Cameras: February 2009 Archives

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.

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.