Flossing regularly is great for your teeth, but the single-use plastic picks add to the ever-growing problem of household waste. A Swedish design team has a better solution, in the form of a sleek flosser that's made to last a lifetime.
Category: Around The Home, Consumer Tech, Technology
Tags: Product alternatives, sustainable design, Dental, Teeth, Kickstarter
Turkey-based upstart Shark Instruments is taking the fight to higher-end guitar makers with advanced manufacturing capabilities. Its latest industry-first feature: adjustable frets.
Category: Music, Consumer Tech, Technology
What better place to pull the covers off of your latest and greatest pocket camera than the Cannes Film Festival? "By unveiling the Osmo Pocket 4P at one of the most prestigious stages in global filmmaking, DJI signals a bold evolution of the Pocket series from a creator tool into a cinematic imaging device capable of professional-grade storytelling," says the company.
Category: Consumer Tech, Technology
Tags: DJI Innovations, Camera, Pocket, Actioncam, Gimbals
Terminal B at LaGuardia Airport in New York has unveiled Bridget, a life-sized, hyper-realistic AI hologram that can hold a real conversation – answering questions about gates, baggage claims, and VIP lounges. The technology is a signal that the way we navigate airports is changing from static signs and apps to conversational digital guides, and several major hubs are already competing to define it.
Category: Technology
Tags: Airports, Navigation, Interactive, Holographic, Artificial Intelligence
The L10 may have a new name, but conceptually it's a successor to the LX100 series that started in 2012.
It's built around a Four Thirds (225mm²) sensor, from which it uses up to a 182mm² region. This makes the sensor 50% larger than a Type 1 sensor and half the size of a standard APS-C chip.
It pairs this with a 24-75mm equiv. F1.7-2.8 lens. By always using a 1.1x crop of its total sensor area, it's able to maintain the same diagonal angle of view, whether you shoot 4:3, 3:2 or 16:9 aspect ratios. It also offers 1:1 capture, but this uses a crop of the 4:3 region, not a taller chunk of the sensor.
Updated InternalsThe L10 gains the BSI CMOS sensor with on-sensor phase detection from the GH7 and G9 II models, meaning it offers improved dynamic range, improved resolution and faster focus than previous LX100 models.
It also gets the latest processor from the Panasonic S1RII, meaning it has access to the latest subject recognition algorithms, which again should significantly increase the ease-of-use of the AF system*, as well as the performance boost coming from phase detection and the more powerful processor. With that said, you may still find yourself waiting on the lens occasionally; the camera takes a full two to three seconds from when you flip the power switch to when you get a preview.
Finally, the connectivity has been updated. The camera now offers 5Ghz Wi-Fi, as well as a 10Gbps USB-C port.
*Though it inherits that camera's quirk of not allowing generic autofocus tracking when you've selected a subject recognition mode.
Multi-aspect shootingLike the LX100 cameras, and many of Panasonic's previous LX models, the L10 opts for a multi-aspect design: always using a slight (1.1x) crop of its Four Thirds sensor, which allows it to deliver a series of aspect ratios, each extending out to the image circle of the lens.
This means that, unlike most cameras, you don't get a narrower diagonal angle of view if you crop away from the native aspect ratio. Instead, the L10 gives a choice of 4:3, 3:2 or 16:9 capture, while maintaining the same diagonal angle of view. This means the lens remains a true 24-75mm equivalent, regardless of which format you choose to shoot in. It also means you get the maximum resolution for all of the modes. The only exception is the camera's 1:1 mode, which is simply a crop of the 4:3 region, rather than extending up to use the full height of the sensor.
Maximum resolutions:The downside of this approach is that you never get to use the entire sensor, so pay a slight sensor size penalty, meaning you get slightly less resolution and slightly more noise, at the whole image level. But plenty of people, including many DPReview reviewers, over the years, have found that the increased creative flexibility makes this trade-off worthwhile.
