Camera

ATLANTIC CITY — The stabbing deaths of two Canadian tourists outside a casino hotel left tourism officials stunned and dismayed Monday, casting a shadow over the formal opening on Memorial Day weekend of the newest gambling palace and tripping up a $30 million-a-year campaign to rebrand and revive the sagging resort town. The two victims, women ages 80 and 47, were stabbed and killed during a robbery Monday morning outside Bally's Atlantic City casino hotel, just steps from where a police officer was sitting in a patrol car. Police declined to provide the names of the victims, or precisely where they were from, pending notification of family.

LOS ANGELES - Millions of people have endured a colonoscopy, believing the dreaded exam may help keep them from dying of colon cancer. For the first time, a major study offers clear evidence that it does. Removing precancerous growths spotted during the test can cut the risk of dying from colon cancer in half, the study suggests. Doctors have long assumed a benefit, but research hasn't shown before that removing polyps would improve survival - the key measure of any cancer screening's worth.

A Montgomery County man, arrested earlier this year for stealing the underwear of a woman he was allegedly stalking, was charged this week with using a hidden camera to film up the skirt of another woman at the King of Prussia Plaza. Kornwell Chan, of Dresher, was spotted at the Plaza near Lord & Taylor on Sunday, May 13, by an undercover officer who noted Chan's resemblance to a suspect wanted in a up-skirting incident at the nearby J.C. Penney in September 2011, said Risa Vetri Ferman, the Montgomery County District Attorney.

Bron Imaging Group has reinvented the camera strap, which should benefit travelers toting bulky cameras. Designed to improve both comfort and security, Bron's Sun Sniper Pro padded adjustable camera straps are nylon, reinforced internally with steel wire, so they won't break and can't be snipped by would-be thieves. Unlike most conventional camera straps, which buckle or hook onto metal loops on the sides of the camera, the Sun Sniper attaches via a stainless-steel ball bearing that screws into the tripod socket on the bottom of the camera, making for more flexible movement when lifting to shoot.

Winter is a grand time to make pictures outdoors, but it's also bad news for camera equipment. Batteries lose their zip. Shutters grow sluggish and film becomes brittle - the shutter speed you choose may not be the one you get, and the film sprockets tear inside your camera. Lenses fog up. Exposure meters begin acting strange when you most need them to expose subjects properly against the glare of ice or snow. You can't expect the camera that served so well in the spring and summer to function flawlessly in the cold unless you take care of it. For starters, install fresh batteries for everything - the meter, winder and flash.

"What you see is what you get" in new picture grabbers from Canon, Sharp and Polaroid. Canon has dreamed up a 35mm still camera so smart you'll think it's reading your mind. No matter where the object of your affection is moving within the field of the viewfinder, the camera knows what to keep in focus. Conventional auto-focus systems zero in only on the object in the direct center of the viewfinder. Canon's system, dubbed "eye-controlled autofocus," bounces a reflected infrared beam off the eyeball that's glued to the viewfinder.

A movie like Everlasting Moments comes along maybe once in a decade. It is a portrait, incandescent and inspiring, of an accidental portraitist. She is Maria Larsson, Finnish emigrant to the port city of Malmo, Sweden, at the dawn of the 20th century. Maria, a working-class woman without pretensions, is nonetheless an artist of considerable gifts. Her medium is photography. Watch how instinctively she frames a fugitive image, like a child gently cupping a butterfly in her hands.

A camera, however expensive or sophisticated, does not a photographer make. That point has been made here, in varying degrees of shrillness, no fewer than a dozen times in the last year alone, but it bears repeating. The photographer has to learn to see, to think, to compose through the viewfinder, and to move around to get the best photographs. The photographer who does all these well will find almost any camera an adequate tool. In other words, photographers need to worry less about the special gear they think they need and more about training themselves to use the cameras they already have.

John Daly smashed a spectator's camera into a tree yesterday while shooting a 6-over 78 in the first round of the Australian Open in Sydney. After pushing his tee shot wide on the ninth hole at the Royal Sydney Golf Club, Daly walked into a clump of trees, where spectator Brad Clegg tried to take a picture at close range. Daly snatched the camera and smashed it against the nearest tree, telling the man: "You want it back, I'll buy you a new one. " He later released a statement saying Clegg got too close.

Police today released a pair of surveillance videos in the hopes of finding a burglar who struck two Vietnamese restaurants on the same block in South Philadelphia this week. In both cases, the video caught the burglar prying open the doors at the restaurants to get inside. On Monday, he broke into the Bunh Mi Viet French Restaurant, 330 W. Oregon Ave., about 1:20 a.m. and stole $3,050 in cash from the cash register and a safe, police said. At 12:10 a.m. Wednesday, he got into the Pho Ha Saigon Restaurant, 320 Oregon Ave., and made off with $200 from the cash register after failing to open the safe, police said.

