Archive for August, 2007
Is this what they mean by ‘digital’ camera?
August 19, 2007
Chicago Tribune, United States
This week’s stop on Q’s world tour of lame vacation pictures is Scotland, where Bob and Donna Wahlert of Dubuque were visiting with four granddaughters in 2005. Bob obviously was still mastering his new digital camera when he photographed Molly Principi and Lauren, Ellie and Sydney Peck in a guard house in Edinburgh. Along with his finger, standing at attention.
Thanks to Amy Principi of Mt. Prospect for sending this photo and for making sure we knew that on this trip her dad “captured many lovely moments on film. Just not this one.”
Readers, there’s still time to send us your bad vacation photos. Send jpegs to vacation photos@tribune.com and include names, locations, years and back stories as best (and as briefly) as you can, along with your n
August 20th, 2007
Digital camera sales are booming
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Consumer appetite for digital cameras so far this year has grown twice as fast as expected, as buyers replace older models at cheaper prices, according to research firm IDC.
Moreover, many are upgrading to more powerful cameras, IDC said on Tuesday in its report Updated Worldwide Digital Camera Forecast.
Global digital camera shipments are expected to grow by about 15 per cent this year, IDC said, double its previous forecast of 7.5 per cent, reversing a trend of declining growth seen over the past four years.
IDC analyst Chris Chute said cameras are becoming a kind of fashion item, a trend made popular by tiny mobile phones and Apple’s iPod digital music player.
Similarly, the digital camera has become a personal, low priced item, whose sales are now more driven by impulse than utility, especially in the United States, Japan and Europe, Chute said.
“This year was the first that we had a lot of colour cameras, a lot of them under $US200,” Chute said, noting the trend toward more choices than just black or silver gadgets. “I think that is resonating with consumers.”
At the same time, the report showed that the average number of cameras in each camera-owning home has remained flat from 2006 at 1.4. IDC said that suggests consumers are replacing their cameras at a faster rate than expected.
Chute also noted that single-lens-reflex (SLR) cameras, favored by professionals and photography enthusiasts, will be more of a driver of the total market than previously thought as prices decline.
In the US, average prices for all digital cameras, ranging from entry level point-and-shoots to SLRs, are expected to slip about 13 percent this year to $US307 from $US352 in 2006.
Chute added that demand for digital cameras, primarily those made by market leaders, Canon Inc, Sony Corp and Eastman Kodak, should remain strong for the critical holiday shopping season.
IDC said it boosted its growth outlook through 2011, with total units shipped seen at 138 million, up from an earlier expectation of 123 million. Prices are expected to decline to about $US250 on average, Chute said.
August 16th, 2007
hp photosmart r937 digital camera
Al-Bawaba, Jordan
hp photosmart r937 digital camera
Overview
The HP Photosmart R937 Digital Camera takes photos to the next level with a large, 9.14cm (3.6-inch) interactive touchscreen and superior 8-megapixel resolution. Ideal for those on the go – this stylish, remarkably thin camera easily slips into a pocket or purse. Users can apply creative touches, easily organise photos with Microsoft Vista™-compatible tags, add e-mail addresses for easy sharing and create slide shows – all in the camera. In addition, the HP Photosmart R937 Digital Camera includes the latest HP Design Gallery features such as industry-leading in-camera red-eye removal,(1) pet-eye fix, slimming, HP steady photo anti-shake and HP touch-up to ensure subjects look their best.
Key Features and Benefits
• Take superior photos that can be cropped or enlarged with 8-megapixel resolution and Fujinon 3x optical zoom.
• View photos easily – indoors or out, using an energy-efficient 9.14cm (3.6-inch) Auto-bright Display.
• Edit and organise photos directly from the easy-to-use, interactive touchscreen – no PC needed.
• Enjoy quick photo organisation for easy sharing using the in-camera, Microsoft Vista™-compatible tagging feature and touchscreen menus.
• Easily add e-mail addresses or tags to the camera simply by tapping the virtual keyboard.
• Get the photo intended with HP Design Gallery’s industry-leading in-camera red-eye removal(1) and pet-eye fix.
• Slim subjects and remove blemishes – in camera – with a unique slimming feature and HP touch-up.
• Add on-camera personal touches to photos using borders, colours and effects.
• Get more detailed photos with new automatic HP steady photo anti-shake mode and HP adaptive lighting technology.
• Stitch panoramic photos and save them for viewing and easy printing – no PC necessary.
• Catch gripping action shots with minimal delay with the easy-to-use burst mode.
• Capture spontaneous memories in high-quality video with audio.
• Snap a photo and mark it for e-mail right on the display, using HP Photosmart Share.
• Includes everything needed to start taking photos right out of the box, including a long-lasting, rechargeable battery and 32MB of internal memory.
