Summit and Dan Casey, Interpret Senior Vice President of Strategy and Analysis. Gamespot stresses that Casey seems to believe that part of the Nintendo 3DS’ early struggles stem from a lack of awareness of the device.

Awareness of the Nintendo 3DS is up more than 60% compared to last year’s findings; however, 28% of the group said that they didn’t even know the unit was capable of 3D without glasses.

Additionally, 13% reported that the turn the 3D effect on the 3DS all the way off when playing, while only 22% said that the 3D actually improved gaming with the portable.

The basic point that I’m pulling from this sampling is that whether or not someone will actually enjoy the illusion of the Nintendo 3DS is an entirely individual and unique thing. The data seems to split users so evenly that it seems like there’s a naturally polarizing quality to the portable. Unfortunately for Nintendo, that may not be translating to universal customer support.

In fact, this has me considering the idea that Nintendo may have inadvertently hurt this system by calling it the “3DS.” The 3D portion of the handheld has been made its centerpiece, that makes it unfortunate that more than a quarter of folks surveyed indicated that the centerpiece was bad for the device. I know that I fall into the 13% of users that turn 3D all the way off when playing, but I also recognize that it’s good for a lot more than its graphical illusion.

With that, I pose a question: if Nintendo had nixed the 3D entirely from this unit before selling it and called it the “Super Nintendo DS,” do you think users may have been more inclined to fall in love at the onset?

[via Gamespot]

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

Denon announces Airplay-enabled network audio player

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 08:46:00 +0000

Japanese audio specialist Denon has today unveiled a new network audio player that aims to mix 21st-century music habits with old-skool hi-fi values.

The slimline DNP-720AE uses your Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection to stream tunes from your networked PC or NAS drive, and access online services including Napster and Last.FM.

Claimed file support includes WMA (and WMA Lossless), MP3, WAV, AAC, FLAC and FLAC 96/24.

AirPlay-enabled

Denon's background in high-end audio then comes into play, with the DNP-720AE's 24bit/192Khz DACs and 'simple and straight' circuit design working to optimise the sound performance.

Of course, you'll need to partner the DNP-720AE with a stereo amplifier, via the rear-mounted phono outputs, to actually hear it.

Like much of the competition, Denon's new player is also AirPlay-enabled, meaning it can stream music straight from an Apple iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, or your PC's iTunes library.

The DNP9720AE is also Windows 7 certified for 'Play To' on Windows Media Player 12 and above.

Other features include control via Denon's remote app (iPad, iPod and iPhone – but not Android, yet), playback from portable storage devices thanks to the front USB input, and a somewhat redundant built-in AM/FM tuner.

The DNP-720AE, which Denon reckons will 'bring your beloved, but possibly somewhat forgotten, hi-fi system flashing back into use,' is available in black and silver finishes, and will go on sale later this month for around £430.

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

iPhone 5 Actually iPhone 4s? October 4 Release Date + Specs

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 08:39:00 +0000

Rumor round up: Next generation Apple smartphone is not iPhone 5 but iPhone 4s. Tim Cook will host Apple’s next big media event.

Latest rumor roundup on the next gen 2011 iPhone 4s, expected with A5 processor and better camera.

Apple Next Big Media Event: iPhone 5 Release Date

Apple Keynote date, All Things D (via macrumors):

“Tuesday, Oct. 4. Thatís the day Apple is currently expected to hold its next big media event, according to sources close to the situation, where the tech giant will unveil the next iteration of its popular iPhone.”

However, the article adds that plans can change.

Specs: iPhone 4s

iPhone 4s only, with specs, BGR reports Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair:

We expect the focus of the new iPhone will be iOS 5, a speedier A5 processor and a higher resolution 8 MP iPhone camera with a small possibility of a larger 4 inch screen.

Despite some examples of wider and thinner iPhone 5 cases and iPhone 5 mockup by Case-mate, there is no hardware evidence of a redesigned iPhone 5. There are some hardware leaks for iPhone 4s though.

Carriers of 2011 5th Gen iPhone

Sprint: new iPhone with unlimited data in mid-October, Bloomberg reports:

“Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) will offer Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone next month with unlimited data service plans to distinguish itself from rivals AT&T Inc. (T) and Verizon Wireless, according to people familiar with the matter.”

AT&T and Verizon both offered unlimited data plans, but discontinued them due to cellular network capacity constraints, as it’s easy to keep using iPhone for data usage. Sprint will likely only offer the unlimited data plan for a few months before following the other carriers in offering tiered data plan.

T-Mobile: “We are not going to get the iPhone 5 this year” – Chief Marketing Officer Cole Brodman. But didn’t say anything about iPhone 4s. (via tmonews)

CEO Tim Cook is expected to host the Apple Keynote to announce the new iPhone 4s. This weekend’s opening of 7 Apple Stores should provide additional locations to buy the new iPhone.

What does it mean? It’s time to get ready for iPhone launch party!

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

HP Fired CEO Apotheker, Replaced with ex eBay CEO Whitman

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 08:32:00 +0000

Hewlett-Packard fired its TouchPad, Palm Pre, WebOS, and PC killing CEO. Still following his failed plans.

Léo Apotheker “Resigned”

New York Times on firing of Léo Apotheker as HP president, chief executive officer, and director:

Hewlett-Packard named Meg Whitman, the former eBay chief executive, as its new leader on Thursday after a series of blunders by the company’s previous chief, Léo Apotheker, that prompted his departure only 11 months into his tenure.

Just last month, Apotheker basically devalued HP with his unexpected announcement that HP will abandon tablet, smartphone, and PC market. So it’s good that the board let go of HP’s CEO, President, and Director of the board. However, HP will continue to follow his failed strategy:

While Mr. Apotheker is going, his strategy, including consideration of spinning off H.P.’s personal computer business from other parts of the company, will remain in place.

Meg Whitman is eBay’s former chief executive from 1998 to 2008.

ObamaPacman: Well, OP already called HP delusional in Feb 2011 for believing it has any chance to compete with the iPhone or iPad. If the “modern” (sarcasm) eBay is the product of Whitman, then HP is doomed to turn into a bureaucracy that will be way out of touch with its customer base. No TouchPad fire sale will save HP from that outcome.

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

HITACHI KC18DHL 18-VOLT LITHIUM ION 2 TOOL COMBO KIT REVIEW

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:26:00 +0000

While I’ve reviewed a number of large tool combo kits before, this is the first “smaller” one that I’ve had the chance to test out. While the “official” name for it is a “Two Tool Combo Kit”, it actually has two tools (a drill driver and an impact driver) plus a light, so in my mind that would be three tools. I’m not here to debate what constitutes being considered a “tool” though, so let’s get in to how they all work, shall we?

First of all, I really like the case that the case that everything comes in – hard plastic, and really designed to take a fall (I dropped the case out a second story window onto concrete with the tools inside – everything still worked perfect) and protect the tools. I worked some construction when I was younger and know the pain of dropping something off of scaffolding by accident and watching it shatter below. I don’t know how high of a drop this will take, or what kind of impact it’s even rated for, but for small drops it really does the trick. another thing that’s really nice about the case, is that it’s all compartmentalized inside of it, allowing you to store bits and things for easy carrying.

With the tools themselves, it’s almost like Hitachi took the best features from other manufacturers and incorporated them all in to one nice little package. For starters, the batteries slide into the base of the handles horizontally, instead of vertically. What that means for you is there’s no post sticking out of the tops of the batteries (like a DeWALT), and the connection is very secure – no risk of being up high and accidentally hitting the button to make it drop to the ground. I’ve seen plenty of people who have has to use duct tape to hold their batteries in because the plastic clips snapped off – there’s really no danger of that happening here.

The grip on both drivers is extremely comfortable to hold, and the tools are incredibly light – even with the batteries in them. I spent an entire eight hours with them attached on my belt (they have nice belt clips to facilitate that), and never noticed the extra weight. Even when using the tools over my head, I didn’t have any fatigue that you would normally associate with using heavy tools. Along with being light weight, they’re also decently ergonomic to hold, and fit my hands quite well.

