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Olympus has at last filled the big gap between its top-end DSLR, the E-3, and the consumer level E-520. The new E-30 comes in at $1300 for the body only, and — despite some rather schizophrenic feature choices, looks to be a solid camera.

First, the basics. The E-30 has a refreshingly low pixel count of 12.3 megapixels, a 2x focal length multiplier, ISO from 100 to 3,200, 5 fps continuous shooting for up to 12 RAW frames (jpeg numbers are unavailable), Live View and the usual image stabilisation features.

Here come the oddities: First, there is a flip out LCD screen (2.7”), something usually seen on mid-range compact cameras. Not that we’re complaining: Olympus often does weird things, and a flip out screen on a DSLR is one of the more useful ones.

Slightly less explicable is the inclusion of a bunch of fancy shooting modes, where the camera adds special effects to your photos. Called “Art Filters”, their names will tell you everything you need to know: Pop Art, Grainy Film and Pin Hole are probably the worst offenders. Seriously. Who would buy a $1300 body capable of shooting RAW images and then let the camera do this kind of thing to the pictures?

There is also a new lens coming, the Zuiko 14-54mm II f2.8-3.5 (28-108mm in old money) which will cost $600. Not cheap, but a pretty wide maximum aperture and a switch to a circular aperture mean that your out-of-focus backgrounds will look Leica-sweet.

Press release [Photography Bay]

Filed under: Digital Cameras

The kids over at Photography Blog have finally got their hands on the Nikon Coolpix P6000 that became official back in August and have pronounced it “a mixed bag.” It looks good on paper at least, with a 13.5-megapixel sensor, 28mm wide angle lens and bult-in Ethernet (a first for a consumer grade camera). Unfortunately, the big ticket items like on-board GPS (for geo-tagging all those coolpix you’ll be taking) and NRW file format support (the new “RAW” image format developed by Microsoft and Nikon) are said to be poorly implemented and all but unusable. Even the much-ballyhooed LAN connectivity is limited to something called MyPictureTown. Hit the read link to catch the reviewer holding forth on a number of other salient points, including the camera’s DSLR-like hand-grip, optical viewfinder and external flash hotshoe.

Nikon Coolpix P6000 reviewed, not all that cool originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Technology allowing paraplegics to operate the right pedal of a piano has been developed by a team of scientists in Heidelberg Germany, trumping earlier systems which didn’t allow for half pedal or flutter variations. The device consists of a tiny remote module that’s placed inside the pianist’s right cheek, and a wireless transmitter and motor attached to the pedals of the piano. A small battery in the left cheek of the user provides up to twelve hours of power. The player grits their teeth when they want to control the pedal — the module is sensitive to different amounts of pressure, which allow the pianist greater control over footing than previous tools. From the sounds of it, this thing would work just as well on a wah pedal, right?

New technology provides greater control to paraplegic pianists originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Laptops

True power is derived from the people, yes? Asus and Intel know this well, so they’ve launched a website called WePC, where users can draw up concepts and specs for new netbook and notebook models then argue about how fantastic or utterly impractical they are. In a sense cooperative laptop design is not new — we’ve seen groups of companies work together to develop products, and Best Buy’s Blue Label is somewhat similar to this — but Asus and Intel are going full-on populist (or at least the appearance of it) with WePC. The promise is that designers will lurk on the site and implement some ideas — probably (and thankfully) not including the ones that are completely whacked.

Asus, Intel launch WePC website, ask community to design PCs for them originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/10/28cough-coughpic550.jpg” align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ width=”494″ height=”334″ style=”display:block;float:none;” /Using a technique more commonly used to image the supersonic shock cones forming around test aircraft in wind tunnels, a group of scientists say they’ve captured the dynamics of a cough on film for the first time. And yes…it looks absolutely as disgusting as you may imagine./p pSchlieren photography involves shining collimated light past a knife edge onto a target, and variations in the refractive index of moving air create “shadows” of a sort in the image captured on film, and it’s most often used to solve aeronautical air-flow problems, or weapons in action. Like this shot fired from an AK47:br img src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/10/schlieren4-ak47.jpg” width=”494″ height=”397″ style=”display:block;float:none;” /br But Doctors Gary Settles from Penn State University and Julian Tang from Singapore tweaked the technique and created an image of the turbulent air stirred up by a cough, which is apparently a very unexplored phenomenon. They plan to use the technique to explore how coughs spread diseases like SARS and the flu./p pAnd while that kind of clever science could end up having big health pay-offs, this image should just do one single thing for you and I: next time you feel a cough coming on, put your hand over your mouth won’t you? [a href="http://iht.com/articles/2008/10/28/healthscience/28cough.php"IHT/a via a href="http://www.uberreview.com/2008/10/cough-captured-on-filme.htm"Uberreview/a]/p br style=”clear: both;”/
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Rather than making an iPhone app, Flickr has tweaked its mobile site to better fit the iPhone screen’s dimensions—and to a pretty solid effect. All activities and controls you need to use are readily available, photos are automatically scaled to fit the screen and you can load pages without needing to refresh Safari. Since Adobe Flash-support is still a ways off, there’s really no way to view slideshows or videos. Still, Flickr’s got two thumbs up from here as one of the most useful non-apps you’ll see. [Cnet]

As well as tweaking its Gorillapod flexible gripping tripod design in the Gogo model, to support all sorts of gadgets, Joby’s now applied some real beefing-up techniques to its original camera-tripod verion and created the Gorillapod Focus, designed for heavier camera gear. Made from aluminum so it weighs just 1.1 pounds itself, it can nonetheless support pro-video or SLR equipment that weighs up to 11 pounds, and of course fasten it/dangle it from all sorts of places you wouldn’t normally mount your cameras. The Focus is due soon for a similarly beefed-up price of $150. [GeekyGadgets]

Filed under: Digital Cameras

We already caught of preview of Canon new EOS 5D Mark II 21-megapixel monster, but if you’re curious about Canon’s other new camera offerings, you may want to hit up Photography Blog, which has gone hands-on with each of ‘em. That includes the PowerShot G10 (pictured above), the PowerShot SX1 IS / SX10 IS, the Digital IXUS 980 IS and 870 IS and, of course, the aforementioned EOS 5D Mark II, just in case you need another look at it. Unfortunately, they don’t have much in the way of first impressions just yet, or any sample shots, but they do at least have a comparison between the G10 and the earlier G9 model for those considering an upgrade, and plenty of high res photos of each camera to let you examine every nook and cranny. Hit up the links below to dig in.

Read - Photography Blog, “Canon PowerShot G10″
Read - Photography Blog, “Canon PowerShot SX1 IS / SX10 IS”
Read - Photography Blog, “Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS and 870 IS”
Read - Photography Blog, “Canon EOS 5D Mark II”

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