Samsung is working on its own social network that it hopes will rival Facebook. The unnamed project will add social integration across Samsung’s portfolio of gadgets, including smartphones, smart TVs and even cameras. Yeah, cameras.

Hearing that a company is working on a ‘Facebook rival’ is not something that usually inspires confidence. Many have tried, even Google has had a crack with Google+, which is not quite up there with Facebook when it comes to user numbers, to put it mildly. Samsung is riding high at the moment however and given how it has put a dent in Apple’s smartphone crown with its Galaxy series of Android, who knows? It might just be able to pull something off.

Korea Times is reporting that Samsung is planning a move into social, with a new project that doesn’t have an official title yet but which is know internally as “Samsung Facebook”, which is pretty on the nose. Rather than a stand alone social site, Samsung is said to be building a social network into its products.

The service will apparently focus on messaging, photo and media sharing and will be accessible from a variety of Samsung devices. This will include the obvious ones like Samsung Android phones but also less obvious gadgets like smart TVs and Samsung’s range of digital cameras. This may then expand to include devices from other manufacturers.

“The eventual goal is to expand our social media service across different devices from different companies across different mobile platforms. That includes cameras, televisions and Blu-ray players,” a spokesman told Korea times.

Do we need another social network? Are you sick of Facebook and ready to start updating your status on your telly instead? Let us know in the comments.

[source: Korea Times]

The premise is relatively similar to Micro Four Thirds shooters and Sony’s NEX cameras: the Nikon J1 and V1 offer smaller chassis than your regular DSLRs, but all the flexibility of different lenses.

Up first is the Nikon J1, aimed at compact upgraders, with a 10.1MP CMOS sensor, HDMI out and 1080p video recording, a 3-inch LCD screen, and 10fps still shot speed, or 1200fps slow-mo. It comes with a built in flash, like Olympus’ E-PL line.

The Nikon V1 meanwhile is designed more for DSLR users and pros who want more accessories and quality: it uses the same sensor and dual-core image processor, but an electronic viewfinder, external flash, hotshoe for accessories and a plusher metal finish.

Purists might be put off by the comparatively small sensor (13.2mm x 8.8mm) and low ISO 3200 – we’d be surprised if lowlight performance outperformed Sony’s NEX cameras – but that incredible frame rate and software features, such as Smart Photo Selector, which grabs a bunch of pictures in burst for you to choose from, may well make up for this.

Alongside the two new models are a range of lenses, including 10mm, 10-30mm, 30-110mm and 10-100mm, an F-mount adaptor that lets you use another NIKKOR lenses, and external flash and GPS units.

The whole caboodle ships from 20 October, with prices starting at £549.99 for the Nikon J1 with 10-30mm lens kit, and £829.99 for the Nikon V1 with the same lens.

Excited by what you see? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Sony launched its NEX range of interchangeable lens cameras 18 months ago, intending it as a means to get compact camera owners interested in DSLR – at a smaller size and price.

But things didn’t play out entirely as Sony expected: the NEX-5 flagship model was embraced by the pro-photographer community, in part due to the compatibility with Sony Alpha DLSR lenses.

“We intended NEX to be a model that provided progression from compact to SLR, with simplicity and portability,” Sony technical field sales manager Paul Genge tells Electricpig.

“The customer sometimes comes at it from another perspective, and we had SLR photographers who wanted that…this is a purpose made camera for photographers.”

The result? The Sony NEX-7, which packs the 24.4 megapixel sensor of Sony’s latest Alpha DSLR cameras, 1080p HD video recording and an ISO range that stretches up to 16,000.

Physically, it”s certainly more imposing than the original NEX-5, with a more vintage black metal and plastic feel to it than the strange, mottled and futuristic chassis of last year’s model (it also houses a flash internally). On the back is a 3-inch LCD, but it’s the dials on the top that are most striking: they don’t have any labels on at all.

These two dials are contextual, and actually allow you to adjust different settings depending on the mode, and what option you have selected with the main dial by the side of the screen. Genge explains: “We are minimising tthe camera – in so doing you lose surface area…(but) by not labelling the buttons they get more versatility.”

