Cameras, Printers & Scanners - Page 2

Sony teased its Airpeak last year, but now the company has just fully unveiled its first-ever drone at the all-virtual CES 2021 this week. Check out Sony's new Airpeak drone:

The new Airpeak is the smallest drone that is capable of mounting a full DSLR camera, with Sony saying that its Airpeak is "capable of dynamic filming and precise, stable flight" with the heavy DSLR camera attached. Sony isn't aiming at casual users with Airpeak, but more so professionals.

Sony President and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida explained that its new Airpeak drone infuses both AI and robotics, which "enables video creators to explore new frontiers for visual expression". Sony adds that it already has a huge array of cameras ready for Airpeak, adding that with "Sony's Alpha camera, stable dynamic remote shooting is possible".

Intel is expanding its family of RealSense products with the introduction of RealSense ID, a new product that was designed to give machines depth perception capabilities.

RealSense ID is an on-device solution that packs an active depth sensor, adds in some of that magic machine learning, and will spool it all around into Intel's push for facial recognition. Intel says that RealSense ID is capable of adapting to the physical features on users' faces, including features like facial hair and glasses -- right down to working in lighting conditions for people "with a wide range of heights or complexions".

Intel head of product management and marketing Joel Hagberg explained: "We've done extensive data collection of all ethnicities from Asia, Europe, Middle East Africa. We were very careful to ensure that we have all ethnicities covered".

Fox Sports is going for more cinematic feel in its matches it seems, with a recent match seeing operator Mike Smole using what he calls a "poor man's Steadicam" for some of the cinematic shots below:

The rig itself is nicknamed the "Megalodon" consisting of a Sony A7R IV, Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM lens, DJI Ronin-S gimbal, a field monitor and a 1080p wireless transmitter. The rig costs around $10,000 but that is miles cheaper than a broadcast camera and full Steadicam rig.

The micro-HDMI port on the Sony A7R VI is outputting 1080p, so Fox Sports color corrected the signal live in order to match the broadcast cameras. The effect is awesome, showing in-your-face NFL as an 11th camera on Sunday's Washington-Seattle battle.

Ring has unveiled its new Always Home Cam, a new autonomous drone that will lift up from its dock and fly around your house in case someone breaks in -- recording it all on-the-fly. Check it out:

The new Always Home Cam can be remotely enabled, and fly around your house when you're out and about -- and once it's done it will fly back and float down into its dock to recharge.

Ring will be selling its new Always Home Cam for $249, and will ship it next year. It all seems like it's out of an episode of Black Mirror, with Ring founder and "chief inventor" Jamie Siminoff explaining that the company spent 2 years developing the Always Home Cam saying that it was an "obvious product that was very hard to build".

Sony is gearing up for the launch of its next-gen A7S III camera, with the company confirming that it will be making the official debut of its new camera on July 28 at 10AM EDT.

What do we know about the new Sony A7S III camera? We are to expect a "complete redesign of the whole system, including the image sensor" according to Kenji Tanaka, Senior General Manager of Sony's Digital Imaging Group during an interview earlier this year with DPReview.

As for what's inside of the new A7S III camera, we're to expect a new 12-megapixel sensor that will have 15 stops of dynamic range, a super high resolution electronic viewfinder, and a new cooling system. The cooling system will see the Sony A7S III sustain long sessions of video recording, unlike the current A7S II.

Blackmagic has just unveiled its new Ursa Mini Pro 12K camera, the new crown jewel in its family of cameras and boy does it have some industry leading features.

The new Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro 12K packs a huge 80-megapixel 12,288 x 6480 (12K) sensor that is capable of shooting native 12K footage at 60FPS. Not just that, but the new Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro 12K can shoot 8K video at 110FPS, and 4K video at 220FPS.

There's an interchangeable lens mount, and dual UHS-II SD card slots (I'm sure you're going to need a lot of them in order to shoot 12K 60FPS video).

Canon is one of the biggest makers of DSLR cameras in the world, and it currently has a new app that launched called the EOS Webcam Utility Beta app. Anyone who has a Canon DSLR camera and needs a webcam for business or keeping in touch with family and friends can use the app to turn their DSLR into a very high-quality webcam. The new app is particularly welcome during the coronavirus pandemic as webcams can be hard to find.

The new EOS Webcam Utility Beta app will be appealing to owners of both new and old Canon DSLR cameras. While the newer cameras have HDMI outputs, additional software is still required to capture and stream live video. In some instances, capture cards are also needed.

The EOS Webcam Utility Beta eliminates the need for any additional hardware for compatible cameras. Only certain cameras are supported but the list is long. Supported cameras include the following:

Raspberry Pi has a new product for tinkerers to integrate into their builds called the Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera. The camera add-on uses a 12.3-megapixel Sony IMX477 sensor. The camera is designed to accept CS-mount lenses, and with the supplied adapter, it will also fit C-mount lenses.

Raspberry Pi notes that the CGL 6 mm CS-mount and the 16mm C-mount lenses are examples of third-party products that are compatible with the High Quality Camera. The lens mount is made from milled aluminum for durability, and the camera has an optional tripod mount. The sensor is 7.9 mm diagonal and can output RAW/12/10/8 and COMP8 formats.

