Philip Bloom, the same guy who shot the Skywalker Ranch earlier this year, got his hands on a pre-production Canon 1D Mark IV and took it to Prague, alongside Lucasfilm producer Rick McCallum.

McCallum helped him by eating some hot dogs, while Bloom took some of the most beautiful shots I've ever seen from a DSLR camera. So subtle, so delicate, and yet so crisp and rich. Check out the falling snow with just the street lighting. My mind is about to assplode. [Philip Bloom]

It's not the first time they've worked together, with the Nikon Photomic FTN actually used on Apollo 15 back in 1971, but it's nice to see that NASA's taste in camera models has got more expensive over the years.

The D3s, unveiled back in August, normally costs $5,199.95, and features a whoppingly large ISO range of 200 - 12,800 (though it can be expanded up to 102,400). NASA will be using the cameras to photograph the happenings at the International Space Station, and apparently are so happy with the D3s and NIKKOR lenses (which cost $1,830 each) that there's no need to modify them to make them more space-friendly.

Over 700,000 photos have been taken by NASA using Nikon cameras to date, though with a total cost of over $70,000 for this latest order, they better be taking a lot more snaps to get their money's worth. [Nikon via Akihabara News]

• Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
• Canon EOS 7D
• Canon PowerShot G11
• Nikon D3S
• Nikon D3000S
• Nikon D3000

Snag it on Software Update, of course. [Apple

Second Runner Up
This is actually a picture of my Christmas tree. I shot this with my Canon XS using a 4 second exposure at f-8, and an iso of 100. I started with the lens unfocused and zoomed in at 55m. During the 4 second exposure I zoomed out to 18mm.
-John Chapman

First Runner Up
Sony A230 Body; Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens; ISO 800; 1/500 sec @ f2.8; No Flash
-Nick Marquis

Winner!
Nikon D5000; Nikkor 18-200 VR; Exposure: 12.2 seconds; Aperture: f/9.0; Focal Length: Multiple; ISO: 200; White Balance: Cool White Fluorescent. This was taken in bulb mode on a tripod. I exposed the tree and surrounding scene at 18mm for about 9 seconds, then slowly zoomed to 200mm closing the shutter right before hitting 200. More here.
-Dan DeChiaro

Dan, please contact me to claim your Joby SLR-ZOOM Gorillapod and Ballhead.

As always, thanks to everyone for participating, and enjoy all of the awesome entries in the gallery below. Picking winners is my favorite worst job to do of the week. Oh, and for those of you wanting wallpaper-sized images, we'll be popping those in a separate post soon.

By the way, more of you sent in shots of soul-sucking winter than pretty, happy Christmas lights. What's that say about us all?

Images coordinated by Kyle VanHemert.

Entitled (autumn), the video was shot, as I said, around Mount Fuji and other beautiful Japanese locales. The music is trippy, the visuals crisp, and the people move about very quickly as clouds play about their heads. Enjoy. [Vimeo - Thanks, Sam]

It's not cheap, at $60, but if you're serious photographer in the field it might be well worth it. I can't wait to check it out, myself. Update: Yes, it is similar in some respects to Black Rapid's R-Strap. [LumaLoop]

The prize at stake: a Joby SLR-ZOOM Gorillapod plus the Joby Ballhead. (Joby was kind enough to write and offer to up the stakes of these contests a bit.)

For a little advice, check out this very apt guide on photographing Christmas lights.

The rules:

1. Submissions need to be your own.
2. Photos need to be taken the week of the contest. (No portfolio linking or it spoils the "challenge" part.)
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings and technique used to snag the shot.
4. Email submissions to contests@gizmodo.com.

Send your best entries by Sunday at 6PM Eastern to contests@gizmodo.com with "Christmas Lights" in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs at 800 pixels wide, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Include your shooting summary (camera, lens, ISO, etc) in the body of the email. ALSO, AND THIS IS NEW FOR THIS WEEK, ATTACH A 2560x1600 JPEG AS WELL FOR PEOPLE TO DOWNLOAD AS WALLPAPER. [Flickr]

(Also, based upon my favorites, I appear to have a barren tree fetish. Regardless!)

