After a sickness and Martin Luther King Jr. related break, Tech with Taylor is back, once again.
1. Nintendo Announces Everything
Is your Wii U gathering dust? Haven’t turned it on since launch day? Don’t know what a Wii U is?
You’re in the same boat as many early adopters of Nintendo’s new console. But in a worldwide Nintendo Direct announcement, several company executives made some interesting announcements.
Coming as a surprise to almost no one, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma announced that Nintendo is in fact working on an HD Zelda game for Wii U. He said the team is “rethinking the conventions of Zelda,” which could mean the series is finally breaking away from its usual monotony.
But the big Zelda-related surprise came from nowhere — an HD remake of the Gamecube’s The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is due this August.
The Japanese gaming company also announced it would show off new Super Smash Bros., Mario and Mario Kart games at this year’s E3 show in LA.
Now, it’s no secret that the Wii U’s user interface is painfully slow.
That’s why the company announced two firmware updates planned for 2013: one in spring, and one in summer.
The updates promise to improve loading times and speed up the general sluggishness of the system.
Additionally, Nintendo announced it would bring a Virtual Console to Wii U, bringing a large library of NES and Super NES games to the system.
And that’s still not it — the company announced a new Fire Emblem game, Yoshi’s Land for Wii U, Wii U Party and a new RPG from the Xenoblade Chronicles Studio.
2. Your lenses, but faster
One of the most important aspects of photography is the aperture of any given lens. Which is why anything that gives your lens a wider (read: better) aperture is awesome.
The Metabones Speed Booster is a lens converter that, in addition to converting SLR lenses to fit mirrorless camera bodies, can increase a lenses’ aperture by an entire stop.
In case all of that sounds like gibberish, here’s a quick explanation of what aperture is and what it does:
Think of it like the camera’s iris. A wide aperture (f/2.8) means more light is let into the camera and extends the depth of field (giving photos that pretty blur effect photographers call bokeh) allowing for brighter pictures or the use of higher shutter speeds (1/8000, for example.)
A small aperture (f/22) allows less light into the camera, shortens the depth of field and makes everything in the shot extremely sharp.
Wide, fixed-aperture lenses are incredibly expensive, but they’re necessary for shooting anything in dim lighting. Which is why this $599 adapter is so cool.
By making the image hitting the camera’s sensor smaller, the Speed Booster gives you up to one extra stop of aperture. So that makes a f/4 lens have a f/2.8 effective aperture. For under $1000, which is what most f/2.8 lenses start at.
—-
That’s all the news for this week! Make sure to check back Monday for the latest and greatest in tech.
