Digital Cameras
April 5, 2005: Multi-function devices are one of the by-products of convergence and we’re going to see a lot more over the coming years, not all of them based around telephone functionality. Vivitar were the first to plunge into this market late last year with the EEK and the DVR 390H, but as time passes, we expect that the “jack of all trades, master of none” multi-functionality will subside. The Miniket VP-M110 from Samsung is a multi-function device in that it is actually very good at one thing – it is a tapeless camcorder capable of recording 30 frames per second of 720 x 480 video and it comes with a 10 times optical zoom built into a package just 58.8mm x 92.7mm x 29.1mm in size. Those specs put the Miniket directly in competition with Panasonic’s D-Snap, but in a smaller form factor for a significantly reduced price. Read More
March 11, 2005 Taking pictures with your mobile phone is no longer confined to what is visible through the view finder on the phone. Sony Ericsson’s new Bluetooth controlled camera, ROB-1, can move around freely, steered wirelessly by the joy-stick or keypad on your mobile phone or as for P900/P910 with the touch screen, enabling you to see on your phone screen exactly what ROB-1 is looking at. You can then capture these images using your phone just as you would a normal photo. Read More
March 8, 2005 Olympus has announced the Mju-mini DIGITAL S, a 5-megapixel compact digital camera with an all-weather, “drop-shaped” metal body, a 1.8-inch HyperCrystal LCD screen and a 2x optical zoom lens. The Mju-mini DIGITAL S will be available in stores from April 2005 and is the ideal camera for all those people sick of looking at square me-too budget digital cameras. Read More
Sony debuts x12 optical zoom and image stabilisation Cyber-shot
February 20, 2005 Sony has announced the Sony DSC-H1 Cyber-shot digital camera which features five megapixel, Super HAD CCD imager, 12X optical zoom lens and Super Steady Shot optical image stabilization feature to counteracts camera-shake and ensure sharp images. With high zoom and image stabilization, the DSC-H1 offers an easy-to-use camera with a focal length range of 36 - 432 millimeters. Whatsmore, the US$500 camera can be optically converted to wide angle (25 - 300 mm) or extra long (61 - 734 mm) with US$150 conversion lenses. Read More
Canon gives the world’s top selling digital SLR a full-body makeover
February 18, 2005 Canon has announced the EOS 350D digital SLR camera, providing unparalleled performance to hobby photographers and users entering the digital SLR market for the first time. Featuring a Canon-developed 8.0 megapixel CMOS image sensor, the EOS 350D offers even more than its predecessor, the EOS 300D. Accompanying the new camera, Canon also announced two new zoom lenses that expand the EF-S series for digital SLR cameras. Read More
New 21.3" Cintiq is World's First Interactive Pen Display
February 18, 2005 If you're a creative professional, Wacom's new Cintiq 21 UX might just be the tool we've been waiting for. Users can draw directly onto the 21.3-inch screen, eight programmable ExpressKeys and Touch Strips for scrolling, zooming and changing brush settings with the touch of a finger. But wait, there's more, like 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity, 1600 x 1200 resolution, a 170-degree viewing angle, anti-glare coating, 24-bit color with ICC colour profile and a 400:1 contrast ratio. Expected in March, the Cintiq 21 UX is expected to cost US$2500 on the street. Read More
Las Vegas January 9, 2005 Taking images with a camera and sending them wirelessly to a third party is a technology that has only been available to newspaper photographers in the last decade, and at massive expense. Accordingly, Kodak’s announcement of the EASYSHARE-ONE, a new digital photography system with wi-fi connectivity for US$599 is a landmark in the history imaging, let alone digital imaging. Read More
January 6, 2005 Toshiba has announced the introduction of the gigashot digital camcorders. Part of the company's gigastyle family of products, gigashot camcorders, like the gigabeat digital audio players, are hard drive based models. With large capacity (30 GB or 60 GB) hard drives built in, the cameras offer 'media-free' functionality and massive storage capability - for example, up to 13 hours of high quality 9.6 Mbps recording is possible using the 60GB model at its highest quality setting. The gigashot camcorders combine a high quality video camera with a still camera, all-in-one easy to use package. With the capability of snapping digital photos while continuing to shoot video, gigashot makes it exceedingly simple to catch those special moments in either still images or video. Read More
January 4, 2005 Kicking off this week's 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Eastman Kodak Company has introduced the world's first dual-lens digital still camera, the KODAK EasyShare V570 zoom digital camera. Using proprietary Kodak Retina Dual Lens technology, the elegant V570 camera wraps an ultra-wide angle lens (23 mm) and an optical zoom lens (39 - 117 mm) into a package less than an inch thick. The innovative EasyShare V570 camera's ultra-wide angle lens coupled with its optical zoom lens produces a total 5X optical zoom range, providing more options to help today's picture takers capture the perfect shot --group photos, scenic landscapes, dramatic portraits, and close-ups. No other consumer digital camera offers such a wide angle of view, nor the unique, sophisticated design of this model, whose all-glass, stacked Schneider-Kreuznach C-Variogon prism lenses never extend from the camera body. Read More
December 14, 2004 Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany have built a prototype pocket projector with a tilting micromirror that builds up the picture line by line for legible graphics and text. Future models are likely to be no larger than a cube of sugar and could be incorporated into a mobile phone, allowing the miniature projector to be always on hand to present PowerPoint slides to a small group of customers or for quickly consulting an online journal. It could also provide useful orientation in unfamiliar towns by projecting a street map onto the wall of the nearest building. Read More
