Sony has released updates to its popular RX-series compact cameras, leaving the externals pretty much unchanged, but with a major update to their sensors. Both the RX100 IV and RX10 II feature a newly-developed 1inch 20MP stacked CMOS sensor, which allows them to capture 4K video and a whole lot more besides. We’ve had our hands on pre-production samples and you can see (and read) more after the jump
Tag: fully
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3D Farming: Trees Grown into Fully Shaped & Formed Furniture
[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

Taking arborsculpture to new levels of efficiency and functionality, this furniture designer creates plastic molds in which his designs are grown without needing to be sawed and shaped after the fact, reducing waste and streamlining the production process. Light, soil and air are the equivalent of filament in this organic 3D printing analog, and even more directly: the molds can be 3D-printed as well.

While requiring careful planning and additional work upfront, taking young willow, oak, ash and sycamore trees and turning them as they grow into chairs, tables and lamps both shortens the construction cycle and eliminates the need to reconnect disparate pieces.


Founder of Full Grown in Derbyshire, England, Gavin Munro aims to challenge “the way we create products as well as how we see the items with which we surround ourselves, the Grown Furniture has an immediate tactile, visceral and organic appeal.”

Gavin thinks of this process as a kind of “organic 3D printing that uses air, soil and sunshine as its source materials. After it’s grown into the shape we want, we continue to care for and nurture the tree, while it thickens and matures, before harvesting it in the Winter and then letting it season and dry. It’s then a matter of planing and finishing to show off the wood and grain inside.”

The notion of shaping trees as they grow on a massive scale is not a novel one – similar techniques have long been employed in vineyards to maximize growth and optimize grape picking. Even the idea of growing fully-formed furniture is not new – artists and designers have long shaped living trees to create objects of use. As far back as Ancient Greece, chairs were ‘built’ by digging out chair-shaped holes and allowing them to fill with root structures before being ‘harvested’ from the ground.

Still, the scale and ambitions here are, however, much bigger – creating full crops of grown furniture, turning a one-off idea into a potentially mass-produced (but always unique) product line.

Each furniture piece takes a few years to grow and maintaining this ‘forest of furniture’ is nothing if not challenging: “I’m only making 50 or so pieces per year but for every 100 trees you grow there are a 1,000 branches you need to care for, and 10,000 shoots you have to prune at the right time.”

Still, the results are worth the effort in the mind of this maker: “They’re still growing now, but when harvested and finished we expect them to be not just fully functional and ergonomic but grown, grafted and fastened into one solid piece, [meaning] no joints that only ever loosen over time. These could last for centuries. We hope and trust that this will eventually become an improvement on current methods.”




[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]
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Prototype battery fully charges in under 30 seconds
While smartphone processing power, screen resolutions and camera performance have all improved significantly over the last few years, one area of development is seemingly standing still. Under heavy use most smartphone batteries still won’t make it through the day, and once plugged in, devices take a long time to charge. Faster charging batteries are certainly welcome news to smartphone and tablet users but could also reduce the need for carrying spare batteries on longer photographic excursions. Learn more
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Fully loaded: Pentax K-3 review
Pentax cameras have always been innovative, and Ricoh has upped the ante with the K-3. Its image stabilization system not only reduces shake, but it can also simulate an anti-aliasing filter. The K-3 marks the latest evolution of one of the best-handling DSLRs in its class. It features a new autofocus system, 24 megapixel CMOS sensor, 8.3 fps continuous shooting, and USB 3.0 support. Has Ricoh put together a top-notch DSLR in the K-3? Read our review to find out
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7 February, 2014 – The Phase One IQ250 CMOS Fully Realized

The NEW Phase One IQ250 has received a lot of press in the last few weeks. We had a chance to work with this new back as well as share it with a number of participants on our recent Antarctica workshop. Look for an article on how it performed soon. Today, Doug Peterson of Digital Transitions shares a behind the scene look at what it took for Phase One to bring this new CMOS chip back to market. Read Doug’s article – The Phase One IQ250 CMOS Fully Realized.





