NASA astronomers conscientiously collected hundreds of photos taken by the wide angle camera and the planetary camera of the Hubble telescope in 1995 and 2003. By filling the gaps with the help of a computer program, they produced an amazing video where we clearly see the cloudy planet and several of its satellites moving in front of her.
For the first time, researchers simulated the explosion of a white dwarf. White dwarf stars pack one and a half times the mass of the sun into an object the size of Earth. When they burn out, the ensuing explosion produces a type of supernova that astrophysicists believe manufactures most of the iron in the universe.
According to Digitimes listening to Taiwan industry sources, Europe would be about to introduce a customs tax of 4.9% specifically for digital cameras including the ability to record videos. A small price increase to expect in June or July this year on imported cameras (Sony, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, etc.) but it would not involve Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras that are not featuring that kind of ability.
After the First World War, the toy cars started to be democratized. This led to today’s collectors for these objects intensely linked to a past time when game consoles did not yet replace the muscular energy used by the young driver to propulse his car.
Those who are lucky to read Chasseur d’Images, French photo newspaper (on real pulp paper), European leader on this market, will remember that they just read a comparison of the sensor cleaning of Olympus E-series, Sony Alpha-100, Canon 400D, Pentax K10D and K100D.
Important conclusion: It’s better than nothing, but there’s only the Olympus able to meet the self-chosen requirements. Sony and Pentax are very disapointing.
But the idea was not isolated and the PixInfo.com web site rushed to do about the same test. With the same cameras, of course (except the K100D). But they pushed forward with:
A total 25 dust cleanings/shakings
Two air blows
One direct sensor cleaning with a swab and chemical product
Unavoidable conclusion: Olympus is nearly as efficient as chemical cleaning, and ensures that you never need to blow air on the sensor. For the others, the air blower is still better than newer technology and the swab cleaning is unavoidable. Apparently, everybody concurs: The ultrasonic technology (Olympus) is -by far- better than other sensor shaking solutions.
HD Photo, this is th new name of the image format from Microsoft that they want to replace JPEG, PNG, Raw and GIF. It was previously known -at launch time- as Windows Media Photo and it is now fully integrated into Windows Vista.
Adobe Photoshop will support this format through a plugin to donwload from a Microsoft web site. For the time being, this is only a beta version for Windows, but a Mac version is under preparation.
The format should be natively supported soon (within 12 to 18 months!) by digital camera manufacturers. It works with both Photoshop CS2 and CS3.
PS: Really! everybody is trying to stick HD to anything that remotely looks like image-related, even when there is no objective reason for it (apart from the media attention magnet it becomes).
John W. Backus, designer of the Fortran computer language just died at 82. The software developers from the oldies will remember this language that revolutionized scientific calculus and programming, even if it is now pushed back (not unused, but less used).
Some (even more exceptional) will remember his participation to language theory with the Backus-Naur Form.
The chariman and CEO of Canon Taiwan (Satoshi Yahata) told yesterday in a press conference that his company had the firm intention to take more than 50% market share for the Taiwan’s digitial SLR market.
Everything points to this being also the same for the worldwide market where Canon no longer wants to be perceived as the follower (Sony had announced a very ambitious policy a year ago at Alpha 100 launch) and they do not intend to let Nikon, Sony, or the others take over the lucrative business.
It seems that despite all my lack of bad experience in this context, many digital photographers (specifically using Digital SLR cameras) have been suffering from dirt sticking to their camera’s sensor. This produces dark blotches on clear zones of the image (like in the light blue sky of your landscapes).
Today, I found a nice little article describing how to clean a sensor. I did not do it, but it seems quite easy to understand and to apply.
It’s all over the place today: German MusicLoad revealed that 75% of its customer support calls were about complaining around the problems created by the inclusion of Digital Rigths Management (DRM) in the MP3 files they sell.
Coming from a company that is living from the sale of legal MP3s, it has a lot of weight. Up to now, that was repeated in many circles, but the music major producers where denying it or downplaying it. Now, it comes from one of the inner circles.
We told you that DRM is annoying (or more) the legal-minded user who bought a DRM-infected file, but leaves the pirates able to plainly use the files in the most usual and natural way. More than one user decided to download the file from P2P just to get rid of the annoyance.
I have at home an “English patient” DVD that repetetively refuses to start in my Home Cinema PC (I don’t have any other DVD player). Maybe I should download a copy from BitTorrent, leave the DVD box on its shelf and watch the movie.
My suggestion is not “go and pirate!”, but it’s call to arms for the marketing departments of these music producers. The customers want music, they are ready to pay for it (look at iTunes and MusicLoad, to name two), but they don’t want the hassles of those protections. Being blind to customer needs is a doomed approach to business. Start listening and P2P will become less of a problem (being free is not an overwhelming advantage: Perrier is selling bottled water and does not complain about the virtually free water on tap).
Previous Entries
After the First World War, the toy cars started to be democratized. This led to today’s collectors for these objects intensely linked to a past time when game consoles did not yet replace the muscular energy used by the young driver to propulse his car.
