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Posts Tagged ‘main’

Vivo’s latest concept phone comes with ‘gimbal-like’ main camera stabilization

29 Feb

Chinese smartphone maker Vivo uses its APEX line of concept phones to showcase the latest mobile technologies and has just presented its latest version, the 5G-enabled APEX 2020 which puts a lot of focus on the cameras and display.

The first highlight is a 16MP periscopic tele camera on the back which, according to Vivo, offers an optical zoom range of 5x to 7.5x, more than the currently longest smartphone teles.

It’s not quite clear at this point how the ‘optical’ zoom is achieved but it’s fair to assume computational imaging methods will be used to achieve the upper end of the reach. In any case, performance should at least be on at least a similar level as the Huawei P30 Pro or Oppo Reno 10x Zoom which both offer a 5x optical tele lens.

Despite the impressive zoom reach the camera module is only 6.2mm thick, allowing for a slim design and only minimal camera hump.

The main main camera comes with a 48MP Quad-Bayer sensor and a stabilization system that goes way beyond what we’re seeing on current phones. The entire camera appears to be hinged in a gimbal-like structure that is capable of counteracting much more severe device motion than conventional systems. Vivo claims the new system extends the stabilization angle by 200 percent and says the design was inspired by the eyeballs of a chameleon, which freely rotates in its socket, allowing the animal to observe its prey.

The 16MP camera at the front works in similar was as we’ve already seen from Oppo and Xiaomi, and is hidden under the display which turns transparent as soon as the shutter is triggered, allowing incoming light to hit the lens. The area right above the camera also features six times larger display pixels to allow for better light transmittance. Like on the main camera, 4-in-1 pixel-binning is used to decrease image noise and increase dynamic range.

The camera also has the ability to remove passers-by in the background in real time and a ‘Voice Tracking Auto-Focus’. The latter uses audio data from the microphones and visual data from the camera to ‘focus’ audio recording on a scene’s main subject, minimizing background sounds, similar to Samsung’s ‘Zoom-in Mic’.

Other features include a ‘120-degree FullView Edgeless Display’ which measures 6.45 inches and offers a 2,330 x 1,080 resolution in its AMOLED panel which wraps around both edges at 120 degrees. This means bezels are invisible when the device is viewed form the front. There’s also Vivo’s third-generation Screen SoundCasting technology, which casts sound through the screen, eliminating the need for speaker holes and allowing for better environmental protection.

As it is appropriate for a showscase device such as the APEX, the 2020 version is powered by Qualcomm’s top-tier chipset Snapdragon 865 and runs the latest Android version 10.

We won’t find out how the APEX 2020 performs given it is unlikely to ever hit the market in its current form, but we hope some of the features of the concept phone, especially the camera elements, will make it to one of Vivo’s production devices in the near future.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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‘It should cost…’ The three main ways you’re wrong about camera prices

22 Jan

Every time a camera is launched, our comment section is flooded with comments saying ‘it’s too expensive,’ irrespective of what the price is set at. Are all the camera makers utterly out-of-touch with reality, or is there something else going on?

I’m going to explain the three main misunderstandings that I see prompting these comments. I’m not advocating for higher prices, nor trying to suggest that manufacturers never get it wrong, but just trying to highlight why cameras are priced the way they are.

A new model is always going to cost more than the outgoing one

Prices decline with time. No matter what your pricing strategy, an older product (particularly in a fairly fast-moving marking like electronics) cannot demand as high a price at the end of their lifecycle as they can at the beginning.

This may sound obvious, but the consequence is that a new model will always look expensive compared with the model it replaces.

The D780 was launched at the same price as the D750, so is cheaper in real terms. But heavy discounting of the D750 makes the new camera look very pricey.

This is the error we most often see: ‘How can they charge $ 2200, when I can buy the old model for $ 1400?’

To which the response is: ‘How can they not?’ If you offer your new model at the price of the outgoing one, then what does its price look like, at end-of-life? Do you then have to match that price with the next generation model? That approach would end up with you giving cameras away within a couple of product generations, which isn’t exactly a winning strategy in an already contracting industry.

Prices decline with time, so new cameras tend to be released at around the same cost that the old one was launched at. The alternative (launching to match the current market prices) is a pell-mell race to the bottom.

So cameras tend to be released at around the same prices that the preceding model was launched at. After all, camera makers are companies: they exist to make as much profit as they can. Their job is to maximize the amount of money they generate from each product.

The main exception to matching the previous model’s launch price is if the new model has been stripped-down to hit a lower price point or re-positioned to attract a different audience.

Case study: The stripped-down mass-market special

Sony’s a6000 was launched for $ 799 with a kit zoom: around $ 200 lower than the existing NEX-6 model. It gained a couple of additional features and updates but also saw a drop in viewfinder resolution and had less substantial feeling construction: distinct hints that it wasn’t a like-for-like replacement model.

Sony’s insistence on assigning similar names to all its models doesn’t help, but the pricing alone makes it easier to recognize the a6300 as more of an NEX-6 replacement than an a6000 update. Sure enough, both the a6000 and a6300 continued alongside one another for the next few years: one targeting the ‘price conscious’ consumer, the other offering better build, an NEX-6 level viewfinder and 4K video, for people who were comfortable to spend a bit more.

Manufacturers will occasional try to re-position a particular model, making it cheaper or more expensive, perhaps trying to make room for a new model.

Case study: two models in the place of one

Panasonic’s GX8 had a significantly higher spec and was launched for $ 200 more than the preceding GX7. This created the space for a less expensive GX85 to sit underneath. Looking at the launch prices suggests that Panasonic thought there were two different types of customer buying the GX7: some that wanted a small, mid-priced model and some who wanted something more ambitious, and were willing to pay for it.

However, the next model refresh saw the GX9 launched back at the same price as the GX7 (and called the GX7 III in some markets). ‘This isn’t a GX8 replacement at all’ complained some would-be buyers. The pricing indicated that they were probably partly right.

The lesson in all of this is that you can better interpret a manufacturer’s intentions by comparing the price of a new model to the launch price of the outgoing model, not its depressed end-of-life price.

Case study: getting the price wrong

Manufacturers don’t always get their pricing right, of course. Nikon entered the prime-lens APS-C compact market in 2013 with the Coolpix A, an attractive camera with a 28mm equivalent F2.8 lens. Perhaps emboldened by Fujifilm’s success selling its X100 models for $ 1299, Nikon priced its camera at $ 1099.

Around a month later, Ricoh launched an APS-C version of its much-loved GR, also with a 28mm equiv F2.8 lens, for $ 799. The Coolpix A was a pretty good camera (though we preferred the GR), but without the retro appeal, hybrid viewfinder and burgeoning reputation of the Fujifilm, or the establish fan-base of the GR, that $ 1099 price tag looked awkward.

Without access to sales data, we can’t know for certain how many units were sold at full price but by the second half of 2014, the price had collapsed to just $ 580. A lot of people got a bargain at that discounted price, but it’s noticeable that Nikon hasn’t shown any further interest in that niche.

Of course, sometimes manufacturers will keep old models on the market at a newly lowered price (the Sony a7 II and a7R II, for instance). This makes life a little more complex but should really just focus your attention on what really matters: ‘does the new model offer enough compelling improvements to overlook the older model?’

Your country probably isn’t being ripped-off, even if the US launch price seems cheaper

The RX100 VI was launched for $ 1298 in the US and the equivalent of $ 1450 in Europe. But that’s not the whole story.

The other complaint we regularly see is that the launch price in country ‘X’ is higher than a direct conversion of the US dollar price. There are two main reasons for this.

