Cameras

In an odd yet understandable marketing strategy, the folks behind E!'s new reality show "Mrs. Eastwood & Company" have spent a lot of pre-premiere publicity time explaining what the show isn't. Which is to say, Clint Eastwood. The legendary actor and director will appear in but a few episodes and then only briefly. He will not, for instance, be slamming doors or engaging in filmed therapy sessions with his wife, Dina, around whom the show revolves (see title.) That doesn't mean the show is not about Clint Eastwood; it is. If the principal characters -- Dina, her 15-year-old daughter Morgan and 19-year old stepdaughter Francesca -- were not related to him, there would be Absolutely No Reason to watch this, which, by reality show standards, promises to be tame to the point of sedation.

Robert Redford Before his superstar days, Redford appear in the Oct. 20, 1961, episode, "First-Class Mouliak," directed by William Conrad of "Cannon" fame Sam Peckinpah "The Wild Bunch" director cut his teeth in TV. He directed the "Mon Petit Chou" episode that aired Nov. 24, 1961, with guest Lee Marvin Boris Karloff Karloff joined fellow movie monsters Lon Chaney Jr. and Peter Lorre in the "Lizard's Leg and Owlet's...

Los Angeles police will not pursue through the courts scores of motorists with unpaid tickets from the city's defunct red-light camera program. The city Police Commission voted this week to end its contract with the company that operated L.A.'s cameras until they were shut off last summer. And authorities are now planning to reassign a small group of officers who regularly appeared in court to testify in contested photo enforcement cases. With the cancellation of the contract, officers will no longer have easy access to the photo and video evidence that courts require.

Need a quick, soul-reviving fix of Yosemite? A webcam pointed at one of Yosemite National Park's main attractions, soaring Yosemite Falls, went live this week. It joins Yosemite cameras already in place at Half Dome and El Capitan. Find them here .  “In a lot of ways I equate it to all of the beautiful picture books that we've had on our coffee tables, or the art from the 1870s that made Yosemite exciting to people around the world when they saw it for the first time,” said Michael Tollefson, president of the nonprofit Yosemite Conservancy, which placed the cameras.

Lawmakers blocked a proposal Tuesday to allow Beverly Hills police officers to use cameras to catch speeders, saying it would put collecting fines above stopping dangerous drivers. State Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) had written legislation for a test program in which Beverly Hills officers would hold a camera triggered by a radar gun that would record speeders. Tickets would be mailed to violators. But the Senate Transportation Committee deadlocked 5 to 5 on the bill. Sen. Jenny Oropeza (D-Long Beach)

Bob Brickman spent months fighting a ticket he got last fall from a red-light traffic camera at Wilshire and Sepulveda boulevards in West Los Angeles. The 61-year-old from Playa Vista eventually decided to give up the fight and fork over the $476 fine. Now he's regretting paying every penny. City officials this week spotlighted a surprising revelation involving red-light camera tickets: Authorities cannot force violators who simply don't respond to pay them. For a variety of reasons, including the way the law was written, Los Angeles officials say the fines for ticketed motorists are essentially "voluntary" and there are virtually no tangible consequences for those who refuse to pay. The disclosure comes as the city is considering whether to drop the controversial photo enforcement program, with the City Council scheduled to vote on the matter Wednesday.

Need a quick, soul-reviving fix of Yosemite? A webcam pointed at one of Yosemite National Park's main attractions, soaring Yosemite Falls, went live this week. It joins Yosemite cameras already in place at Half Dome and El Capitan. Find them here .  “In a lot of ways I equate it to all of the beautiful picture books that we've had on our coffee tables, or the art from the 1870s that made Yosemite exciting to people around the world when they saw it for the first time,” said Michael Tollefson, president of the nonprofit Yosemite Conservancy, which placed the cameras.

If you buy something from online auctioneer Property Room, you don't have to wonder if it was stolen. That's because it probably was. Property Room, started by a former police detective, gets its items from law enforcement property rooms nationwide. Most of its inventory of jewelry, bicycles, computers, furniture, tools, car stereos, cameras, sports equipment, portable music players and things that could best be categorized under miscellaneous -- or bizarre -- was seized from crooks.

Closed-circuit cameras, electronic highway sensors, and real-time computers normally used for traffic control will be Big Brother-like observers as events unfold during the Democratic National Convention.