• Effortlessly share, save and print photos, plus order prints online, using HP Photosmart Express.
• Order brilliant prints online through Snapfish by connecting to a PC. (2)
• Microsoft Windows Vista™ ready.
Additional Features
• Meets HP’s General Specification for the Environment, which includes compliance with the EU ROHS Directive (focus: lead, cadmium, mercury, PBB, PBDE). (3)
Spend more time shooting and sharing photos by quickly charging the HP Photosmart R937 Digital Camera’s high-capacity, lithium-ion battery in one hour or less(5) with the optional HP Photosmart Quick Recharge Kit for R-series cameras. (4)
© 2007 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
August 15th, 2007
Sony Alpha 100 digital SLR camera
PC Advisor, UK
Introduced with much fanfare last summer as Sony’s first foray into the sub-professional DSLR market, how will the 10Mp Sony Alpha 100 fare in comparison with the newer models?
The Sony Alpha 100 is more plastic bodied than many digital SLR cameras – so opt for the black rather than silver casing as it’s better disguised.
And with the lithium-ion battery inserted (good for up to 750 shots) the Sony Alpha 100 feels solid. Powering up in just over a second, the click of the Sony Alpha 100′s shutter is reassuringly loud. Integral features, such as anti-shake built into the camera rather than the lens, plus an eye sensor that switches on the camera’s viewfinder as soon as it registers your eye’s proximity, are impressive.
The fact that the Sony Alpha 100′s actual CCD moves to counterbalance any hand wobble means that any lens attached – including all of Konica Minolta’s old lenses – automatically becomes image-stabilised. Sony’s kit bundle offers an adequate 18-70mm zoom to get you started.
Simultaneous Raw and JPEG capture is offered. Thanks to the Sony Alpha 100′s nine-point auto focus and 40-segment pattern metering system, a half press of the shutter button means the Alpha is swift to determine focus and exposure, although busy scenes can confuse the camera as to which subject it’s supposed to lock onto first.
To avoid any dust attaching itself to the sensor when swapping lenses, the CCD automatically vibrates every time the camera powers down, so shaking undesirables free. Other useful features include the fact that the Sony Alpha 100′s 2.5in LCD displays essential shooting information in capture mode and, if you turn the camera on its side, automatically adjusts the display for easy reference. So, though the Alpha 100 initially looks daunting, it’s actually fairly easy to get to grips with.
With vivid and well-saturated colours, there’s little need to embark on any Photoshop editing here. Although the Sony Alpha 100′s anti-shake isn’t 100 per cent effective, we’ve yet to come across a system that is, and, for the most part well-focused sharp images are the order of the day.
Verdict
The Sony Alpha 100 is fast, responsive and user friendly despite the level of sophistication on offer. It’s also capable of some stunning results with the right lens attached, but the plastic construction is a shame.
Gavin Stoker
Submit your own review for this product
August 14th, 2007
Medium-Format Digital Cameras: The Shapes of Things to Come
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EDN.com, MA
Personally, I never got into medium-format film photography. That’s probably because I never became skilled enough to exhaust the possibilities of my Canon SLRs. Even with my Canon 20D dSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera, I’ve got a long ways to go before I can say I’ve mastered the medium. I probably never will. So I’m unlikely to buy Mamiya 645ZD digital medium-format camera, even though it’s priced a whole dollar under $10,000, but that doesn’t mean I can’t drool over the camera or extract some pointers of things to come for lesser cameras. (If you already happen to own a Mamiya 645, you can buy the digital back alone for $1 less than $7000.)
Mamiya’s large-format digital camera back sports a 22-Mpixel image sensor. That’s 30% more pixels than you get with a top-of-the-line, 16.7-Mpixel Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II full-frame dSLR for about 25% more money. It’s also a bit less than twice the number of pixels for three times the money when compared to the full-frame Canon 5D dSLR.
More important to me, however, is the difference in bit depth. The Mamiya captures 14 bits/pixel while nearly all lesser-format dSLRs capture 12 bits/pixel. Those extra two bits of pixel depth are a very big deal to me. I consider them more important that the extra resolution, for the types of images I try to capture. Really high-end digital camera backs capture 16 bits/pixel. I think bit depth is the next great battleground for digital cameras.
The Mamiya 645ZD’s features bode well for digital cameras in general and drive another yet nail or three into film’s coffin.
August 13th, 2007
A Digital S.L.R. With Some Top-of-the-Line Features but Not the Higher Price
New York Times, United States
It is a classic gadget-world situation: features that start off in a top-of-the-line model eventually migrate down the product line. Some features from the K10D single-lens reflex camera, for example, which Pentax prices at $899.95, show up in the $599 K100D Super, which shipped this week.
