October 24, 2006, 12:54 PM PDT
Microtek to replace i900 flatbed scanner
Posted by: Philip Ryan

When we reviewed the Microtek ScanMaker i900 flatbed scanner two years ago, we named it the best flatbed for creative professionals on a budget and gave it an Editor's Choice award.

Microtek now has announced that it will replace the i900 early next year with the new ArtixScan M1. This new scanner will offer: 4800x9600dpi resolution, 16-bit per channel color, Digital ICE dust and scratch removal technology for film and reflective scans, autofocus to switch between reflective and film scanning, USB 2.0 and FireWire interfaces, the same quality tensioned film holders (as Microtek's i800), as well as the company's patented Emulsion Direct Imaging Technology (E.D.I.T.). This patented technology provides a separate film scanning path, below the flatbed glass, to avoid Newton rings and other problems that can occur when scanning film through glass.

The ArtixScan M1 can work with 35mm slides or film, 4x5-inch film, medium-format 120 film, and any reflective media, such as photographs, magazines, or other documents measuring up to 8.4x14 inches. LaserSoft Imaging's SilverFast scanning software will ship with the scanner. Microtek hopes to ship the ArtixScan M1, which is expected to retail for $699, to stores this February. The new scanner will also be available through the company's online store.

Permalink | 1 comment

• Read also: Digital imaging, Digital photography, Scanners
• Email to a friend | Print this post

October 12, 2006, 4:28 PM PDT
Kodak adds cards, collages, calendars to kiosks
Posted by: Philip Ryan

Even though most people who print photos at an in-store kiosk don't pay any attention to the company that makes it, Kodak is pretty proud of theirs, which can be found in Wal-Mart, CVS, Target, Ritz Camera, and Rite-Aid stores, to name a few. In fact, it likes them so much that it's recently upgraded the software that runs the kiosks to add new greeting cards, collages, and monthly calendars to the types of prints that customers can print from them. Apparently, there have been a lot of requests for these types of things from the clientele of these touch-screen-operated units. Those of you who have used Kodak kiosks in the past might remember their calendars, though you could get only yearly calendars; the monthly calendars are new.

All the new offerings let you select images from almost any memory card, as well as CDs or DVDs, and allow you to edit the photo to remove red-eye or fix things such as brightness or saturation; preview your images in the cards, collages, or calendars; and you can even zoom in or out or change the picture's border separating the photo from the rest of the theme. The kiosks print onto the same type of paper used in Kodak's printer docks, which means that the kiosks print using dye-sublimation technology and yield tough water-resistant images. In the case of the calendars, you'll likely want to use a sharpie or other permanent marker to write on them, though when I tried a ballpoint pen on a sample I saw at the Digital Life trade show in New York today, it wrote fine and smudged only slightly when I slid my thumb over it.

According to Kodak, the greeting cards will start out with themes based around the year-end holidays, though other holidays and themes will roll out during the coming year. Of course, each retailer can choose what they want to offer to their customers, so the selection of themes and print sizes available in each store may vary. Retailers can choose from cards in sizes of 5x7 or 6x8 inches, collages in 5x7, 6x8, or 8x10 inches, and monthly calendars in 6x8 or 8x10 inches.

Wal-Mart stores are the first to get the new software, and many of their locations have already been upgraded. Kodak expects to complete the new software rollout over the next two months.

Permalink | Post a comment

• Read also: Digital photography, Digital imaging, Camera accessories, Printers
• Email to a friend | Print this post

October 10, 2006, 10:49 AM PDT
Canon Elph turns 10
Posted by: Philip Ryan

It's always fun to watch your children grow up--even if your initial expectations for what they might become changes along the way. Canon took just such a trip down memory lane today in celebration of the 10th anniversary of its Elph brand of tiny, stylish cameras. What began as a simple concept (which designer Yasushi Shiotani refers to as a box and a circle) for a film camera that used Advanced Photo System (APS) film, later morphed into the pocket-size digital cameras we see in stores today.

In commemoration of the event, Canon has created a special PowerShot SD900 Digital Elph Coach Edition gift set which will include the camera, along with a leather and fabric custom camera case and neck strap, packaged in a gift box complete with red ribbon, which will start selling in October for about $550.

In collaboration with NYC Peach, Canon is offering bejeweled SD900 cameras as part of the prize packages for a sweepstakes in which 10 winners will win a trip to New York City to see Z100's Jingle Ball 2006 at Madison Square Garden on December 15, 2006. Information about the contest will be available at powershot.com later this month.

Five more of the bejeweled cameras, will also be auctioned on January 9, in Las Vegas, to benefit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), with which Canon has worked in the past as part of its Canon4Kids campaign. The program urges parents to have up-to-date photos of their children to aid police, should they ever need to search for their child.

