Sony Alpha 7 and 7R: the full-frame mirrorless ILC is finally here!

Sony Unveils World's First Full-Frame Mirrorless Cameras

New Sony Alpha 7 Series Are World's Smallest, Lightest Full-Frame Interchangeable Lens Cameras

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 15, 2013 – Sony's new α7 and α7R digital cameras are the world's smallest full-frame interchangeable lens models2. Highly anticipated by professional photographers and imaging enthusiasts alike, the two new cameras offer an unmatched combination of creativity, customizability and portability.

The α7R model features a 36.4 effective megapixel 35mm Exmor® CMOS sensor – the highest resolution sensor in the history of Sony's α line – with no optical low pass filter for added resolving power and increased image detail. The α7 model boasts an impressive 24.3 effective megapixel 35mm Exmor® CMOS sensor and an innovative fast Hybrid AF system.

Each camera is equipped with advanced imaging features including a powerful new BIONZ® X processor; fast AF capabilities; a clear, bright XGA OLED Tru-finder, full HD 60p video recording, Wi-Fi® and NFC connection, dust-and moisture- resistance and more.

"With these new α7 camera systems, Sony has completely redefined the look and feel of a professional-grade digital camera," said Mike Kahn, director of the interchangeable lens camera business at Sony Electronics. "The α7 and α7R cameras are significantly smaller, lighter and more portable than any other full-frame interchange lens camera yet deliver image quality, power and performance that professionals and enthusiasts crave."Both cameras feature full customization and control to meet the needs of the most demanding photographers. There are 9 different customizable buttons and 46 assignable functions that can be adjusted based on shooting preferences, including fully customizable front and back dials, a rear control wheel and an exposure compensation dial. Users can preview all changes to photographic settings in real-time on the high-contrast, 2.4 million dot XGA OLED Tru-Finder or the high-resolution tiltable 3" LCD screen.

The new cameras share a powerful new BIONZ X processor that accurately reproduces details in textures in real-time via extra high-speed processing capabilities, and allows for exceptional low noise performance in all types of lighting conditions.

Additionally, the powerful processor combined with the advanced, high resolution sensors allow both cameras to shoot pro-quality Full HD video (AVCHD progressive, 1920x1080p @ 60p) with richly detailed colors and ultra-low noise.

Clear Image Zoom has been enhanced for video recording as well, allowing for powerful close-up shots without sacrificing pixel count. Other pro-style movie features include an audio recording level control and display plus a "live" HDMI® output for passing through video to an external monitor or recording device.

The new cameras both have on-board Wi-Fi and NFC capabilities for instant image sharing and transfer to compatible smartphones and tablets. The α7R and α7 models can access Sony's platform of PlayMemoriesTM Camera Apps, allowing users to add new effects, filters, utilities and more. This platform includes new 'Multiple Exposure' app, which automatically combines sequential exposures into one creative shot, and 'Smart Remote Control'4, which allows for direct control of exposure and shutter speed from a connected smartphone and is particularly useful for self-portraits or group shots5. Find out more at www.playmemoriescameraapps.com .The new α7 and α7R cameras each have a tough, magnesium alloy build and are dust and moisture resistant for standing up to some of the toughest weather conditions.

α7R Camera

Designed for professional photographers and highly advanced enthusiasts, the new α7R model is the world's smallest and lightest full-frame interchangeable lens camera2.

It has an impressive 36.4 effective megapixel full frame sensor and no optical low pass filter, ensuring that the extraordinary resolving power is fully realized and resulting in an unprecedented level of detail and clarity in images.

The camera features a new Fast Intelligent AF technology that delivers blazingly quick, accurate autofocus. Additionally, there are a total of three selectable sizes for the Flexible Spot AF frame, minimizing the risk of accidentally focusing on the wrong target.

α7 Camera

Offering an exciting entry into the world of full-frame photography, the α7 camera features an advanced 24.3 effective megapixel full-frame Exmor CMOS sensor paired with the powerful new BIONZ X processor.

