Cameras: December 2008 Archives
When Apple wanted to set its products outside the pack, it made them white. When the Beatles wanted to tell the world they had produced an exceptional album, they made its jacket white. When George Lucas wanted to give his Imperial Stormtroopers some futuristic panache, he made their body armor white.
White can be a very evocative color, especially when it comes to things digital. And that seems to be something the marketers at Pentax are counting on when the company releases a special edition version of its K2000 entry-level digital SLR in February.
The special edition package promises to be an attractive one. Not only does it include the body of a K2000 in gleaming white, but two Pentax lenses--one an F/3.5-5.6 18-55mm zoom, the other an F/4-5.6 50-200mm zoom--both en blanc.
Aside from its color, the special edition K2000's features mirror its black brother's.
It's a 10.2 megapixel DSLR with a 2.7-inch LCD with a resolution of 230,000 dots. It has a shake reduction system and dust removal technology. In addition, it includes a number of auto picture modes--portrait, landscape, macro, action and night portrait--to enable novice shutterbugs to snap good pictures without fussing with a lot of camera settings.
No pricing as been revealed yet for the package, but industry watchers predict the package will sell for around $800.
It's not often that a company renames a product because it makes sense, but that's what Olympus has done with its Stylus SW line. Digital cameras that carry that label are designed to take a licking and keep on clicking. The cameras are shockproof, waterproof, freezeproof and crushproof. In other words, they're tough--although you wouldn't know it to look at their nameplate. So Olympus announced today that when it introduces the new models of these durable snappers next month at CES, they'll have a new name: Stylus Tough.
"Once our innovations moved beyond purely shockproof and waterproof--some Olympus cameras offer freezeproof and crushproof--the SW name became limiting," Olympus Imaging America Brand Marketing Executive Director Mark Huggins said in a statement. "The Stylus Tough brand will be more descriptive and visual, and will provide us with greater flexibility as we grow this and other camera lines."
Fans of accidental art will love the Pet's Eye View Digital Camera. This low res snapper attaches to a pet's collar and grabs images intermittently. Selling for $49.99, the unit will capture up to 40 640 x 480 pictures at intervals of one, five or 15 minutes. The camera need not be limited to pets, however. Why not clip it on while attending a party or wedding reception? You could even place it in a fixed location and use it as a camera trap. A little imagination will go a long way with this little gadget. As William Gibson said in Burning Chrome, "The street finds its own uses for things."
The successor to Nikon's flagship commercial digital SLR, the D3, was announced yesterday by the company. The new FX-format D3X has more than twice the megapixels packed onto its CMOS processor than its predecessor, 24.5MP compared to 12.1MP, and carries an estimated selling price of $7999.95.
Three file formats are supported by the D3X--TIFF, JPEG and NEF (RAW). Dual UDMA-compatible CompactFlash slots are available for storage.
Full resolution sequential shooting speed for the unit is five frames per second. That can be boosted 7fps for shots at 10.5MP.
Light sensitivity for the camera ranges from ISO 100-1600, but lower, ISO 50, and higher, ISO 6400, settings are available.
According to Nikon, the unit starts quickly at 0.12 second and shutter lag is negligible at 0.04 second.
The DSC has a superfine three-inch LCD with a resolution of 920,000 dots and 100 percent coverage. Two Live Views are offered for framing and shooting pictures directly through the display and its focusing system, which has 51 focus points, allows an image on the LCD to be enlarged as much as 27x.
Nikon watchers will recognize some of the other technologies in the digcam. Scene Recognition coupled with 3D Color Matrix Metering II takes information about a target scene and compares it to a built-in database of some 30,000 images to obtain the appropriate settings for a shot. Active D-Lighting improves the dynamic range in images.
“[T]he new 24.5-megapixel FX-format D3X DSLR provides the extreme resolution and high dynamic range capabilities needed to meet the extraordinary needs of photographic disciplines such as high fashion, commercial advertising and fine art," Nikon General Manager for Marketing SLR Systems Products Edward Fasano said in a statement. "The D3X delivers this remarkable capability while fitting seamlessly within the Nikon system, taking full advantage of Nikon’s world-renowned collection of Nikkor lenses and Speedlights.”
The DX3 is expected to reach Nikon authorized professional dealers this month.
