Sony just announced the ZV-1, a modified version of the RX100 series aimed specifically at vloggers. We take a look at six important features you may have missed from the announcement.
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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
The post Tips for Finding Beautiful Portrait Light at Home appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Charlie Moss.
It can be tempting to think that you need lots of money, space, and equipment to shoot great portraits. But using just your camera and a reflector, you can find beautiful portrait light at home to shoot in.
Almost everyone will have at least one room in their home with natural light from a window that could make a great portrait. It’s just a case of figuring out where the best light in your home is. Sometimes this takes a little trial and error, but as long as you get a good grasp of the basics, you should be able to shoot some great portraits at home!
Shooting indoors often means less light than if you were shooting outside or with studio strobes. To get some more light into your camera, try opening up your aperture and setting it to the lowest number possible.
Opening your aperture up to let more light into your camera also has the effect of creating a shallow depth of field. A shallow depth of field has real advantages when you’re shooting at home – it can blur out the background and any unwanted clutter.
Alternatively, if you need to place your subject right next to a wall that isn’t as great a background as you hoped for (like above), try hanging a large sheet of paper behind them. The result would be like going to a studio with a paper backdrop. Or if you fancy something completely different, try creating a more creative backdrop!
Get your subject to turn their face towards the light to make it fall in a very flattering way that illuminates their features. If you turn their face slightly back towards you then you can create the classic “Rembrandt light” that fine art photographers love so much (just turn their face towards you enough to create a “triangle” of light on the side of their face away from the window).
By just changing the way your subject faces, you should be able to experiment with broad and short lighting with just a single window. If you have a patient subject, then a single window and a model can be a great way to learn about new kinds of lighting while finding lovely portrait light at home.
I’m not even messing about. Bathrooms often have incredible light because of all the white, reflective surfaces. Even a bathroom with a small window can have lots of light bouncing about just waiting for you to photograph it.
If you want to fill in some shadows, or even add a bit more directional light, you can experiment with using a reflector. You can use the silver side to add a bright, directional light in a room like this by bouncing light into the brighter side of the face. Alternatively, you could use the white side of a reflector to just gently lift any shadows that you get, to make the light more even.
Don’t be afraid to push up your ISO either if you want to capture a fast-moving or unpredictable subject like a pet. Most modern digital cameras can now go quite high with the ISO without seeing any problems in the images.
I shot the images above at ISO 1600, with an extremely fast shutter speed as my cat zipped around the house from dark to light spots. I had the camera set to Aperture Priority mode, so the camera chose its shutter speeds. Aperture Priority mode is a great choice for shooting portraits indoors because it lets you make creative choices about aperture and depth of field without having to worry about shutter speed.
As the sun moves, the light will change in different parts of your house. Make it your mission to observe and try out the light as it changes throughout the day if you want to find the good spots for beautiful portrait light at home.
I took both of the above shots in the same room, sitting in almost exactly the same place. The difference was the time of day. The shot on the right with the hard light was taken in the bright morning light. In comparison, I took the image on the left in the afternoon when the sun had stopped shining directly into the room.
Patches of light and shadow can make for really interesting photographs as you let them play across the face or body of your subject. Be sure to experiment with how they create different effects both in the photographs themselves and when you post-process them afterward (increasing the contrast can work really well for light like this).
When I first moved into my home with its large room designated as my studio, I shot almost exclusively with strobes. I would shut out all of the natural light so that I could concentrate on just using my studio lights. I hadn’t even considered that I might have beautiful portrait light at home.
One day, though, I just wanted to grab a quick self-portrait. So I opened the curtains and photographed myself in the morning light.
On inspecting the files later, I discovered that this light was unexpectedly beautiful. Now I shoot regularly sat face-on to this big window in my studio with no additional lighting or reflectors because I discovered it was simply wonderful light.
Learn from my mistake – test out every window in your house for portraits, at different times of the day.
When you move into a new home, make it one of the first things that you do. Don’t wait several years to realize that you already have wonderful natural portrait light at home!
I’d love to see your portraits using the natural light in your home. Please share them with us in the comments section!
The post Tips for Finding Beautiful Portrait Light at Home appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Charlie Moss.
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The Sony ZV-1 is a new compact camera explicitly designed with vloggers and ‘content creators’ in mind.