Second Runner Up
Camera: Canon EOS 40D; Lens: EF28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM; ISO: 400; Exposure: 1/8000. Subject: Winter after California Wildfires -Devin Workman

First Runner Up
I used a Panasonic DMC-FX150 point and shoot camera. I had to shoot it in manual mode because I was shooting into the sun. This is after a rainy day in Los Angeles. The shot is looking toward Century City (The water is behind it). -Jim Hale

Winner
This is a shot I took myself at my college Campus in Goshen, Indiana. Was a very rare morning with snow on the ground, yet a tremendous amount of fog also, it almost whited out everything. This tree is in front of our cafeteria, not sure the type, but always looks very spooky at night, and this fog made it really stand out and look awesome. I shot it with a Canon 30d, Sigma 17-70 lens. No real special technique other than framing the shot and taking it. (hope this shot can be extra depressing and destroys the hope of happy holidays for everyone.) Believe me, living in Indiana in the winter, I know a thing or 2 about a gray winter.... -Andy Graber

Thanks to everyone for making this week's turnout absolutely nuts. And as always, my choices are painfully subjective, so take part of this afternoon to look through our gallery of participants, which includes photographs taken on everything ranging from Holgas to iPhone 3Gses—all of which are producing impressive, unique results.

Gallery assembled by Kyle VanHemert.

The technology has been available for years, and the DSLR market has been veering toward the general public ever since that cursed D was appended to it, so it's almost surprising that it's taking this long for touchscreens to infiltrate. But not really: DSLRs are proudly retro, built around mirror box and lens designs that date back decades, and covered in buttons to the point that, to an amateur, they are totally unapproachable. That said, the standard Canon and Nikon button layouts do work pretty well, and there are a lot of parameters you've got to deal with, so, well, here we are, staring down a Canon patent application for a basic touchscreen interface, in 2009:

Here's how it works, as interpreted by the Photography Bay:

1. Sliding your finger across the panel in a vertical direction changes aperture values.

2. Sliding your finger across the panel in a horizontal direction changes shutter speed.

Other features contemplated by the patent that may be enabled by touch entry through the LCD include the following settings:

Focus detection area
Exposure correction value
Flash adjustment correction value
Photometry mode (i.e., metering mode)
Drive mode
ISO value
Auto focus mode
White balance mode
Exposure correction value

In other words, the touchscreen would do everything your current 1970s aviation panel of a DSLR backside would, without the buttons.

In practice, I think a DSLR touchscreen would need to be supplementary. Given that a lot of DSLR adjustment is done with the photographer's eye in the viewfinder, the tactile feedback provided by buttons will be hard to replace; while it might make settings menus a bit easier to navigate, having a touchscreen won't do much good when you're trying to adjust aperture on the fly, or pull down your exposure time after a light flickers on. However wonderfully or horrifically it's executed, though, a touchscreen DSLR from a major manufacturer will happen, and probably soon. [Photography Bay]

The official challenge is "Gray Winter." For fun, let's all shoot black and white in-camera and try to create most of the image without too heavy a hand in post production. If you nee advice/tips on shooting black and white landscapes, check here.

The rules:

1. Submissions need to be your own.
2. Photos need to be taken the week of the contest. (No portfolio linking or it spoils the "challenge" part.)
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings and technique used to snag the shot.
4. Email submissions to contests@gizmodo.com.

Send your best entries by the end of SUNDAY (yes, we moved the contest days) at contests@gizmodo.com with "Gray Winter" in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs at 800 pixels wide, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Include your shooting summary (camera, lens, ISO, etc) in the body of the email.

Bonus points for extra depressing shots that destroy the hope of happy holidays for everyone.

*Note: we didn't run last week's Shooting Challenge (Thanksgiving) because we didn't receive enough entries. Meanwhile, the week before, we received around 75 shots. We'll do our best to keep the challenges interesting, but for Giz's weekly shooting challenge to stay afloat, we really need your free labor, I mean, participation! [Image]

Designer Erin Fong came up with this crazy "NOVA DSLR" design, and truth be told I like it. The folding handle idea seems especially useful for one-handed shots. Looks like it would work better than balancing the camera's weight off-center like with traditional DSLRs.

