Sony NEX-5 and NEX-3 Interchangeable Lens Cameras Go Official With HD Shooting [Sony]

Sony's gone and made both the NEX-3 and NEX-5 official, with the NEX-5 carrying the large boast of being the world's smallest and lightest camera with interchangeable lenses.

The leaked specs of the NEX-3 have panned out according to Sony's news release, but it's the NEX-5 I'm most interested in. Both have 14.2MPs, Exmor APS HD SMOS sensors, an ISO range of 200 - 12800 and are compatible with all E-mount lenses.

Video is where they differ however. The NEX-5 (above) can shoot 1080i, but the NEX-3 stops at 720p. Both have HDMI outputs and USB 2.0 for connecting to PCs, and they thankfully take SD, SDHC, SDXC cars as well as Memory Stick Pro Duo and Pro-HG Duo.

They'll be available in June, with rumored pricing tipping the NEX-3 (below) at $900. If you've been looking for something in the style of a micro four thirds camera and happen to be a Sony fan, then these two sound like they could be worth checking out in person. It all hinges on the price though—as we all know Sony's got its head in the cloud when it comes to pricing. [Sony]






[Gizmodo]

Color-Shifting Contact Lenses Alert Diabetics to Glucose Levels [Contacts]

Diabetics are saddled with the unenviable task of checking their blood sugar levels constantly. But a new non-invasive technology lets diabetics keep tabs on their glucose levels with contact lenses that change colors as their blood sugar rises and falls.

Nanoparticles — is there anything they can't do? — embedded in the hydrogel lenses react with glucose molecules in naturally occurring tears. A chemical reaction then causes the lenses to shift their hues, alerting the wearer to falling or spiking blood sugar levels. The wearer can then make the appropriate adjustments to his or her blood sugar, all without having to carry around (and use) devices for drawing and analyzing blood.

U. of Western Ontario Professor Jin Zhang has just collected $216,000 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation as a result of the breakthrough process to develop other applications for multifunctional nanocomposites, which can be used in everything from biomedicine to food preservation to packaging. We think a head-up display for glucose levels is pretty good, but if nanocomposites can also make the packaging on that blood-sugar-leveling candy bar biodegrade more quickly, all the better.

[Gizmodo via Institute of Nanotechnology]

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Tell Us What You'd Shoot Using a Camera With 158 Lenses [Camera]

The Guinness World Records doesn't just award insanely tall men and disgusting long fingernails, you know. Sometimes they happen over to our side of the crazy pool, to give recognition to things like the camera with the most lenses ever.
Created at the Nagoya Institute of Technology of Japan (it had to be Japan), the camera you can see above was constructed using 158 lenses, which were attached in four rows, spanning 47cm in diameter. As each lens only cost $2.10 it's entirely realistic to try and top their record for next year's Guinness book, but bear in mind it took the team of students six months to build. Better organize some cheap labor.
[Gizmodo via Sankei News via CrunchGear]

Ricoh GXR, Smallest Camera With Interchangable Lenses and Sensors, Coming In December [Cameras]

Seems that the previously rumored Ricoh GXR will be coming in December. It'll be smaller than even the slimmest micro four thirds out now and feature a system that'll make it the first to allow both interchangeable lenses and sensors.
The GXR body will go for about $700, the macro lens and sensor for about $1,000, and the zoom lens and sensor for about $500. If the system works as well as the video implies, we might have some rather fantastic cameras ahead of us.
[Gizmodo]

Electronic Contact Lenses Promise Future of Advanced Augmented Vision

Babak A. Parviz, an associate professor at the University of Washington whose research was seen on our pages before, wrote an article for IEEE Spectrum discussing the work of his team to develop electronic contact lenses to provide continuous monitoring of glucose, augmented vision, and potential other implications of the technology. Parviz also gives a rundown of the challenges involved in creating functional in-lens displays that users can focus on at such a short distance.

From the article:

The glucose detectors we’re evaluating now are a mere glimmer of what will be possible in the next 5 to 10 years. Contact lenses are worn daily by more than a hundred million people, and they are one of the only disposable, mass-market products that remain in contact, through fluids, with the interior of the body for an extended period of time. When you get a blood test, your doctor is probably measuring many of the same biomarkers that are found in the live cells on the surface of your eye—and in concentrations that correlate closely with the levels in your bloodstream. An appropriately configured contact lens could monitor cholesterol, sodium, and potassium levels, to name a few potential targets. Coupled with a wireless data transmitter, the lens could relay information to medics or nurses instantly, without needles or laboratory chemistry, and with a much lower chance of mix-ups.
Three fundamental challenges stand in the way of building a multipurpose contact lens. First, the processes for making many of the lens’s parts and subsystems are incompatible with one another and with the fragile polymer of the lens. To get around this problem, my colleagues and I make all our devices from scratch. To fabricate the components for silicon circuits and LEDs, we use high temperatures and corrosive chemicals, which means we can’t manufacture them directly onto a lens. That leads to the second challenge, which is that all the key components of the lens need to be miniaturized and integrated onto about 1.5 square centimeters of a flexible, transparent polymer. We haven’t fully solved that problem yet, but we have so far developed our own specialized assembly process, which enables us to integrate several different kinds of components onto a lens. Last but not least, the whole contraption needs to be completely safe for the eye. Take an LED, for example. Most red LEDs are made of aluminum gallium arsenide, which is toxic. So before an LED can go into the eye, it must be enveloped in a biocompatible substance.

Link @ IEEE Spectrum: Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens...