Laser weapons reached a new milestone as the US Navy tested the AeroVironment (AV) LOCUST Laser Weapon System (LWS) aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier USS George H W Bush (CVN-77), notching up a 100% kill rate against multiple aerial drone threats.
Category: Military, Engineering
Tags: Aircraft Carrier, AeroVironment, US Navy, Laser weapon
Crowd-funded startup I'm Back has developed a clever fix for one of the drawbacks that photographers have pointed out in their digital module for film cameras.
The I'm Back Roll, which is currently approaching $1M of backing on Kickstarter, is a self-contained APS-C sensor module designed to fit into the film bay of legacy 35mm film cameras.
One of the challenges this latest project hadn't overcome was the need to activate the sensor before the camera body's mechanical shutter could then define the exposure.
When the Kickstarter opened, the company showed renderings of a Bluetooth-connected trigger unit that you would have to attach to the camera body, initiating a digital exposure so that the sensor would be active when the mechanical shutter opened.
This (along with the sensor size smaller than the cameras were originally designed for), was one of the main areas of concern expressed by backers.
The company has designed a clever workaround: a shutter button that screws into the camera's shutter button.In response, the company has designed a clever workaround: a shutter button that screws into the camera's shutter button.
The "Sync button" add-on is a small additional button that can screw into the cable release threads of cameras that have one. The company also suggests another version may be possible without the thread, presumably to be glued onto cameras without a threaded shutter button.
The renders of the button show a flat cable extending from the button but don't show what that cable would need to connect to. The company's development video suggests it will need to connect to the I'm Back Roll unit, to avoid the latency that a Bluetooth trigger is likely to have.
While we've repeatedly stressed the many challenges that stand in the way of creating a quasi-universal digital module for old film cameras - challenges that prevented the original Digital Film project, back when the aim was to perpetuate the use of film bodies as an alternative to switching to dedicated digital cameras - we've been impressed by I'm Back's persistence to make it possible to revive old film cameras for the fun of it. And, even if the implementation still looks like it may be a bit clunky, it's an undoubtedly clever idea.
The Sync button can be added as an option during checkout and existing backers can add one to their order for around $38 (it costs 20 Swiss Franks, with an additional 10 CHF for postage to the US).
When the Fujifilm X half, a compact camera designed to provide a whimsical, nostalgic shooting experience rather than technical prowess, launched, it cost an eye-watering $849 in the US. Many commenters balked at that price, saying that they might have considered it as a fun toy, were it closer to $500.
Well, that time has come. The X half is currently on sale at multiple US retailers and on Fujifilm's own site, selling for $550, a substantial markdown compared to its launch price. But is that a sign that Fujifilm is so desperate to sell the cameras that it's willing to mark them down by around 35%?
Buy now:
Buy at Amazon.comBuy at AdoramaBuy at B&H PhotoNot quite. For the past few months, US stores have been selling the X half for $649, which is much closer to its price in countries like the UK or Japan. While some marked that as a sale price, others, like B&H and Fujifilm's official store, show it as a permanent reduction. And indeed, the camera hasn't sold for above that on Amazon since December 2025, according to price tracking site CamelCamelCamel.
Again, though, this isn't necessarily a sign of the camera's failure. When the X half launched in the summer of 2025, the environment around the US market was murky, as the country's arbitrary import tariffs sparked trade wars with several countries, including China, where the X half is made. While few companies ever actually confirmed their strategy, we wouldn't be surprised if many products launched during that time had some extra padding in their prices to avoid the companies having to later raise prices on newly-introduced models.
If the X half's price kept you from picking one up, your time may have comeFast forward to the present day, and things have somewhat settled down, with the US Supreme Court ruling that those tariffs were introduced illegally. While that may not mean that the battle over tariffs is over, it does at least seem like Fujifilm is comfortable selling the X half for $200 less than when it was introduced, and even letting it go on sale to bring the price down further.
Of course, there were things people disliked about the X half beyond just the price, and those aspects haven't changed. The company has released a few software updates since we reviewed the camera, but none of them have fundamentally changed what the camera is. But if the X half's price was the main thing keeping you from picking one up, your time may have come.
World-renowned science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey, Childhood’s End) once quipped that “Any teacher who can be replaced by a computer should be.” Some people think Clarke’s statement means we should replace all teachers.
Category: Robotics, Engineering
Tags: Exoskeleton, Education, Training aid, Ghent University, Violin
Designing a tiny house for a couple is one thing, but creating a home on wheels for an entire family is another challenge entirely. The Soma addresses this with a remarkably spacious layout that packs in three bedrooms and a large open living area.
