Clearly targeted at consumers who are living a more extreme lifestyle than I do, the new Casio EX-G1 features a shock-resistant shell allowing it to survive drops from as high as 7 feet, or being submerged up to 10 feet underwater for as long as an hour. The waterproof seal also keeps out dust, and the camera is rated to survive temperatures as cold as -10 °C, which isn’t actually that cold, though it is below freezing.

As for tech specs, the EX-G1 features a 12.1MP sensor that’s also able to capture 30fps AVI videos at 848×480, 3X optical zoom using an internal mechanism so the lens doesn’t actually extend from the body, and all the other features you’d expect to find on a reasonably equipped P&S digital camera these days. The choice to use microSDHC and microSD memory cards is a bit odd, though I imagine it helps keep the camera compact.

The Casio EX-G1 should be hitting shelves sometime in December of this year in black or red for $299.99.

[ PR - Casio Releases World's Slimmest Shock-Resistant Digital Camera ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

By Evan Ackerman

I wasn’t alive back in the day when someone with no specific tools or knowledge could open something up to fix it or just figure out how it worked. Nowadays, electronics come plastered with dire warnings about how opening the case will void your warranty, destroy the device, and kill you and your pets. This is really too bad, because one of the ways that people learn, or specifically that kids learn, is by experimentation. With this in mind, the Computer Vision Lab at Columbia University has developed the BigShot camera, which comes in a kit designed for kids to assemble while learning about cameras specifically and electronics in general:

The camera can be powered with a battery or with a dynamo, where 6 cranks = 1 picture, a feature I’d love to have in any or all of the cameras I use. It’s also got lenses on a rotating wheel, including a wide angle lens and a prism for taking stereo pictures. It goes beyond just a buildable camera kit, though… The overall mission of the BigShot project aims to keep the camera cheap enough that they’ll be available to kids worldwide, and to create an online social environment of sorts to share photos and teach the principles of photography.

The viability of this whole thing probably depends on what the final price of the BigShot ends up being. It’s currently still in a final testing phase, and my guess is that it’ll end up in about the same place as the OLPC… Great idea, but about twice as expensive as it ideally should be.

[ BigShot ] VIA [ Make ]

With a resolution of just 640×480 I don’t think Vivitar’s new DVR 510 has what it takes to dethrone the almighty Flip, but it does have a few unique features that will make it stand out in an already crowded market. It’s waterproof up to a depth of 5 meters thanks to what appears to be a sealed housing that they’re incorrectly using in that product shot (isn’t the DVR 510 inserted backwards?) and it’s got basic night vision too making it actually usable in the dark.

The 2GB of built-in storage isn’t much, though more than enough when you’re only capturing VGA resolution footage, but that’s expandable thanks to an SD card slot. It’s also got a 1.8-inch LCD screen, TV-out, a sliding USB connector and is available now for just $49.99.

[ Vivitar DVR 510 ] VIA [ Chip Chick ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Geotagging is nothing new, and the required hardware is finding itself into more and more cameras. After all, who wouldn’t like to know exactly where their pictures were taken? Well if your camera doesn’t have a built-in GPS device, it’s rather difficult to acquire the exact location of your shot. Thankfully devices such as the JOBO photoGPS exist.

The JOBO photoGPS sits atop your DSLR in the hot-shoe, and captures raw GPS data whenever you snap a photo. Later, when you download your pictures to a computer, you can also download the GPS data. The included software will then use the information it previously gathered and geotag your pictures. It can even add in information such as city, street POIs and more. $159 is a bit pricey, but also looks to be one of the easier geotagging solutions for existing cameras.

[ JOBO ] VIA [ GizMag ]

By David Ponce

You see what all the cool kids are doing these days? Getting drunk and taking regrettable pictures of themselves is what. And Samsung just made the task a little easier with the release of the TL225 and TL220, both of which feature a smaller LCD in front for those times you got no one but yourself to hold the cameras. That’s really the only innovative feature here, although the other specs and features are pretty decent too.

For instance, to turn the camera on you simply touch the LCD at the back, and to delete pictures you swipe an X over them during playback (you have to confirm, so no accidents). There a 3.5 inch LCD for the TL225, and 3.0 for the TL 220. Along with that, you’re looking at a 12.2-megapixel resolution, HDMI output and 4.6x optical zoom, though the lower priced TL 220 loses the HDMI output.

Prices are $350 for TL225 and $250 for TL220.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Dvice ]

Ouch! So Akihabara News had a chance to try out Fujifilm’s new 3D capable digital camera, and saying they walked away disappointed is a bit of an understatement. Now the actual design of the camera and build quality were OK, but after that things just go downhill. The terrible UI apparently hearkens back to the good old days of 1999, and just changing something like the ISO settings required a trip through the user manual.

But the worst part was actually using the camera in 3D mode, which according to them will require a bottle of aspirin in your camera bag since the 3D viewfinder induces a terrible migraine headache after just a few minutes use. And viewing your 3D photos? Well the camera captures 3D images in a .MPO file which as far as they know is only supported by Fujifilm’s 3D digital photo frame. It does however capture JPEGs at the same time allowing you to view them on your PC, but image quality is another aspect where the camera is severely lacking. So the moral of this story? Avoid this camera at all costs.