From a hardware perspective it’s essentially an updated riff on the RX100 V(A), but with both ergonomic and feature changes to make it easier to operate from the ‘wrong’ side of the lens. As the distinct naming indicates; it’s not part of, nor intended as a replacement for, the RX100 series.
If you think of yourself as primarily a photographer, the ZV-1 is probably not designed for you. Instead it’s a camera purpose-designed for generating to-camera video for platforms such as YouTube. But that doesn’t mean it’s just a frivolous novelty.
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At its heart, the hardware of of the ZV-1 overlaps a lot with the RX100 series. It takes the 24-70mm equivalent F1.8-2.8 zoom and 1″-type 20MP stacked CMOS sensor from the RX100 V but mates it with the autofocus improvements of the Mark VII.
However, the controls and handling are quite different, with no control ring around the lens and a very different button arrangement, designed for a very different way of working.
It’s worth noting that, unlike the RX100 series, Sony isn’t using its ‘Cyber-shot’ branding on this camera, and that the official model name is DCZV-1, rather than ‘DSC,’ denoting digital stills camera.
It continues to use the same NP-BX1 battery as the RX100 cameras.
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The ZV-1’s video capabilities are very similar to those of the RX100 VII: it can shoot 1080p footage at up to 120p or UHD 4K footage at up to 30p. There are also high-speed modes shot at lower resolution and upscaled, allowing capture at up to 960 fps (1000 fps in PAL mode).
Like other recent Sony consumer cameras, all this footage is 8-bit. Log and ‘HLG’ modes are available, but will offer less flexibility than 10-bit footage would. Sony tells us it can also record video for longer (which we’ll get to later).
The other improvement that comes from using the RX100 VII’s processor is that the ZV-1 can apply digital image stabilization to its 4K footage, on top of the IS provided by the lens. The camera can also write shake information into the metadata, so that the Imaging Edge software can apply digital correction after the footage has been shot.
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The first thing you’re likely to notice about the ZV-1 are its unconventional ergonomics. There’s a large dedicated [REC] button that sits immediately behind the shutter button. The significance of its size and position isn’t necessarily obvious until position the camera facing towards you, held at arms-length with your left hand.
It’s designed to be operated with the index finger of your left hand, while the zoom rocker is controlled with your left thumb.
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Its focus on creator-to-camera content means the ZV-1 has no built-in viewfinder: after all, there’s no point including an expensive component if you can’t see it.
Instead it has a fully articulated touchscreen LCD, to make it easy to operate when it’s pointing towards you. As you’d expect, this display shows a mirror image of what the sensor is capturing, when faced toward you.
The touchscreen lets the user tap-to-track but like many recent Sony cameras, has very little other function.
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All the ports are arranged on the right-hand side of the camera (left-hand side as it faces you), meaning that they’re on the opposite side from the articulating screen.
These include a mic socket, HDMI out and USB connector, over which the camera can be powered, while recording. Crucially, these can all be used without clashing with the flip-out screen.
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The lack of viewfinder frees up space for a comparatively complex three-capsule microphone, set into the top of the camera. Sony says this setup is designed to be directional to pick up the sound of someone in front of the camera,
The camera comes with a wind screen (often referred to as a deadcat, though this one looks more like a deadmouse) that can be attached to the top of the microphone recess, to reduce the risk of wind boom from air blowing directly onto the mic. The deadcat attaches via the hotshoe, which means it can’t be used with anything like an external LED light.
The deadcat covers the power button, which doubles as the charging indicator, which makes it hard to see.
The ZV-1 also has an offset hotshoe on one side of the camera, allowing a shotgun mic to be fitted. It’s got all the pins of Sony’s Multi-Interface shoe, meaning it can be used with a host of accessories, including microphones or, theoretically, Sony’s XLR adapter.
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Critically, the ZV-1 features the latest version of Sony’s AF system. This will focus on whatever you tap to focus on, and will use its face and eye detection system if that thing happens to be a face. The AF system will continue to track the subject, even if they look away from the camera and their eyes and face can’t be recognized.
That persistence is especially important for this kind of product, where you can’t afford for the camera to lose track of your face, and you’re usually going to be too busy to monitor or correct any errors.
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The ZV-1 has a series of designed-for-vlogging features, to make it easy to get the desired result, with minimal interaction with the camera or its settings.
The most basic of these is Face Priority Auto Exposure. This does exactly what you might expect: it ties the camera’s metering to the face detection system, and prioritizes the exposure of the presenter’s face over the metering of the scene as a whole. It’s designed to respond rapidly to changes in exposure so that faces remain correctly exposed even if the light changes.
Sony also says its adjusted the camera’s color response in the ‘Standard’ Creative Style with a particular focus on making (a variety of) skin tones look more attractive.
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Sony is keen to stress that Background Defocus mode is not a filter or a shallow depth-of-field simulation. Instead it’s a mode that automatically opens the aperture up to its widest setting, to give as shallow a depth-of-field as possible.
It’s a one-click option that means vloggers don’t have to learn to think in terms of aperture values. And, because the camera knows its target is the widest aperture setting, it’s able to respond almost instantly: adjusting the ISO and ND filter to compensate for the change in aperture, rather than slowly progressing through all the steps in between.
By default, Background Defocus mode is assigned to the ‘C1’ button on the camera’s front right corner, making it easily accessible if you’re shooting with the camera held at arm’s length with your left hand.
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Perhaps the feature that makes this camera’s intent most clear is the ‘Product Showcase’ mode. This is designed for creating the kind of video in which you talk to camera and hold up the item you’re describing, to show some detail of it.
Product Showcase mode is designed to prioritize things that appear near the camera and override the face detection when they do. This means you don’t have to hide your face or wait for the camera to refocus on the object you’re trying to show your followers. Again, it’s designed as a mode so that you don’t have to manually tune the autofocus response.
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The ZV-1 is primarily a video camera, designed to be operated selfie style, which makes it easy to understand why photographer-friendly features from the RX100, such as the EVF and control ring haven’t been included.
But video shooters are likely to note the lack of a headphone socket. While it’s true that most to-camera video isn’t shot with headphones on, it seems like an odd omission to provide no way of listening to the audio levels before you press that big red button, or properly review a clip after it’s been recorded (the internal speaker is pretty quiet).
Similarly, the inclusion of Log and ‘HLG’ video modes feel a bit half-baked, given the camera’s output is all 8-bit. We’re not expecting much of the ZV-1’s footage to go through extensive color grading, but more experienced video shooters should be aware of this limitation.
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The ZV-1 is a little bit thicker than the RX100 V and Sony says the use of more composite materials in its construction improve heat dissipation. You can see this composite panel when the screen is flipped out. Despite this, the camera will only record footage for five minutes at a go in its default state. You need to disable the overheat shutdown function in order to record for longer periods.
With this done, we’re told the camera will keep recording almost indefinitely (or, at least, to the capacity of your memory card). But it’ll be interesting to find out just how hot the camera gets, and how long you can comfortably hold the camera before needing to consider the optional VPT2BT bluetooth selfie grip thing.
We’ve not yet been given a battery life figure but, as we say, the ZV-1 can be powered over its USB connector if necessary.
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As the branding hints, the Sony ZV-1 isn’t particularly intended for stills photographers. But for the many, many people creating (and, in some cases, making a living from) facing-the-camera content for social media, the ZV-1 looks like a powerful tool.
We’ll have to spend more time with the ZV-1 to find out how well it behaves as a stills camera, beyond its core role, but (as evidenced by the vlogging functions added to Canon’s G7 X III) there is a niche for such a product. Unlike the Canon, the Sony can’t directly stream its video to YouTube, though the latest version of Sony’s smartphone app lets you transfer videos (including 4K) once you’ve captured them.
If you’re not able to take advantage of the initial discounts being offered in some markets, $ 799 might seem quite expensive. But it’s worth noting that the removal of the EVF helps bring the list price down by $ 200 compared to the original MSRP of the RX100 VA and within $ 50 of the Canon’s launch price.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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Samyang, which is also sold under the brand name Rokinon, has released updated versions of two of its best-selling lenses: the MF 14mm F2.8 MK2 and the MF 85mm F1.4 MK2.
The updated manual focus lenses feature the same optical designs as their respective predecessors but add new features to provide a more seamless and robust user experience. In particular, both lenses now have weather-sealing, an updated focus ring for better grip and a switch for de-clicking the aperture without the need to tear it apart. The 14mm F2.8 MK2 also has a new focus lock switch for ensuring the focus doesn’t get bumped out of place during operation.