But again, I'm no photographer. I'll leave it to you shutter junkies out there to cry foul. [Erin Fong via Gizmo Watch via Geeky Gadgets]

Baby's First DSLR: Nikon D3000

The D3000 is cheap. We're talking a full kit (i.e., it comes with a lens) for just $460, making it the cheapest DSLR kit around. But what really makes it stand out for beginners is a built-in tutorial system that explains how to get certain kinds of shots—like shallow depth of field—in plain English.

Amateur Hour: Canon T1i

The next step up is Canon's T1i. What we like is that it packs a bigger boy's image sensor—it's got the same 15-megapixel sensor as the pricier mid-range 50D—and 1080p video into a camera that's $720 with kit lens. Also, for the money, it edges out Nikon's D5000 on a few points, namely superior video handling and Live View.

Bigger Britches: Nikon D90

Nikon's D90 was the first ever DSLR to shoot 720p video with manual controls, but that's only part of the reason we like it. It's got the awesome image sensor from the semi-pro D300, in a package that's just over $1000. And at that price, it's $100 cheaper than Canon's competing 50D, which has the same image sensor as the cheaper T1i above, but none of the video benefits of either camera.

The Budding Auteur: Canon 7D

The only camera on this list that's more expensive than its competition—the D300s—the 7D overwhelms with DSLR video that's superior to every camera but Canon's very pro 1D Mark IV (which costs $5000). It shoots in 1080p, with full manual controls, and it's amazing what it can do in low light. Besides that, Canon's somehow cheated physics with an 18-megapixel sensor that doesn't explode with noise at high ISO settings, all while cramming a whole bunch of new features, and an actually good autofocus system. It's $1900 with a kit lens.

Beyond here, honestly, you should already have a pretty idea of what you're gonna buy without our help. And if you've got your own opinions about what's best in every price range, let's hear 'em in the comments.

The official challenge: "Thanksgiving." As always, interpret the theme however you'd like to give us the best shot that you can. (Food shots are always great, but Thanksgiving can mean people, Black Friday trampling and more.)

Of course, if you decide to do food, check out this list of ways you can cheat a bit: Food Styling - Fun Tac, anyone?

The rules:

1. Submissions need to be your own.
2. Photos need to be taken the week of the contest. (No portfolio linking or it spoils the "challenge" part.)
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings and technique used to snag the shot.
4. Email submissions to contests@gizmodo.com.

Send your best entries by the end of SUNDAY at contests@gizmodo.com with "Thanksgiving" in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs at 800 pixels wide, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Include your shooting summary (camera, lens, ISO, etc) in the body of the email. [Image]

First Place
"Smoke Signal was taken with an Olympus sp350 set to night scene. This was taken with a color changing led rave light about six inches long by 1/2 inch wide that I wrapped with electrical tape to create a candy cane stripe. I placed the light on my record turn table at a slow RPM and swiped the camera vertically to create the spinning stripe"
- Brad Bogle

Second Place
"No photoshop! To take this photo, I set up some white paper for a background in a dark room. I laid strawberries on a table and separately stood up a banana with some cardboard and tape. With the lights on, I set up a quick-release tripod properly framing the banana (this makes it much easier later). Now the lights are off. So now I set my camera to bulb and used my built-in pop up flash to shoot straight down on the strawberries, filling the frame. Keeping my finger on the shutter button, I put my camera on the tripod and then hit the pilot button on an external flash. The flash hits the white background behind the banana, silhouetting it briefly. Effectively, this washes out all of the original photo of the strawberries except for where the silhouette is, thereby superimposing the first image into the second. And you get a cool glossy product-shot-reflection-look that results from the shadow drop off of the external-flash (although if you look closely, you'll notice the "reflection" is actually just other strawberries from the initial shot) And now you can have a strawberry-banana! Canon 20D 17-55 IS lens @ f/22 ISO 200 13s (multiple focal length)"
- Jason Yore

Third Place
Nikon D5000; Nikkor 18-200mm VR; Exposure: 36.5 seconds; Aperture : f/5.0; Focal Length: 38mm; ISO: 400; WB: Daylight. I had a friend spin some burning steel wool in an eggbeater attached to a lanyard at the top of the overpass. What you're seeing are the resulting spark trails. More here. [Ed note: the umbrella shots are even more impressive]
- Dan DeChiaro

These placements are almost unfair with so many good shots being in the mix. I wish that I could honorable mention you all. Check the gallery. It's well-worth a waste of 10 minutes.

