After holding the D3 and D300 for several minutes, the Digital Rebel XTi I’m using (blasphemy at a Nikon event, I know) feels like a fucking toy—when I fired the D3 on burst mode, I felt like Arnold firing the minigun in T2 between the rapid clacking and the weight. I’ve never held a more solid-feeling camera, though. (The D300 isn’t exactly a featherweight either, but you won’t need to swallow some spinach beforehand.) And the LCD screens: gorgeous. You could watch movies on them. Jump to keep reading and see the D300 from all angles.
Ladies, when you go away on vacation, are your menfolk always saying, “Coo-er, missus, you’ve must have packed everything but the kitchen sink in here,” when they heft your suitcase into the car? Well, now you can prove them right, with this take-away basin. It’s obviously just a concept right now, but what a wonderful idea. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to say occasionally, “honey, you are so right,” just for a change?
The take-away sink is designed by Jessica Nebel, who reckons it will encourage water saving. [Yanko]
I can’t tell you much about this wallpaper, except for that I think it rules the school. It’s basically a two-dimensional light source that switches on and off. Please, someone put Jonas Samson’s idea into practice, because I’d have no hesitation in putting this up in my bedroom. Just one question, though: does it come in a roll? [Design Scoops]
The office can be a dangerous place, full of danger and boredom. Thankfully ThinkGeek have come to the rescue with some lightweight and affordable chain mail. At only 20 pounds, this aluminum armour is light enough to wear all day, and comes in both large and medium sizes. It should fend off light blows and any attention from the opposite sex.
Nikon also announced the D300 today, as was heavily rumored. Its latest prosumer DSLR is loaded with a 12.3 megapixel DX format CMOS sensor (the one Sony just announced), 6fps burst—it goes up to 8 with the optional battery pack, HDMI support with 1080i playback, 200-3200 ISO range, live view and a 3-inch viewfinder (the same as the D3′s). It too is shipping in November, with a body-only price of $1799. This is a lot of camera for less than half of what the D3 costs.
The rumors were true: The newest Nikon flagship DSLR is the D3. For starters, it’s the DSLR with the “fastest start up time, shortest viewfinder blackout time, and shortest shutter lag” of any. And it sports a 12.1-megapixel FX format (full frame) CMOS sensor, a 3-inch, 920,000-pixel VGA viewfinder with a 170-degree viewing angle, live view, a 51-point autofocus system with 15 cross-type AF points, and a 200-6400 ISO range. And dropped into Hi 2 Mode can hit a crazy ISO equivalent of 25,600. (Maybe with grain the size of asteroids, but likely NOT.)
How many people have said that these high-zoom cameras should have wider-angle starting points? Olympus’ SP-560 Ultra Zoom ($450) does just that, with an 18x optical zoom lens ranging 27 to 486 mm (that’s 35 mm equivalent). And that’s not all this chunky funky camera has going for it.
Olympus is talking tough about its latest waterproof and freeze-proof Stylus 790SW camera, the successor to that Stylus 770SW we saw frozen in a block of ice. Carrying on that everything-proof tradition, this one still can brave freezing, dust, shock and water, but adds intriguing new tech under the hood at the same time.
Olympus’ new FE cameras—FE-280 ($200), FE-290 ($250) and FE-300 ($300)—are built to be “fun” and “easy,” with a smile-recognition program, a way to fix bad images on the fly, and other cool tricks, plus a 12-megapixel version for $300.
The FE-280 and FE-300 are essentially the same camera with 2.5″ LCDs and 3x optical zoom lenses. The difference is, one registers 8 megapixels while the other carries a whopping 12 (and for $300!). They both have face detection, digital image stabilization, and something called “perfect shot preview,” which simultaneously previews different exposures, white balances and metering so you can choose (and learn). They also have the Perfect Fix, which tweaks blurred, red-eye infested or poorly lit images after you take them.
DivX is launching a hardware platform for a media streaming box with openness in mind. The set top box I was showed (a plain looking reference design) had HDMI, component, composite outputs and a b/g WiFi and Ethernet connections for connecting to your PC. The gorgeous UI I saw had PS3-like 3d thumbnails of videos and photos, and music can play in the background as you browse your albums. There’s even a front page weather widget. And the whole thing is built on an open API so it should be fairly easy to add metadata or build plugins in a pretty nice UI.
Here’s the interesting thing that keeps costs down — decoding of, say a HD DivX video stream is done on your PC and the decompressed (or partially decompressed) video is sent to the box. That keeps the cost of the box down, and although DivX wouldn’t say how much the boxes would be when the launched in a couple of months, I’d guess that they’d be below $200.
Minimum requirements for the box are a P4 1.6Ghz CPU, with half a gig of RAM. More as we play with this thing.
