Comments on: Nikon patents for this week

By: soap

soap — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:45:23 +0000

I don’t know the math, but the SB-900 at peak power is measured near the KW range. Only reason it doesn’t need a dedicated line to your household wiring is that it’s on for fractions of a second.

By: T140Rider

T140Rider — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:51:41 +0000

This whole GPS to Maps thingy is ok for places where decent maps exist.
I was shooting Ice Flows, Whales, Seals etc off the Greenland coast in August. Guess what. There are no maps of the areas except nautical charts.
Pah. Another ‘non critical marketing feature’ that I don’t need.

I’d rather have a 30+mp no frills camera. You know Manual + AP & SP modes only plus selectable crop sizes.

By: donde?

donde? — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:25:39 +0000

I think it’s great that they’ll get more into the incamera correction.

By: Kensai

Kensai — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:07:11 +0000

[NR] Admin,

you REALLY need to run a poll here in the blog to find out how many of us will be interested. You can count me in as long as the price of the app is not more than €3-4, but of course many more are needed to see if it’s economically viable for you.

If costs for a native app are high, why don’t you develop a web app (HTML/CSS/Javascript) that seems to work in almost every environment and are easily portable to any mainstream smartphone?

Although I’m an iPhone user myself, don’t forget many of your readers might use Symbian/Maemo, Android, Blackberries, etc. So a web widget which does RSS parsing and we can read all your news on-the-go might be a better solution, at least until you develop a native app for most major platforms.

By: Kensai

Kensai — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:01:27 +0000

I happened to read the patent (trying a series of browsers before switching to Safari since the darn Quicktime images weren’t loading… what were the USPTO webmasters thinking?) and actually found it a very nice idea.

Perhaps yes, you’ll need to download the maps beforehand, but if you see the images in the patent application there are many nice possible scenarios where a landscape or architecture photographer might use the GPS landmarks to cover his/her field.

Myself, sometimes, wonder if I have covered all possible angles of a certain viewpoint so having such an integrated help might be a boon. But I’m afraid it will be a D4/D800 feature at the beginning, as the artificial horizon was, although I would really like to see it in compact cameras as well. Afterall the images they show in the patent seem to be from such a project.

By: WoutK89

WoutK89 — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:43:25 +0000

I wouldnt read much into it, here in Holland it is also low on stock or out of stock. I dont think Nikon still makes a lot of them

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:51:39 +0000

I doubt I have the stamina to hold a D800 to my ear for a 10-minute conversation.

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:46:23 +0000

The Nikon 135mm f/2.0 AF-D DC is out of stock Adorama and B&H.
It may be discontinued or replaced soon.
I never used that lens, how the DC work ?
The price is low for a f/2 prime telephoto lens, I wonder if Nikon sold many of it.

By: WoutK89

WoutK89 — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:12:45 +0000

That flash will blow any other flash away if they can make it as powerful as an SB-900. Continuous lighting for creative exposures like the examples looks very nice.

By: [NR] admin

[NR] admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:59:35 +0000

I did talk to a iphone app developer few months ago. A good app, with the features I wanted will be expensive to make and I am not going to be able to five it away for free. How many people here are willing to pay for something that they can get for free through RSS feed on any mobile device? I still have not completely given up on that idea, but the app must be more than a regular RSS feed reader, it must have a twist

By: zack

zack — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:41:27 +0000

This is for [NR] admin.
What about doing Nikon Rumors iPhone/iPod Touch app?

By: [NR] admin

[NR] admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:40:28 +0000

just fyi – you can have Safari and Chrome on Windows

By: alex

alex — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:30:29 +0000

thanks for suggestion but i’m on windows.
tried IE, Opera and Firefox. they all load quicktime plugin but it shows a blank white page

anyway thanks for the info LYR

By: Zoetmb

Zoetmb — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:25:21 +0000

You take a photo and it gets GPS tagged…fine. But then the camera shows you a map or satellite photo of where you were? Why? Didn’t I just take a picture showing the same thing (albeit from a different angle)? And besides, for the camera to do that, it would have to have access to a net connection unless they’re going to store the maps in the camera. And if you need access to a net connection, you might as well do it on the computer with the GPS-tagged photos. I can think of 20 other features I’d want before that one.

Of course, a patent doesn’t mean a product strategy…it can be a defense against others implementing something without paying you.

By: lyr

lyr — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:14:03 +0000

I reached the images via Safari for the illumination patent.

Looks interesting.
It seems it’s using the some LED light technology and power vs time control for creative lightning:

- first curtain sync, with high power during short moment at first then low power until second curtain, giving the usual “rear movement”
- second curtain sync, with first low power and at the end high power, for typical second curtain look.
- first AND second curtain “flash”, with high power, low power, high power, so you have two images of the item (here in their examples, a car) and the trail between.
- middle flash: low power at first power, in the middle of the exposure time, a burst then still low power, for freezing in the middle of the trail
- progressive increase in power: very low power from t0 to t1, then medium power between t1 and t2 and finally a “flash” between t2 and second curtain (I say “flash”, because the diagram mentions LED) for a trail becoming more and more present

And still a few other cases presented.

Nikon is really pushing creative lightning to a new zone (especially if combined with their customizable illumination pattern patent).

By: [NR] admin

[NR] admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:26:26 +0000

Alex, try it with a Safari browser, I couldn’t access the pics with Chrome either

By: alex

alex — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:20:47 +0000

for that illumination device can you see the pictures on the site? i can’t, seems interesting.

By: nobody

nobody — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:35:42 +0000

No, it’s not. It’s for a much smaller sensor. It’s widest angle resembles just a 35mm FX lens (about 65°), the tele end is equivalent to ~120mm.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:56:35 +0000

Perhaps the new lens is for the new Nikon 4/3 micro type camera that is rumoured. So something like a 14-48mm equivalent. Nice! I’ll take one if they keep the size down.

By: Zorro

Zorro — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:48:51 +0000

If they are going to start building SATNAV, phones, maybe MP3 players etc into compact cameras, it doesn’t look good for a serious compact on the horizon.