The exciting new camera has an innovative Fast Hybrid AF system that combines phase- and contrast-detect AF methods to ensure speedy, accurate autofocus. It can also shoot at up to 5 fps continuously with non-stop AF tracking, allowing it to keep pace with fast- moving athletes, wildlife or energetic children.

New Sony α Lenses and Accessories

There are a total of 5 new full-frame E-mount lenses designed to take full advantage of the powerful imaging capabilities of the α7R and α7 cameras, including mid-range zoom lenses from Sony and Carl Zeiss, two bright Zeiss Sonnar T*TM prime lenses and a premium- quality G LensTM telephoto zoom. Sony's growing E-mount interchangeable lens lineup now consists of 21 different lenses including the new full-frame models.

In addition to the new lenses, there are also two new-generation mount adaptors that give photographers the ability to utilize full-frame Sony A-mount optics on the α7 and α7R cameras. The LA-EA3 adapter simply adds compatibility for existing A-mount lenses the new cameras, while the LA-EA4 model adds the ultra-fast focusing and shooting capabilities of Sony's innovative Translucent Mirror Technology.

There is also a new vertical grip (VG-C1EM) that offers greater comfort during vertical shooting and can accommodate two separate NP-FW50 batteries for extended battery life and shooting time. A new BC-TRW compact external battery charger that quickly charges batteries and is great for travel, and FA-CS1M off camera shoe allows the use of external flashes (HVL-43M, 20M) in off-camera wired applications. Additionally, the new3

LCS-ELCA premium soft leather carry case protects the α7 and α7R cameras from scuffs and marks while being carried.

Pricing and Availability

The Sony α7R and α7 full-frame interchangeable lens cameras will be available for purchase this December.

The α7R camera will be offered as a body-only for about $2300.

The Sony α7 compact system camera will be offered with a 28-70mm F3.5 – F5.6 full- frame lens (model SEL2870) for about $2000. It will also be offered as a body-only for about $1700.

The versatile new LA-EA3 and LA-EA4 mount adapters will be available in December for about $200 and $350, respectively.

The new VG-C1EM vertical grip and LCS-ELCA premium case will also be available in December for about $300 and $ 140, respectively.

The new camera and all compatible accessories will be available at Sony retail stores (www.store.sony.com) and other authorized dealers nationwide.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/16/sony-alpha-7-7r?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000589
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Florida executes man with new lethal injection drug

By Bill Cotterell

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) - Florida prison officials on Tuesday carried out what they described as the first execution in the United States using the sedative midazolam hydrochloride in a lethal injection.

Midazolam was pumped into William Happ, 51, as the first of three drugs in a lethal injection cocktail designed to induce unconsciousness, paralysis and death by cardiac arrest, the Florida Department of Corrections said.

He was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. EDT in the execution chamber at the Florida State Prison in Starke and there appeared to be no suffering or unusual reaction stemming from the use of the new drug, department spokeswoman Misty Cash said.

In a hand-written final statement, Happ confessed to killing 21-year-old Angie Crowley, who was raped and murdered in 1986. He also apologized to those who believed in his innocence.

"It is to my to agonizing shame that I must confess to this terrible crime," he wrote.

Like many other death penalty states across the country Florida is running out of pentobarbital, a barbiturate that has long been the first of three drugs administered in a lethal injection "protocol" for executions.

Supplies of pentobarbital are low because its manufacturer has clamped down on sales of the drug for executions, prison officials said. Just last week, Missouri postponed an execution set for October 23 due to uncertainty about using a different drug, propofol, as a pentobarbital substitute.

Legal experts had voiced concern over whether midazolam, commercially known as Versed, would spare Happ from suffering extreme pain when the second and third drugs were administered.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, called the use of the drug in an execution "an experiment on a living human being."

No late appeals were filed on behalf of Happ, who was sentenced to death in 1989 and abandoned his appeals in September.

Another Florida death row inmate, Etheria Jackson, has a hearing scheduled in Jacksonville federal court November 6, contending that the use of midazolam might violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" by allowing inmates to suffer in their final minutes.

Cash told Reuters state authorities had been satisfied that the new drug represented a humane replacement for pentobarbital, however, and would not open the door to "unnecessary or wanton infliction of pain and suffering."