Category: Tiny Houses, Outdoors
Tags: Building and Construction, Tiny Footprint, Micro-House, House, Home
One of the biggest hitters in the conventional arsenal merged with drone technology, as the US Army tested a bunker-buster warhead combined with an expendable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for field testing at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.
Category: Military, Engineering
CMOS sensors are now so ordinary that it's easy to forget how transformative they were. They're used in an ever-growing list of devices, from dedicated cameras, smartphones and webcams, to security systems, glasses and cars. A new video from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) looks at how the CMOS image sensor, once a space-imaging technology tied to NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), became one of the defining inventions of the digital age.
The short video traces the sensor's path from deep-space imaging work intended to photograph Saturn up close to everyday devices. It highlights the roles of engineers Eric Fossum, the inventor of the modern CMOS sensor and a longtime friend of DPReview, and Sabrina Kemeny. It walks through the idea of the "camera on a chip," with a useful visual for understanding how it works and how it differs from CCD technology.
Interestingly, even though the team had success right away, NASA wasn't interested at first. "We were trying to get them to adopt this technology that we thought was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and they just weren't that interested," said Kemeny in the video. That's because the scientists didn't know how it would handle the harsh conditions in space, and they needed a camera that they could be confident would perform when spending millions on a mission.
That led the team to seek out industry applications, which snowballed into what we now see today. "I had no idea how massively useful or ubiquitous it would be," said Fossum. Of course, the CMOS sensor did eventually make its way back to NASA, with the Perseverance rover on Mars using the technology to send back photos and videos from the distant planet.
The video is part of a series that highlights how research moves from the laboratory to daily life. It's a good example of how scientific research can find its way into everyday tools, including those used by photographers. After all, the same broad push to make cameras smaller, more efficient and more capable helped set the stage for the image-saturated world we live in now.
The last time we heard from the UK's AltoVolo, it only had renders of its grand vision for a sportscar equivalent of an eVTOL to show off. That was exactly a year ago – and it's now got a working prototype taking to the skies.
Tags: eVTOL, Hybrid eVTOLs, Personal eVTOLs
Thanks to researchers at Georgia Tech, robots have taken several new steps towards replacing human labor – and not simply for dangerous tasks such as mining the depths of the Earth and exploring the Moon, or difficult tasks such as high-speed mass-assembly of thousands of cars.
Category: Robotics, Engineering
Tags: Georgia Tech, Georgia Institute of Technology, Humanoid
Flying under the radar of robot hype, Sony AI's Ace has shown off its rapid-speed learning abilities that are seriously remarkable, displaying powerful split-second decision-making while taking on some of the best table tennis players – and winning.
Category: Robotics, Engineering
Tags: Sony, Sport, Autonomous, Self-Learning, Robotic construction
In 2021, Optimus debuted the Gemini stove, a sleek, uniquely shaped dual-burner stove that split the difference between backpacking and car camping gear. The brand immediately took home several prestigious awards for its design efforts, including an ISPO Award in Europe and an Outdoor Retailer Innovation Award in the US. Now it's doubling down on what makes the Gemini stove great, debuting a Gemini II that packs over a third more power per burner while still managing to drop a couple ounces.
Category: Outdoor Cooking, Gear, Outdoors
Tags: Stoves, Camping, Cooking, Backpacking, Bikepacking, Outdoors and Camping, Katadyn
A research team supervised by Assoc. Prof. Theo Hughes-Riley from Nottingham Trent University has designed a smart vibrating pillow sleeve prototype, to alert people who are deaf to fire and burglar alarms. The device was recently presented at the Association for Computing Machinery CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, at the Barcelona International Convention Centre in Spain.
Category: Good Thinking, Technology
Tags: Nottingham Trent University, Deaf, Sleep, Alert, Hearing Impaired
Combining a low price with a modest footprint of just 224 sq ft (20.81 sq m), the Rasa tiny house comes with a carefully considered interior that sleeps four in comfort – or even up to six at a squeeze.
Category: Tiny Houses, Outdoors
Tags: Building and Construction, Tiny Footprint, Micro-House, House, Home
The 2026 Nissan Frontier is a truck that’s equal parts stubborn old-school and new-face modernized. And honestly? That tension is exactly what makes the Frontier interesting.
Category: Automotive, Transport
Since 2018, Polish photographer Kamil Budzynski has been placing homemade pinhole cameras throughout the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, leaving them in abandoned buildings, trees and other locations for months at a time. The resulting solargraphs are strange, quiet and even disorienting. Ghostly buildings and overgrown streets sit beneath bright arcs traced by the Sun, thanks to exposures that can stretch across seasons. Kosmo Foto recently published a fascinating interview with Budzynski about the long-running project.