What's New and Dandy

What makes it my favorite Canon so far is actually everything that's completely new to Canon—DP Review has a nice summary here, in pictures. But in short, while this might sound weird, it shoots more like a Nikon than any Canon DSLR I've used. This is primarily because of the new 19-point autofocus system and the color metering system that goes with it. You're able to select AF zones—clusters of AF points—while in the past with Canon you've been limited to a full AF blast or picking out a single point. The system is also more customizable, so it can be locked with different default focus points depending on whether you're holding the camera horizontally and vertically orientations. Against Nikon's D300s, Canon's new AF system mostly kept up, and definitely performs better than autofocus on the 5D Mark II.

The new viewfinder now provides 100 percent coverage, unlike previous Canons in this range, and it uses a new polymer LCD network for the graphical overlay to display AF points, grids and other displays, so it's more flexible and feels more fluid. (It also just looks swankier, and again, more Nikon-like.) Your other viewfinder (when you're shooting video, anyway), the LCD screen, is a 3-inch, 920k dot display like the 5D Mark II and it's still excellent, with a wide viewing angle, nice color and the right amount of crispness.

Sensor and Image Quality

Truthfully, I've been mildly surprised at the quality of photos that've come out of the 7D, which uses an absolutely stuffed 18-megapixel, APS-C sized sensor. (So, there is a 1.6x crop factor.) For comparison, the D300s has a 12MP sensor that's the same physical size (Update: For nitpickers, yes, Nikon's DX format is marginally larger than Canon's APS-C sensor, with the D300s's sensor coming in at 23.6 x 15.8 mm to the 7D's 22.3 x 14.9 mm.) The the D3 only goes for 12 megapixels on its bigger full-frame (35mm-equivalent) sensor. The 5D Mark II has a 21MP full-frame sensor. And typically, the more pixels you try to cram on a sensor of a given size, the more the image quality degrades, especially when it comes to low light, high ISO shots.

I was expecting a noisefest, or at best, seriously noticeable noise reduction employed by the camera's software. It is clear that Canon's using incredibly sophisticated noise reduction algorithms with the dual Digic IV processors onboard, though the effects are less drastic than I expected. It's most apparent, actually, when you directly compare photos taken with the D300s. Looking at photos taken with the 7D and D300s at 100 percent crops, the D300s's images are noisier, but they also preserve more detail. For web-sized images, the 7D's images look better, with less noise and more smoothness.

I've got two sample galleries—an array of sample shots, and then another directly comparing the 7D with the D300s in low light situations, using identical settings for photos. 100 percent zooms follow photos in both galleries. Or you can download full size photos from Flickr here and here.

Video

You can get sense of Canon and Nikon's philosophical differences with the difference in their buttons for video: Canon makes a distinction between Live View and video mode, while Nikon is ready to start shooting video as soon you tap the live view button on the D300s. Creating video is a separate, dedicated event for Canon, in other words, and there is a semi-serious video camera that happens to be built into a DSLR. Nikon's D300s, on the other hand, is a DSLR that happens to shoot video.

With video, the 7D simply has the upper hand—video is very much a legitimized use of this camera, not a secondary one like the D300s. (As expected from a company with an entire wing dedicated to camcorders for pros and consumers.) Not only does it have full manual controls, I find that it's slightly easier to use that the D300s while shooting video—not to mention the whole shooting in a real video codec at 1080p, yadda yadda. Three clips here: A melange of video above, and then by two videos, one from the 7D, one of the D300s, that mirror each other. Both were shot at ISO 6400, and you should be able to catch them at full res if you click over to Vimeo.

