This looks, at first glance, like an incredibly useful charging accessory: it plugs into a USB port and has adjustable teeth to charge any of those blocky, unfriendly, proprietary custom camera batteries. Any maybe it still is an incredibly useful charging accessory… But when we wrote about it last July, we were hoping that it would come along with some of Energizer’s universal power packs. Why? Because the 5 volts that comes out of your USB port isn’t enough juice to charge DSLR batteries, which generally need something like 7.4 volts. It doesn’t look like that’s how it’s going to go down, since Brando is selling this, not Energizer. Oh well. If you have one of those wimpy cameras that takes 3.7 volts or whatever (not that you should be ashamed of that), this accessory could certainly come in handy, since in addition to being able to charge many different kinds of batteries from a USB port, it’ll also work with all of those portable USB charger gadgets out there. At only $12, it’s a pretty good deal, just not as good of a deal as it could have been.
Space: The final frontier—for Nikon, anyway. The camera company's relationship with NASA has just got steamier, as they're supplying 11 D3s DSLRs and seven AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED lenses for their space photography. It's not the first time they've worked together, with the Nikon Photomic FTN actually used on Apollo 15 back in 1971, but it's nice to see that NASA's taste in camera models has got more expensive over the years. The D3s, unveiled back in August, normally costs $5,199.95, and features a whoppingly large ISO range of 200 - 12,800 (though it can be expanded up to 102,400). NASA will be using the cameras to photograph the happenings at the International Space Station, and apparently are so happy with the D3s and NIKKOR lenses (which cost $1,830 each) that there's no need to modify them to make them more space-friendly. Over 700,000 photos have been taken by NASA using Nikon cameras to date, though with a total cost of over $70,000 for this latest order, they better be taking a lot more snaps to get their money's worth. [Nikon via Akihabara News] Send an email to Kat Hannaford, the author of this post, at < moc.odomzig@drofannahk > moc.odomzig@drofannahk
I've been waiting for this damn update for months: Apple's dropped the latest RAW compatibility update—2.7 to be precise—for Mac, which adds compatibility for these fine cameras: • Canon EOS-1D Mark IV • Canon EOS 7D • Canon PowerShot G11 • Nikon D3S • Nikon D3000S • Nikon D3000 Snag it on Software Update, of course. [Apple Send an email to matt buchanan, the author of this post, at < moc.odomzig@ttam > moc.odomzig@ttam