The first is that US prices tend to be quoted without sales tax, whereas most other countries tend to include sales tax/VAT/GST in consumer-facing communications. As a results, US prices tend to look less expensive simply because the price quoted isn’t the price most people are legally expected to pay. Your local tax level may be more expensive, but that’s more likely to do with your country’s history, style of government and degree of healthcare provision and social support: none of which can be blamed on camera makers.

The second factor is that price competition varies greatly between countries. US prices tend to stay at or near the Manufacturer’s Recommended Sales Price until the manufacturer chooses to adjust it. Countries with more competition between retailers tend to see prices quickly fall away from the initial asking price: early adopters end up paying full price, but anyone buying a few months (or sometimes weeks) later, will get a much better deal.

Case study: why are cameras more expensive in Europe?

Sony’s RX100 VI had an initial MSRP of $ 1298 in the US and €1299 in Europe. This looks bad: €1299 was worth $ 1450 in July 2019. Outrageous, right?

But, if I went to buy one today, I’d end up paying $ 1429 after tax in the US ($ 1298 plus my 10.1% local sales tax rate). If I lived in Germany and bought the same model from a large internet retailer, I’d have to pay €1180, including VAT, which is equivalent to $ 1315.

So, although the launch price in your country may look outrageous, compared with the US price, that doesn’t mean you’ll get ripped-off. The last two times I’ve looked at buying cameras in the US and UK, I found the year-old model I was shopping for to be less expensive in the UK, even with higher local taxes. I’ll concede that this was before the pound plummeted following the Brexit vote: but again, that’s not really the fault of camera makers.

Some things are supposed to look expensive

Marketers have all manner of theories about how to price their goods, and different strategies for maximizing the amount of profit they can make from a specific product. Very few of these have much to do with the costs involved in developing, manufacturing, distributing and supporting that product. Most strategies set the price high enough to make this money back, but there are exceptions even to that.

So there’s little point looking at a product and saying ‘they’ve removed ‘x,’ so it should be cheaper,’ or expecting the price to relate in any way to your estimation of the costs involved.

For instance, a premium pricing strategy holds that it’s sometimes beneficial to price your goods so highly that you end up selling fewer than you could, but at greater profit: the high price and resulting scarcity in itself contributes to the perceived value of the product.

A premium pricing strategy holds that the high price in itself contributes to the perceived value of the product

‘That’s silly,’ you might think: ‘that wouldn’t work on me.’ But it does. Like it or not, you respond to pricing. Read through the comment section of the launch of any Leica product: you’ll see an audience dramatically polarized between ‘it’s not worth that’ and ‘if you could afford it, you’d understand.’ The same goes for luxury items, whether they be Range Rovers or Rolex watches: if they weren’t expensive, they wouldn’t have the same cachet.

This discussion is almost entirely divorced from whether the products themselves are any good (to the degree that any assessment can be entirely rational and dispassionate), it’s primarily a reflection of differing personal responses to the price.

Perceived value is entirely personal and both responses are equally right and wrong: a premium product isn’t worth its exaggerated price to the person who doesn’t care about prestige, scarcity, brand history and reputation or the degree to which something is hand-built, but it is worth it for someone to whom those factors contribute to the item feeling special, or more meaningful.

Is it worth it?

Which ultimately brings us to the question that’s really at stake: not ‘is it too expensive?’ but ‘does it appear to represent good value to me?

Again, manufacturers are for-profit companies. They aren’t aiming to offer the product you want at a price you want to pay: they’re trying to price it at the maximum amount you’re willing to pay.

In other words: it’s always going to be a bit more expensive than you’d like.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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The Motorola One Hyper tosses a 64MP main cam, 32MP selfie cam inside a $400 phone

06 Dec

Smartphone manufacturer Motorola has launched a new model that features a 64MP rear camera and a pop-up selfie camera with a 32MP sensor. The Motorola One Hyper comes with 128GB of internal storage, can accept microSD cards of up to 1TB to boost storage and has 4GB of RAM.