Bigger is better? The L10 versus the D-Lux 8, essentially Leica's updated version of the LX100 II.It's worth noting, though, that the L10 has a new name, rather than being a Mark upgrade of the LX100 series. And while the body looks very similar, it's a distinctly larger camera. It feels sturdier and more substantial, though not necessarily more premium; the buttons and dials feel decidedly less sturdy, and the "saffiano leather-textured finish" doesn't offer a ton of grip.
We previously said the LX100 looked a lot like a smaller X100 with a zoom lens, given the similarity of the control points and their layout. The L10 is no longer smaller, matching the larger sensor camera's dimensions almost to the millimeter. However, the controls have changed somewhat, which again justifies the change of name.
On the subject of names, there was previous a Lumix DMC-L10, which was a Four Thirds system DSLR. This new camera is technically called the Lumix DC-L10. This isn't the first time we've seen camera companies run out of names and have to re-use earlier ones. Canon has made two PowerShot S100 models, 11 years apart, whereas Panasonic's previous L10 came out nearly two decades ago.
A familiar lensThe lens has an ambitious F1.7-2.8 aperture range, giving an equivalent aperture range of F3.8-6.2 in full-frame terms. The lens drops away from its maximum aperture relatively quickly, hitting F1.8 as soon as you start to zoom in, and F2.0 by 27mm equiv. F2.8 is reached at 52mm equiv. and maintained to the full extent of the zoom.
The camera has an in-lens, 'leaf' shutter that can operate at up to 1/2000 sec. This maximum speed is maintained even at the brightest apertures (some leaf shutters can only deliver their maximum shutter speeds at smaller apertures, where they have less distance to travel).
This means the camera can sync with flashes all the way up to 1/2000 sec. The camera's hot shoe gives you the option to use a small flash such as the Godox iT30Pro (the 'O' version is compatible with the Olympus TTL protocol used by Panasonic), or the Godox iT32 / X5 flash/remote trigger combination. However, unlike the LX100 II, it doesn't come with an external flash in the box.
For shutter speeds above 1/2000, the L10 can use electronic shutter, which extends up to 1/32,000 sec. This can't be used with flash but should work pretty well when you want to use a wide aperture in bright conditions. We haven't had a chance to measure the electronic shutter yet, but the slight crop, relative to the GH7, should mean a sub-20ms level of rolling shutter.
ControlsThe L10 has a mode dial on the top plate, rather than one dedicated to shutter speed. Likewise, the thumb wheel on the corner is no longer dedicated to exposure comp, and can be customized to change ISO, aspect ratio, autofocus mode, drive mode, or to control shutter speed / aperture (depending on exposure mode).
It gains a function button at its center, that, by default, controls your JPEG color mode (unless, of course, you want to switch to the "Real Time LUT" mode, for which you'll use a dedicated button on the back), but can be set to do essentially anything in the cameras' menus.
This camera feels like its control system has been borrowed from a camera with different dialsLike the S9, this camera feels like its control system has been awkwardly borrowed from a camera with a different dial setup (which is unfortunate, as the LX100s had a pretty coherent control system). As an example, the top plate dial controls aperture in both Aperture Priority and Manual modes by default, meaning that, unless your physical aperture ring is in A mode, it doesn't do anything in those modes. (In Shutter priority mode it, more sensibly, controls shutter speed). We found ourselves needing to customize the controls before they made much sense, and even then that required using the fiddly rear-plate dial more than we'd have liked.
Somewhat disappointingly, the aspect ratio slider on the lens has been replaced by a three-position switch, which has an additional position that hands control over to the camera. By default in controls aspect ratio, but can be re-purposed to control a few other parameters: switching between a set of autofocus subject recognition modes, zoom steps, or color modes.
Other changesThe bigger body allows for the use of a much larger battery. Rather than the 7.4Wh battery used in the LX100s, the L10 gains the much larger, DMW-BLK22, which has a capacity of 15.8Wh. This powers it to an 420 shot per charge rating, measured by the CIPA standard test method, and over 1000 shots in power save mode. These are excellent figures for a relatively compact camera, and mean you're unlikely to have to worry about battery life when traveling with the camera.