Build and Controls

The 7D is heavy, heavier than the 5D, but it's also slightly sturdier, with a build quality and weatherproofing that that's slightly in between the 5D and Canon's definitely pro 1D. It feels about the same in your hand, though. And it's roughly comparable to the D300s.

Controls aren't radically different from other Canon DSLRs of this caliber—that is, it's what you'd mostly expect from a DSLR that sits in between the lower end 50D and the higher end 5DMkII, though it's a bit closer to the latter. While the menu system feels completely unchanged—leaving more advanced features, like the orientation autofocus a bit inscrutable—a few things are new on the outside: The power switch is up on the top left, under the mode dial; there's a dedicated button for switching to RAW/JPEG; a quick action button; and a new toggle switch for Live View and video, which you engage by pressing a start button in the center.

You Already Know If You're Going to Buy This

The real question for Canon users who want something more than the lower end 50D is whether they go for the 7D, at $1700, or full bore to full-frame with the $2700 5D Mark II. The 7D has a 1.6x crop factor which is useful for sports, a better autofocusing system, shoots faster, is slightly more rugged, and is $1000 cheaper. The 5D is full frame—which I suspect is the real consideration for folks—and takes slightly better photos at higher resolutions.

Obviously, if you're locked into Nikon, with thousands of dollars in lenses, you're not going to jump to Canon, or vice versa. But Canon's dedication to DSLR video is proving formidable in carving out a new kind of market that Nikon might have some trouble competing in, since they're a dedicated still camera company, not a video company, too, like Canon. Really, both the D300s and 7D deliver for the money, though I think the 7D delivers more, since it's packed full of newer technology and for the people who want it, the video component is truly killer. Either way, it's proof that competition is good—it clearly wouldn't exist without the D300, and the D400 will be that much better because of it.

New 19-point autofocus and metering systems plus the new viewfinder rock

Excellent 1080p video with full manual controls

Not full-frame, which might put off some people

I'd like a secondary SD card slot, like the D300s

Noise reduction can get pretty aggressive at higher ISO speeds, obscuring detail

BTW, here are some Giz posts shot w/ the 7D:
• Motorola Droid Impressions
• Motorola Droid Review
• Blood Energy Potion Review
• BlackBerry Storm 2 Review
• S90 Review

First Place
Wade Saathoff: Nikon D300, Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.4, 1/100th, f/3.2, ISO 320, 14 bit RAW, .nef converted using Raw Therapee and edited in Photoshop 7

Second Place
Tess Davis: Sony A350, 18-70mm kit lens, f/4.5, 1/200s, ISO 100

Third Place
Neal Rosenblat: Nikon D90, 50mm lens, f1.8, 1/2000

Thanks to everyone for making the first Shooting Challenge so much fun. And since these results are completely subjective, enjoy the full gallery below before mocking my taste in the comments. Still, I don't think there's a lousy shot in the bunch.

I had around two hours to shoot with a pre-production model of the tank-like D3s at New York's Big Apple Circus, hence all of the scary clowns and very flexible folks. Since low-light performance is what you're probably most interested in, I've broken down the sample shots into galleries by ISO speed. Overall, shots at ISO 6400 are the cleanest I've ever seen at that ISO rating—just think about that for a second—and ISO 12,800 photos are unquestionably usable for even large web photos (like 1000x1000 pixels). Of course, the pictures at ISO 102,400 have ridiculous grain and you'd never use them for anything but novelty, but consider that we really are talking light sensitivity on the order of night vision. It's a remarkable achievement for achievement's sake.

All of the photos here are from JPEGs straight out of a pre-production D3s, with no retouches. They were resized, but I've included shots of 100 percent zoom close-ups above the galleries.

These two series are shot at the exact same shutter speed, adjusting only the ISO, so you can get a sense of how much extra light the cranked ISO absorbs.

I've also cut together some of the 720p video I shot. The video mode's a little confusing to use at first, since the "shutter speed" is how adjust exposure in video mode, but the results are nice, even if they're not in 1080p. The clip was always shot at an ISO rating of at least 3200 (I was fiddling with the ISO throughout), and the second half makes use of a boom mic for stereo.