It’s certainly true, and being able to map your own controls to them may prove to be a blessing for serious snappers – it does mean a learning curve however.
Also of note is the electronics OLED viewfinder, which has caused some ruckus online. It gives 100 percent frame coverage, and honestly, we couldn’t notice any difference – other than the text that overlays in its place, and we think most users will be pretty chuffed with it.

Lastly, Sony showed off the second generation lens mount, which allows you to attach Alpha lenses, including enormous telescopic ones, onto the front of the NEX-7. It uses Sony’s translucent mirror tech, and phase detection to improve auto focus, handy when you’re shooting video. Genge also revealed that native E-mount lenses are on the way from Carl Zeiss, Cosina, Sigma and Tamron, so look out for those

Unfortunately, we aren’t able to publish the images taken with the Sony NEX-7 as this is a pre-production sample. Nevertheless, we were impressed with what we saw: on a grey, dreary day in London, images shot over the Thames came out crisp, detailed and noise-free, and video was smooth. For pros tired of lugging around enormous camera bodies, it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.

The Sony NEX-7 is out in November.

Out November | £TBC | Sony

Though the iPhone and Android devices are usually the sworn enemies of compact cameras, the new Panasonic Lumix FX90 attempts to broker a truce. The 802.11.n WiFi enabled compact comes with Lumix Link iPhone and Android apps in tow to share images with your mobile at the touch of a button…

Oddly, you’ll need to sign up to Panasonic’s new Lumix Club cloud storage service to get at the apps which set up a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection. You can also share photos and videos to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and YouTube directly from the Panasonic Lumix FX90 via WiFi should the desire take you.

Besides its WiFi smarts, the Panasonic Lumix FX90 has a 12MP CCD sensor and features a f2.5 ultrawide-angle 24mm lens with a 5x zoom. It will capture video 1080i video at 60fps and has a 3in touchscreen round the back for viewing and editing your creations.

No pricing or release date for the Panasonix Lumix FX90 has been revealed yet but the Lumix Club is due to open its virtual doors on September 5.

Out TBC | £TBC | Panasonic

They’re ideal for those of you torn between a compact digital camera and a super-spec digital SLR. We’ve just been playing with the Pen E-P3, the flagship model, so come this way for our hands-on thoughts!

The gleaming new Pen range of Micro Four thirds cameras is what Olympus hopes could be a new SLR-walloping band of sharp shooters. Chief among them is the  E-P3.

Like the rest of the range it’s tailor-made for “people that like to have fun with photography.” The idea is that amateur photographers can say good riddance to hum-drum washed-out shots, and hello to photos professional-looking enough to give David Bailey cold sweats. And not the good kind.

For a start, autofocus has been kicked up a notch. More autofocus points (35 in total) have been added to lend more oomph and accuracy to autofocus. The result is having to stand still for much less time standing around like a lemon when taking photos.

‘Full-time autofocus’ means that the E-P3 is constantly beavering away to focus on subjects as you shoot, without a as much as a tickle on its impressive battery life. Half a day’s use snapping 123 photos and recording 1080i HD 60fps video still left us with more than enough juice to play paparazzi.

In terms of weight, the E-P3 feels lighter and more compact than an SLR, but its muscular outer feels solid. It’s not quite the puny featherweight, but rest assured, a full days use with this lugged around your neck won’t leave you looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Rounded off by hefty metal strips the E-P3 feels like the Chuck Norris of Micro Four Thirds cameras. That doesn’t mean you should drop-test the E-P3. You wouldn’t dare trip Chuck Norris up now, would you? Colours will include: black, white and silver.

The rear end features a three-inch 610,000 dot resolution OLED touchscreen to preview photos in crystal clarity, fiddle camera settings, ISO, aperture, and whirl through your snaps with your pinkie. Because it’s an OLED display, it drinks up less juice than the LCD panels you’ll see on many of its peers. We imagine the E-P3 will cope perfectly well snapping close to over 200 shots in a full day’s use, with the odd spot of HD video recording.