The focus is adjustable between 12.5 mm and 22.4 mm. The High Quality Camera has an integrated IR cut filter and a 200 mm long ribbon cable to connect to the Raspberry Pi developer board. The IR filter is removable to enable IR sensitivity, but that modification is irreversible. The camera should provide users with a new way to get high-quality photos using various Raspberry Pi build possibilities.

Researchers have created a new 3D printing technique that could replace traditional 3D printers that take far to long to create desired objects.

The problem with traditional 3D printers is that they work in horizontal layers. This process is the bane of 3D printing, as it means that, depending on the size of the object, it will take time to construct. What if the printer could build the entire model all at once, instead of layer-by-layer? Researchers from Switzerland's Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne (EPFL) have done just that with their new invention.

This new printing technique uses lasers to project an image onto the photosensitive resin. To put it simply, the researchers use a rotating chamber that is filled with the resin, and an image that the laser blasts onto the chamber to quickly start the building process. The chamber spins in tandem with the laser, activating the entire model of the object all at once, building it in seconds. In the above video, it's explained that this new form of 3D printing can be used for the construction of softer materials such as organ shapes and hydro-gels.

The internet is an amazing place that I started my journey on back in the dial-up days and 14.4Kbps modems, all the way through to fiber connections and 5G -- but there's not much these days that makes me sit back and think "yeah, holy crap"... but today, is one of those days. Check out this video:

This is 'L'Arrivee d'un train en gare de La Ciotat', a 50-second silent short film that debuted in 1896 (that is NOT a typo), and when it was first showed to cinema-goers, rumor has it that many of them thought the train was going to burst through the screen as they had not (ever) seen video before. The low-quality original film can be viewed in a comparison towards the end, while it is shown in the glorious 4K resolution at 60FPS.

YouTuber Denis Shiryaev used publicly available AI-powered enhancement programs DAIN and Gigapixel AI to upscale the 1896 footage to 4K 60FPS. It looks absolutely awesome in comparison, with the 60FPS side of things really helping smooth the entire video out.

Engineers have stepped the camera game up to a new level with a brand new camera that is capable of not only taking one trillion images a second, but also capturing objects that are transparent.

Caltech's Lihong Wang developed the world's fastest camera, this device was capable of taking ten trillion images a second. While that might sound incredibly impressive, which it is, that camera did have limitations. Now, Wang has invented a new camera that has a slower speed (one trillion images per second), but can also capture images of transparent objects. This new camera combines the technology of the first camera mentioned (ten trillion images per second) with some older technology called phase-contrast microscopy.

Wang calls this combination of technology "phase-sensitive compressed ultrafast photography (pCUP)". Phase-contrast microscopy is quite old, in fact, its one-hundred years old and was created by Dutch physicist Frits Zernike to observe transparent materials. The method observes light waves that are slowing down as they are entering various materials. An example of this would be if a beam of light was shot into a plane of glass, the light would slow down upon impact of the glass and then speed back up once it has exited it.

3D printing has really taken off in recent years, but with Dubai wanting to be Dubai, they have taken it one step further than printing home use objects. They have decided to print an entire office...

Yes, you did read that correctly. Dubai is now not only home to the world's tallest building, but also the largest 3D printed building in the entire world. Above we have a top-down image of the structure, and according to Reuters, it will be used as an office.

The office was constructed by many 3D printers that combined traditional plastics with special cement. The structural integrity of the building was tested in Britain and China before printing began in Dubai. The office is one-story and has a floor space of 250 square meters. According to United Arab Emirates Minister of Cabinet Affairs, Mohamed Al Gergawi, "This is the first 3D-printed building in the world, and it's not just a building, it has fully functional offices and staff".

When I say handheld camera the most likely cameras to come to mind are probably GoPro, Dji Osmo Pocket or even the Insta360, but what about KanDao?

KanDao have announced a new 360 camera, the QooCam 8K. This camera comes in with the highest video recording resolution in its class of pocket cameras, with the capabilities of shooting in 8K at 30FPS. It can also shoot at 4K in 60 or 30FPS, and if you want to capture something in slow motion you can hit the slow motion mode and shoot in 4K at 120FPS.

The QooCam 8K can fit in your pocket but it still isn't that small, I feel as if it were in my pocket it would be uncomfortable due to its bulkiness. Regardless of that though, its a small price to pay for such a powerful portable camera. The camera sports a large 1/1.7-inch 20-megapixel sensor on both sides, a 2.4-inch OLED touchscreen, a 3,600mAh battery with USB PD 2.0 fast charging support, 64GB of onboard storage plus a microSD slot for extra. Pre-orders are currently available, and the asking price for the QooCam 8K is $589, more information can be found here.

The world's smallest camera has just famously entered the Guinness Book of Records, with the OmniVision OV6948 as small as a grain of sand.

OmniVision OV6948 measures in super-small at just 0.575 x 0.575 x 0.232mm and is good for 40,000-pixel color images using an RGB Bayer back-side-illuminating chip. This new camera is ridiculosuly small, but it's for specific use cases in surgery.