For those of you trying to keep track, there have been more than 50 different Canon Elphs over the course of the past decade, during which over 33 million of the small snappers have been sold. Since the Elph went digital in May 2000 with the PowerShot S100, 22 million digital Elphs have been sold, and with Canon's plan to raise its research and development spending from its current 8 percent of the company's spending to 10 percent, by 2010, there seems to be no end in sight for the sprightly sales figures of the Canon Elph.

Permalink | Post a comment

• Read also: Cameras, Digital cameras, Digital imaging, Digital photography, Camera accessories
• Email to a friend | Print this post

October 04, 2006, 8:53 AM PDT
Eye-Fi's SD Wi-Fi to go (beta)
Posted by: Philip Ryan

When Wi-Fi for cameras first emerged, it didn't work well, sometimes entailing awkwardly long SD adapters, and wasn't all that we'd hoped it would be. Now, as camera makers are refining their Wi-Fi offerings and putting it into more cameras, such as Nikon's new Coolpix S7c, a company called Eye-Fi has made a 1GB SD card called Eye-Film with built-in 802.11g connectivity. It isn't available yet, the company doesn't explain exactly how it's really going to work, and there's no hint of pricing, but the blogging world is still abuzz. About the only thing the company has said is that it has no plans to offer the cards for PDAs or any devices other than cameras, though I'd imagine that would come eventually if they are successful in cameras. Plus an image in the solution portion of the company's site certainly hints that it has bigger plans.

Of course, since most cameras with built-in Wi-Fi include a fair amount of control through their menus, it's hard to imagine just how well a card like this will work, especially with existing cameras. And even if it does work well, without the level of control offered by something like the Nikon S7c, which is made to work with T-Mobile hot spots so that you can e-mail photos straight from the camera, it's hard to see how a simple card like this will be able to compete. The company says that the card doesn't require any upgrade to your camera and that "if your camera has been qualified by Eye-Fi, the card will just work." This leads me to think that the company is trying to work with camera makers to build support for Eye-Fi into future products, though the company hasn't said that explicitly. If so, there's a chance that this horse won't even get out of the starting gate, since a lot of camera makers seem content to do Wi-Fi on their own.

According to a post on Engadget, a beta test is expected to start this month, and details and sign-up procedures should be available within days. The Engadget post says that the SD card will come with a CompactFlash adapter, but a FAQ on the Eye-Fi site just says that a CompactFlash version of the product will follow after the SD version. If you want to be among the first to know about the beta test, the company has a mailing list you can join. As usual, as we find out any more deets, we will share them with you.

Permalink | Post a comment

• Read also: Camera accessories, cameras, digital cameras, digital photography, flash cards
• Email to a friend | Print this post

October 02, 2006, 8:14 AM PDT
The biggest lens you'll never see
Posted by: Will Greenwald

The Zeiss Apo Sonnar T* was designed by Carl Zeiss to be the world's largest nonmilitary camera lens. The 1,700mm lens weighs more than 550 pounds, is larger than a refrigerator, and gives a medium-format camera a telephoto factor of almost 29X. Don't expect to actually see it in the wild anytime soon, though; the Apo Sonnar T* is a special project from Carl Zeiss and costs as much as a small house.

Source: DP Review via Gizmodo

Permalink | 12 comments

• Read also: digital photography, digital cameras
• Email to a friend | Print this post

September 27, 2006, 12:06 PM PDT
Inside the Leica M8
Posted by: Will Greenwald

Camcorderinfo.com has a video tour of Leica's new, obscenely expensive, digital-range-finder camera, the M8. If you ever wondered what could make a digital camera cost $5,000, or even just want to know what exactly a range finder is, this video might be very helpful to you.

Source: Camcorderinfo.com via Gizmodo

Permalink | Post a comment

• Read also: cameras, digital cameras, digital imaging, digital photography
• Email to a friend | Print this post

September 26, 2006, 10:01 AM PDT
Lock in the blur with Lensbaby 3G
Posted by: Philip Ryan

If you've never heard of a Lensbaby, then the company's latest product, the Lensbaby 3G, might just seem strange. The original Lensbaby was just a simple two-element (one front, one back) lens with a plastic bellows between the two elements, so you could move the front element to throw part of an image out of focus, while another part remained focused. That first version, and the one that followed it, also relied on the bellows action for focus, and since you couldn't lock the front element in place, shooting sharp images became something of a game. Those first two versions were a major hit among photographers, even pros, since the images have a kitschy quality that's reminiscent of artsy Holga photos.

The newest Lensbaby has added a locking mechanism, so you can easily replicate a specific effect, as well as a focusing ring, so you can fine-tune your focus after you've tilted the front element to your liking. Plus, since three screws lock the tilt, you can also turn them after you've locked it to fine-tune the tilt. Like the 2G Lensbaby, the 3G version comes with interchangeable aperture discs that can be placed in front of the front element to manually change the Lensbaby's aperture. The 3G comes with six aperture discs to allow seven possible apertures ranging from f/2 to f/22. Lensbabies also offer wide-angle (0.6X) and telephoto (1.6X) adapter lenses, as well as a wide-angle/macro accessory lens for close-up shooting. The Lensbaby 3G is available in Canon EF, Nikon F, Sony Alpha/Minolta Maxxum, Pentax K, Four Thirds (Olympus and Panasonic), and Leica R mounts for $270. You can order the Lensbaby 3G now directly from Lensbabies or look for it to hit stores in October.

