Recently in Cameras Category
Olympus has boosted the creativity quotient for lensslingers with its release today of its latest digital SLR based on the Four Thirds image processing system. The new 12.3 megapixel E-620 includes a set of art filters for producing on the fly effects such as
- emulating the pop art style of the 1960s
- bathing subjects in an ethereal light giving them an unworldly quality
- imitating the flat soft and pastel lighting of movie flashbacks
- softening the shade and highlight areas in a frame to add elegance to a shot
- draining the color and adding grain to an image to make it look ripped from an old documentary film and
- duplicating an image captured with a pinhole camera.
It also has the ability to capture overlapping exposures, which can open the door to all kinds of experimental effects.
Images with the DSC can be framed and shot through its pivoting 2.7-inch, 230,000 dot LCD or optical viewfinder. Pivoting displays enable a shooter to grab photos at extreme or unorthodox angles without twisting into a pretzel.
Another creative bonus built into the E-620 is the power to shoot at a variety of aspect ratios—4:3, 3:2, 16:9, 6:6 and 3:4.
The bytecam, built around a Four Thirds CMOS image sensor (17.3 x 13mm), also has a full complement of bracketing options, not only exposure bracketing but ISO, flash and white balance bracketing, too.
There's also an array of in-camera editing functions such as shadow adjustment, red-eye fix, image cropping, monotone and sepia conversion, saturation tuning and resizing.
Other features include face detection, four frame per second continuous shooting, in camera optical image stablization, shutter speeds from 60–1/4000 second and light sensitivity from ISO 100–3200.
The E-620 is scheduled to reach retailers in May at a body only price of $699.99 and a kit tab of $799.99 with 14–42mm Zuiko digital zoom lens.
A slew of new point-and-shoot digital cameras have been introduced by Canon—most of them with the company's powerful Digic 4 image processor and a Smart Auto feature that intelligently analyzes a scene and finds the optimal focus, exposure, image stabilization and white balance for it.
Some models also have face detection, motion detection and post shot blink detection, which alerts a shutterbug after a picture is captured that someone in the image blinked. One knock against typical blink detection is that it prevents a shot from being taken if it detects hooded orbs. That can leave many a clickster wondering if there's something broken in their new camera or just plain irritated that nothing happens when they press the shutter button.
Another neat treat in some of these new offerings is something that Canon's calling Active Display. It lets a photog page through photos in a camera with a simple wrist shake.
The priciest shooter of the new bunch is the 10-megapixel SX1 IS (photo above). It has a 20x optical zoom (28-560mm equivalent) and optical image stabilization. It can shoot 1080p HD video and has an HDMI interface. What's more, it shoots RAW and JPEG stills. The unit, which has a 2.8-inch LCD, is headed for retail shelves in April at $599.99.
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Following on the heels of its
introduction of two new point-and-shoot cameras earlier this
month, Fujifilm
raised the curtain last week on five more models. The company debuted a new waterproof bytecam, the FinePix Z33WP, which can be used at a depth of up to 10 feet. The 10-megapixel DSC has a 2.7-inch 230,000-dot display, a 3x optical zoom and will be offered in three colors—green, pink and black. When in Auto Scene Recogniton (ASR) mode, the DSC will analyze a scene and automatically optimize the unit's exposure, focus, white balance and light sensitivity settings for the shot. As is common in many cameras in this category, the Z33WP has a face detection feature. What's not so common is that its face detection can be tied to the unit's self-timer so it won't fire until the DSC detects a selectable number of faces in the picture. That's valuable insurance against a photographer being out of position when the timer fires the shutter. Other features include in-camera special effects, post shot red-eye reduction, VGA video at 30 frames per second and a lithium ion rechargeable battery. The Z33WP is scheduled to reach retailers in March at $199.95. |
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Another new addition to this model line is the FinePix Z30. The 10MP digital camera has a 2.7-inch LCD and 3x optical zoom. It, too, has ASR, face detection and red-eye removal. In an interesting video twist, it will automtically incorporate a series of video clips into a single 60 second movie thereby skirting the task of editing the clips with video editing software. It also has dual shutter buttons--one for stills and one for video--and Fuji's Natural/Flash mode , which will capture two versions of a scene sequentially—one with the unit's flash, one without. The Z30 runs on Lithium Ion power and is expected to be available to consumers next month at $179.95. |