[ Akihabara News - Fujifilm W1 3D Camera… Just the worst ever Camera made on Earth, the Review ]

While the term ‘Exmor R’ is nothing more than a new PR catchphrase for Sony to toss around, the technology behind the sensors in their new Cybershot DSC-TX1 and DSC-WX1 is kind of interesting. Traditionally, compact P&S digital cameras are not known for their fantastic low-light performance. The smaller optics means there’s less light hitting the larger and larger sensors, which leads to noisy photos. I mean there’s a reason professional photographers will drop thousands of dollars on a gigantic ‘fast’ lens. But the ‘Exmor R’ technology supposedly results in a sensor with twice the light sensitivity of a traditional sensor since the various elements like wires and circuitry which usually hinder the photo-diodes from gathering light have been effectively moved out of the way.

And further improving the camera’s low-light performance are the hand-held twilight and anti-motion blur multishot modes which basically use exposure bracketing and in-camera HDRI techniques to automatically combine multiple shots with varying exposures to produce a final result with more detail and less noise. As for other specs, both cameras feature a 10.2 mega-pixel sensor and while the thinner TX-1 includes a 3-inch touch screen LCD on the back, the larger WX-1 benefits from a wider angle Sony G lens instead. $380 for the DSC-TX1 and $350 for the DSC-WX1 and both should be available come October.

[ PR - SONY DEBUTS WORLD’S FIRST DIGITAL STILL CAMERAS WITH BACK-ILLUMINATED “EXMOR R” CMOS SENSOR TECHNOLOGY ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By David Ponce

Most photographers will tell you: regular camera flashes are horrible. They tend to reflect off people’s skin amd create unwanted white spots, they give you red eyes in some pictures and they also blind you. NYU researchers have developed a way around this by creating a flash that uses light that is outside the visible spectrum, thus invisible to us.

It works like this: first the camera takes a picture with IR and UV light which produces a monochrome image. In quick succession a second image is taken without any flash, using only ambient lighting. Typically this will result in a dim, noisy, grainy image. The magic happens when the software combines both images using the first monochrome picture as a reference point to de-noise the image with natural colors. Once combined, the result is nearly indistinguishable from a long-exposure shot.

F: Monochrome Image, A: Ambient Light Image (noisy) R: Combined Image L: Long-exposure Shot (reference)

All this can be achieved using standard camera equipment and appropriate filters. Current drawbacks are that since two pictures must be taken, rapidly moving scenes can’t be captured. However, their novel approach could be used in single-picture mode.

[If only camera manufacturers would modify] the Bayer pattern on the sensor to include UV-only and IR-only pixels, we would be able to implement the dark flash concept using a single image. Additionally, our large flash unit could be replaced with compact UV and IR LEDs giving a more controllable pulse duration and a more precise spectral emission, perhaps further reducing the visibility of the flash. This would also permit the dark flash concept to be implemented in small platforms such as cell-phones, where a flash is often needed due to poor lowlight performance on account of the small sensor size.

Their work will be presented at SIGGRAPH 2009, this coming August.

[ PFD of their work (warning, 72MB) ] AND [ Project Homepage ] VIA [ Xataka ]

When you want to see what’s going on in your neighbor’s apartment you can simply get yourself a nice telescope or a high-quality pair of binoculars. But what if you want to record those ‘moments’ without having to spend thousands of dollars on a high-end video-capable DSLR with a nice telephoto lens, you can go with Chinavasion’s far more affordable Avatar digital camera instead. (~$128)

The most obvious feature is its 21x zoom telephoto lens which is hopefully removable, otherwise you’re going to have a heck of a time finding a camera case for it. And besides capturing stunning 2MP photos, the Avatar can also capture 640×480 videos at a PAL-friendly framerate of 25fps. Media can be stored on the 1GB of internal storage, but a microSD slot is also included making the thing actually usable. And like pretty much every single device with an LCD display that Chinavasion sells, the Avatar can be used as a media player supporting everything from Divx movies to MP3s to even .TXT eBooks.

[ Avatar Digital Binocular And Spy Camera ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

By Evan Ackerman

I’ve got portable chargers for my cell phone, portable chargers for my iPod, portable chargers for my little video recorder, portable chargers for my AA batteries… The only thing I don’t have a portable charger for (besides my laptop) is my DSLR, because it takes those annoyingly square 7.4 volt battery packs that require their own special charger. Energizer is about to solve this problem with a little clip that has teeth to attach to the contacts of battery packs of any size. The other end can be plugged into a USB port, and if I may say, props to Energizer for not making it some kind of proprietary plug.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that you can’t charge a 7.4 volt DSLR battery out of a 5 volt USB port, which means that you’ll have to instead use one of Energizer’s new line of XPAL universal power packs (out next month) that come with 8.4 volt outputs. Nothing wrong with that, though… The battery packs looks pretty useful, and some of them even come with solar chargers. We should be seeing a review unit sometime in the near future, and we’ll keep you updated.

[ Energizer XPAL Power ] VIA [ Gearlog ]