Though it lacks its older sibling’s weather seals and 10-megapixel sensor, the 6.1-megapixel K100D Super does give you a removable 18-55 millimeter zoom lens, the same sophisticated processor and the same image stabilization and sensor dust cleaner. Strategies for keeping dust motes away from light-gathering surfaces are a rare new feature in digital S.L.R.’s
The camera is compatible with Pentax’s new SDM series of lenses with quiet supersonic motors, also shipping this week. And, with adaptors, any Pentax lens, even those from the ancient film era, can be made to work.
The K100D Super is small — 5.1 by 3.6 by 2.8 inches — and light, at 23.5 ounces with batteries. Interestingly, these are AA batteries, which may allow further weight economy by letting you pack just one charger for both the camera and an external flash. MARTY KATZ
August 10th, 2007
Compact digital camera a snappy little number
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
HERE’S a compact digital camera that gives consumers great value for money.
For a start, those willing and able to splash $599 on a new camera will really like the new IXUS 950IS model’s pearl-silver finish. It stands up to wear and tear much better than the standard silver finish on comparable models.
After months of constant use the standard silver has more scratches than a Tattslotto outlet, but the wee IXUS should always look as fresh as the day it was bought.
Buyers will also get bragging rights from the camera’s 8-megapixel CCD sensor, which is sure to trounce the camera your mate bought last year — which just goes to show that, these days, digital cameras are more about CCD size than almost any other feature.
It’s great to know the IXUS can, theoretically, build an image using 8 million individual pixels, but my advice to anyone playing the numbers game is to be cautious about what they wish for.
Sure, the greater the pixel count the sharper and more defined the image — if you display it, say, on a 1080i high-definition TV. But it’s overkill when you want to print a copy of a standard 6×4-inch picture that can fit in only about three megapixels of resolution.
Even an A4-sized picture struggles to cram in six megapixels of resolution.
Exploiting that 8-megapixel resolution requires an A3-sized picture, which will happily accommodate 7.2 to 8.1 megapixels of resolution. Of course, the extra pixels are handy when you want to crop your pictures without losing image quality.
The IXUS’s 2.5-inch LCD screen displays images using a resolution of about 230,000 pixels.
Bottom line? Don’t shy away from a quality digital camera because it has what seems like a modest four to six-megapixel CCD.
There’s much more to like about this camera than a high standard of finish and a high pixel count.
There’s its ease of use. Most users can find their way around the operating controls and set the camera to full automatic mode without having to read the manual.
Point the camera to a subject, press the shutter and the Canon’s 4x optical zoom lens with built-in image stabilisation rewards you with sharply defined, richly coloured pictures.
It’s also fast: it takes only 1 1/2 seconds to turn on the camera and take a picture. It also has red-eye reduction and face detection, and both features combine to generate well-focused images.
It’s an enjoyable model to use, except for one gripe: advanced users can rightly complain that, at this price, Canon should have given them manual exposure controls. This group will justifiably look elsewhere.
August 9th, 2007
Digital camera shipments jump 39 percent
Adorama (press release), New York
Japan’s Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA) reports that digital camera shipments from Japan in June jumped 38.9 percent compared to June 2006. 8MP models as well as more advanced cameras such as DSLRs led the way, with an increase of over 205 percent.
More than 7.5 million cameras were shipped in June, worth approximately $1.4 billion. 6.7 million of the cameras were in the 6-8MP range.
© 2007 Adorama
August 8th, 2007
Vacationing With A Digital Camera
www.arabia.com
Traveling with a digital camera is more complex than going on a trip with a conventional film camera. All that needs be done with a conventional camera is to bring along some extra rolls of film or purchase some more when the camera runs out of film.
A digital camera, however, has a fixed storage capacity that can only added to by buying expensive flash memory cards.
One common solution is to carry a notebook computer, if one is available, and transfer the pictures to it from the camera periodically to free up the precious camera memory
This option also permits the vacationer to preview the pictures and decide whether to erase them, e-mail them, or post them on the Web. If the notebook computer has a CD writer they can even be transferred to a write-able CD. Some people even carry a small printer to print the images, or take the digital images to a shop that provides this service.
If carrying a notebook is undesirable or not an option, it is possible to transfer images directly to a portable hard drive. This palm-sized, battery-powered device may come with or without a display screen.
Another popular option is to transfer pictures to a Clik! drive, a portable storage device powered by a rechargeable battery. Once the images have been transferred to the Clik! drive, they can be erased from the flash memory card to free up space. When a Clik! disc becomes full it can be replaced with another one, typically costing around ten to twenty dollars. Images can be transferred from the drive to the computer upon returning from the trip.