Work on the long-awaited television traffic-monitoring system on the Coronado Bridge began this week with the laying of conduits for the highly specialized system, state transportation officials said. Despite technical concerns and problems with a bidder, the system is expected to be completed in June, they said.

USC and the Los Angeles Police Department announced sweeping new security measures Thursday, including the addition of 30 police officers to the area surrounding the campus. The move comes three weeks after the university was stunned by the slayings of two graduate students from China, a case that remains unsolved. The measures go beyond more police on the street to include the sharing of crime data with USC public safety officials, the installation of more security cameras and the addition of a city prosecutor who will focus on cases in and around the campus.

On a steep slope, above a retaining wall with scrawled warnings ("Stay off, Stay out, Private Property"), Colin Rich begins to unpack black bags full of cameras and gear. The warnings confirm that this is where he wants to be. The secluded Echo Park hillside offers a sweeping view of downtown Los Angeles. Over the next three hours, he will take a sequence of nearly 1,000 images, studying the scene and adjusting his camera as the sun falls and the city lights emerge. PHOTOS: Los Angeles, one frame at a time Rich, a cinematographer and time-lapse filmmaker, has spent many nights in the last year photographing the city from out-of-the-way locations such as this.

There's a smartphone app for almost everything, so why not an app to help with prom planning? From picking the perfect dress to editing your pictures, there is an app to help with every aspect of the big dance. "So many teens have smartphones," said Molly McLaughlin, mobile technology editor at ConsumerSearch.com. "They are already managing their lives with these devices. " Here are her top prom apps. Prom Hairstyles (free for the iPhone) The app allows the user to try different hairstyles on a photograph of herself.

A Los Angeles County commission investigating jail abuse heard tearful testimony Monday from clergy and civilian monitors who worked in the lockups and said they witnessed deputies assaulting inmates and bullying witnesses to keep quiet. One jail monitor broke down as she recounted being intimidated by a deputy whom she said saw beat an unconscious inmate. A weeping jail chaplain described deputies calling him a rat after he reported another beating. In one case, a clergy member said he was told by gang member inmates that jailers had targeted them in retribution for the slaying of a deputy by members of their gang on the outside.

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)

Los Angeles police will not pursue through the courts scores of motorists with unpaid tickets from the city's defunct red-light camera program. The city Police Commission voted this week to end its contract with the company that operated L.A.'s cameras until they were shut off last summer. And authorities are now planning to reassign a small group of officers who regularly appeared in court to testify in contested photo enforcement cases. With the cancellation of the contract, officers will no longer have easy access to the photo and video evidence that courts require.

This historic town, where America's founding fathers plotted during the Revolution and Milton Hershey later crafted his first chocolates, now boasts another distinction. It may become the nation's most closely watched small city. Some 165 closed-circuit TV cameras soon will provide live, round-the-clock scrutiny of nearly every street, park and other public space used by the 55,000 residents and the town's many tourists.

Federal safety officials called for railroads to install cameras and voice recorders in every locomotive cab in the nation as they publicly warned Thursday that cellphone texting by engineers and conductors was a growing and lethal danger. The call came as members of the National Transportation Safety Board publicly concluded their investigation into the deadly collision of a commuter train and a freight train in Chatsworth in 2008 -- a crash they blamed on a Metrolink engineer who passed a stop signal as he sent a message from his phone.

Before the launch of a top-secret spy satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base, a fleet of small drones will be doing some spying of their own. In yet another use of robotic aircraft, RQ-11 Raven drones equipped with high-powered video cameras will fly around the craggy launch site northwest of Santa Barbara, scouring the ground below to ensure that the area is clear for blastoff. "Public safety is our first priority during launch operations, " said Staff Sgt. Brandon Johnson, who is a Raven operator and crime prevention officer.

George Eastman introduced the first Kodak camera in 1888. It was a small wooden box covered in Morocco leather with a roll of dry film inside. You no longer had to be a professional carrying a tripod, heavy plates, a darkening cape and liquid developer to take a photograph. Any amateur could hold the box waist-high, aim at a subject like the family and press the button that released the shutter that covered the lens. The box - later just the roll - could be sent back to the company to develop the film.