Camera

Been inexplicably sneezing or feeling itchy recently? It could be an allergic reaction to that shiny new Canon EOS Rebel T4i camera you just bought. Canon just put out a notice telling owners of the recently released camera that some  of the units have been having chemical reactions that result in the grip changing colors and which could possibly lead to allergic reactions. The Japanese camera company says a number of units produced between late May and mid-June contained a slightly higher amount of rubber accelerator than normal.

Think of it as the digital camera for the lonely. Samsung unveiled a camera Thursday with a view screen on the front as well as on the back. And why would people want this DualView camera, as Samsung calls it? To take pictures of themselves. "The growing popularity of social networking sites has given rise to the self-portrait," Samsung said in its news release, "with many consumers turning their digital cameras on themselves." Many who have used social networking or dating sites can relate to holding a camera at arm's length in front of themselves while snapping a picture.

So Jack Smith is bored with his wife's attempts to preserve happy moments on film ("I Am Not a Camera," Jan. 4). I'd rather see some of her travel pictures than be forced to look at a different picture of his mug every week. Mary Lane Redondo Beach

How the tiny Sony NEX-C3 digital camera takes such sharp photos and high-def videos has everything to do with great lenses (which are interchangeable) and a big, super-sensitive sensor (great for low light) that's about the size you would get in most bulky SLRs. It measures 4.3-by-2.4-by-1.3-inches (without a lens), the camera comes with  an 18-55mm zoom lens or 16mm wide-angle lens and includes a snap-on flash. There's also an optional 18-200mm zoom lens. The screen can be tilted up or down for overhead or down-low shooting.  You also get Sony's Sweep Panorama mode: Sweep the camera in an arc, and it takes a slew of continuous pictures, then stitches them together to produce a 202-degree panoramic image.  The camera's pricey but you'll pocket plenty of change for the better.

There's a saying among photographers that "the best camera is the one that's with you," and for many of us nowadays, that camera happens to be a smartphone too. That's where Nokia's 808 PureView  smartphone and its 41-megapixel/1080p camera plans to come in. The Finnish phone-maker is looking to raise the bar in smartphone photography far past what currently passes for a good camera-phone. Most high-end smartphones are currently packing 8-megapixel cameras or 5-megapixel cameras, which has resulted in millions of fantastic, detailed shots taken and uploaded to the likes of Facebook, Flickr and Instagram.

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master" is an intimate look at a troubled drifter played by Joaquin Phoenix. To make it even more intensely personal, Anderson decided to shoot much of the film in the oversized 65mm format. That rarely used large-frame format -- especially when projected in theaters equipped to show such films -- allows the tightest close-ups to  become that much more revealing, which didn't always make Anderson's actors comfortable. In this excerpt from The Envelope Screening Series, Anderson talks about the challenges of using 65mm film, which by necessity requires an enormous camera -- about the size of a chair, Anderson says.

Six thousand yards of red carpet has arrived in Anaheim, ready for the big night. Fashion consultants and makeup artists will be on hand as the celebrity guest list fills out, publicists calling to secure tickets for their A-list clients. If it sounds as if baseball's annual All-Star game — which comes to Angel Stadium on Tuesday evening — has gone Hollywood, that's no mistake. Over the last decade or so, Major League Baseball has expanded its "Midsummer Classic" from nine innings to five days that include rock concerts and a high-tech carnival, the popular home run derby and a softball game pitting former players against actors and musicians.

The first major hardware issue with the iPhone 5may be surfacing as users and news sites are reporting a possible glitch with one of the cameras on the new smartphone. Mashable and TechCrunch on Wednesday reported that photos taken with the phone's rear camera show a band of purple when the photo is taken with the light source just outside the camera's view. We tried this out on one of the iPhone 5s we have and can also confirm the problem. This is an issue that we couldn't replicate on an iPhone 4 or that was ever reported on the iPhone 4S. Check out the two pictures we shot above.

The cameras on generation after generation of iPhone have gotten increasingly better. So much so that it's often the only camera owners carry these days. What could Apple have in mind for the future? The next dimension in iPhone cameras just might be 3-D. Photos and video on upcoming iOS devices could be shot with what Patently Apple is calling "a killer 3D imaging camera. " According to an Apple patent filing discovered by PA, the cameras would incorporate laser, RADAR, light-detection and ranging (LIDAR)

Even in this era when cameras have become nearly standard equipment on cellphones, there's still a place for digital point-and-shoots. "The nice thing about a camera on a phone is that you can take a quick snapshot and send it along," said Will Chambers, editor in chief of the consumer review site Steve's Digicams. "But the optics on those cameras is very cheap." On the other hand, "the image quality you get from even a low-level point-and-shoot camera is so much better," he said.