Each tool also has a little LED on them under the chucks, and this is where my main gripe comes in to play – the light shuts off as soon as you release the trigger. I know it’s a small gripe, but I’ve gotten used to using a drill where the LED stays on for a few seconds after you release the trigger – it makes it easier when you’re in a cabinet or other dark places. The LED’s that are on the Hitachi drivers are a lot brighter than others I’d been using though, so that’s a big plus.

As for the performance of the drivers themselves – I couldn’t ask for them to be any better. The drill driver has two gear settings, and they both have an adjustable trigger clutch, so they’re good for just about any application. The clutch on the impact driver is really great, because for the first time I didn’t have any issues with running half inch diameter lag bolts their full eight inches. On other impact drivers I had tried that test on before, there would inevitably be some issues with it locking up before bottoming out.

As for the included light (or the tool that isn’t considered a tool), it’s very useful. The head has a nice swivel on it, and it’s bright as hell. I haven’t had a power outage in a while, but I’m sure there will be one this Winter (there is every year), and I’ll be ready for it when it comes. I keep one of the two included batteries inside the light just on the off chance something happens. I shouldn’t need to talk about battery life – it’s an 18 volt lithium ion battery, and lasts as long as the others I had tested. I do with that there was some sort of button to push on the battery itself to indicate how full the charge is (like a RIDGID or RYOBI) – unfortunately it’s just a guessing game with these.

Overall, I really like this kit. So much so in fact, that it has replaced the RIDGID drill I had been using as my new drill of choice. The fact that the belt clips are metal, and adjustable for either the right or the left hand sides makes these drivers extremely versatile. Couple that with the how light they are in the weight department, and you can easily overlook the few negatives (speaking of which, I forgot to mention there’s absolutely no place to store bits on either of the drivers themselves – an extreme oversight) that there are.

My final score is a rating of four and a half stars (if we could give three quarters of a star I would) out of a possible five.

Pros:

The drivers are light weight and durable, which makes for less fatigue and strain
The case is a lot better than the cloth bags that other companies use
The clutch works perfectly on each of the drivers

Cons:

The LED light doesn't stay on after the trigger is released
No place to hold bits on the drivers
No indicator on the batteries for how much charge is left

You can get a Hitachi KC18DHL 18-Volt Lithium Ion 2 Tool Combo Kit from Amazon for $249.99

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

WIN! A Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:16:00 +0000

Thanks to the mobile price comparison site, Mobilife.com, you could be the first of your mates to own the new Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo - a small handset packed with features, such as an 8MP camera, 3.7-inch LED backlit screen and Android v2.3 Gingerbread operating system.

Mobilife.com is the new mobile price comparison site approved by Ofcom and takes the hassle out of finding a new deal when your contract comes up for renewal.

In the past, trawling through the million or so deals on offer has been such a pain for most of us, that 70% of contract phone users in the UK are on the wrong tariff, wasting an amazing £3bn a year paying for minutes and texts we don't need!

Deal breaker

A new site called Mobilife.com has changed all that. They will show you the best deal for you from the millions of combinations of handsets, tariffs and add-ons such as cashback deals and free gifts available on the UK market – and all you have to do it click to get the handset you want at the tariff that's right for you. The company has already saved one heavy data user £612.24 a year on his contract!

The data is updated every day, so you know that you will always be getting a recommendation based on the very latest deals available.

If you like the look of this phone, why not head over to Mobilife.com to check out all the latest deals for it, with 24 month deals from as little as £10.50 a month.

Click here to enter this competition

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

Dell: Why we won't follow HP

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:09:00 +0000

Dell founder Michael Dell has insisted that his company has no intention of following rival Hewlett Packard in attempting to shed its PC making business.

Mr Dell has already publicly mocked HP's much-discussed decision to seek alternative routes forward, and he reasons that his company could now have a significant market advantage.

"We are very distinct from some of our competitors," Dell told the Financial Times.

End-to-end
"We believe the devices and the hardware still matter as part of the complete, end-to-end solution," he added.

"Think about the scale economies in our business. As a company spins off its PC business, it goes from one of the top buyers in the world of disk drives and processors and memory chips to not being one of the top five."