Budzynski first visited the exclusion zone in the mid-2010s, but after several trips, he began looking for a process that could better match the feeling of the place. "After three trips to the Chornobyl exclusion zone, I began to feel that I couldn't do the place justice by walking around with a digital camera," he said. "Searching for inspiration in niche photographic processes, I came across solargraphy just as I was about to pack for another visit."
"I began to feel that I couldn't do the place justice by walking around with a digital camera"For the unfamiliar, solargraphy is the process of capturing the Sun's path across the sky over long periods (days, weeks or even years) using pinhole cameras. Budzynski's cameras are often made from simple objects such as 35mm film canisters, drink cans and small tins, loaded with very low-sensitivity photographic paper and fitted with carefully made pinholes. He has installed more than 100 of them, though not all have survived because of Ukraine's harsh winters or Russia's invasion. After retrieving the exposed paper, Budzynski leaves the cameras behind to avoid bringing any radioactive particles out of the exclusion zone.
This photograph shows the metal shield built to contain the radioactive remnants of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
Photo: Kamil Budzynski
The distinctive look of the images is not the result of radiation, despite their months-long stay in the exclusion zone. Budzynski told Kosmo Foto that "for nuclear radiation to affect photosensitive paper it would need to be far too dangerous to get near it," but added that the weather was a much bigger challenge. Moisture, freezing temperatures and months of exposure can all leave their mark on the final image.
What makes the project more than a visual curiosity is how well the process matches the subject. Budzynski is using a camera to record time passing through places many people still think of as frozen in 1986. That distinction feels especially relevant this year, as April 26 marked 40 years since the Chornobyl nuclear disaster. Pripyat was evacuated the day after the accident, and tens of thousands of people were ultimately removed from the surrounding area. Budzynski's images push against the familiar "ghost town" shorthand by showing that the zone is not static.
"I wanted to capture the passing of time in a literal sense""I wanted to capture the passing of time in a literal sense," Budzynski told Kosmo Foto. "Pripyat and the entire exclusion zone may be frozen in 1986 to us, but life there continues. Stray dogs and wild horses roam the empty streets, plants climb tall buildings, and the sun still rises every morning – whether we are there to see it or not. I hope I can convey how insignificant I feel when standing among the ruins to those looking at my photographs."
Photo: Kamil BudzynskiRussia's 2022 invasion altered Budzynski's solargraphy trips. He has returned to Ukraine since then on humanitarian trips, during which he was able to recover a few cameras. "Most cameras from this period did not survive, destroyed by Ukrainian forces searching for booby traps and other surprises left by the retreating Russian army," he said. "I had quite a lot of explaining and apologizing to do when our guards learned of my little innocent photography project. One particular camera left right near the power plant caused quite a stir."
Kosmo Foto's full interview goes much deeper into Budzynski's process, the locations he has photographed and the practical problems of hiding a pinhole camera in a place where both weather and history are working against you. It is worth reading in full, both for the mesmerizing images and for the way the project's technical limitations become part of the story rather than obstacles to it.
You can also see more of Budzynski's work at his website.
Dictation tech for typing on your computer and mobile devices has gotten way better and more accessible over the last few years, thanks to sophisticated AI models. But an upcoming device can remove even more friction from the process of getting words onto your screen, by simply reading your thoughts.
Category: Wearables, Consumer Tech, Technology
Tags: Brain-computer interface, EEG, Electroencephalography (EEG), wearable computing
Russian design studio ATRIUM has completed a private multi-use garage in Moscow. Set within a forested estate, Garage for Car Collection, is a bespoke building for a private collection of luxury and vintage vehicles. The 200-sq-m (2,153-sq-ft) garage is a modern extension to the site, and also features a home gym, office, lounge areas, practical storage, mud room, and ski racks.
Category: Architecture, Engineering
Tags: sustainable design, Architects, Fusion Garage, Tiny Footprint
As if it wasn't already running enough laps around its competition in the electric-vehicle (EV) world, BYD's now building a hypercar for drop-top aficionados.
Category: Automotive, Transport
Tags: Hypercar, BYD, Electric Vehicles
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a passive motion/contact sensor that detects motion using only sound. Without electricity, electronics, or batteries. The sensors are small, uniquely shaped metal tags that each emit very specific ultrasonic sounds upon contact. They are smaller than a penny and cost only a few cents each.
Category: Good Thinking, Technology
Tags: Georgia Tech, Georgia Institute of Technology, Motion sensor, Ultrasound
In only four years after the Russian invasion, Ukraine went from being a country knocked back on its heels and scrambling for military aid to emerging as a leading provider of battlefield-tested counter-drone expertise and exporter of anti-drone weapons systems. How did this happen? Let's find out.
Category: Military, Engineering
Tags: Ukraine , drones, NATO, xxShowcase