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Both lenses are available for Canon EF, Nikon F, Sony E, Fujifilm X, Canon M and MFT mount camera systems. As of writing this article, no pricing information is available for the lenses and no online retailer appears to have a product page up. We have contacted Samyang for additional information and will update accordingly when we receive a response.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
The post Peak Design Donates 100% of Profits from Travel Tripod Launch to Charity appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
Peak Design, the camera carry company based in California, launched their Travel Tripod in early April.
And they donated 100% of the profits to charity.
The Travel Tripod has been making waves ever since it was funded on Kickstarter, where the promise of a stable, compact tripod drew in 12 million USD from nearly 30,000 donors.
Fast-forward a year, and the Travel Tripod was ready to launch as two separate products:
A carbon fiber option and an aluminum alloy option, both offering unprecedented compactness and stability as a pro-level travel tripod solution.
Then, in the weeks prior to the launch, Peak Design announced its intentions to donate all profits to two charities:
The CDC Foundation, for COVID-19 relief, and Climate Neutral, an organization that works to combat climate change.
As explained by the Peak Design CEO:
Now more than ever is the time for us to act on our core values and ensure that our employees, contractors and retail partners can find economic shelter in a product we’ve spent years developing…Peak Design is also in a unique position to offer financial support to those that are solving the problem. To be able to donate in a time of need speaks volumes to the company we’ve built over the last ten years.
Now that the launch is complete, Peak Design has released their numbers; the company sold over 2000 tripods, culminating in a whopping $ 218,000 USD donated to the CDC Foundation and Climate Neutral.
For those who are interested in the Peak Design travel tripod, it offers:
You can pick it up for $ 599.95 USD (carbon fiber) or $ 349.95 USD (aluminum).
Now over to you:
Do you own a travel tripod? And how does the Peak Design Travel Tripod compare? Share your thoughts in the comments!
The post Peak Design Donates 100% of Profits from Travel Tripod Launch to Charity appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
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We’ve all been there. You needed some cash, or you went overboard trying to downsize your gear stash. Selling that camera or lens seemed reasonable at the time, but in the razor-sharp clarity of hindsight, you know now it was a terrible mistake.
Since misery loves company, we thought we’d share our own stories of the gear we let go and shouldn’t have and offer a space for you, reader, to share your tale of woe. Think of it as a kind of group therapy session.
So take a deep breath, count to five as you exhale, and read on. Leave a comment with your own story of the gear you let go of – we’ll be publishing a few of them in a follow-up article soon.
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Photo by Richard Butler with DX Nikkor 18-70mm F3.5-4.5
I usually end up using cameras until they have little to no resale value, and I have no real regrets about selling my last DSLR. Oddly, though, I do regret selling the lens I bought it with. The DX Nikkor 18-70mm F3.5-4.5 wasn’t a great lens, in the grand scheme of things, but we’d been through so much together.
That lens: a longer and slightly faster alternative to the standard kit lenses was the thing that finally settled the Pentax vs Canon vs Nikon decision I’d been agonizing over for weeks (months, maybe). Over a decade of extensively using every maker’s cameras has just reinforced the idea that picking the right lens was more significant than trying to choose a ‘right’ brand.
It vignetted like crazy at 18mm F3.5, which was the setting the impetuous younger me used most often, but 70mm F4.5 was appreciably more useful than 55mm F5.6, and the sturdier build made me feel a bit more ‘serious’ and a bit more confident that it would survive my misuse.
I don’t have any use for a DX DSLR lens anymore, but as the lens I used every day, and that helped me appreciate the value of upgrading your everyday lens, I sometimes wish I’d held onto my Nikon ‘super kit lens.’
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Photo by Dale Baskin, taken with the Canon S300 Digital ELPH.
The Canon PowerShot S300 Digital ELPH was my first digital camera, purchased in 2001. To be honest, I never really loved it, but that’s beside the point. I was planning a cross-country road trip and figured it would be a good opportunity to experiment with digital. Back then, choosing between a 2MP or 3MP sensor was a pretty big decision, but I ultimately decided the third megapixel wasn’t worth hundreds of dollars more, which is mostly how I ended up with the S300.
Off I went into the sunset shooting digital for the first time in my life. I loved the instant feedback and I have fond memories of uploading photos at night on a 28.8 Kbps modem. Good times. Eventually, I moved on to other cameras and sold the S300 to a guy who wanted to use it for SCUBA with a dive housing.