| Fuji
has also added to its monster zoom lineup with the FinePix S1500. The
10MP snapper has a 12x zoom (33-396mm equivalent) and 2.7-inch
230,000-dot display. It has dual image stabilization—sensor
shifting and ISO shutter speed adjustment—as well as ASR,
face
detection and post-shot red-eye removal. A full manual mode allows a
shutterbug to totally customize the key settings for a shot. Sequential
shooting modes include 15 2MP frames at 7.5fps and six 5MP frames at
3.3fps.VGA video at 30fps is also supported. The unit runs on four AA
batteries. Scheduled availability for the S1500
is next month at $249.95. |
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Two new J models were also introduced by
Fuji. The FinePix J20fd is a 10MP pocketcam with 3x optical zoom
(35.5-106.5mm equivalent) and 2.7-inch LCD. The slimster, which
is offered in black and silver, is a little over 2/3 of an inch thick,
or 17.4.mm. Features include ASR, face detection, digital IS and 640 x
420 video capture. Power is supplied by a lithium ion
battery. The J20fd
is scheduled to reach retail shelves this month at $129.95. |
| The other J model
unwrapped by Fuji is the 10MP FinePix J250, which has a bigger optical
zoom—5x (28-140mm equivalent)—and LCD
display—three inches—than the J20fd. Offered only
in black, the snapper supports ASR, face detection and image
stabilization through ISO manipulation of shutter speeds. It, too,
operates on a lithium ion battery, but is scheduled for March release
at $199.95. |
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Fujifilm's point-and-shoot digtial camera announcement this week adds to the company's reputation as a camera maker that refuses to be enslaved to the megapixel myth. The new pashoo, the FinePix F200EX, has a sensor that Fuji is calling the Super CCD EXR. It has three modes aimed at optimizing the quality of a photo by manipulating how the sensor's pixels are used to capture the shot.
There's a Fine Capture mode, which uses the sensor's entire 12 million pixels to snag images when lighting conditions are full and even.
There's a Pixel Fusion mode that melds adjacent pixels together to improve light gathering capabilities in low light scenarios.
And there's a Dual Capture mode that takes two 6MP pictures of a scene at different exposures then combines the pics to improve the dynamic range of the shot.
Any of the sensor's modes can be chosen manually or choice can be turned over to the camera through an auto EXR mode.
“There is strong demand in the digital camera market to increase the number of pixels on a sensor, which, all too often, is used as a convenient yardstick for image quality,” Fujifilm's Consumer Digital Cameras Marketing Manager David Troy said in a statement.
“Consumers," he continued, "have realized there’s more to a good picture than just the number of megapixels, and with our Super CCD EXR sensor we prove that true image quality is about a combination of many factors like tone, hue, color fidelity, dynamic range, sharpness, and resolution...."
Not to be outdone by Panasonic, Nikon rolled out eight new Coolpix digital camera models this week, including two with monster zooms.
All the new DSCs have Nikkor lenses and are built around Nikon's Expeed processor. They also have a Smart Portrait feature that includes blink and smile detection and face detection for up to 12 mugs in a shot. In addition, they have 4-Way VR Image Stabilization that uses a quartet of technologies--digital image stabilization, motion detection, shutter speed boosting and "best shot"--to bash blur from photos.
The 12 megapixel Coolpix P90 has a 24x (28-624mm equivalent) optical zoom and three-inch tilting LCD, as well as an electronic viewfinder. It can shoot up to 45 2MP images at 15 frames per second and can capture 3MP pictures at ISO 3200 or 6400. The P90 will be available in March at $399.95.
Less than two weeks after it announced a trio of new economy pocket shooters, Panasonic pulled the wraps off a sextet of high-powered ultracompacts. The new sixsome, scheduled to arrive at retailers in April, range in price from $250-$400 and contain an array of cutting-edge features.
The 12.1 megapixel Lumix DMC-FX580 has a three-inch touch-screen LCD and a beefed up version of Panasonic's Intelligent Auto (iA) mode. That mode activates optical image stabilization, face detection, autofocus tracking, intelligent exposure and intelligent scene recognition with the touch of a single button.
