November 01, 2006, 7:05 AM PST
Adobe adds raw support for more cameras
Posted by: Will Greenwald

It's a great day for Adobe-using photographers. The imaging software company has just released a large update to Adobe Camera RAW, the system that handles raw image processing for programs like Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Photoshop Elements 5. Raw files are the unprocessed data recorded by digital cameras' sensors. Because they're uncompressed, they're free of any JPEG compression artifacts and produce the clearest, most accurate pictures. However, every camera sensor records images slightly differently, so support for each camera must be coded separately into raw-processing programs. Adobe's update includes support for 13 new cameras, including the Canon EOS Rebel XTi and the Nikon D80, two of the most popular new cameras on the market today.

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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.

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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.

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October 11, 2006, 1:42 PM PDT
Smilart Fan Studio: edit your images online
Posted by: Will Greenwald

Note: Despite the picture and byline, the opinions expressed below are that of Senior Editor Lori Grunin.

Smilart Fan Studio isn't the first fix-your-photos-online service, and I'm sure it won't be the last. And really, it should have a big old BETA logo splashed across it, because it surely isn't fully baked--it's free, though, so I suppose polished code is optional. I couldn't get it to run in Firefox; it ran inconsistently in IE 6; and after downloading and installing IE 7 RC1, it still wouldn't operate properly. It turns out that the English version has no Javascript code in it! Ooops. The Russian version worked, however, as well as many automatic algorithms work--that is to say, OK, but not great.

Frankly, I tend to find stand-alone sites like this kind of pointless. It makes sense as part of photo-sharing/printing/whatever, but having to upload a photo, retouch it, download it to your hard disk, then reupload it to your sharing site strikes me as hopelessly slow, tedious, and inefficient. If you have more than a couple of images per month to retouch, you're better off downloading free software and working locally.

The site strikes me more as a proof-of-concept in search of a buyer, and from that perspective, it has some merit. The interface is one of the nicest I've seen for this type of application. A photo-sharing company or a photo-printing service could slap some color management under the hood, polish the interface (and perhaps add batch operations), and integrate it into the service for some nice value added. Consumers should just pop over to download.com and download The GIMP.

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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.

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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

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September 26, 2006, 4:49 PM PDT
HP's dye-ink for your big pictures
Posted by: Lori Grunin

OK--a bad pun, poorly executed. I admit it. Nonetheless, at Photokina today, HP announced a new Photosmart printer to inhabit that amorphous market segment geared to amateur photographers who want to print their photos as large as 13x19. Or at least to know that they can.

The Photosmart Pro B8350 uses HP's dye-based Vivera inks--the same cartridges as the consumer Photosmart 8450--for six-color or monochrome prints. What's "pro" about it is the medium-format size and straight-through paper path for printing on heavier paper stock.

I expect the print quality to be the same as the 8450's, which is very good for a consumer model, and like the 8450, the B8350 has a built-in Ethernet connection, which is one of the reasons I recommend the B8450 to anyone who wants to use it on a home network.

HP plans to ship the Photosmart Pro B8350 printer this month, for $349.

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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.

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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.

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September 26, 2006, 7:56 AM PDT
Foveon and Sigma, back for more
Posted by: Lori Grunin

Just when I'd almost forgotten about them, Foveon and Sigma are back for a third try at the digital camera market. Foveon's X3 sensor--a still-innovative design that stacks RGB filters on each pixel rather than scattering them across the pixels in a Bayer pattern--is now up to 14 megapixels, and is integrated into the new Sigma SD14. Previous Sigma dSLRs, the SD10 and SD9, have served well as proofs-of-concept for the low-noise, high-fidelity capabilities of the chip, but they were pretty much disappointments as cameras. Despite the ingenuously overstated claims for the SD14--five-point autofocus, 3fps continuous shooting for 6 frames at max resolution, a physical dust protector over the sensor, mirror lock-up capability, and so on--this model will have to have really amazing photo quality to make a dent in the market. I have to say, though, Sigma has a beautiful Flash site for the SD14.

Furthermore, Sigma's jumping in with both feet this time. Despite the dubious fate of the Foveon-based Polaroid X530 consumer camera, Sigma will be releasing a compact camera with the 14-megapixel X3, dubbed the DP1. There's little word on either pricing or availability for either camera, though.

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