"…that raises the cost of making servers and storage products. Ultimately we believe that presents an enormous opportunity for us and you can be sure we are going to seize it."

HP is still seeking to spin off its hardware business and restructure, but the repercussions will be watched with interest by the computer world.

Via FT (subscription)

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

Qualcomm S4 processors to support Windows 8

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:05:00 +0000

Qualcomm has announced that its latest S4 chipset will support Windows 8 and that we should see devices with the processor built in by the middle of 2012.

This is according to Pocket-lint, which reported from the Innovation Qualcomm event in Istanbul that the next Snapdragon processor will be a powerful chip, sporting Adreno Graphics, 3D, 1080p HD and 3G connectivity.

The S4 is part of the next-generation processors from Qualcomm, which have been given a new and easier to understand naming strategy.

The chips range from S1 to S4, with the S4 variation being the more powerful quad-core variety.

Core values
Qualcomm also revealed that the chip can be optimised for particular devices so we will see the Dual-Core MSM8960 and Quad-Core APQ8064 varieties of the processor appearing in Windows 8 computers come 2012 – interestingly there's no word on if they will be appearing in tablets.

As for mobile phones, the processors will be shipped to manufacturers by the end of 2011, so expect 2.5GHz phones soon after.

Back in August, Qualcomm boasted that its latest chipset will make phones more powerful than PS3s so it will be interesting to see just how good the phones are when released.

Via Pocket-Lint

Qualcomm, S4, processers, chips, components

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

Video: iPhone 5 - what you need to know

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:59:00 +0000

Every year the world goes crazy over the thought of a new mobile from Apple, and the iPhone 5 is no exception.

So to help you out, we've waded through the literally hundreds of published 'facts' about the iPhone 5, and picked out the specs, dates and features we think are most likely to appear on the new handset in our iPhone 5: what you need to know.

But if you're in a hurry and the idea of waiting a month to see the new phone brings you out in a cold sweat, then check out our video - all you need to know about the forthcoming iPhone 5 in 130 seconds.

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

Apple takes Samsung to the UK courts

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 07:49:00 +0000

Apple has launched a lawsuit against Samsung in the UK, which marks the latest in a long line of court cases between the two electrical giants.

Apple filed the court order this week, according to ZDNet, which brings the total number of patent suits the companies have between them to 20.

While this latest court shenanigan is about potential patent infringement, so far the exact patents it refers to are unknown.

Samsung said that the lawsuit was a countersuit filed against them for its original lawsuit it took out against Apple in June of this year.

Samsung V Apple: take 20
The situation between Apple and Samsung is something of a messy one. Apple is obviously nervous of Samsung's success in the smartphone (and to a lesser degree the tablet) market, but both companies also have a vested interest in staying civil with each other.

Samsung makes a massive amount of the chips Apple uses in its iPhone 4 and iPad, which is a contract Samsung would not want to lose.

At the same time it can't be seen to look as if it agrees it has been using Apple's patents for use in its own products.

The patent war isn't just affecting Samsung; HTC is at loggerheads with Apple and Google has bought out Motorola Mobility for its massive stash of patents.

Via ZDNet

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

No mirrorless cameras in Amazon Top 40

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 19:22:00 +0000

Compact system cameras are failing to make a dent in the purses of Amazon shoppers, as no mirrorless models can be found in the top 40 best selling cameras in the UK, US, Germany and France.

Despite the huge increase in compact system cameras currently available on the market, and the frenzy surrounding rumoured Canon and Nikon releases, no existing compact system camera models are appearing in Amazon's best seller lists.

Compact system cameras are failing to make an impact with Amazon shoppers

In Japan, official charts show the overall market placings of digital cameras, and these recently indicated that more than half of all cameras purchased were mirrorless models, with the new Olympus PEN E-PL3 appearing highest at no.6.

In other countries however, it's harder to determine the best sellers as detailed reports are not so easily available. However, using sites such as Amazon is a good indicator of the overall market trend.

It may seem surprising that the list does not include a CSC, but considering that the two major players, Canon and Nikon, are yet to enter the market, it could be that American and European consumers are waiting for these new releases.