The device will run Android 10 and uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 platform with its 2GHz Kryo 460 octa-core CPU, and is powered by a 4000mAh battery that Motorola claims provides up to 38 hours of use. The phone’s screen measures 6.5in, all of which can be used to display images as the selfie camera pops up out of the top of the phone instead of shooting through the main screen as happens in smartphones with ‘teardrop’ or ‘punch hole’ selfie cameras. The 19:9-screen has a resolution of 1080×2340 pixels, which equates to 395 pixels per inch.

The main camera offers users a choice of the 64MP sensor or a secondary 16MP sensor, both of which use a F1.9 aperture. A further 8MP rear-facing camera is fitted with a wide angle lens that has an angle of view of 118° — about 13mm on a full frame camera — and an aperture of F2.2.

The rear camera can shoot RAW files as well as JPEGs, and offers auto modes that shoot when a smile or a wave is detected and will also suggest modes according to what its AI thinks the subject is. Video can be recorded in 4K at 30p and FHD at up to 60p, while slow-motion modes are also available.

The Motorola One Hyper has both a USB-C port and a 3.5mm audio port, features NFC and Bluetooth 5.0, and can take on a full day’s charge in ten minutes using the optional 45W charger. It costs $ 399 in the US and will cost £269.99 in the UK later this month.
For more information see the Motorola website.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Report: Samsung Galaxy S11 to come with 5x telescopic zoom and 108MP main camera

26 Sep

Huawei with the P30 Pro and OPPO with the Reno are still the only manufacturers to offer folded-tele-optics in their respective smartphone camera systems. According to South Korean technology publication The Elec they might soon be joined by Samsung, though.

The company started mass production of a 5x optical zoom camera module back in May. In in its report, The Elec claims the new tele camera will debut in the next generation Galaxy S11 device and will be accompanied by a 108MP main camera.

Like other recent high-resolution smartphone sensors, the 108MP juggernaut will likely not be designed to output full resolution images but instead deliver image data that can be subjected to all sorts of computational imaging trickery, resulting in better detail, lower noise, a wider dynamic range and better zoom performance among others.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics has released a video which shows the new lens design and how it works in detail. The module is only 5mm tall which means it fits even in thin smartphone bodies without protruding too much. Light is diverted onto the sensor via a prism. The latter is tilting to provide image stabilization which makes a lot of sense for the lens long maximum focal length.

Samsung launched the Note 10 flagship series with a more conventional camera not too long ago but we should be able to see the new design in the S11 models which are expected to launch sometime next spring.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Lush Life: 12 Verdant Architecture Projects Making Plants a Main Priority

26 Sep

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Not all architecture incorporating lots of living greenery is doomed to remain an unrealistic rendering, depicting buildings that can’t structurally support the weight of all the soil and water needed to keep full-sized trees alive. Architect Thomas Heatherwick built ultra-strong concrete pillars into his 1000 Trees design, for example. Other buildings take a subtler approach, choosing ivy, potted plants or existing trees rooted in the ground. All of these projects attempt to meld urban architecture with lush gardens in the hopes of cleansing the air, storing CO2 to mitigate climate change and providing enhanced access to green spaces in cities.

Valley: Green-Terraced Towers by MVRDV in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Construction began in August 2017 on MVRDV’s ambitious ‘Valley,’ a mixed-use complex of green-terraced towers in Amsterdam’s central business district. ‘Valley’ is notable not only for its unusual offset stacking of volumes , creating an irregular shape, but also for all the greenery it supports. The towers include 196 apartments, 7 stories of offices, shops, restaurants, cultural facilities and a three-story parking lot.

House for Trees by VTN Architects in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

VTN Architects approached ‘House for Trees’ as a way to alleviate the lack of access to green spaces as well as poor air quality found in big cities like Ho Chi Minh. This residential project incorporates trees into its design, envisioned by the firm as a “small park in a dense neighborhood.” The trees are set into deep planter boxes disguised among the concrete volumes of the house, with cut-outs allowing their crowns to rise as high as they like.

