Ad: Switch and save with State Farm®
ie8 fix

1

Q&A: Canon helps usher in the video SLR era

The camera industry and photographers, having just gotten accustomed to the arrival of video in point-and-shoot cameras, just now are beginning to grapple with its arrival in the more serious SLR realm.

Chuck Westfall, technical adviser for Canon's professional products marketing division and a 26-year veteran at the Japanese company, is in the thick of it. Nikon was the first to market with a single-lens reflex camera equipped with video, the D90, but Canon offers video in two SLRs: the high-end EOS 5D Mark II, with a large sensor the size of a full frame of 35mm film, and the Rebel T1i, a more affordable, mainstream model.

These cameras combine high-definition video--1900x1080 pixels at 30 frames per second in the case of the 5D Mark II--with SLRs' advantages when shooting in dim conditions and with a broad variety of lenses. But even though today's video SLR features offers hold some appeal to enthusiasts and professionals, they're something of an awkward afterthought. SLRs and those who use them that haven't yet had much time to adapt.

Welcome to the world of digital photography, where change is incessant. In an interview with CNET News, Westfall talked about not just video, but also OLED displays, the arrival of rival full-frame SLRs from Sony and Nikon, changing flash card and file format standards, wireless networking, and more.

Question: The age of the video SLR has begun. A lot of people in the high-end camera market are set in their ways, and video is a radical difference for a lot of them. How does that change the camera design, the marketing, and everything you have to do to sell a camera?… Read more

BlueAnt announces the BlueAnt S1

BlueAnt introduced a new visor-mount speakerphone at CTIA 2009, called the BlueAnt S1. Designed to work in the car, it has pretty much the same features as the Supertooth 3, except it has support for A2DP. That means you can stream music wirelessly to it from a device that has stereo Bluetooth. It's not really meant as a stereo speaker system though, so don't expect it to replace your expensive car stereo.

Like the other BlueAnt devices, the S1 lets you use your voice to make and answer calls. It also has multipoint, which means it can connect … Read more

T-Mobile G1 gets Microsoft Office, Exchange support via DataViz

DataViz announced on Thursday that it is now offering Documents to Go Standard Edition version 1.0 and a beta version of RoadSync through the Android Market. The two applications will give T-Mobile G1 and HTC Magic owners the capability, for the first time, to work with Microsoft Office documents and get support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync.

Documents to Go has long been available for Windows Mobile and Palm devices, but now Android users can finally have the capability of viewing, editing, and creating Word and Excel documents through the productivity suite. The suite's editing capabilities are vast, including … Read more

What's the No. 1 gadget in the land?

In case you didn't know it, CNET's been running a special package the last couple of week's called "Tech Madness" that not only highlights CNET's March Madness toolkit but a little game called "What's the No. 1 gadget in the land?"

While we don't have 64 gadgets in our tournament, we do have 32. Once you register/log in as a "player" (Voxpop.tv is running the game), you make your picks just like you would with any typical bracket, selecting an overall champion at the end.

After … Read more