With the OmniVision OV6948 surgeions can have a camera so small it will fit into the smallest veins inside of the human body. This provides surgeons and doctors that have the OmniVision OV6948 with next-gen camera access for future surgeries.

Every wondered what it would be like to be able to carry a portable printer around and print on any surface you want? Yeah me neither, but after seeing the PrinCube the idea sounds a lot more promising than it did before.

Above we have a video released onto TheGodThings Company YouTube Channel who are also repsonsible for the PrinCube, and what they have been calling 'the worlds smallest mobile color printer'. The PrinCube fits into the palm of the user and enables color printing anywhere at anytime, and on any surface. From the above video we can see the PrinCube being used on multiple different materials and it having no issue printing out the desired design.

Users can simply connect their iPhone, Android or laptop device to the PrinCube over Wi-Fi via a QR code scan, and then upload the desired pattern and start printing. In the entirety of this article I have provided images for all of the different materials that the PrinCube can print on and how easy it is to connect your device to it. If you are after more information, head on over this link here.

Stick em up! Is exactly what you can say as either a joke to your kids or even seriously to an intruder that you spot in your house. Both of which are possible with Amazon's new Indoor and Stick Up Cam.

Amazon-owned company Ring has announced a new line of products at Amazon's annual hardware event. This year we are introduced to the new 'Cam' series of cameras, designed to apply a better level of security for users' homes. The new refresh of the 'Stick Up Cam' shoots in 1080p and has night vision as well as motion detection. It also has the ability to be solar, battery, or wired charged. Each of which have a different price point.

For people that are looking at spending less money on security cameras, Amazon and Ring offer the 'Indoor Cam. This camera is more budget friendly, but obviously can only be used indoors and is wired only. Moving onto pricing now, the Stick Up Cam Battery comes in at $99.99, the Stick Up Cam Plug-In sits at $99.99 and the Stick Up Cam Solar finishes up at $148.99. For the Indoor Cam variant it will only cost $59. For more information head on over to the Ring website here.

Intel has announced that it will be using its new 3D athlete tracking (3DAT) technology during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, with the system featuring 4 cameras that will record athletes in the 100m and other sprinting events.

During the race an algorithm will analyze the bio mechanics of the athletes' movements, and then display visual overlays during replays. The new 3DAT technology is a first-of-its-kind of technology that combines AI to take viewers to the next level with real-time insights and visual overlays of athletic events.

Intel will be hosting the 3DAT-captured data on Alibaba's cloud infrastructure (powered by Intel) and will team with the Olympic Broadcast Services (OBS). The system uses "four pan-tilt mounted, highly mobile cameras to capture the form and motion of athletes, then apply pose estimation algorithms, optimized for Intel Xeon processors, to analyze the biomechanics of athletes' movements".

Don't worry -- Google having an always-watching camera inside of your house will be totally private. I promise. I won't have to write a story years from now that some data leak has occurred, and millions of hours of footage of random people -- including families with young children, will have their videos from within their living room leaked.

Google has just unveiled its new Nest Hub Max smart display, which bakes in a front-facing camera and something Google calls Face Match. Face Match uses facial recognition technology to remember what you, and other people in your house, look like.

The company claims it will use captured faces to build personal identities, and then personalizing the data it displays such as calendars and Google Duo messages, to who it recognizes.

Microsoft might have all but abandoned the Kinect sensor for its Xbox family of consoles, but that hasn't stopped the TSA from deploying some Xbox Kinect sensors at the Newark Liberty International Airport.

Video game historian and archivist Jason Scott recently tweeted a photo when he was going through the the Newark airport, where we can see Xbox Kinect sensors being used for surveillance. Better yet, the Kinect sensors still have their Xbox logo on display for some geek/gaming recognition in a surveillance scenario.

Microsoft discontinued the Kinect back in 2017, releasing an adapter that let gamers connect the Kinect sensor into their newer Xbox One S and Xbox One X consoles but that adapter was also discontinued, in 2018. Microsoft isn't only seeing its Kinect sensors used at the Newark International Airport, but its Xbox Kinect sensors are being used in some Walmart stores according to a Reddit post from u/docbaily from 8 months ago.

A new camera has been designed by researchers using photodetectors, something that is so advanced it can see up to 28 miles away (45km) as long as it is placed high enough off the ground as it will be capturing photos across Earth's curvature).

The new camera technology has been created by researchers out of the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai that is capable of snapping a photo some 28 miles away in a smog-filled urban environment. Technology Review reports that their technique "uses single-photon detectors combined with a unique computational imaging algorithm that achieves super-high-resolution images by knitting together the sparsest of data points".

Zheng-Ping Li and his team made the low-cost, compact camera technology that blends the worlds of laser imaging technologies and AI, with Lidar-based imaging technology capable of shooting photos 10 miles away by bouncing a laser on the subject, this new technology takes it to the next level. Whereas previous camera technology was limited to 2D images at up to 10 miles away, the new camera snaps 3D images at a record-breaking 28 miles away.