Shopping habits
It could also be that the limited range of lenses available for compact system cameras is having an impact on shopping habits. When third party manufacturers such as Sigma, who announced it was working on some micro four thirds lenses earlier in the year, decide to make its products available, the concept of a mirrorless model may seem more attractive.

On the Amazon UK site, the current best selling camera is the Panasonic Lumix FS35, a three year old budget compact model, followed by the Fujifilm Finepix S2950 bridge camera. The first DSLR to appear in the list is Nikon's entry level D3000.

With the majority of the cameras in Amazon UK's top 20 falling into the "budget" end of the spectrum, this could perhaps suggest more about the buying habits of Amazon customers, with more "serious" photographers perhaps choosing to spend their cash in more established photographic outlets.

A quick peek at dedicated photography stockist Warehouse Express however also shows that CSCs are not within its top 10 best sellers either, with the Nikon P300 compact topping the list followed by Nikon's enthusiast DSLR, the D7000.

Interestingly, on the Amazon US site, Canon compacts dominate the top 3, with the S100 which was only announced yesterday, storming into 3rd place.

It'll be interesting to see how any announcement from Nikon or Canon will impact the sales of compact system cameras, so keep following TechRadar for more details as they emerge.

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

11 cool uses for your old dead Mac

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 11:24:00 +0000

Back in Victorian times, the death of a pet didn't necessarily mean the end of a beautiful friendship: if you had the means, you could arrange to have your faithful companion stuffed.

The process became known as taxidermy, and it turns out that there's a modern equivalent for Apple kit that's too old or too broken to carry on. You could call it 'Macsidermy'.

Nothing lasts forever, and one day your favourite Apple kit must go to the great Apple Store in the sky. However, some owners don't believe that the death of a Mac should be the end of a Mac. Their Macs aren't just stuffed and stuck in a corner, though. They're reincarnated, reborn in new forms designed to keep that happy-Mac feeling alive.

It's rather fitting that the products being reborn and recycled are Apple ones: after all, Steve Jobs' own spiritual path, Buddhism, teaches about impermanence but also rebirth and renewal. Jobs himself is pro-recycling too: as he recalls, in his pre-Apple days at Reed College, Jobs "returned Coke bottles for the five cent deposits to buy food with."

Keep reading as we discover the incredible ways Apple owners are helping their Macs to live on.

1. Fancy dress

Developer: Gary S Katz

URL: www.personalmovietheater.com

Specs: Angle-poise iMac with integrated iPhone holder for hilarious MouthOff-related tomfoolery. It just works.

We like the way Gary Katz thinks. When he sees an iPad and a box, he sees a concert venue for pretend people. When he sees old Power Macs, he sees a cool storage solution. And when he sees an old iMac, he sees a Cylon helmet.

"I built a small box out of circuit boards to hold my iPhone and run an app called MouthOff that syncs a cartoon mouth to any sound it hears," he says. "It looks hilarious when the wearer is talking as the mouth syncs to the sound." We're betting Steve Jobs himself couldn't envision such uses of his kit.

And Katz has plenty more ideas where that one came from, as his blog clearly demonstrates.

2. In your living room

Developer: MacTechnology

URL: www.mactechnology.co.uk

Specs: Apple iMac G3 with slot-loading CD/DVD drive, iMac G3 table conversion kit (£29), a table top

The iMac G3 is a classic for all kinds of reasons: it was the first Mac to banish the beige, the floppy drive and adopt USB - and, of course, it marked the beginning of Apple's resurgence following the return of Steve Jobs in the late 1990s.

Sadly, the iMac G3 isn't much use as a computer today, so why not turn it into a talking point instead? Oxfordshire-based company MacTechnology has created a range of conversion kits that can turn the iMac G3 and other Apple computers into occasional tables and desks - they're all available to buy from the MacTechnology website. You don't even need any tools or glue to assemble!