It is important to remember that in North America, Central America, and some parts of South America the power supply is 110 volts and 60 Hz, whereas most of the rest of the world uses voltages of 220 volts and 50 Hz. The wall outlets may also be different. Always check before travelling abroad, as it may be necessary to purchase an adapter kit before it will be safe to plug in a notebook computer, AC adapter, or battery charger.
Adapters come in two varieties, transformers and converters. A transformer is safer and is suitable for use with sensitive electronic devices. A converter can be used with more robust electrical appliances like hairdryers. Using a device through a converter can, however, harm devices over time and should not be done for more than a few hours. Transformers, being better suited to the task, can be used for longer periods, but they tend to weigh more and are more bulky.
If it will be necessary to use a modem, it is important to find out about the type of adapters that are used in the country in question. Also, if a lot of hiking, canoeing, or sailing is planned, a solar-powered battery charger to is advisable to ensure equipment will be running smoothly.
Contrary to popular belief, a digital camera, laptop computer, flash cards, audio and video tapes, floppy discs and film are not harmed by the X-ray machines and fluoroscopes installed at airports. However, magnetic media like Clik! discs can be harmed by a metal detector. Keep this in mind while traveling by air and plan accordingly.
John Miller writes for several online magazines, including http://products-tips.com and http://cheap-product.com
August 7th, 2007
Groundbreaking Digital Experience for Endeavour Shuttle Launch
CNNMoney.com
Microsoft’s Photosynth 3-D imagery gives people around the world unprecedented views of the shuttle vehicle and its launchpad.
August 06, 2007: 12:01 AM EST
REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — For the first time, people around the world can view 3-D images of the space shuttle Endeavour and surrounding buildings at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida before it launches into space, through a collaboration between Microsoft Corp. and NASA. Microsoft(R) Live Labs and NASA developed the environments using hundreds of photographs and a photo-imaging technology called Photosynth(TM).
Photosynth uses hundreds of standard digital camera images to construct a 3-D view of an environment that can be navigated and explored in a highly intuitive manner.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO )
Online viewers can go to http://media.labs.live.com/photosynth/nasa to access 3-D images of details such as the shuttle boosters, interior and exterior of the Vehicle Assembly Building, and launchpad. By clicking and dragging their mouse, visitors to the site will be able to explore parts of the shuttle launch, zooming in to see the smallest decorative detail or zooming out and panning 360 degrees to place the shuttle in a wider context.
“This collaboration with Microsoft gives the public a new way to explore and participate in America’s space program,” said William Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for Space Operations. “We are looking into ways of using this new technology to support future missions.”
“With Photosynth, we take pictures of an environment and knit them together into an experience that people can move through like a 3-D video game,” said Blaise Aguera y Arcas, architect at Microsoft Live Labs. “NASA provided us with some outstanding images and the result is an experience that will wow anyone wanting to get a closer look at the Endeavour and its travels.”
The specific synth collections created for this shuttle launch include these:
— The interior and surrounding area of the Vehicle Assembly Building
(the largest one-story building in the world), used for housing
external fuel tanks and flight hardware, and the location of orbiter
mating (stacking) with the solid rocket boosters and external fuel
tank to prepare the space shuttle for launch.
— Endeavour on the launchpad, including amazing detail shots taken from
a helicopter
— The previous flight STS-117 shuttle Atlantis returning from Edwards
Air Force Base in California to Kennedy’s Shuttle Landing Facility
In addition, MSNBC is providing a multimedia experience of the Endeavour shuttle launch for viewers, and will provide viewers with a link to the video demo at http://spaceworld.msnbc.com of the Endeavour shuttle launch synth collections.
Photosynth was created in collaboration between Microsoft and the University of Washington based on the groundbreaking research of Noah Snavely (UW), Steve Seitz (UW) and Richard Szeliski (Microsoft Research). It combines hundreds or thousands of regular digital photos of a scene to present a detailed 3-D model of a subject, giving viewers the sensation of smoothly gliding around the scene from every angle. The scene can be constructed regardless of whether the photos are from a single or multiple sources. It’s like a hybrid of a slide show and a gaming experience that lets the viewer zoom in to see greater detail or zoom out for a more expansive view. Viewing the photos in a 3-D context gives viewers a better sense for the place where the images were captured. A link to the research paper and a video demo of Photosynth can be found at http://labs.live.com/photosynth.
Microsoft Live Labs is an applied research organization focused on the incubation of innovative, Internet-centric technologies to improve and accelerate the next evolution of Microsoft’s Internet products and services. Through rapid prototyping of emerging technologies and incubation of entirely new inventions, Live Labs aims to advance the state of the art of Internet technologies and enable new scenarios for users. Live Labs also believes that collaboration with other groups at Microsoft, government and academic research labs, industry labs and pioneers, and others is key to fulfilling its mission, and works to build strong relationships with these groups.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
August 6th, 2007
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