Permalink | Post a comment

• Read also: Camera accessories, digital cameras, digital imaging, digital photography
• Email to a friend | Print this post

September 26, 2006, 9:56 AM PDT
SanDisk CompactFlash hits 16GB
Posted by: Philip Ryan

Continuing the march toward ever-larger-capacity memory cards, SanDisk announced three new cards at the Photokina trade show in Germany. Two of the new cards, 12GB and 16GB CompactFlash cards, carry the company's Extreme III moniker, while the third, a 4GB SDHC card bears the Ultra II name. SanDisk says Extreme III cards can withstand temperatures from minus 13 degrees to plus 185 degrees Fahrenheit and rates them with sustained minimum read and write speeds of 20MB per second. SanDisk rates the new 4GB SDHC card at a write-speed of 9MB per second and a read speed of 10MB per second and will sell the card as a bundle with a MicroMate SDHC card reader, since SDHC cards require special SDHC-compatible readers and cameras. That means you should check to make sure your camera is SDHC-compliant before purchasing an SDHC card.

SanDisk has a nifty PDF on its site that explains what SDHC is and also has a page to help you find SDHC-compatible SanDisk products, but you'll have to check your camera's specs to see if it is compatible with the new standard. It would be really nice if the SD Card Association, which manages the various SD card standards, would publish a complete list of SDHC-compatible devices, but they don't yet.

Look for SanDisk's new CompactFlash cards to hit stores in December, while the SDHC card should be available in October. SanDisks expects the 4GB SDHC with MicroMate USB 2.0 reader bundle to sell for about $220, while the 12GB and 16GB versions should carry price tags of $780 and $1,050, respectively.

Permalink | Post a comment

• Read also: Camera accessories, Digital cameras, Digital imaging, Digital photography, Digital video, Flash cards
• Email to a friend | Print this post

September 25, 2006, 3:57 PM PDT
Epson's new photo viewers
Posted by: Philip Ryan

Epson announced two new photo viewers today, the P-3000 and the P-5000, as follow-ups to the company's current P-2000 and P-4000. In an attempt to increase the color gamut of the viewers' 4-inch, 640x480-pixel LCD screens, Epson has added a fourth color to the usual RGB LCD screen color-filter system. The new screen, which Epson calls Photo Fine Ultra, includes two colors of green, emerald-green and yellow-green, which is enough to let the display create more than 16.7 million colors, says Epson. The company also asserts that its Photo Fine Ultra display can reproduce 88 percent of the Adobe RGB color gamut and includes support for that color space, along with sRGB in the viewers. Also included is support for RAW and JPEG images; MPEG-4, Motion JPEG, and DivX video files; as well as MP3 and AAC audio files. A pair of memory card slots lets you back up images from CompactFlash or SD cards, and with an adapter, most other card types. Plus, according to Epson, a new processor speeds up image downloads by up to 250 percent.

The only difference between the two models is the size of their hard drives. The P-3000 includes a 40GB drive, while the P-5000 doubles that to 80GB. Previous Epson photo viewers in this family have been much better suited to viewing images or video than to listening to music. However, Epson has updated the interface in hopes of creating a more universal entertainment experience and now includes the company's Link2 software to automate file conversion and playlist creation and management. As with past P-series viewers, all of this comes at a steep price. The P-3000 and the P-5000 have already begun shipping to stores, where they will be available at prices of $499 and $699, respectively.

Permalink | Post a comment

• Read also: Camera accessories, Digital imaging, Digital photography, Digital video, MP3
• Email to a friend | Print this post

September 25, 2006, 8:12 AM PDT
Fujifilm announces the FinePix F31fd
Posted by: Philip Ryan

Sometimes when a company finds a technology it likes a whole lot, it wastes little time adding it to a variety of cameras across its line. Such is the case with Fujifilm and face detection. While the company introduced the technology to its line with the FinePix S6000fd just a few months ago, it has now built it into the new FinePix F31fd. In essence, the F31fd is the Fuji FinePix F30 with face detection added, to produce a somewhat pocketable camera with usable sensitivity up to ISO 3200, if it lives up to the performance we saw in the F30. Like the F30, the F31fd includes a 3X optical zoom lens, a 2.5-inch LCD, Fuji's i-Flash system (which the company says provides a higher level of automatic flash control than similar cameras from other manufacturers), and a manufacturer-rated battery life of up to 580 shots per charge. On top of all this, advanced shooters will be pleased to see this camera's manual exposure controls.

Fujifilm expects the FinePix F31fd to hit stores in December for an estimated street price of $399.

Permalink | 1 comment

• Read also: Cameras, digital cameras, digital imaging, digital photography
• Email to a friend | Print this post