But perhaps the most major new feature you’re getting… is the ability to take HD movies with the camera. Interested yet?

Because of the way an SLR works, which it’s mirror assembly and shutter mechanism, typically your recording surface (in the digital era, that’s the sensor) is hidden from view until you press the shutter release button, causing all that stuff to flip up and out of the way. This has been a bit of a technical barrier for doing something like Live View or movies.

In the last year or so, however, companies like Nikon have discovered ways around that hurdle. Modern Digital SLR’s are able to preview using the LCD screen and, with the Nikon D90 release… they can now take movies. This is a feature that many photographers, pro and amateur alike, may not immediately find appealing… but it’s huge. You see, not only does the D90 shoot video, but it shoots HD video (720p) and because it can use all the Nikon lenses, your D-Movie video can look better than most expensive camcorders.

Visit the Nikon D-Movie page and watch some of their sample video.

Not too much of this is entirely useful, given that there’s little to no discussion surrounding the hacks themselves, but I thought you may be interested in it. [oobject]

If you don’t have an iPhone, these apps will also work on an iPod Touch updated to 2.x firmware (though some will require you to be located within a WiFi hotspot). If you don’t have an iPhone or an iPod Touch… you’re dead to me already. I’m kidding. But no, seriously, what are you waiting for?

Photography and the iPhone are, in many ways, a match made in heaven. Apple recognized this, and that’s why there’s a whole category in the iTunes App Store called “Photography”. Many of these apps are silly, novelty items – like Talk Bubbles, which adds cartoon-like chat bubbles over peoples heads. Dig deeper, however, and you’ll find some real treasures here.

PhotoCalc is one of them. It’s essentially a calculator and guide for photographers. You can calculate exposure reciprocity, depth-of-field and hyperfocal distance, and it has a flash exposure calculator. These are nice to have, but the real gem is that you can check what time the sun rises or sets. This app would be particularly handy if you tend to shoot with a lot of flash, and even moreso if you tend to shoot that way outdoors.

Speaking of outdoors, the iPhone comes packaged with a nice little Weather app from Apple that’s pretty handy to get a rough sense of the weather in the days ahead, but if you want a little more detail, well – it kind of lacks.

WeatherBug, which has been annoying me for years on the desktop PC, is a free and fantastic way to get that kind of detail on an iPhone, and includes a satellite map. It will also bring up weather cams if any exist for that area, so you can get an idea of the conditions outside on the fly, in case, you know… you don’t feel like going outside to check yourself. All kidding aside, it’s nice to be able to get cam views on areas that may not be local to you, and having the extra detail provided by WeatherBug can be invaluable when you’re trying to decipher which way a storm is headed.

Finally, if you’re concerned about the condition of the skies you’ll be shooting under, a great application is iCSC Clear Sky Chart, which shows you in an easy to read chart form whether you’ll have clear or dark skies overhead.

PhotoCalc, WeatherBug, and iCSC are all available in the iTunes App Store. PhotoCalc costs $2.99, but the other two are completely free.

This isn’t just annoying, but that moisture build-up on the camera could get inside the optics or the electronics and cause issues. Maybe not at first, but down the line you could hit a snag with corrosion or mold. Here’s how you prevent it.

When you go outside into sub-zero temperatures, take a plastic bag with you… one that will fit over the entire camera/lens unit. Before moving back inside, stuff your camera into the bag and seal it up.

Moisture from the air, which would normally be attracted to the cold camera body, will now accumulate on the bag instead of on the equipment. Give the whole thing twenty minutes to a half hour to warm up and then open up the bag and remove your warm, dry gear.

Much more, and you could be running into alternate problems. When you cram more pixels onto a sensor of the same size, you’re making the pixels smaller, and smaller pixels have less capacity to handle light.

Think of sensors as a field of buckets. Light is rain, and when it rains, the buckets fill up with water. Bigger buckets can handle more water before they start spilling over than smaller ones. When water spills over, you get digital noise.

The new digital SLR war is in the realm of noise, and more accurately, the cameras ability to handle noise at higher ISO sensitivities. What good is a 20 or 30 megapixel camera if the pictures you take at ISO 1000 are noisy to the point of being unusable? That’s why a large format sensor is typically a better noise handler, and why cameras will more megapixels are generally not able to contain noise as well as their lower megapixel brethern.

While there are plenty of color spaces available out there, the two that are most often available on digital SLR’s are Adobe and sRGB. While you can convert these to any other space in post processing, there’s typically not much benefit, so the question is – sRGB versus RGB (or Adobe RGB)… what’s better? What are they?

