Update – Germany Deal: Huge Price Drop on Canon EOS M w/ 18-55mm IS STM and Speedlite 90EX (Eur 380, Amazon DE)

Canon EOS M

Update: I forgot to mention that the deal also includes the Speedlite 90EX (thanks Wintermute). And…: the price is now 379,89 (click here)

Concrete price drop on the Canon EOS M with the EF-M 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens and the Speedlite 90EX on Amazon Germany. It is now just €389 (click here). It was just a few days ago that Canon announced a new wide-angle zoom lens for the EOS M system, the EF-M 11-22mm IS STM. And there is another, important news concerning the EOS M. Canon will soon release a firmware update that will correct the EOS M’s main issue: the sluggish auto-focus. The EOS M is a great camera that delivers impressive image quality. If Canon manages to solve the AF issue, the EOS M could become a truly outstanding mirrorless system camera. Found it via dealsrunner.com.

canon eos m

HDR Video Captured In Real Time From A Canon EOS 60D (Magic Lantern)

Are there limits to the exploits made available by Magic Lantern and the coding skills of gifted hackers? After all the news of the last weeks and since we learned that even an EOS 50D (here on eBay), a camera that didn’t sport video capabilities, has been enabled to shot RAW footage thanks to the Magic Lantern hack, I thought there would be some rest. Nope.

Tao Ai, University of Toronto grad student, used a Canon EOS 60D with the Magic Lantern hack onboard, a video processing board with a field programmable gate array, and some pieces of code he wrote to capture the HDR feed produced by the 60D. The feed was then run through the video processing board to produce the final footage seen on the screen in the video above. The results is a HDR video feed at 480p and 60fps.

Everything is obviously very experimental, but it shows what can be done, which possibilities are hidden in Canon’s DSLR hardware, and – last but not least – what a skilled programmer can do (and I mean both the ML hackers and Tao Ai).

[via PetaPixel, video shot by Engadget]

Magic Lantern
Image courtesy: PetaPixel

 

Canon PowerShot SX280 HS Review (ephotozine) and Firmware Update

SX280 HS

User Newtown grafitti on flickr
Another review of Canon’s WiFi and GPS-enabled Powershot SX280 HS. ephotozine reviewed the camera. In the conclusion they write:
The Canon Powershot SX280 HS offers a lot of optical zoom in a compact camera body and has a number of features that the traveller will find appealing including both GPS and Wi-Fi. Image quality is very good with excellent colours and good levels of detail. The 14fps high speed shooting mode will also appeal, although it would be nice if it was available in all of the modes, and could have been used for an automatic HDR mode. It would have also been nice to see an auto-stitching panoramic mode built in. One of the biggest issues with the SX280 is the very short battery life, which will be even shorter when using GPS and Wi-Fi. However, if you are looking for excellent image quality in a compact camera, with a lot of zoom, then the Canon Powershot SX280 HS is recommended.
The camera gets 4/4 stars and “delivers impressive image quality“. As usual with ephotozine‘s professional reviews, the review comes with lots of sample images, test charts etc. The SX280 is prices $329/€290.
A firmware update for the SX280 is available for download.

Firmware Version 1.0.2.0 incorporates the following fixes and improvements:

1. Increases the duration of movie shooting by 20% in cases where the optical zoom is used compared to cameras running Firmware Version 1.0.0.0 or Firmware Version 1.0.1.0 through a reduction in the power consumption of the optical zoom.

2. Fixes a phenomenon with cameras running firmware version 1.0.0.0, in which the low battery level warning is prematurely displayed while shooting in movie mode.

Canon PowerShot SX280 HS price check: B&H Photo, Adorama, Amazon USA, Amazon Canada, Canon Canada, Canon USA
SX280 HS