The Ono U1 Beast smartphone by U1 Labshas yet to see the light of day as a shipping product. There have been several setbacks to the project but they seem to still keep the flame alive by having the hardware finished and polishing the software constantly to get to a ship ready state.
The latest info pushes for a February release of a slow motion video sample at the spec of 480fps. This will be a real video and not an interpolated sample like the one released before which used the Android camera to deliver slow motion video based on standard frame rate footage. Now the talk in the forums is when will backers and early buyers get the phone if at all. The handset was supposed to be in the hands of backers in late 2015 especially taking in mind the holidays as a Christmas present. That did not materialize as expected due to software delays. However the company honored early backers with refunds for the entire amount. These early backers will still get the phone with no out of money cost. This would be a great thing for backers but this put stresses on the actual company making the necessary revenue unless they have investors footing the bill.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Fuji got quite a few products out at CES 2016 for photographers but nearly all had no real slow motion capabilities except for the Fuji XP90 Rugged waterproof compact camera. It is the same 16.4 Megapixel CMOS sensor with 5x optical zoom and a pretty standard 28mm lens at the wide end as last year’s Fuji XP80.
It is still shockproof from 6ft, waterproof to 50ft and freeze-proof down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit. But aside from the harsh treatment capabilities the camera has a larger 3 inch screen vs 2.7″ on it’s predecessor and the 1080p video spec has been upped to 60p for a little slowdown.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Regardless of what the GoPro and Ambarella marriage can provide in tandem hardware it is clear the company wants to branch out of the fledgling sales of GoPro which have tanked in recent quarters and the stock price from a high near a $100 USD is now trading at a mere $12 which is half the IPO price. By branching out it seems they want their chips in many more imaging devices and be less affected by the GoPro product cycle.
The announced H2 and H12 chips are able to provide beefy 4k specs at high frame rates for mobile devices at a mere 2 Watts of power. As to 1080p frame rates it will remain to be seen how this powerful new chip can handle that in a camera design and how it is implemented to squeeze that performance. 120fps at 4k from the H2 in theory should be able to yield 480fps at 1080p just counting the Pixel processing. This however can be limited by the rest of the components like imaging sensor.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Another big set of releases at CES regarding cameras that have a slow motion mode fro the consumer are the Sony Handycam and Action cam models that were refreshed. The Sony FDR-AX53 is the most interesting of the two as it is probably the smallest and lightest Handycam from Sony that shoots 4k in a near professional quality level.
It offers so much for under 1k that it will pose some problems for other cameras in it’s segment. It is not as advanced in the zoom department as the Panasonic WXF991 which can ramp zoom and focus on dolly motion but it does have a jack of all trades feel about it.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Warning: The parent company of FPS cameras “The Slow Motion Camera Company Ltd.” went out of business and entered liquidation proceedings. No further development of cameras is expected. More information here on Google Search!
In the update released to day Graham Rowan the creator of the fps1000 high speed camera project has made it known that the camera body has passed EMC for both CE and FCC certification.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Panasonic has been quite busy this morning with a plethora of camera announcements. It seems 4k is strongly anchored in the product line matrix by adding the feature on pretty much every product category this year. It seems to throw the message to the rest of the electronics camera industry that 1080p is so last year and that 4k is the make it or break it feature for compact and larger cameras alike.