Another feature adding to the camera'a size is the fully articulated rear screen. This is likely to divide audiences, as some photographers prefer a tilting screen, but we suspect most users will find it an upgrade compared with the fixed screen on the LX100 cameras. The L10's screen is a 1.84M dot panel, giving 960 x 640px resolution.
OLED viewfinder, rather than tearing-prone field-sequential finder. It's a 4:3 panel, rather than the wide 16:9 finder in the LX100 cameras, whose area was rarely used to the full. The new finder has an impressive 0.74x magnification (approaching the size of the finders in professional DSLRs), though with a relatively short 20mm eyepoint, which glasses wearers may find a little limiting.
Video specsEven though Panasonic talk about the L10 as being designed for photographers, its video specs are pretty impressive. Despite the microphone jack, there's no headphone socket for monitoring audio or an HDMI port, but the L10 is clearly a product of the company that brought us the GH series.
There's a Stills / Video / Slow & Quick switch on the back of the camera. It can shoot 4K video in either DCI or UHD aspect ratios at up to 120p, or 5.6K DCI-shaped video at up to 60p, or 4:3 'open gate' 5.2K footage at up to 60p.
The video modes make use of the same multi-aspect approach as stills modes do, so the 5.2K footage is taken from a much taller region of the sensor than the ∼17:9 5.6K video, making it tall enough to extract 2160 x 3840 (vertical 9:16 4K) crops, if you're using it to deliver both horizontal and vertical video from the same capture.
PriceThe L10 costs $1500 at launch, which feels like a major step up from the $999 that the LX100 II cost, back in 2019. However, it's worth noting that inflation means you'd need $1320 in modern money to buy the equivalent of a 2019 $999 camera, and the L10 is a much more capable camera, with more substantial-feeling build than its forebears.
The original LX100 developed something of a reputation for sucking dust into its sensor, in part because pocket cameras tend to be carried and used in wide, varied and challenging conditions. Panasonic said they made efforts to reduce this risk with the Mark II, and we've heard fewer complaints from users of the newer model. No further claims were made about the L10, so it's likely to be worth remembering that it's not fully sealed (it has an extending zoom, after all), but shouldn't be as susceptible as the Mk 1 was.
Wrap-upThe L10 might not be as compact as the LX100s were, nor does it follow quite the same control layout, but it brings most of what we liked about those cameras and directly addresses just about all our concerns about them.
Buy now:
Buy at AdoramaBuy at B&H PhotoWe're hard at work on our initial review of the camera, and will be posting an initial batch of samples from it shortly, so stay tuned.
Despite measuring just 30 ft (9.1 m) long, the Ruby tiny house is surprisingly capable as a full-time home for a small family. It packs in a large and open living area, plus two bedrooms, each with its own staircase.
Category: Tiny Houses, Outdoors
Tags: Building and Construction, Tiny Footprint, House, Micro-House, Home
This new tool you'll want on your belt looks like a Vernier caliper, but it's actually designed to beat the traditional monkey wrench at its own game – and then some.
Category: Knives and Multitools, Gear, Outdoors
Tags: Wrench, Kickstarter, EDC, DIY
Rice is one of the most widely grown staple crops, providing around 20% of the daily calorie intake for more than half of the world’s population.
Tags: Crops, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Genetic engineering, Agriculture
Far removed from its days as a synonym for "huge Class A motorhome," Winnebago is now known for a diverse lineup of on- and off-road RVs of all sizes. Building out its "Backcountry Series," the company adds its most ruggedly luxurious offering yet: the Arka truck camper. This off-grid expedition behemoth is prepared to spend up to 2 full weeks at a time in the deep, dusty backcountry. It's sure to have the Earthroamers and Krugs of the world peering back over their shoulders. Just don't expect a spa bathroom.