"The department was required to develop a new protocol because we have limited supplies of pentobarbital sodium that will expire at the end of November 2013," Cash said.

(Editing by Tom Brown and Bob Burgdorfer)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/florida-executes-man-lethal-injection-drug-000054384.html
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Worst Case Scenario for Obamacare

Consider for a moment what will come next for Obamacare, in the context of Ezra Klein’s five thoughts on the disastrous launch of the program – a bellwether of sorts for how the administration failed to live up to the expectations it sold to the law’s supporters and opinion leaders. There are a few different directions it can go from here, but the worst case scenario hasn’t really entered people’s consciences yet, in part because the insurers are staying quiet at the moment. The reality now is that the system is at least a month from actually working, and likelier two or (gasp) three, given the enormous range of problems. And that could make for a real disaster.

Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2013/10/15/worst_case_scenario_for_obamacare_317901.html
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Remembering The Woman Who Gave Motown Its Charm

Powell mentored Motown artists like Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and the Supremes. "Ladies dance with their feet, not their buttocks," she'd tell the girl groups.

Tony Ding/AP

In 2007, decades after Maxine Powell had retired from training a generation of black artists at Motown, a reporter from a Cleveland television station asked her whether anyone had been particularly difficult to work with.

Powell cut her off before she finished. "I don't have that," she said. "No one is difficult. Each person is a beautiful, unique human being. So if you have a problem and you're acting negative, you have been conditioned."

She went on. "So I said to my students, 'Allow me to help you unlearn that and realize and discover what a beautiful flower you are.' "

Powell, who died this weekend at the age of 98, was Motown's director of artist development during its heyday, and her job was to teach the label's young musicians how to present themselves in public. "They did come from humble beginnings," she told the Cleveland reporter, "some of them from the projects, some of them were using street language, some were rude and crude."

But to audiences at the time, those beginnings would have been invisible. For a long stretch in the 1960s, Motown's clean, factory-precise sound dominated popular music. The label's roster — the Temptations, the Supremes, The Jackson 5 — helped desegregate the radio waves. Motown was a kind of machine: Songs were written by committee, and artists had their images meticulously managed and cultivated. This meant that Motown's artists made incursions into places that black artists were not often seen; according to a Contemporary Black Biography interview, Powell told artists she was preparing them for "the White House and Buckingham Palace."

She was known to her charges as a straight-talking taskmaster. In 2009, All Things Considered host Rebecca Roberts asked her what kind of tips she gave artists:

"Body language. Everybody walks, but I teach how to glide. I teach how if you drop something, how to pick it up. If your slip comes down around your feet, how to stand in the basic standing position and step out of it smiling, with your hip bones pushed forward and the buttocks pushed under. You never, never protrude the buttocks because it means an ugly gesture, you see? They learned all of those things. I was turned loose to do whatever was necessary to make the artist look first-class."

But some artists were initially resistant to her instruction. She told the Detroit News that Marvin Gaye felt that he didn't "need 'charm school.' "

She corrected him: "It's a finishing school."

"Well, I don't need finishing," he told her.

" 'You don't need as much as some, but you close your eyes when you're singing, and people think you're asleep,' I told him," Powell recalled. " 'And you slouch. So we'll work on those two things.' "

She also worked with the Temptations, Tammi Terrell, Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder. ("But I didn't do anything for Stevie," she told Roberts. "Stevie was always beautiful.")

"Two days a week when you were back in Detroit you had to go to artists' development," Robinson said. "It was mandatory. You went there and learned so many things about being in show business."

But Powell said that her work wasn't simply about prettifying pop stars — she saw it as part of the larger fight for black progress. "All my life I was thinking of things that would help my race become outstanding and I thought of class and style ... two things that would be accepted around the world," she told the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Just this summer, Powell told people gathered at an event in her honor that she would "teach until there's no breath left in my body." And indeed, Martha Reeves, the lead singer of the Vandellas and later a member of Detroit's City Council, said she dispatched Powell to schools and retirement homes to teach children and the elderly about "poise and pride."

