Digital Shot

Surely you remember Panny’s new duo of camcorders that featured the so-called 3MOS technology. No? At any rate, Panasonic’s HDC-SD100 has just been reviewed by the cool cats over at TrustedReviews, and while we’re not sure if all that MOS was the reason for its success, critics were generally pleased with the performance (at least in good lighting). They noted that point-and-shoot fans would likely be thrilled, but the professionals in the crowd will probably wish for a few more manual controls. Still, at the end of the day, reviewers proclaimed that if you’ve been “holding out for an AVCHD camcorder with the full gamut of professional features, this could be your dream come true at last.” You hear that? Dream come true, son.

Toshiba is offering up a nice respite from the inane quantity of LCDs and, um, more LCDs at IFA this year. The SD Multi Tool and the SD Photo Editor are two touchable handhelds, offering up some beefy features where similar devices lack, and also skipping over some of the more traditional MID OS features that might put these over the top — a confusing mix, but again, not an LCD, so we’re hooked. The SD Multi Tool is the real wild one, offering dual 3.5-inch touchable (finger or stylus) LCDs, rated at 960 x 480 each if the spec sheet is telling the truth — that could be a combined resolution. The device offers wireless connectivity of some sort, and can handle web browsing, email, videos, photo editing and pretty much anything else that isn’t an actual phone call — though it can’t be tough to squeeze some VoIP in there. Meanwhile, the SD Photo Editor really earns its “SD” moniker with dual SD card slots, while the Multi Tool just has one microSD slot. The Photo Editor runs a similar OS, but seems distilled down to mainly the photo browsing and editing functions, with a bit of PMP functionality thrown in we hope. A 5-inch WVGA screen with 16 million colors should be plenty of room to work your magic. No word on what OS is under the hood, but it seems to be mostly homegrown Toshiba fare. We know the Multi Tool does HDMI out, and we’d hope the Photo Editor does as well, since they’re both supposed to hit in 2009 for a similar price point: around $300 US. If the shots below aren’t enough for you, check out the coverage at Engadget Spanish.

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Red CEO, Jim Jannard, is stirring up trouble in the RED User forums, J. Wong-style. His latest volley discusses the new Mysterium “Monstro” sensor program, the next evolution (and future free upgrade) to the Mysterium X sensor slated for RED’s 5k Epic. The most interesting revelation though is this little nugget: in addition to Epic, RED plans to place Monstro into, “another camera aimed squarely at the DSLR market.” He later adds, “Future cameras will shoot ultra-high resolution stills and motion…” Now, considering that the second generation, full-frame, ~25 megapixel Mysterium X is already a serious challenge to 35mm film, we can only imagine what this DSLR with a third generation RED sensor might offer. Hear that Nikon? Your D90 is just the beginning of this story. Let’s just hope that televisions and monitors, already struggling to reach 4k, Quad HD can keep pace.

[Thanks, Jundai]

The phrase “full frame” brings a smile to the face of anyone remotely familiar with photography, and the term “D700” is likely to do the same for shooters with three large to plunk down on a new body. Still, even with its long list of drool-worthy features, we’re certain that anyone who dropped the aforementioned dough on this beauty has a few things to say about it. Are you satisfied with the live view implementation? Any problems with its reliance on CompactFlash? Oh, and is the image quality alright? Sound off below!

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Toshiba is pulling an EyeToy, minus a diabolical plan to actually sell the thing and make a killing off of collectable elemental decks. The company’s Cambridge-based Research Lab has some new video camera-based feature they’re prototyping for possible eventual TV implementation. The real highlight is a fist-based cursor control — just stick out your hand, make a fist, and control a cursor on-screen for navigating the TV’s functions. You can also put up your palm to stop the madness, and even rotate 3D images on-screen, but it’s all a little shaky for now. Another thing we saw was picture recognition: hold up a cue card to the TV with an image on it and the TV recognizes it and performs a pre-assigned function. Tosh is also working on speech recognition and some other things; not really changing the world, but some fun stuff all the same.

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