3. On your desktop

Developer: Mike Hathaway

URL: www.mikehathaway.com

Specs: G4 Cube, a box of Kleenex tissues

To paraphrase the M&S ad, this is no ordinary Kleenex box; this is a $2,500 Kleenex box. When Mike Hathaway was dumping some old work equipment, he spotted somebody else getting shot of some G4 Cubes. "I couldn't let them sit there and go to the recycler and certain doom," he writes. "So I've modified one to sit on the table in my office and dispense tissues."

Fancy something more practical? Randall Littleton (www.randalllittleton.com) makes iMacs into interesting things such as clocks and angle-poise lamps. An iMac lamp is yours for just $125. Why does it remind us of the opening credits of every Pixar film? Steve Jobs would be proud…

4. As a clock

Developer: Book of Joe

URL: www.bookofjoe.com

Developer: Stuff Made From Stuff

URL: www.etsy.com/people/pixelthis

One of the simplest, most useful and most attractive ways to reuse an old Mac is to drill a hole in it. Mac clocks are everywhere online, with sites such as Etsy.com showcasing all kinds of good-looking Mac clocks. We particularly like Stuff Made From Stuff's designs: using an Apple mouse as a pendulum is a witty touch that makes us grin whenever we look at it.

Older Mac hardware is particularly good for decoration, and the original iMac inspired all kinds of consumer kit. Its keyboard makes a good clock too, as Book of Joe's creation demonstrates above.

5. As a home for your pets

Developer: Yeo & Chua

URL: http://gucciand prada.blogspot.com

Specs: Apple Studio CRT Display, sawdust, hamster wheel, toys and small plastic

Christmas tree Jim Lower built his first Macquarium in 1995 by sticking a two-and-a-half-gallon fish tank in a Mac 512kE case. It looked great, but the tank burst. The mark II model was more successful, and it still lives on as a colourful planter - more of that in a moment.

Mac kit can make great homes for furry pets too: designers Bjorn Yeo and Jo Chua took a clear, pear-shaped Apple Studio CRT Display, hollowed it out and turned it into a great-looking home for their "hammies" Gucci and Prada. We think they make an adorable desktop wallpaper to.

6. In the garden

Developer: Jim Lower

URL: www.techquarium.com

Specs: Macintosh Classics and Macintosh SEs, soil, water, a variety of plants, a supply of Baby Bio

Jim Lower's Maquarium and Lisaquarium are the stuff of Apple legend, but his colourful Mac Planters are just as impressive. However, turning dozens of classic Macintoshes into planters isn't as simple as you might think.

Lower used a Dremel tool to carefully cut out the tops of his old Macs, removing the screens and replacing them with sheets of clear acrylic. Those sheets enable the planters to double as photo frames. With its innards removed, you need to add weight to a Mac won't tip over: Lower prefers PVC and bits from old light fixtures. But just look at the wonderful result!

And here's a fascinating titbit: one of these horticultural innovations is a 1986 Macintosh SE whose case boasts the signatures of the original Apple team behind the design; perhaps Lower should now add his own?

7. As a stereo

Developer: Klaus Diebel

URL: www.kiwidee.com

Specs: 2.1 amplifier (2x15W and 1x40W) with original Apple Pro speaker, audio/sync/charge cable and Bluetooth audio

The G4 Cube is arguably the best-looking computer Apple has ever made, and now it's one of the best-looking iPod docks money can buy. The SubCube is another Klaus Diebel creation and promises to "take out the Mac and put in the bass" and it uses the G4's enclosure as the home for a powerful 2.1 amplifier delivering 15 watts per speaker and 40 watts through the subwoofer, a hefty, down-firing Apple Pro speaker.

Sound dampening is added to the interior to prevent buzzing and rattling, and the integrated iPod dock is iPhone-friendly. The laser-cut base plate is hidden underneath, delivering all the controls and connections you might need - subwoofer level, bass and treble controls and an auxiliary input - without spoiling the Cube's minimalist good looks.

It's not the cheapest way to resurrect a Mac - you're looking at €499 (£437) plus speakers if you provide the donor Cube - but you'll end up with a genuinely striking iPod/Mac sound system that's as good to look at as it is to listen to.

