Camera

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.

On Boston's Beacon Hill, a bright-red door, illuminated by a hanging lantern and framed by a brick archway, struck me as beautiful. So I pointed my camera and shot picture after picture until the door swung open, and a barefoot guy emerged, his hair a little tousled, his white T-shirt wrinkled from sleep. He didn't look up at the group of camera-wielding tourists standing feet away from him on the sidewalk. He simply bent over, plucked the newspaper from his stoop, and retreated quickly back into the house.

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.

If Michael Jordan hits a home run and it's not on video, did it happen? The Birmingham Barons outfielder, whose career highlights so far have been filmed inside NBA arenas, hopes to find a videotape of his first professional home run. Jordan's homer at Hoover (Ala.) Stadium on Saturday came so late in the evening that local television photographers had already packed up. "It was the bottom of the eighth and a late night," said team spokesman Chris Pika. "We would like to have a copy of it, and I think Michael would, too. " So the Barons are trying to get the word out to anyone in the record crowd of 13,751 who might have had a camera running when Jordan hit his homer.

As summer came to a close, I went for a run at the high school, a blazing end-of-summer sun beating overhead. But forget that exertion: I was exhausted much more by the two super-Moms I saw afterwards. It was the perfect day for a trip to the playground - and for some beautiful childhood memories. There were sunny skies and wide fields, swing sets and wooden forts, and slides for the mischief of American childhood. You and I might have made that mischief and memories on our own - but in this age of limitless gigabytes, it seems those memories now are to be scripted, posed, photographed and (due to that pesky childishness)

A New Jersey man was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison today for using cameras hidden in a bathroom to take pictures of nine young girls in various states of undress. Ronald Oshrin, 50, of Budd Lake, pleaded guilty in December to a charge of production of child pornography. Oshrin admitted to installing several hidden video cameras in his Morris County home in 2007. When the girls were in either the bedroom or bathroom, he monitored the cameras and recorded video of them disrobing, showering or using the toilet.

Red-light cameras have mixed results in their brief history in New Jersey, with rear-end crashes up at camera-equipped intersections and right-angle crashes down, according to data gathered by the state Transportation Department. The Christie administration said Thursday it would permit no new installations of red-light cameras because the pilot program that began using them in 2009 will end next year. Red-light cameras have been controversial in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and elsewhere in the country.

THE BOSTON Marathon bomber has been caught . . . on film. Law-enforcement authorities revealed Wednesday that they are "very close" - as a source told the Boston Globe - to a major break in the case of the worst domestic bombing attack since 9/11 after surveillance video captured footage of a suspect carrying and possibly dropping a black bag at the scene of the second of two explosions. A spokeswoman for Boston Mayor Thomas Menino told the newspaper that "the best source of video" has proved to be a Lord & Taylor department store that faces out toward the sidewalk where one of the bombs - which killed three spectators at the iconic race on Monday and injured more than 170 others - went off. That recorded video was one of many pieces of film - footage taken not just from store or street surveillance cameras but also spectator videos and TV news cameras recording some of the 23,000 runners crossing the finish line - that seem to be helping agents heat up a trail that might have otherwise grown cold, some 48 hours after the stunning attack.

On Boston's Beacon Hill, a bright-red door, illuminated by a hanging lantern and framed by a brick archway, struck me as beautiful. So I pointed my camera and shot picture after picture until the door swung open, and a barefoot guy emerged, his hair a little tousled, his white T-shirt wrinkled from sleep. He didn't look up at the group of camera-wielding tourists standing feet away from him on the sidewalk. He simply bent over, plucked the newspaper from his stoop, and retreated quickly back into the house.

The NFL has ordered all teams to have cameras in their locker rooms next season, with video shown only on stadium scoreboards. It's part of commissioner Roger Goodell's initiative for "enhancing the fan experience in our stadiums. " The videos will be available on team apps as well. Each team will operate the cameras and will determine what is shown on the video boards and apps.   Preseason telecasts The Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens and the team they beat, the San Francisco 49ers, each will make one national TV appearance during the preseason this summer.

Edmond Dougherty had high-flying hopes for the aerial-camera system he helped develop to capture action at school sports events. But those ambitions have landed with a thud. Chalk it up as another recession casualty. Wavecam, brought to life at a workshop in Villanova, took flight in 2008, just as the economy was free-falling and budgets constricted. "When people were canceling Christmas parties because it wouldn't look right, we were going around saying, 'Hey! Want to buy a flying camera?

PHILADELPHIA police are reaching out through YouTube to find a man who fired into a food store and wounded three people. Detectives have posted a two-minute clip of surveillance video shot inside and outside a Chinese-food market at 18th Street and 66th Avenue in West Oak Lane, where shots rang out at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday. The video shows a man clad in gray sweatpants and hooded sweatshirt firing at least one shot through the glass front door as several young men scramble to hold the door shut.

Justice Antonin Scalia raised eyebrows when, in the midst of the Supreme Court argument over the Voting Rights Act, he said the landmark civil rights legislation was now the "perpetuation of racial entitlement. " I know that because I've read the transcript. And I've listened to the audiotape. But we should all be able to watch what was an important and pointed discussion on a matter of great importance. While it's true Scalia said those words, the transcript makes clear that there was a bit more to his thinking.

Philadelphia City Council held a committee hearing Monday on the city's surveillance-camera program, which has been plagued by technical problems and has been criticized by Council members and the city controller. Officials testified Monday representing SEPTA, the University of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Housing Authority, and the School District of Philadelphia - all large institutions that operate their own cameras to fight crime. But no one from the Nutter administration spoke.