A Montgomery County man, arrested earlier this year for stealing the underwear of a woman he was allegedly stalking, was charged this week with using a hidden camera to film up the skirt of another woman at the King of Prussia Plaza. Kornwell Chan, of Dresher, was spotted at the Plaza near Lord & Taylor on Sunday, May 13, by an undercover officer who noted Chan's resemblance to a suspect wanted in a up-skirting incident at the nearby J.C. Penney in September 2011, said Risa Vetri Ferman, the Montgomery County District Attorney.

The Bucks County street was choked with cars and a TV news van Friday. Police cordoned off the end of the block. But inside the colonial on the cul de sac in Feasterville, it was just another calm morning for Stacey and Brendan Carey and their 11-month-old sextuplets and 2-year-old daughter. Bam went the front door. Brendan Carey asked Stacey to get it. Emeril Lagasse stood there in a white chef's coat. Behind him was a camera crew from ABC's Good Morning America, along with Warminster's William Tennent High marching band, neighbors, and friends.

Gorillapods are flexible, multi-jointed camera tripods that can be affixed around door handles, tree limbs, and other objects for self-portraits pretty much anywhere. Now comes the Gorillapod Micro, a simpler, svelter model that can remain attached to a camera all the time for setup in a flash. The tiny Micro has three zinc-alloy legs that can grip even uneven surfaces with their rubberized feet. The legs, though not multi-jointed, fan out from an aluminum positioning ball that allows 36 degrees of movement in any direction.

  A wildlife camera helped to capture a serial burglar whose three-month crime spree victimized 13 homeowners in three Chester County townships, District Attorney Tom Hogan said Tuesday. Larry Samuel, also known as Elijah Samuel, 32, of Coatesville, is accused of committing the crimes in East Fallowfield, Valley, and Sadsbury Townships from Oct. 27 through Feb. 1, Hogan said. The stolen items were electronics, jewelry, and 10 firearms, including semiautomatic weapons. "He targeted homes around where he lived," Hogan said.

About three minutes of images captured by a security camera at a Northeast Philadelphia strip club have become the key link in the prosecution of a Wissinoming man accused of leaving the scene of an accident after he hit and killed a jaywalking pedestrian. A Philadelphia Municipal Court judge on Tuesday ordered Angel Roque, 28, held for trial on charges including homicide by motor vehicle while driving under the influence in the Sept. 29 death of Joyce Kenny, 46. According to witnesses called by Assistant District Attorney John Doyle, at 6:44 a.m. Kenny was at a bus stop in the 5400 block of Torresdale Avenue, at the intersection with Fraley Street.

Francis X. Dougherty, one of the two Philadelphia School District administrators fired after an investigation into leaks about a $7.5 million no-bid surveillance-camera project, has filed a federal lawsuit that alleges he was wrongly terminated for being a whistleblower. The civil rights complaint filed in U.S. District Court a week ago said former Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman improperly steered the no-bid contract to a minority firm in fall 2010 and later fired Dougherty in retaliation for reporting her action to the FBI, state officials, and The Inquirer.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - A man who witnesses say was watched via webcam kissing a male Rutgers University student who later committed suicide told jurors Friday that he saw the camera pointed in their direction while they were being intimate. "I had just glanced over my shoulder, and I noticed there was a webcam that was faced toward the direction of the bed," the man, identified only as M.B., said in court, later noting that there was no light indicating it was on. "Just being in a compromising position and seeing a camera lens, it just stuck out to me. " The man testified that he had met Tyler Clementi in August 2010 through a social-networking site for gay men and said he texted repeatedly after their third and final rendezvous.

Cruising the city in their silver Honda Odyssey van, a trio of South Korean journalists looked around Camden in awe. The poverty. The abandonment. The open-air drug markets. "In Seoul, because it's the capital, we have some crime. But we do not have this kind of serious crime," said Yurie Kim, Washington-based coordinator for the Korean Broadcasting System, the largest South Korean television network. The group was in Camden this week to tape a 50-minute documentary on the effect of the economic downturn in the United States.

Worried the "Camden Camera" surveillance system might violate the rights of innocent visitors to the city's drug-plagued neighborhoods? Talk to Laura Sánchez. "Twenty years ago, I would have been on the civil liberties side, but now I think the [surveillance] is absolutely wonderful," says Sánchez, the special-projects coordinator for Camden's Area Health Education Center. Beginning this week, notices will be mailed to owners of vehicles caught by the city's Eye in the Sky network.