8. As an iPad dock

Developer: Klaus Diebel

URL: www.kiwidee.com

Specs: Angle-poise iMac with integrated amplifier, subwoofer and iPad dock (first generation)

Klaus Diebel started transforming Macs a few years ago, but while "I received a lot - really a lot - of virtual claps on my shoulder," orders weren't so forthcoming. "I almost gave up," he says, but instead he decided to build something else. The result is the PadiMac, which Diebel calls his masterpiece.

Designed for the first generation iPad (making it work with the slightly thinner iPad 2 is just a matter of fitting a thicker bar spacer) the iPadiMac turns an iPad into a desktop machine.

Diebel took the shell of an angle-poise iMac, stuck an amp and subwoofer in the base and replaced the screen with an iPad dock that clamps the iPad in place and connects it to the sound system. Instead of the iMac's standard ports you have a speaker connector, auxiliary input and USB connector, together with a control for the subwoofer volume.

9. For halloween

Developer: Tim Siedell

URL: http://badbanana.typepad.com

When Tim Siedell's studio decided to offload a bunch of old Mac Classics that they had been collecting for an art project that didn't get off the ground, a Twitter conversation led to the Macs becoming Mac-o-lanterns. Yes, you read that right.

The Macs were cleaned, their screens masked and their bodies painted in pumpkin shades; keyboard cords were painted green and mice became leaves. Spooky faces were created in Illustrator and turned into JPEGs in Photoshop. The images were transferred via an external floppy drive, with JPEGview software showing them in slideshow mode.

We've had Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, but we reckon Attack of the Killer Macs has a better ring to it. They're enough to give George Clooney nightmares…

10. For storing coffee

Developer: Klaus Diebel

URL: www.kiwidee.com

Specs: WMF 1 Pad coffee maker with injection filling system and optional Clatronic Milk Frother

If you thought a USB coffee warmer was impressive, how about an iMac that's been turned into a coffee machine?

Klaus Diebel's iMac Coffee Edition takes an original iMac, disassembles it, and replaces its display with a printed image of your choosing. Diebel then installs a high-quality coffee maker - you can also add a milk frother - and all the necessary cabling and piping; the unit is then injectionfilled and reassembled. Two sugars, please.

11. Storing cables

Developer: Klaus Diebel

URL: www.kiwidee.com

Specs: APC Performance SurgeArrest surge protector, 3x6-outlet and 3x4-outlet power strips

The irrepressible Klaus Diebel strikes again: the G4 PT - Power Tower - delivers up to 31 free plug sockets with an APC surge protector to keep your kit safe. Inside the G3 or G4 case you'll find three six-outlet power strips, three four-outlet strips and enough room for even the bulkiest AC adapters. We're impressed.

Canon introduces 35x zoom bridge camera

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:43:00 +0000

Canon's new SX40 bridge camera features a 35x optical zoom lens

Canon has announced the latest camera to sit in its Powershot bridge camera range, the SX40 HS.

The new camera is one of Canon's first Powershot models to use the new Digic 5 image processor which promises to boost the performance of the HS system and supports Full HD (1080p) video recording.

Featuring a 35x optical zoom, the lens on board the SX40 features Ultrasonic and Voice Coil Motors (USM and VCM) to allow for fast and silent zooming and focusing. The focal length extends from 24mm at the widest angle (35mm equivalent) all the way up to 840mm at the telephoto end.

New Intelligent IS technology is capable of detecting a shooting situation and automatically applying the most appropriate IS settings from seven different modes. Panning IS, for example, can be used to follow moving subjects while Macro IS has been designed for close ups.

The Powershot SX40 HS is the latest model to feature the HS system, which combines a high-sensitivity back-illuminated 12.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor with the new Digic 5 image processor.

Low noise
According to Canon, the new image processor is able to deliver up to 75% less noise than on previous models. In Smart Auto mode, multi-area White Balance is able to detect different light sources within the same scene, applying appropriate correction to each.

High speed shooting is possible on the SX40, which offers full resolution photos at up to 2.4 shots per second until the memory card is full, or using the high-speed burst HQ mode, a sequence of up to 8 full resolution shots can be captured at 10.3 shots per second.

