Oh, Leica. We love your work, but we cannot afford it. The 37.5-megapixel S2 DSLR will hit U.K. stores for the equivalent of roughly $26,000 for the body alone, though the U.S. price will be just $23,000. And believe it or not, a better body with a sapphire-glass LCD screen and Platinum Service costs an extra $5,000. What do you get for all that money? A sensor that’s 56 percent bigger than full frame, measuring 30 x 45 mm, but no lens. That’ll cost extra — in the range of $5,000 per lens — and if you want an extra battery charger it’s $400. These are not outrageous prices for a high-end camera, but I’d certainly be afraid to hold one. [DP Review via Wired]

The new 12-MP Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZR1 combines the best of both worlds in providing a bulked-up and maintaining a slim profile. Using a new aspherical lens, the ZR1 includes an 8 x optical zoom while keeping the numbers down to just an inch thick and 5.6 ounces, with battery and SD/SDHC card. A high-speed auto focus system makes the camera very quick, so that your next candid won’t be of the side of some guy’s face as he turns tail and runs in the other direction. Rounding out the spec sheet, the ZR1 includes a 2.7-inch screen, 330 pics worth of battery life per charge, the latest in Panasonic’s image stabilization technology: Panasonic Power Optical Image Stabilizer, face recognition, and Travel mode, which lets you group according to destination, time and date. The ZR1 will be available in September in a number of colors for $279.95. [via CNET]

Conventional cameras do a pretty good job of depicting the world around us, but they don’t process imagery the same way as the human eye. Designer Georg Milde dreamed up a technology that shows just how much information our eyeballs are taking in, using a combination of lenses and post-production. The lenses have variable variable focus and focal length, and when light hits they spread the image to to three sensors, processing the image as a human would. But we don’t see in rectangles, like a camera, so the Human Eye Camera presents its RAW images as stitched panoramas, curving and distorting the image to show what it would look like if the brain didn’t flatten it. Thank goodness for brains. [via Yanko Design]

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Photos of the rumored Nikon D300s have surfaced before, but if you didn’t believe them then, perhaps the sneaking cameraman in the reflection above will change your mind. The camera is reportedly a follow-up to the D300 — a 12.3-megapixel DSLR with a 3-inch LCD screen — adding a microphone, 720p video, a quiet shutter option and a slot for SD cards. It’s also said that the D300s’ continuous shooting speed will be boosted to 8 frames per second. Of course, companies rarely, if ever, give us the satisfaction of knowing when a rumor is dead-on, so we’ll have to wait for official word to find out what’s really going down. [Nikon Rumors via Electronista]

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Just unveiled at the Korea Products Exhibition in Warsaw, the LG GC990 Louvre is an exciting package of high-resolution stills and video. It’s also just a concept and ” a great example of the type of mobile technology innovation LG is developing .” Hopefully we’ll see that technology innovation on the market sometime in the not-so-distant future. The conceptual mobile features an impressive mix of a 12 MP camera with auto/touch focus and Schneider-Kreuznach optics, and HD video recording (1280 x 720 pixels) at 30 fps. Unlike the phone that you used this morning to snap a pic of that douche at the bus stop with the inexplicable hard hat, this phone could actually take both pictures and video you’d want to keep. You may even drop your regular camera altogether. Additionally, it has Wi-Fi with DLNA, TV-out, GPS, 3.2″ 16M color touchscreen display. But again, just a concept. For now. [via GSM Arena] Continue Reading

Clearly, when taking unflattering pictures at the bar, the iPhone’s built-in camera can’t make you look fabulous on its own. Perhaps Factron’s iPhone case with accompanying lenses will do the trick. There are five of them, including fisheye, super wide and close-up lenses, along with an elegant case that lets everyone know you’re a true professional. The lenses cost between $15 and $55, and the case alone costs $200 — a small price to pay for that perfectly-framed iPhone photo, perhaps — but it’s not clear whether Factron will ship out of Japan. No word on how these lenses work with the iPhone 3GS’s new tap-to-focus feature. [via Engadget]

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Many may think that Kodak discontinued Kodachrome years ago. And film for that matter. However, despite the decline of the once prominent medium of film, Kodak has continued to distribute Kodachrome, the “world’s first commercially successful color film”. Kodak has announced that it will discontinue the 74-year old film as of this year. With sales dwindling to just a fraction of a percent of Kodak’s still-picture film sales, Kodachrome simply isn’t the high-demand product of photographic legends that it once was. While digital camera technology has obviously contributed to Kodachrome’s discontinuation, photographers have also moved toward newer, easier color film.  Kodak will donate the last rolls of Kodachrome to the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester. [via CNET] [Photo: kodachromeproject]

It’s certainly possible to drop a few Benjamins on a compact digital camera, loaded with unnecessary features, but when it’s time to just take pictures, simplicity is king. That’s why the Canon PowerShot A480 is getting positive reviews despite its lack of frills and decidedly unstylish design. PCWorld says the A480 is “dead-simple,” while Photography blog calls it a “cheap, well-made, straight-forward compact camera.” It’s a 10-megapixel point-and-shoot with 3.3x optical zoom and a 2.5-inch LCD screen. The DIGIC III image processor offers face detection, motion detection and red-eye correction, along with 15 shooting modes, and that’s about it. A few different colors are available, but you’re not impressing anyone. Amazon’s got it for $105. [via Thaindian News]