Cameras

Happy Friday and happy Memorial Day weekend readers! It's the official start of the summer -- at least in our neck of the woods -- and we hope you can get out there and take some photos. We've found a handful of great bargains this morning on Canon DLSRs, plus the Nikon D600 and more. Be sure to check back regularly as we find new deals all the time. Refurbished Canon 5D Mark III - $2,800 (compare to $3,500 new) - Free Shipping Directly from Canon's Online Store, there's a great price on a Factory Refurbished Canon EOS 5D... (read more)

Announced just last month, the new Panasonic G6 and Panasonic GF6 are two compact system cameras we've been eager to get our hands on and put to the test in the IR Lab -- as well as out in the field with our reviewers. The cameras' predecessors were both enthusiastic Dave's Picks, and we have high hopes that the latest models will show marked improvements. While the Panasonic G6 and GF6 continue to go through our rigorous battery of laboratory tests, we've posted First Shots from both of them for your pixel-peeping pleasure. The... (read more)

Adorama has a couple of deals right now on the Sony NEX-3N and NEX-5R. The NEX-3N with the compact 16-50mm kit lens is available for $448 (reg. $498). Check it out here at Adorama. The Sony NEX-5R is on sale for $498 (reg. $648). Check it out here at Adorama. Copyright/DMCA Notice: The RSS entry was originally published on Photography Bay and is protected by copyright laws. It is unlawful to (a) edit, modify, alter, or create derivative works of the text, content or links supplied by Photography Bay, (b) use any robot, spider, scraper, other device or manual process to monitor or copy any content from the Photography Bay RSS feed, (c) sell, retransmit or commercially exploit the Photography Bay RSS feed, headlines or content in any manner except as expressly permitted in writing by authorized representatives of Photography Bay, (d) incorporate advertising into or the placement of advertising associated with or targeted towards the Photography Bay RSS feed or (e) use the Photography Bay RSS feed for any unlawful purpose or in violation of the rights of others. RSSID#794326 Related posts: Sony NEX-5N for $369 – Deal Alert Sony Pre-Black Friday Camera Deals Sony Alpha DSLRs Up to $300 Off – Deal Alert

Asking a stranger to snap a photograph of you is a risky proposition. If the person has no concept of basic photography concepts and techniques, the resulting photographs may be completely different than what you had hoped for — and you’re too embarrassed to ask for another photo (so you wait for that person to leave and for a new one to walk by). Samsung wants to help solve this problem: they’re working on a camera feature that helps guide photo-inept strangers in snapping the shot you want. The feature was discovered by Engadget in a recently published Samsung patent. is very simple: if you can provide the impromptu photographer with an overlay showing exactly what you want your photo to look like, all they need to do is match up the scene with the overlay and press the shutter. The first step involves snapping a photograph of the scene yourself. This image serves as the main overlay that your new photographer will need to match. Once you have that photo, you’ll need to select where you’d like your head to be in the shot: You can then choose how large you’d like your body to appear, adjusting the height and width to fit your vision: Once the scene is composed in your camera, all the volunteer needs to do is match it up with the real world — after you’ve gotten into the frame — and press the shutter: The feature also includes a “composition score” that measures how closely the photo matches the guidelines you’ve provided, and a automatic shutter release that snaps a photo as soon as the live view matches your overlay. You can read the patent for yourself here. Given that it’s only a patent, there’s no way to tell whether we’ll actually be seeing this feature in the real world anytime soon. However, given the simplicity of the idea, we’re guessing we’ll be seeing it show up as a mobile phone app before it hits standalone cameras. Image credits: group photo by Mike Schmid, Tourist Snaps by garryknight

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Writing a book, a research paper, or a script may seem intimidating when sitting in front of a blank word-processor window, trying to figure out where to start. Yarny is a cloud-based, distraction-free editor that can help writers stay organized and focused on their work.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Oracle and managed services provider ServiceKey have come to a proposed settlement of an intellectual-property lawsuit Oracle filed against the company last year.Oracle sued ServiceKey in February 2012, alleging that it and another company, Federal Business Systems Corporation, were part of a "gray market" conspiracy that unlawfully used Oracle's software code and log-in credentials with the goal of selling "support on Oracle hardware to customers with no active support contract with Oracle."ServiceKey had been paying Oracle for technical support on a small number of computers it owned, but then used its log-in credentials to provide hardware support to third parties, Oracle alleged.But now Oracle and ServiceKey are poised to settle the suit in a deal that would see ServiceKey pay no monetary damages but face a number of conditions and restrictions, according to a court filing Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