In Super Slow Motion movie mode the SX40 can shoot VGA resolution video at 120fps and play it back at a fraction of the real speed. A dedicated movie button allows photographers to switch from high quality stills to full HD videos at 24fps.

On the back of the camera a 2.7 inch vari-angle PureColor II VA LCD screen can be found.

Full manual
Advanced users can take advantage of full manual control, while on-screen hints and tips can be displayed to guide beginners.

Smart Auto has been enhanced on the SX40, now offering up to 32 different scene modes that can be automatically detected.

A range of creative filters including a fish-eye effect, super vivid, poster effect and miniature effect have been included, each of which can also be used in movie mode. Toy Camera Effect recreates a pin-hole camera, while monochrome can shoot in black and white, sepia or blue tones.

Canon Speedlite EX flash units can be used with the SX40, as well as lens filter adapters and other accessories.

Canon Powershot SX40 key specifications:
35x ultra wide angle zoom
4.5 stop image stabiliser
HS System with new Digic 5 processor
Full HD video recording
2.7 inch vari-angle screen
High-speed burst HQ shooting mode
Manual modes
Creative filters

The Canon Powershot SX40 UK price is £459 RRP and will be available from October.

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn

PS Vita: what you need to know

noreply@blogger.com (addy) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:07:00 +0000

PlayStation Vita release date, price, specs and more

t's here! And by "here!" we mean "nearly here!" After much rumour and speculation, Sony has announced that the new PSP - formerly codenamed NGP for Next Generation Portable - will be called the PS Vita.

So what are the Vita specs, when will the UK release date be and how much will it cost?

PS Vita UK price will be £235

This one's a rumour, but it's a credible one: given that the Wi-Fi only version of the new PlayStation Vita will be $249 in the US and €249 in Europe, an unnamed source told CVG that the UK price will be "in the region of £235".

PS Vita UK release date will be before Christmas

Nobody expected Sony to miss the all-important Christmas shopping period, and it won't: the Vita UK release date will give you plenty of time to ask Santa for one. Rumours suggest the UK release date may be 11 November 2011.

PlayStation Vita will come in two versions

In addition to the Wi-Fi only version, which does 802.11b, g and n, the PS Vita will also be available with integrated 3G. This will cost slightly more money.

The PS Vita specifications are pretty tasty

The PSP's replacement has a five-inch, 16 million colour 960x544 OLED touchscreen, twin cameras, twin speakers, two turntables and a microphone. We're lying about the turntables.

You also get twin analogue sticks and a ridiculously powerful quad-core processor based on the ARM Cortex A9, the same kind of processor you'll find in many top-end tablets. Expect four to five hours battery life.

The PlayStation Vita specs include a touch-sensitive back

The Vita has a touch-sensitive back so you can control the on-screen action without hiding it behind your fingers. The screen's multi-touch too. The combination of a touchy front and back is fascinating - Sony talks about it enabling "touch, grab, trace, push and pull hand movements."

The PS Vita specs include POWERVR graphics

The Vita doesn't just have that nifty quad-core processor: it's got a quad-core PowerVR graphics processor too. We can summarise its spec in one word: mighty.

The PlayStation Vita specifications include GPS

Sony promises that the Vita's built-in GPS will mean some interesting location-aware games via the PlayStation Network, and an application called Near will let you know if your friends are, you've guessed it, near you.

The Vita also includes a three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer and three-axis electronic compass for handheld-waggling motion-controlled tomfoolery.

The PlayStation Vita does things with rabbit ears

From the Sony press release: 'by having both Wi-Fi and 3G network connectivity, together with various applications, PS Vita will enable infinite possibilities for users to "encounter," "connect," "discover," "share" and "play" with friends wherever they are.' That "sounds" quite "good", doesn't "it"?

PS Vita games

New titles scheduled to be released from SCE Worldwide Studios include Gravity Daze, Uncharted Golden Abyss, Little Deviants, Hot Shots Golf, Reality Fighter, Hustle Kings, ModNation Racers, Wipeout 2048 and Super Stardust Delta.

Other PlayStation Vita games, such as Capcom's Street Fighter X Tekken, will be available from third party game developers and publishers.

Follow Gadget INN' News | Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gadgetinn