Category: RVs and Motorhomes, Adventure Vehicles, Outdoors
Tags: Winnebago, Truck, RAM, expedition vehicles, Overland Expo, Off-road, Off-grid, Camping, Outdoors and Camping, RV
Ian A. Wright, Amy-Marie Gilpin, & Katherine Warwick, Western Sydney University / The Conversation
Category: Environment, Science
CycloKinetics, a US propellant company, has unveiled a new family of superfuels for aircraft, missiles, and rockets that increase fuel performance by 32%. Aimed at the defense market, the fuels could allow vehicles to fly farther while carrying heavier payloads.
The Byron Bay tiny house is a spacious model that's centered around an open kitchen and living area. The towable home also has multiple upgrades available, including an off-grid setup, and would be a good fit for small families.
Category: Tiny Houses, Outdoors
Tags: Building and Construction, Tiny Footprint, Micro-House, House, Home
Fraimic wants to turn AI art into something you can put on your wall, rather than forgotten images somewhere in your phone's gallery. And honestly? That's a pretty neat idea.
Category: Around The Home, Consumer Tech, Technology
Tags: E Ink, E-Ink, AI Art and Music, Creative AI, Home decor, Reviews
The US Army has selected three vendors to boost the service's night vision system into the 21st century by replacing the legacy system from over 20 years ago with the next-generation Binocular Night Observation Device (BiNOD).
Category: Military, Engineering
Tags: elbit, Night Vision, US Army
After announcing last month that it had become the first Chinese lens manufacturer to create a full-frame autofocus zoom lens, this week Thypoch fully revealed its Voyager 24-50mm F2.8 lens for E-mount. The most eye-catching spec was probably its price: $649.
We were able to spend some time with the lens before it launched, shooting it in a variety of scenarios to see how it performs. You can check out our full coverage to read our impressions, but if you want to see for yourself, check out the gallery below.
Buy now:
Buy at B&H PhotoPlease do not reproduce any of these images on a website or any newsletter/magazine without prior permission (see our copyright page). We make the originals available for private users to download to their own machines for personal examination or printing; we do so in good faith, so please don't abuse it.
Sample galleryThis widget is not optimized for RSS feed readers. Click here to open it in a new browser window / tab.Thank you to Sony for the loan of an a7R V to capture this gallery. All images were processed using our standard lens workflow in Capture One, with no vignetting correction applied.
Rugged phones are not for everyone. They're generally huge and heavy, though most come with a long-life battery and all can withstand a beating. A relatively new name in the space has gone mini for a tough cookie that's also an actioncam.
Category: Mobile Technology, Consumer Tech, Technology
Tags: Rugged, smartphones, Actioncam, Compact
Just when modern EVs are starting to feel like interchangeable tech pods on wheels, Renault has decided to bring a little romance back into the equation. The newly revealed open-top version of the Renault 4 E-Tech takes the retro-inspired electric hatch and gives it something the EV world desperately lacks these days – personality.
Category: Automotive, Transport
Tags: Renault, Convertible, Electric Vehicles, MINI, Fiat, Citroen
Norton Motorcycles’ comeback has been a long-documented story. The company has spent the better part of the last decade feeling like one of motorcycling’s great cautionary tales. Once a legendary British marque synonymous with Isle of Man glory and café-racer culture, the company disappeared into administration by 2020.
Category: Motorcycles, Transport
Tags: Norton Motorcycle, Superbike, V4, BMW Motorrad, Ducati, Supersports, TVS Motor
Back in the olden days of the previous millennium, long before the digital revolution compressed entire albums and even movies into ultra-high-fidelity files that users could download in seconds, hundreds of millions of people relied on physical tape to store albums on cassettes (or 8-tracks) and video on low-resolution VHS cassettes.
Category: Computing, Consumer Tech, Technology
Tags: Pennsylvania State University, Memory, Tape, Adhesive
Unitree has just gone and made many a kid-at-heart's wildest dream come true. The Chinese robotics firm has created the GD01, a functional mecha suit that you can hop into and walk about on two legs or four.
Category: Robotics, Engineering
Tags: Unitree, Future Robot