Today, black artists don't have trouble making it to the White House. Beyonce was the toast of the inaugural ball in 2008, and Jay Z, her husband, was on the dais during President Obama's second inauguration this year. Black artists no longer need charm school to burnish their palatability with white audiences; today, authenticity has as much cachet as respectability, if not more. Motown desegregated the airwaves, normalizing black celebrity enough that black people would eventually not always have to be perfect in public spaces. (Indeed, many of the artists that Powell tutored — Gaye and Terrell, in particular — later dealt with their demons in the limelight.) That's a reality that Maxine Powell and Motown helped to bring about, even if that may not have been their intent.

To the last, Powell was a picture of grace.

"Thank you so much for being here," Roberts said to her on All Things Considered.

Impeccable as always, Powell responded: "You're perfectly welcome."

You can listen to Karen Grigsby Bates's obituary for Maxine Powell on NPR's All Things Considered, which is embedded at the top of this article.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/10/15/234738593/remembering-the-woman-who-gave-motown-its-charm?ft=1&f=1039
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HTC One Max review

The debate around giant smartphones is over. Manufacturers like Samsung, Sony and LG have amply demonstrated that it's possible to build a pocketable, phone-like device with a screen bigger than five inches. Now it's HTC's turn. But instead of re-imagining the much-praised One for this new category ...

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/pkn782hxBRs/
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U.N. extends NATO force in Afghanistan for last time

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Thursday to extend the mandate of the NATO-led force in Afghanistan for the last time before it hands over total responsibility for security to Afghan forces at the end of 2014.

The resolution adopted by the council said the situation in Afghanistan "still constitutes a threat to international peace and security."

It expressed serious concern about security in the country, pointing to ongoing violence and terrorist activities by the Taliban, al-Qaida, and other illegal and extremist groups as well as by criminals and those involved in the illegal drug trade.

The Taliban have escalated attacks in recent months as they try to take advantage of the withdrawal of foreign troops. In June, Afghan forces took the lead for security nationwide, leaving the NATO-led International Assistance Force known as ISAF entirely in a supporting, backseat role.

ISAF has dropped dramatically in strength as it prepares to leave — down from 130,000 troops two years to just over 87,200 troops on Aug. 1, including 60,000 Americans.

The Security Council extended ISAF's mandate until Dec. 31, 2014, the final day for transferring full security responsibility to the Afghan government.

Its action followed an outburst Monday from Afghan President Hamid Karzai who alleged that the U.S. and NATO inflicted suffering on the Afghan people and repeatedly violated its sovereignty. Despite his critical remarks, the Obama administration is still optimistic that a U.S.-Afghan agreement over the future role of American troops in the country can be finalized in the next few weeks.

Karzai made the comments on the 12th anniversary of the start of the American campaign in Afghanistan against al-Qaida that ousted its Taliban allies from power. The invasion was in response to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives.

The Security Council welcomed a 2010 agreement between NATO and Afghanistan to provide practical support to improve Afghanistan's "capacity and capability to tackle continued threats to its security, stability and integrity."

It encouraged ISAF and other partners to accelerate the training and mentoring of the Afghan National Security Forces, now numbering more than 350,000 men and women.

The council said the goal is to have an Afghan force that is "self-sufficient, sustainable, accountable and ethnically balanced," and is able to provide security and ensure the rule of law throughout the country.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/un-extends-nato-force-afghanistan-last-time-210252242.html
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Can Iran, The West Overcome Distrust To Make A Nuclear Deal?

Nuclear negotiators from six world powers and Iran head to Geneva for talks surrounded by more optimism than has been seen in years. Positive rhetoric from the new administration of President Hasan Rouhani has raised hopes that diplomacy may once again be ascendant instead of sanctions and threats of military action. Analysts say the trick will be getting the slow-moving negotiating process to respond before these expectations fade. Much will depend on the West's, and especially Washington's, willingness to consider leaving low-level uranium enrichment in Iran's hands, and on whether Congress can be persuaded to hold off on more punitive sanctions that could derail the diplomatic effort.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=234234173&ft=1&f=1004
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