So why, after all these years, do I wish I still had it? For a simple reason: it was my first. We all have memories of various firsts in our lives: first kiss, first car, first time falling in love, etc. The S300 was the first camera that allowed me to shoot in a new way that would eventually change my life, influence my career and spawn adventures I never would have dreamed of so many years ago. I’ve thought about buying a used one for nostalgia, but it wouldn’t be the same. It could never be the same as my S300.
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Photo by Carey Rose, taken with Nikon 85mm F1.8 D
I got my Nikon 85mm F1.8 D lens in college chiefly because I had a D80 that produced pretty horrific images when you cranked the ISO. And I found I was cranking the ISO pretty often while photographing for the college rag in wintertime in Bellingham, Wash. The days (if you can call the interminable grayness ‘day’) provide only eight hours of light, and so often my cheap secondhand F2.8 zooms just didn’t cut it. The small, light, snappy 85mm quickly became a favorite.
Fast forward a few years, and the 85mm became a staple for my wedding photography, and may as well have been permanently glued to one of a pair of DSLRs. But as I was now making some of this thing called ‘money,’ I found myself taken by a lens that would of course be superior in every way: Nikon’s 85mm F1.4 D. I found one at a price I could stomach and promptly put the 1.8 up for sale.
Cue the regret and sad trombones. Turns out, though that F1.4 lens was optically fantastic, the autofocus was far slower than the F1.8 I had so carelessly cut loose. For everything I really liked shooting, from weddings to concerts to street photography, it made such a difference that I never used it anywhere near as much as its more humble cousin. And with today’s modern sensors, I would happily trade the extra light for the extra focus speed. I still think about getting another F1.8 D someday.
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Photo by Dan Bracaglia with the Fujifilm X100T.
The gear I most regret selling is my Fujifilm X100T. I purchased it when it first debuted in late 2014 and owned/loved it for two straight years; it was my go-everywhere, document-everything camera. But eventually I grew tired of using it and the images it produced and felt compelled to go back to shooting film in my free time. And so I sold off my X100T and replaced with a well-worn Leica M6 and went on happily shooting for another few years. But eventually I too tired of film’s limitations and once more craved the freedom of a lightweight personal digital camera.
Fortunately by the time that feeling crept it dawned on me: it’s OK to switch back and forth between film and digital for personal work. And so this time I held on to the M6 and picked up an also well-used X100F to satisfy my digital cravings. These days I still love and shoot with both as my personal cameras (along with a few other film buddies) and I’ll never be so quick to sell off gear again.
Sound familiar? Share your story of the gear you regret letting go of in the comments below – we’ll pick our favorites to include in a follow-up article.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Sony has announced the price and expected availability date in the United States for its newest flagship smartphone, the Xperia 1 II (pronounced ‘mark two’).
Announced back in February, the Xperia 1 II is packed full of pro-level photo features, including a triple-camera array, a Sony BIONZ X image processor, Zeiss-branded lenses, continuous shooting up to 20fps and even Sony’s animal and human Eye AF feature. Sony followed up the announcement with an in-depth breakdown explaining the details of the impressive collection of camera tech inside the flagship device.
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This new information from Sony is to confirm that pre-orders will start on June 1 with the first units set to ship on July 24. The Xperia 1 II will retail for $ 1,200 and all pre-orders made before June 28 will receive a free pair of Sony WF-1000XM3 wireless noise-cancelling earbuds as an added bonus.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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We got our hands on Sony’s new Xperia 1 Mark II smartphone, which features super-fast burst shooting and subject recognition with Eye AF. A triple camera design offers 16mm, 24mm and 70mm equivalent focal lengths, and a new Photography Pro photo app provides full manual control and a user interface that will be familiar to Sony shooters.
See our Sony Xperia 1 Mark II gallery
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
A camera lens is arguably the most important part of a photographers set-up, to the point where most professional photographers would rather shoot with an ok camera body as long as they had a top-quality lens rather than the other way around. However, if you are just entering the world of DSLR lenses, at first glance they can be a Continue Reading
The post How DSLR Lenses Work: DSLR Lenses Explained appeared first on Photodoto.
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When most people think of Casio, they think of watches (calculator and G-Shock, most likely) and keyboards of the musical type. What people probably don’t remember is that Casio was a huge innovator in digital photography, creating features that would become standard on cameras introduced years later.
