Use a white tshirt to improve digital photos

Here are two photography hacks which use a simple white tshirt to improve the lighting of your photos. They come from Darren Rowse of Digital Photography School.

In situations where you can’t use a reflector (and for minimising the set up needed) you can wear a white tshirt to reflect light onto the subject. You’ll need to ensure you’re standing close enough for the light to reflect.

And the other tip? When shooting with a flash you can diffuse its impact by bouncing the flash off yourself. This way the subject is lit indirectly, but with a white natural light.

DIY Reflector – Wear a White T-Shirt [Digital Photography School]
by Sarah Stokely – LifeHacker

Asus intros sleek Nova P22 desktop

Asus, currently on a crash-bang roller derby thanks to the massive success of the Eee, has stepped up its game in the desktop arena today with the announcement of the Nova P22. The sleek, white and orange box is in the size class of the Mac Mini, standing at just 2-inches in height, and features a 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo E6320 processor with a 1.06GHz front-side bus, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and what appears to be some sweet media center options. As of right now, the PC is only available in Taiwan, where you’ll drop around $1,019 for bragging rights. We can only hope they bring something with this much style to the US, so the Mini vs. Nova P22 flamewar can begin in earnest. The ball is in your court, Asus.

[Via Electronista]

by Joshua Topolsky – Engadget

Solio Magnesium Edition converts solar power to gadget juice

Like the broad, sun-catching leaves of a plant – nature’s original sun catcher – the Solio nabs that sun but, instead of creating carbs via photosynthesis, it powers your equally life-sustaining portable gadgets. While the Solio’s been around the block before, the new Solio Magnesium Edition is a little more rugged which, ideally, means it oughta stay away from the landfill a little longer than its predecessor. The unit comes with adapters and a wall charger (for those of you who live underground) and is available for £99.95. If you could care less about the fancy new shell, the original Solio has been redubbed the Solio Classic and is now available for under £50.

by Christopher Grant – Engadget

Quartics Mobile2Display connects phone and PC wirelessly

Quartics, the company behind the PC-on-TV solutions peddled by D-Link and others showed its latest spin on the technology, Mobile2Display. We checked out a demo allowing Windows Mobile 5 or 6 based phones to send video wirelessly to a TV, with no problems about codecs or formatting, the picture upscaled through Quartics’ device to high resolution. Look out for these coming from your cell phone manufacturer in the second quarter of this year. Next up? Adding the ability to send video from the TV back to the phone, Slingbox-style.

by Richard Lawler – Engadget

D-Link debuts DSM-210 10-inch WiFi photo frame

We love us a decent WiFi photo frame, and D-Link seems to have a keeper with this here DSM-210 10-incher. The frame can pull photos from RSS feeds, USB drives, flash cards and a special Yahoo Widget that lets you drop an image from you desktop and have it appear automagically on the DSM-210. You can also sync with calendar programs, and various online news and other info via RSS. There’s an Ethernet plug in the back if WiFi isn’t your style, and the frame also has a rechargeable battery if you’re looking to do things completely wire free. The DSM-210 will be out Q1 2008 for $250.

by Paul Miller – Engadget

WUSB streaming HD video

The Wireless USB packing Toshiba Portege R400 makes an encore performance at CES 2008 in hopes of putting your bandwidth fears to rest. Pushing data at 377Mbps (of a theoretical 480Mbps at 3-meters), you’re looking at 1,920 x 1,080 pixel video sourced from the R400 and displayed on a prototype WUSB monitor sitting a few inches away. Not bad, eh?

by Thomas Ricker – Engadget

Samsung intros Spinpoint M6 500GB standard height laptop drive, Hitachi be damned

Hitachi had to hack it to produce a 500GB 2.5-inch laptop drive, adding another platter (and a few millimeters thickness) that make their new 5K500 impossible to install in most standard laptops and enclosures — but not Samsung. The Spinpoint M6 500GB drive brings a half terabyte at the standard 9.5mm height, and should land some time in March, meaning your current laptop — and not just those new Asus machines — should be able to accommodate one or two of these massive mothers.

[Via Pocket-Lint]
by Ryan Block – Engadget

Asus M70S and M50S notebooks boast 1TB of storage

As you may have read in our coverage of Hitachi’s new 5K500 2.5-inch 500GB drive, Asus will be the first manufacturer to pack a pair of these capacious components into a set of upcoming widescreen models, giving the 17-inch M70S and 15-inch M50S the distinguished honor of being the world’s first one terabyte laptops. Besides those oddly-sized drives (which can configured in either RAID 0 or RAID 1), these machines will also offer up to WUXGA or WSXGA+ resolutions (for the M70 and M50, respectively), 2.4GHz T7700 Core 2 Duo processors, AMD ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics, and a fingerprint reader, along with an optional hybrid TV tuner and remote. As usual, the good stuff (pictures, pricing) will be coming in a few days at the Show of Shows.

by Evan Blass – Engadget

Samsung announces slew of upconverting DVD players, recorders

Can’t get enough of Samsung’s new gear? Good, because there’s plenty more where that came from. Next up on the docket is a half dozen DVD players and recorders, so without further ado, let’s check out the DVD-F1080 ($99.99). This “ultra-compact” unit provides 1080p upconversion, HDMI-CEC, progressive scan playback and support for multimedia files including DivX, MP3, WMA and MPEG4. The DVD-HD1080P8 ($89.99) serves up the exact same features as the aforementioned F1080, but does so while residing in a slightly larger chassis. Moving on, we’ve got the über-slim (14.2-inches wide) DVD-P180 ($49.99), which upscales DVDs to 720p / 1080i, rocks an HDMI-CEC port and also plays nice with DivX. For the rest of the gang, we suggest you head on past the break.

Next in line is the DVD-R175 ($149.99), the first of the bunch to support 1080p DVD upscaling and feature DVD recording. Aside from boasting an EZ Record (read: one-touch) function and providing a front DV input, this unit records to practically every writable DVD out there and touts HDMI 1.3 with CEC, commercial advance / time slip and component pass-throughs. Amazingly enough, the next two units take us back to a simpler time in life, one where VHS players were ubiquitous and the next format war was simply a pipe dream. The DVD-V9800 ($99.99) does indeed rock a dual-format (DVD / VHS) design, but somehow manages to include a totally modern HDMI port as well as 1080p DVD upconversion. As for the DVD-VR375 ($179.99), it combines the recording functionality of the DVD-R175 with the vintage appeal of the DVD-V9800, resulting in a upscaling DVD / VHS player than also stores content to blank DVDs. You can catch the whole lot (or just the one you’re eying) this April.

by Darren Murph – Engadget

Philips launches SHB9000 Bluetooth headset

Philips’s claim that its new SHB9000 headset offers the best-ever music and conversation quality from a Bluetooth headset might be a bit optimistic, but it’s their PR, so we’ll let ‘em say what they want. The over-the-ear headphones offer native MP3 decoding for loss-less streaming, 40mm neodymium speakers and can automatically switch between calls and music. There’s a digital signal processor to filter out background noise and echo when on the phone, and you can connect to your phone wirelessly or via a provided cord. We’re not quite sure what the difference in SKUs is, but Philips is offering this one in the Spring for $99 and $129 “respectively.”

by Paul Miller – Engadget