Spec fans will find the E-P3 has a 12.3-megapixel sensor, and an ISO of 12800. We found the EP-3 certainly performed well even in eye-watering sunlight. Video records in 1080i HD as AVCHD or Motion JPEG formats, so you should have no trouble sharing your creations with the YouTube fraternity.

Two scroll wheels are also used to tweak aperture and the ISO settings, while the one on top is used to dive into the menus to select from the array of arty effects on offer, of which there are plenty – certainly enough to satisfy the wannabe pro the E-P3 has in its iron sights. These include: Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pale & Light Colour, Light Tone, Grainy Film, Pinhole, Diorama, Cross Process, Gentle Sepia and Dramatic Tone Art Filters. All ten can be applied to both still shots and movies.

The Olympus E-P3 will launch in August, fetching around £799. We’ll be bringing you a review of the E-P3 in full soon. In the meantime, feast your peepers on some of our own sample shots using some of those art styles below…

Out August 2011 | £799 | Olympus

Pop Art

Pinhole

Diorama

Grainy film

Soft focus

Gentle sepia

Samsung Galaxy S 2: Dual core super powers explained!

This Pentax RS1500 is a handy shooter for £120, grabbing 14 megapixel stills and HD video and displaying it all on a 3-inch LCD screen. But really, the selling points are these frankly awesome cases, featuring the likes of the Green Lantern, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Superman, Catwoman and the Joker, which you you can swap out faster than the time it takes for Superman to switch attire in a phone booth.

Click the image to see the whole gallery – the Pentax RS1500 is available Pow! Sorry.

Like superheroes? Meet our very own Android Avengers! Click to see the video.

Out Now | £119.99 | Pentax

To help inspire creativity, Pentax is including ten ready-made unique front skins with the Optio RS1500. Since this camera screams unique, there’s also five blank pre-cut paper foils which you can use to design and create your own skins. It doesn’t stop there, in fact there’s also two lens ring, black and orange, included in the box.

Now let’s get into the specs. The RS1500 features a 14-megapixel CCD sensor and advanced Movie SR (Shake Reduction) mode to compensate blur due to movement. At the end of the day you’re look at great quality video. Other highlights include burst shooting, auto-tracking AF, digital panorama, green mode, and a frame composite function for composing images with decorative frames on the go.

April 2011 | Pentax | £89.99

The Nikon Coolpix P500 has a 12.1MP sensor, with a whopping great 36x zoom. The 3-inch LCD monitor is bright and clear, and folds out. The mechanism is sturdy, but is also quite bulky, and does not rotate, but folds out and tilts on a chunky double hinge.

A nice touch on the Coolpix P500 is the stumpy lever on the barrel of the lens. This is an alternative control for the zoom, which is well placed and easy to use. It has 1080p HD video recording, with a dedicated record button, and zooming and autofocus works while you’re recording.

The Coolpix P500 has ISO that pushes up to 3200 (800 in auto), and there’s scene modes and portrait modes. A best shot selector picks the best of 10 sequential shots, and there’s a HDR mode too.

£400 | 3 March 2011

What do you think of the Nikon Coolpix P500? Shout out in the comments!

The first thing to say about the Coolpix S9100 is that it looks great, and is light and quite compact, but still a little bulky around the front of the body. In the hand the buttons were not intuitively placed, and our hands felt a bit big to be able to shoot and control it easily, but this might be because we’re so used to our own camera, and don’t shoot with a compact very often.

The sensor is a more than adequate 12.1MP, and the lens has an 18x optical zoom. The aperture runs from f/3.5-5.9 and the lens has a focal length of 4.5-81mm. ISO runs to 3200 (only 800 in auto modes) and the battery lasts for around 270 shots.

Effects include high contrast monochrome, soft focus, a sepia setting, plus the selective colour mode, which gives you a massive choice of colours to pick out in a monochrome shot.

The LCD monitor was bright and sharp, 3-inches in size, and with Nikon’s reflection minimising smarts (we couldn’t test this out, without adequate outdoor or bright light, and we had neither of these).