Nautilus Eco Resort by Vincent Callebaut in the Philippines

The Nautilus Eco Resort by Vincent Callebaut is designed as a ‘zero emissions, zero waste, zero poverty’ development for the Philippines in response to environmental and social problems in the country, like overfishing, pollution and mass tourism. The project would be built from reused or recycled materials, self-sufficient in producing its own energy and food, and engage volunteer ecotourists in cleaning up plastic waste that washes up onto the area’s beaches. It consists of a series of shell-shaped hotels and apartment towers spiraling around a central island housing a nautical center and scientific research laboratories. The plant walls cool the buildings as they grow food.

Amata + Triptyque Timber Building in São Paulo, Brazil

Constructed entirely from Brazilian timber, this building is a collaboration between architecture studio Triptyque and forest management company Amata. The building aims to be a giant carbon sink, contributing towards the fight against climate change. Each square meter of wood is capable of absorbing a metric ton of carbon dioxide from the environment. The 13-story building contains co-working, co-living and dining spaces, the edges of its terraces dripping with living plants.

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Lush Life 12 Verdant Architecture Projects Making Plants A Main Priority

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[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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In Photos: Cincinnati’s impressive ‘Old Main’ public library

13 Jul

Cincinnati, Ohio’s current downtown public library is grand in its own right as one of the busiest branches in the country. But its predecessor, demolished in 1955, was nothing short of stunning. Built in 1874, the ‘Old Main’ library was originally intended to be an opera house, with a towering atrium that instead became home to five tiers of stacked bookshelves. These photos capture the grandeur of the library and its popularity in its own time. See gallery

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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6 Main Studio Lighting Methods to Master for Your Portraits

16 May

Understanding light is a concept that makes a good photographer, and an even greater skill to master is knowing how to recreate different light effects in the studio . Using lighting accessories like off-camera flashes or strobes, and studying how to trigger them from a different position than on top of the camera, will give an overall different aesthetic to Continue Reading

The post 6 Main Studio Lighting Methods to Master for Your Portraits appeared first on Photodoto.


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[MODIFIED] Digital Urban and Cityscape Photography – Look Outside the Main Business / Financial District

01 Aug

Step outside of a city’s main district for some of the best skyline digital photos opportunities.

Instead of taking the usual cityscape photos while inside the main Financial or Business Districts, you may want to scout out areas outside of the main ‘hustle and bustle’ to take wide-angle skyline photos that showcase more of a city’s architecture.

In Chicago, instead of just taking Loop pictures from the Chicago River and other well-photographed vantage points, consider heading out to Navy Pier to take a cityscape photo on the lakefront. Or, another great photo opportunity is north at Lincoln Park; shoot south, towards the skyscrapers, and part of Lake Michigan will be in view….

Read more at MalekTips.
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Hindi Poems – Tota Hoon Main

31 Jan

Watch fun filled animation of Hindi Nursery Rhyme Tota Hoon Main about how a parrot is. Its Beak hair and much more. To watch more entertaining and educating videos on animation stories nursery rhymes learning series and school poems SUBSCRIBE NOW at www.youtube.com . To watch more kids animation videos in high quality log onto www.youtube.com
Video Rating: 3 / 5

Cute Videos Which Will Help The Entire Family To Enjoy With The Kids. To watch more entertaining & educating videos on animation stories, nursery rhymes, learning series & school poems, SUBSCRIBE NOW at www.youtube.com . To watch more kids animation videos in high quality log onto www.youtube.com

 

Main Street Electrical Parade in 3D – Part 2 of 2 (yt3d:enable=true)

19 Dec

Disney’s Main Street Electrical Parade in Walt Disney World. To view in 2D, click the ‘3D’ button and select ‘Right Eye Only’ or ‘Left Eye Only’ To view Part 1: www.youtube.com

 
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