Kamera Digital News

Simple is as camera does

Simple is as camera does
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (subscription), WI

Sometimes “simple” is just what you need - the basics boosted with just a few nice extra features.

Kodak’s EasyShare V1003 sizes up to be a solid party camera, the kind you pull out at family gatherings or during an evening out with friends.

Aesthetically, the camera isn’t striking and its size and shape are definitely more purse than pocket-friendly.

However, the button layout is very straightforward and easy to use. You shouldn’t find yourself accidentally turning off the camera when you try to take a picture. And maneuvering through menus is easy.

Switching between photo and movie mode - as well as several other features - is simple because of clearly marked, dedicated buttons for various tasks.

The V1003 also has plenty of resolution - 10 megapixels, which can take huge photos of up to 3648 pixels x 2736 pixels. It’s unlikely most people will take pictures that big all the time, but it’s nice to have the capability in your back pocket.

You’ll want to ramp down that maximum resolution considerably unless you buy a secure digital or multimedia card to boost the camera’s 32 megabytes of internal memory, which is a little disappointing considering the $250 price.

The camera does not have an optical viewfinder.

Instead, you line up your shots using a 2.5-inch color liquid crystal display.

That wide, bright screen gives decent close-ups through a combination of a 3x optical zoom and 4x digital zoom, which is more than enough to snap subjects across a crowded room.

It’s easy to tell when the optical zoom stops and the digital zoom begins - there is an unfortunately noticeable delay in zoom movement and focusing time between the two.

In addition to several scene modes to help take better pictures in different lighting conditions, the V1003 also has an anti-blur setting to offset shaky hands, red-eye reduction and can crop photos.

Transferring photos to a computer for editing and e-mail is exactly what you would expect: plug-and-play through a USB connection, although Kodak’s camera has a special “share” button.

Using the share button lets you bookmark your favorite photos stored on the camera, creating low-resolution versions of them that take up less space but are still easy to show off on the camera’s display.

The camera pairs up well with a new line of digital picture frames from Kodak, including a couple that can connect to a home’s wireless network and show off the pictures stored on a computer.

Kodak’s EasyShare digital picture frames come in standard and Wi-Fi versions.

The wireless ones come with 10- and 8-inch screens and can display pictures and video, as well as play music through built-in speakers or headphones.

In addition to tapping into the media on your computer - a feature that requires Microsoft’s MediaPlayer 11 - you can store content on 128 megabytes of internal memory as well as external media cards using its built-in expansion slots.

There are plenty of other ways to get pictures onto the frame in addition to transferring them over a wireless network or through a computer’s USB port.

You can connect a camera - like the V1003 - directly to the frame. You can also plug in a USB key drive and copy over the saved data, and pictures stored online can also be shown off using a Kodak gallery account.

While trying out the EX811 frame - the 8-inch wireless version that costs $280 - I was surprised by how easy it was to link it to my home network.

Setting up the MediaPlayer to share content on the computer required only a couple of steps, and the frame soon found the network, as well as hundreds of pictures stored on the computer.

The frame can also connect to a secured wireless network - you just need to enter the password using an included remote control, which also lets you change settings and move through whatever slideshow you’ve set up.

Stanley A. Miller II covers personal technology for the Journal Sentinel. He can be reached at (414) 223-5162 or smiller@journalsentinel.com.

Add comment May 14th, 2007

Lights, camera, makeup! WCVB broadcasts role as first with new tech

Lights, camera, makeup! WCVB broadcasts role as first with new tech
Boston Herald, MA

Bill Fine is passionate about all the geeky technological aspects of television broadcasting.
Fine, president of WVCB-TV (Ch.5), tends to speak about digital signals, compressed frequencies - even the doppler radar system - like a kid in a candy shop.
So he was visibly excited last week as the station prepared to become the first in the market to broadcast its local newscasts in high definition.
“I absolutely love it,” Fine said. “I’ve been walking down (to the station’s new set) every day for two weeks and just getting more and more pumped up about it.”

Starting with its 5 o’clock newscast tonight, WCVB will be the first and only station to broadcast its news in HD.
WCVB, which is owned by Hearst-Argyle Television, has invested millions of dollars buying the new camera equipment, creating a completely new set and installing a new control room.
Some of the effects of converting to HD will be immediate.
For viewers with high-definition TVs, the picture will be sharper, brighter and clearer. To hammer home the difference, WCVB has been running episodes of its show “Chronicle” - which began running in HD last October - on high-definition and old-fashioned analog TV sets side-by-side in its lobby.
Even for those watching at home, WCVB’s sleek set, which is twice the size of its previous one, will likely be a welcome improvement.
And, of course, there are the precious bragging rights of being first.
But what isn’t as clear is what kind of economic impact it will have for the station.
While HD TVs are gaining popularity, far more analog sets sit in homes. Only one in six households in the U.S. had at least one HD TV as of last year, according to the trade publication MediaPost.
Fine wouldn’t say how much the cost of converting to HD was for WCVB. But industry insiders said such a soup-to-nuts change-over could run above $10 million.
Fine acknowledged that WCVB is getting ahead of most of its audience by implementing the new technology. “You want to be ahead of the market,” he said.
“The more our lineup is 24 hours of high definition the better value we’re going to be for the viewer,” Fine said.
And HD can be especially appealing to advertisers who rely on showing their products in TV commercials, such as fashion brands, electronic gadgets or furniture stores, he added.
People who own HD sets tend to be a more affluent set, said Tim Gilbert, general manager of Lexington, Ky.-based KLEX-TV, which went to HD last month. “They’re very desirable households,” he said.
A wave of TV stations converting to HD has spread across the country in the past six months or so, said Dennis Wharton, president of the National Association of Broadcasters. Close to 50 stations now do local newscasts in HD in the United States “I think it’s a way to brand your station as the next generation of technology,” he said.
On Feb. 17, 2009, all TV stations will switch from an analog signal to a digital one. Plans are in place for vouchers to be provided to homes to help purchase converters for old analog sets. But the move is expected to push more consumers toward buying new HD sets and eventually the entire industry will shift to broadcasting in HD.
So, perhaps, the best reason for WCVB’s turning to HD was it was going to have to anyway.

Add comment May 14th, 2007