For movie recording, there’s a dedicated button, so it’s one click for HD 1080p movie recording. You can also zoom and focus while you’re recording video, and there’s a built-in HDMI mini connector for hooking it up to your telly.

Out 17 March 2011 | £300

What do you reckon to the Nikon Coolpix S9100? Shout out in the comments!

Nikon Coolpix S9100
The Coolpix S9100 is the most feature-rich compact to come out of Nikon’s unveiling today. It has a whopping great 18x zoom packed in its compact body, that comes in bright cherry red or black. The Nikon Coolpix S9100 also has a wide angle lens and HD video capabilities, ISO up to 3200, scene modes and special effects, and a 3″ LCD screen. It has a 12.1MP sensor, and size wise clocks in at 104.8 x 62.0 x 34.6 mm, weighing 214g including battery and a memory card.
Out 17 March 2011 | £300

Nikon Coolpix P300
The Nikon Coolpix P300 can push to an f/1.8 aperture, and it has an ultra-wide 24mm lens, with 4.2x zoom. It has a 3-inch LCD screen, 12.2MP sensor, and has HD video at up to 120fps. The P300 is meant to give you some extra controls over your standard compact, with manual controls offering four exposure modes: programmed auto, shutter-priority, aperture-priority and manual. It can shoot up to seven continuous shots at eight frames per second too.
Out 17 March 2011 | £300

Nikon Coolpix P500
The Nikon Coolpix P500 is a bridge camera, with a 12MP sensor, 36x zoom, and a tiltable LCD monitor, which flips out, but cannot rotate. It has 1080p HD movie recording, and there’s a side lever on the barrel to control zooming while you’re shooting stills and also while recording video. ISO pushes to 3200and there’s a built-in HDMI connector.
Out 3 March 2011 | £400

Nikon Coolpix S2500
The S2500 has a 4x optical zoom on its wide angle lens, plus a 12MP sensor. It comes packing Nikon’s “Smart Portrait” system, which means it has features like smile timer, blink proof and skin softening – the ea being that your mates won’t be desperately clicking ‘remove tag’ when you upload them to Facebook. The monitor is a 2.7-inch LCD, and there’s a bunch of automatic functions too.
Out 24 Feb 2011 | £100

Nikon Coolpix S3100
The Nikon Coolpix S3100 comes in seven colours, has a 14MP sensor, and can capture HD movies in one click. The S3100 packs 5x optical zoom, plus the standard collection of basic portrait and scene modes like smile timer, blink proof and skin softening.
Out 17 March 2011 | £130

Nikon Coolpix S4100
The Nikon Coolpix S4100 is similar to the S3100 in most ways – 14MP sensor, HD movie recording at one touch, 5x zoom – but also comes with a 3-inch LCD touchscreen, which you can use for navigation and as a shutter release. It comes in a handful of different colours too.
Out 24 Feb 2011 | £150

Nikon Coolpix S6100
The Nikon Coolpix S6100 is slightly more feature heavy than the S3100 and S4100. It has a 7x zoom, 16MP camera, 3-inch LCD touchscreen, and one touch HD movie recording. The S6100 also has four anti-blur functions, and comes in five colours.
Out 24 Feb 2011 | £200

Nikon Coolpix L120
The Nikon L120 has a 14MP sensor, super-zoom lens and 720p HD video recording. It has a wide angle lens with 21x zoom, and a control lever for zooming, which works while you’re recording movies. It has a 3-inch LCD, and is powered not by a rechargeable battery, but by AA batteries, meaning it’s a little heavy, but useful if you’re going somewhere a plug socket might be hard to find.
Out 24 Feb 2011 | £250

Nikon Coolpix L23
The Nikon Coolpix L23 has a 10.1MP sensor, 5x wide-angle zoom, plus a 2.7-inch LCD monitor. Similar to the L120, it’s also powered by AA batteries, meaning it’s a bit chunkier than your average compact, as it needs the space to accommodate the batteries, and also that it’s a bit heavier too. The L23 comes in five colours.
Out 24 Feb | £70

Which one of Nikon’s new compacts is top of your wishlist? Shout out in the comments!