It’s always a good idea to get to know your neighbors. Case in point: photographer David Vincent Wolf recently found himself directing a mind-bending music video for the band Portugal. The Man, and all because his neighbor Rich Holtzman happens to be both the manager of the band and the father of his daughter’s preschool classmate. The opportunity came about when Wolf and Holtzman were having a conversation at a party. Wolf pitched the idea of putting together a music video made up entirely of stills taken at 1fps, and then interpolated using Twixtor until the footage played at 24fps. The original idea was to capture the lead singer lip synching the song in a video that was only right once every 24 frames, the rest would be 100% computer generated. As you can see from the video, that’s not quite what ended up turning out. After several test runs where Wolf filmed his daughter singing the alphabet song, the idea wound up being more complicated than it was worth. Fortunately, what resulted seems to be even cooler. Using his D700 and some hot lights, Wolf ended up photographing all of the band members at anywhere between 1 and 8fps as they rolled their eyes into the backs of their heads, grimaced and made other creepy facial expressions, allowing Twixtor to interpolate the frames in-between. It was the post processing that took the longest. After making every frame black-and-white in Photoshop, he had to organize the photos into folders based on band member and expression/action. The resulting frames were then brought into After Effects, where Twixtor was applied with a frame rate setting of 1fps. The resulting video has both the band and record label thrilled, so Wolf really doesn’t have much to complain about. Atlantic Records has even asked him to shoot another video in a similar style. Wolf, however, (like any good photographer) still sees room for improvement. In a recent Reddit AMA, he explains that, because of the spur-of-the-moment style of the shoot, he was focusing mainly on eye movement. He only realized later that it was the “facial distortions, grimaces, etc.” that were the most “compelling.” In the future he hopes to take full advantage of that fact. To see more from Wolf or find out more about this particular project, head over to his website or check out his Reddit AMA.

In 1951, a diesel-powered US Navy submarine called the U.S.S. Catfish passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and did a short tour of San Francisco Bay. While there, the crew decided to snap some photographs of San Francisco… through its periscope. The USS Catfish in 1956 The photographs were recently rediscovered by Bill Van Niekerken, the library director at the San Francisco Chronicle, in the newspaper’s photo morgue. Writer Peter Hartlaub then gathered the photographs together and posted them to an online gallery. The USS Catfish had been stationed in San Diego, but came up to Northern California on this occasion to pick up a couple of reservists for a training exercise. It spent roughly an hour traveling from a point five miles out from the Golden Gate Bridge to a berth at Treasure Island, snapping photos of sights along the way. The photographs show the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco skyline, and various well-known landmarks (the photograph above shows Coit Tower and the Bay Bridge). Oh — and all the photographs feature crosshairs: Alcatraz Island framed by the Golden Gate Bridge A photograph showing the Palace of Fine Arts The well-known factory sign in Ghirardelli Square The water tower on Alcatraz Island (via SFGate via Gizmodo) Image credits: Photographs by the United States Navy

This might sound a bit creepy, but Google will now let you search through your own photos on Google+ via the main Google Search bar. The feature helps you find photos you uploaded on Google+ by typing the “my photos” prefix followed by your search term in the Google Search box. What’s interesting about this feature is that thanks to a hefty dose of maching learning, Google can recognize general concepts in your photos, so you can search for specific terms such as food, flowers, or sunsets rather than relying on file or album names. For example, you can search for “my photos from San Francisco last year” or “my photos of food” and Google Search will display a set of results from your uploads. Google says this feature works only when you are signed into your Google+ enabled Google account, and the results are only visible to you, although they are displayed from the main Google Search page. The custom search terms for your photos are currently available only in English on Google.com. You can also use the semantic photo search in the photos module on Google+. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here