New to the iA mix is Face Recognition. When it's activated, the camera will remember faces and optimize their capture whenever they appear in future shots. The technology can also be used to sort photos based on mugs stored in the face recognition database.
The snapper also features a 5x optical wide (25mm equivalent) zoom with 1280 x 720 HD video capture at 30 frames per second, maximum light sensitivity of ISO 6400 and a Panorama mode for both horizontal and vertical stretchies. The FX580 is expected to sell for $399.95.
Digital stills and digital video have never peacefully coexisted. Still camera makers have tried to elbow their way into camcorder makers' turf by incorporating video into their products. Meanwhile, camcorder producers have made stills part of their products' repertoire, too. These maneuvers have presented consumers with a dilemma. Should I get a still camera that takes mediocre video, they often must ask themselves, or a camcorder that takes mediocre stills? For many shooters, the answer to that question is to get one of each. But now Sanyo, with a quintet of new additions to its Xacti line, is bragging that it has a one device solution to the still/video dilemma.
The first of the new hybrid cameras, the Xacti DMX-2000 (photo above) scheduled to reach retailers in February. It can capture eight megapixel stills and shoot high resolution, 1920 x 1080 video at 60 frames per second and 24 megabits per second. It stores its video, as do all the new Xacti units revealed by Sanyo, in AVC/H.264 format. That format makes it easy to share the video with devices like computers and media players.
Despite gloom and doom predictions about the global economy this year, Samsung believes it can grow its share of the world digital camera market. According to a report this week in The Nation, a business daily based in Thailand, Samsung Vice President Soo Bong Kim told the publication that the South Korean company wanted to make inroads this year against rivals Canon and Sony by boosting its worldwide market share in 2009 to 10 percent from nine percent. Canon's market share is 20 percent; Sony's, 17 percent.
While acknowledging digital camera sales missed their mark last year--predictions for the worldwide market were 145 million units; actual units shipped were 140 million--the Samsung executive told the daily that the company was optimistic about sales in the second half of this year. Sales in the the developed world are flat and will continue to be so, he conceded, but demand in the developing world continues to grow.
Kim's comments come just two weeks after Samsung raised the curtaiin on four new pocket cams at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Here are the cameras debuted at the show.
Panasonic waited for the dust to settle from CES last week to announce today three new point-and-shoot snappers slated to reach retail shelves this spring.
The Lumix DMC-FS7 is a 10.1 megapixel compact with relatively fast F/2.8 Leica DC Vario-Elmar 4x optical zoom. It has an Intelligent Auto Mode (iAM) that can be activated via a dedicated button. In iAm the camera will automatically activate a battery of smart features--optical image stabilization, intelligent ISO, intelligent scene selection and face detection. It also has an intelligent 2.7-inch LCD, which adjusts its brightness automatically based on available light, and can capture WVGA video at 848 x 480 pixels for viewing on wide TVs or monitors. The DMC-FS7 is expected to be available in March in silver, black, blue, pink and green and sell for $159.95.
Connecting digital cameras to a wireless network for uploading photos to a computer isn't new, but Sony has taken the concept a step further with its Cyber-shot DSC-G3 point-and-shoot camera introduced this week. It has built a Web browser into the snapper so it can plug into public hotspots and upload photos and video to popular sharing sites. The 10 megapixel DSC includes complementary access to wireless hotspots operated by AT&T until January 31, 2012.
The G3 has a 4x optical zoom lens and an enormous 3.5-inch touch-screen LCD with a staggering resolution of 921,600 dots. The shooter, which has four gigabytes of internal memory, also boasts an array of Sony imaging technologies, such as intelligent scene recognition; face, blink and smile recognition; and dynamic range optimization.
The G3 sells for $500 and is available from Sony's online store now.
Also announced by Sony this week was the Cyber-shot DSC-W220. The 12 megapixel pocketcam has a 2.7-inch LCD and 4x optical zoom lens. It has some of the tech found in the G3--intelligent scene recognition, dynamic range optimization and face and smile recognition--as well as 15 megabytes of internal memory and HD video output with an optional HDMI cable.
The W220 sells for $190 and is also available from Sony's online store.