If you were a painter, the color space would be your palette. It’s the choice of color your camera has to choose from when recording an image. sRGB is a smaller palette than RGB… it has fewer colors. It may, however, have access to colors that RGB does not, depending on how the sRGB space is skewed.

JPEG is an 8-bit file, and as such, should always use sRGB because it won’t benefit from the enhanced choice of color offered by RGB. It doesn’t have the space to store that kind of information. With an 8-bit file you are restricted to 255 levels on each color channel (Red, Green, and Blue).

With a RAW file, you can convert it to 16-bit on your computer and it will then have thousands of levels of color. A definite advantage, if you have the equipment to utilize it. Many screens and printers won’t be able to reproduce those extra colors provided by Adobe RGB – and even with it’s narrower color gamut however, sRGB is still considered wide enough for most applications.

So what to choose?

Because the spectrum of color is restricted somewhat is sRGB (in some ends of the spectrum) these images will typically “pop” a little more without any editing consideration. That’s because the color is not spread out over as wide an area. Also, if you work with 8-bit JPG’s, you’ll want to choose sRGB.

If you’re working with 16-bit files, you should likely choose Adobe RGB. Your printer or screen may not utilize all the extra color provided by this color mode, but you likely don’t want to eliminate them as an option without knowing if they’ll be used or not.

Radiopopper might beg to differ – and has several new images posted that show off the design of the little unit.

This code will essentially “authenticate” the image as one that has not been tampered with, which is especially useful for legal purposes.

While other camera companies have methods which achieve the same thing, this method is surely the most advanced and the least time consuming, though when it may actually be implemented in a camera is anyone’s guess. Still, it’s worth mentioning.

The lens (video of it after the jump) is actually 19 lenses piled together and aimed at slightly different angles. The result is an image that lets you control the perspective (a little bit) and the depth of field in post processing.

It’s a marvellous looking device that could have a lot of potential. Here’s a video of the lens in action. Do you think you could use it?

The new A300 and A350 cameras will fall between the existing A700 and the A200, and offer some new features.

The A300 is 10.2mp and the A350 is 14.2. The two new cameras will also incorporate Live View technology, like the latest offerings from both Canon and Nikon.

For more information on the two new Sony monsters – visit their website.

The first is a 55mm f/1.4, the second is a 60-250mm f/4, and the third lens is a 17-70mm f/4. All three lenses feature the SDM ultrasonic focusing. The 55mm sounds particularly nice, since it’s a very fast lens and will give you a great amount of control over your depth-of-field.

For more information on Pentax lenses, see the Pentax site.

The first is the AF-S Micro-NIKKOR 60mm f/2.8G ED – a macro lens that’s been around for a while, but updated with an AF-S motor like it’s big brother, the 105mm AF-S lens.

The second is a PC-E NIKKOR 24mm f/3.5D ED – a perspective control lens, which comes in the D variety – so will remain backwards  compatible with film cameras that require the aperture dial.

The final lens is a general purpose AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR – a sort of replacement for the 18-70mm DX lens which offers a slightly wider and slightly longer zoom.

The D60 will contain a 10.2 megapixel DX format sensor, with a 3fps framerate, a 2.5″ LCD screen, and in-camera editing. The only major difference is, apparently, the addition of a self-cleaning sensor with something called “airflow” to help reduce dust. We’re not yet sure exactly what this is, and whether the self-cleaning sensor differs from the D300 because of it, but we’ll let you know.

This means that in the last two months, the D300, D3 and D60 have revamped almost the entire lineup of Nikon DSLR’s. The only one left now is the D80 – so my guess is that we should expect to see an update to that camera before the fall.

The problem is that while this device is impressive, it’s my opinion that the Lightsphere is a little overpriced. Gary charges $50 for the actual lightsphere, and another $20 for the amber dome (which helps under tungsten lighting). I’m all for personal business ventures, especially in the photography world, but when I found the Lambency version of the Lightsphere on eBay for 1/4 of the price – I couldn’t justify spending that kind of money on Gary’s original version… especially after hearing stories like this and this. So I bought the eBay Sphere.

While I applaud Mr. Fong for his ingenious device, and would be willing to throw some money his way for it, I’m a little confused as to why this replica diffuser can be manufactured and sold at such low costs in comparison to his “authentic” Lightsphere. If you feel the same, and want to save yourself some money, check out the Lambency diffusers.