Casio stopped selling cameras in the US several years ago, and it threw in the towel globally in 2018. In this article we’ll take a look back at the innovations that Casio came up with, going all the way back to the mid 1990s.
The story begins in 1994, when Casio introduced the 0.25 Megapixel QV-10, the first consumer digital camera with an LCD and live view (the QV-10A, a variation, is pictured above). It also had a rotating lens that would not only reappear on several other Casio cameras, but on several Nikon and Sony models, as well.
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The QV-700 showing off Casio’s trademark rotating lens and low-res LCD. That F2 lens had a focal length equivalent to 38mm. The tiny sensor size combined with the F19-equivalent lens allowed the QV-700 to be fixed focus. Image courtesy of www.digicammuseum.de, Boris Jakubaschk |
The real innovations occurred in 1998 with the release of the QV-700. It offered pre- and post-shot buffering, similar to what Olympus calls Pro Capture today. While it didn’t take many shots, the QV-700 let you save a few images before or after you pressed the shutter release.
Not long after the QV-700 came the QV-7000SX, which brought with it a sort-of movie mode (32 frames at 160 x 120, with no audio) and in-camera panorama stitching (something some cameras still don’t have). It also created an HTML page on your memory card that you could load up in Netscape to browse through your photos.
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Note the large IR transmitter/receiver on the front of the QV-7000SX. It could beam photos to the small number of devices that supported the IrTran-P protocol. Image courtesy of www.digicammuseum.de, Boris Jakubaschk |
The QV-7000SX also offered support for infrared image transfer (later called IrDA), which was a very slow way of wirelessly beaming photos to compatible devices. Both Sony and Sharp were involved in IrDA, with the former offering a camera and printer with this feature.
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| Two of the more conventional Best Shot modes | |
Casio was a pioneer of scene modes, which it called Best Shot modes. And Casio really loved Best Shot modes, with 2001’s QV-4000 including one hundred of them on an included CD-ROM. Some personal favorites include ‘photo at hotel’, ‘photo of a toadstool’, and ‘photo of a fishing catch’.
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| Step 2 in the Coupling Shot feature: We’ve already taken the photo of the first person, so now you can line up the second in the right spot. | And we’re done. |
One feature from that era that did not catch on was ‘coupling shot’. Essentially a multiple exposure mode for taking photos of yourself and another person without giving the camera to a stranger to take the photo for you, you took a photo of one person, whose ‘ghost’ was shown on the LCD. You then put the other person in the frame, making sure they were in the right spot, and took the ‘second half’ of the photo.
A few years later, the Exilim EX-ZR400 offered a green screen feature that let you paste a subject you’ve photographed onto a different background.
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Something more helpful than self-portraits and green screens that Casio pioneered were guide modes (Casio called this Manual Assist), which are on some – but not nearly enough – modern cameras. As shown above, visual aids showed the effect of changing aperture and shutter speed.
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| The Exilim EX-F1 Pro could shoot at 60 fps and also had in-body image stabilization and 1080/60p video capture. |
One final way in which Casio really separated itself from the pack was the sheer speed of its cameras. The company’s cameras were lightning fast, whether when shooting bursts, navigating menus or reviewing photos. One standout was 2008’s Exilim Pro EX-F1, which could take full resolution (6MP) images at 60 fps (for one second) and 1200 fps if you dropped the resolution (way) down.
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| After setting up the three lines, the camera will capture video of your swing, which you can view later in slow motion. |
Casio used that speed for a unique use case on its EX-FC500S: analyzing golf swings. The camera could capture your swing from the front, back and side (and yes, it asked if you were a lefty or a righty). By lining yourself up with a virtual golfer on the display, the FC500S would automatically start and stop recording during your swing. All of this was captured at up to 240 fps and could be started by pressing a button, using a smartphone or waving your hand at the camera. The FC500S was never sold in the U.S., but you can find it on eBay once in a while.
Once 2010 or so arrived, other companies had surpassed Casio in most respects. Maybe not in terms of innovative features and speed, but certainly technology and image quality. The company made unremarkable compacts for a few more years (including the very awkward TRYX), until finally fading away. I do miss Casio cameras, not because they took amazing photos, but because they broke the mold and were fun to use. RIP, Casio: gone, but not forgotten.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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