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Red unveils the Motion mount for Epic and Scarlet cameras to eliminate CMOS rolling shutter
Red has just announced the Red Motion lens mounting system for Epic and Scarlet motion camera systems that'll eliminate one of their chief snags: the dreaded CMOS rolling shutter. Though details are scant, it seems it'll do that in a similar manner to the Tessive system (see More Coverage), where a second liquid crystal shutter is placed in front of the main sensor and timed to engage only when the camera's CMOS is fully "open." That'll help eliminate artifacts like skew / judder in pans, repeating motion artifacts (think distorted propellers) and flicker from lights or displays, among others. The mount also brings an 8x electronic ND filter adjustable to 1/100th of an f-stop, partially negating the need for a matte-box in bright lighting situations. The Red Motion's drawback is that it'll cost you a stop of speed even when the ND is off, meaning you may have to change to a classic mount in low-light situations. Red's showing it now at its NAB booth-cum-factory and it'll ship out this fall in PL-mount form (with a Canon mount arriving later) for $4,500. Check the source for more discussion.
CSR outs new Coach16 processor for high-end cameras, aims to kill video jaggies, noise
If you've ever cussed out your DSLR because your still shots or video had excessive aliasing, jello and noise, you might be happy to hear about the new Coach16 imaging chip from CSR. The new addition to the ex-Zoran line of imaging processors is aimed at DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, and for the cinema set brings 1080/60p HD video with 'super-resolution' RGB downscaling to eliminate aliasing caused by line-skipping. Still shooters would get "endless sustained burst" high frame-rate capability, multi-frame noise reduction for improved low-light shooting, USB 3.0 support, high resolution EVF capability and smart flash. The latter feature cleverly takes two pictures rapidly with and without a flash, then marries the best parts HDR style for the final image. We won't see any of that until it gets released in a new DSLR model, of course, but meanwhile, you can dream with the PR below the break.
Russell Kirsch helped create square pixels, now he wants to kill them off
Did you know that we're only 53 years removed from the very first digital image? I know, with everyone on your street having a good 2GB of Facebook-uploaded, privacy-be-damned photos, it all seems so pedestrian, so typical. But back in the monochromatic 1950s, when Marlon Brando and Elvis were still young whippersnappers and the UK was busy crowning a new Queen, Russell Kirsch became the first man to create a digital picture, by scanning in a photo of his baby son. Now, half a century wiser, Russell is back to apologize for introducing that cursed square pixel into our lives, and to try to remedy all the jagged little edges we've been seeing on our screens ever since. According to old Rus, squares were just the logical solution at the time, but now that we can splash bits and bytes around with reckless abandon, he's come up with a new algorithm to smooth images beyond what's possible with simple squares. His new idea inserts 6 x 6 masks where there once was just one pixel, with adaptive calculations making for a more realistic representation of the underlying optical data. The sample above shows what improvements this new technique can deliver, with Russell's son doing the posing once more -- you'll find his decidedly younger visage in the 176 x 176 proto-pic after the break.
Nintendo DSi XL review
Since Nintendo first asserted sole domination over the handheld gaming market with the release of the paperback-sized Game Boy in 1989, the company has striven time and again to make its pocket systems smaller, meeting fantastic financial success along the way. Nintendo did it with the Game Boy Pocket, the Advance SP, the Micro, the DS Lite and again ever so slightly with the DSi -- the last even at the expense of backwards compatibility and battery life. Now, for the first time in the company's history, it's made an existing platform bigger, with questionable reasons as to why. Does the Nintendo DSi XL squash its predecessors flat? Or is Nintendo compensating for something? Find out inside. %Gallery-89058%
