Nikon has a new camera hitting the shelves very shortly which I’m sure you’ve all had a chance to hear about. It’s called the Nikon D90, and it’s a 12.3 megapixel step up in their mid-range of cameras. This will be the successor to the D80. However, a few things seem to radically set it apart from the D80. First, it’s basically using the D300′s CMOS sensor… so you’ll get the kind of low noise the D300 has been enjoying. Still not as good as an FX sensor, but far better than anything that came before. It shoots at 4.5 fps – so it’s no slouch at capturing action.

But perhaps the most major new feature you’re getting… is the ability to take HD movies with the camera. Interested yet?

Because of the way an SLR works, which it’s mirror assembly and shutter mechanism, typically your recording surface (in the digital era, that’s the sensor) is hidden from view until you press the shutter release button, causing all that stuff to flip up and out of the way. This has been a bit of a technical barrier for doing something like Live View or movies.

In the last year or so, however, companies like Nikon have discovered ways around that hurdle. Modern Digital SLR’s are able to preview using the LCD screen and, with the Nikon D90 release… they can now take movies. This is a feature that many photographers, pro and amateur alike, may not immediately find appealing… but it’s huge. You see, not only does the D90 shoot video, but it shoots HD video (720p) and because it can use all the Nikon lenses, your D-Movie video can look better than most expensive camcorders.

Visit the Nikon D-Movie page and watch some of their sample video.

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Just when you may have thought “It’s all been done”, you find out it really hasn’t. Gizmodo published this story earlier today of ten interesting and fun camera rig hacks. While many are mounting concepts, there are a few homemade cameras in the list as well. I really dig the red-eye mount, which is essentially a rig designed with one thing in mind – to induce the maximum amount of red-eye possible. Genius.

Not too much of this is entirely useful, given that there’s little to no discussion surrounding the hacks themselves, but I thought you may be interested in it. [oobject]

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Having just made the plunge into the iPhone, I’ve finally come to appreciate what all the hype and fanfare was about. It may not be the messiah device that Steve Jobs and his loyal fans would have you believe, but it’s pretty close. Apple has engineered a fantastic phone mobile computer which is now extensible with third party applications. For photographers like you and me, there are a few apps that could come in handy, so I thought we could take a moment to talk about those.

If you don’t have an iPhone, these apps will also work on an iPod Touch updated to 2.x firmware (though some will require you to be located within a WiFi hotspot). If you don’t have an iPhone or an iPod Touch… you’re dead to me already. I’m kidding. But no, seriously, what are you waiting for?

Photography and the iPhone are, in many ways, a match made in heaven. Apple recognized this, and that’s why there’s a whole category in the iTunes App Store called “Photography”. Many of these apps are silly, novelty items – like Talk Bubbles, which adds cartoon-like chat bubbles over peoples heads. Dig deeper, however, and you’ll find some real treasures here.

PhotoCalc is one of them. It’s essentially a calculator and guide for photographers. You can calculate exposure reciprocity, depth-of-field and hyperfocal distance, and it has a flash exposure calculator. These are nice to have, but the real gem is that you can check what time the sun rises or sets. This app would be particularly handy if you tend to shoot with a lot of flash, and even moreso if you tend to shoot that way outdoors.

Speaking of outdoors, the iPhone comes packaged with a nice little Weather app from Apple that’s pretty handy to get a rough sense of the weather in the days ahead, but if you want a little more detail, well – it kind of lacks.

WeatherBug, which has been annoying me for years on the desktop PC, is a free and fantastic way to get that kind of detail on an iPhone, and includes a satellite map. It will also bring up weather cams if any exist for that area, so you can get an idea of the conditions outside on the fly, in case, you know… you don’t feel like going outside to check yourself. All kidding aside, it’s nice to be able to get cam views on areas that may not be local to you, and having the extra detail provided by WeatherBug can be invaluable when you’re trying to decipher which way a storm is headed.

Finally, if you’re concerned about the condition of the skies you’ll be shooting under, a great application is iCSC Clear Sky Chart, which shows you in an easy to read chart form whether you’ll have clear or dark skies overhead.

PhotoCalc, WeatherBug, and iCSC are all available in the iTunes App Store. PhotoCalc costs $2.99, but the other two are completely free.

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I’ve been a little preoccupied lately and have had trouble getting anything done on Fotohacker, but I couldn’t miss the opportunity to talk about the second coming of Photosynth, the spacial photography browser being developed by some folks over at Microsoft.

Photosynth is a product being worked on by Microsoft Live Labs, and about two years ago they unveiled a tech demo upon the world which got everyone excited. In a nutshell, the application gathers photos from a source and using an advanced set of algorithms it creates paths between these photos allowing you to browse around geographically local environments, almost like a 3D virtual world. It was really cool, but now they’ve gone and outdone themselves.

The next generation of Photosynth (which technically really hasn’t had a generation yet since it’s unreleased) employs even more techniques to smooth the transition between photographs, including color correction and steadying effects. Here’s a video of it at work…

Now all they need to do is combine this application with a rich source of photographs, like Flickr or Pbase, and they might really have something. Maybe this is why Microsoft has been so persistent with their desire to acquire Yahoo (owners of Flickr) lately. One thing’s for sure – Microsoft really doesn’t have a great photo service of their own to draw from, at least not yet, but when they do – Photosynth will surely try to take advantage of it.

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