Video Cameras

Day after day, honeybees are able to travel back and forth between a food source and their hive, even in a constantly-changing environment. Given that the insects have relatively small brains, scientists have determined that they rely chiefly on vision and hard-wired visual processing abilities to achieve such a feat. To better understand that process, scientists from the Cognitive Interaction Technology Center of Excellence at Bielefeld University, Germany, have created an artificial honeybee’s eye. Using the device, they hope to unlock the secrets of the insects’ sensing, processing and navigational skills, and apply them to human technology such as micro air vehicles (MAVs).  Read More

Movie makers who want to enjoy hours and hours of uninterrupted recording might be interested in a new addition to Canon's VIXIA line of camcorders. The new VIXIA HF M32 can record up to 24 hours of continuous footage on its 64GB internal memory, but should the main storage medium become full, the camcorder can automatically switch over to whatever memory card is sitting in the SDXC slot.  Read More

The interchangeable lens consumer-oriented HD camcorder Sony teased us with when it announced its NEX interchangeable lens digital cameras has now been unveiled. As previously revealed, the Handycam NEX-VG10 features the same Exmor APS HD CMOS sensor found in the NEX-5 and NEX-3 and will be able to share E-mount interchangeable lenses with those devices. Calling the NEX-VG10 the world’s first consumer HD camcorder with an interchangeable lens system, Sony says it enables users to capture images and videos with background defocus effects and shallow depth of field.  Read More

There was a time, not so very long ago, when high-resolution video cameras, non-linear editing suites and the ability to reach millions of potential viewers were exclusively the domain of TV stations. All that has changed, of course, in the past decade or so. What many New Media on-camera personalities still lack, however, is the smooth, polished delivery of professional TV hosts. Is that because the Big Boys and Girls have journalism degrees and years of experience? Perhaps partly, but it’s also because they have a teleprompter feeding them their lines. Now, you can have yours fed to you too, by getting a Prompt-it - a gizmo that turns your iPhone into a teleprompter-on-a-budget. Take that, Oprah Winfrey!  Read More

Aiptek is about to release a 3D camcorder and a suitably stereoscopic photo frame display which don't require the user to wear any special glasses. The camcorder can take 5 megapixel still images or 720p HD video with its two fixed lenses and sports a 3D live view screen. The 8-inch media display unit can show off still or video images in either 3D or standard 2D and will play MP3 audio files while a user views a slide show or movie.  Read More

Helmetcams, lipstick cameras, action cameras - whatever you call them, there’s something endlessly fun and fascinating about tiny, rugged video cameras that can be mounted just about anywhere, put through all sorts of abuse, and then proceed to output first-person videos that put your viewers right in the action. We’ve valiantly tried to cover the various makes and models as they’ve come out, and they’ve all had their good points and their compromises. With Drift Innovations’ new HD170, however... well, let’s just say it sounds like one of the best so far.  Read More

If there’s one job on CSI that doesn’t look like much fun (besides boiling the flesh off human heads), it’s having to watch hours upon hours of surveillance camera footage in the hopes of seeing some kind of clue. In real life, footage sometimes ends up going unwatched because there are simply not enough man-hours in which to do it. Even when there is, studies have shown that viewers’ attention starts to decline within 20 minutes when watching such videos. Fortunately, new software developed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem can help with this problem.  Read More

It might be a sad indictment on today’s society but surveillance cameras are an increasingly common sight on city streets around the world. Most of these systems employ a fish-eye lens to capture a wide field of view, but such lenses distort the image and can only provide limited resolution. A new video surveillance system currently being developed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) overcomes these shortfalls to provide perfectly detailed, edge-to-edge images that could prove to be of great assistance to law enforcement.  Read More

One the many hidden gems we stumbled over at Computex 2010, the Panvista Borescope Package consists of a tiny fiber optic video camera, joined via a long flexible tube to a 3.5 inch hand-held color LCD monitor. The camera head is equipped with four Infrared LEDs, allowing it to see in the dark. Besides other useful applications, the camera can be used to peek inside a car’s engine via the spark plug hole.  Read More