01/24/2001: Olympus C-2040 Zoom First Look Posted

I have just posted my Olympus C-2040 Zoom first look report. Olympus has cranked out yet another excellent camera. This is an updated C-2020 zoom with the new large-aperture F1.8 lens that improves low-light pictures and exends indoor flash range. In addition to the new lens the C-2040 Zoom also gets an internal upgrade with the latest exposure and focusing systems and 8MB of buffer RAM. And there's some completely new features like Multi-spot metering, spot AF and custom one-touch white balancing. Nice to see that everyone is not abandoning the two megapixel cameras but actually improving them....[read more]

01/21/2001: Olympus P-200 Printer Review Posted

Want to turn you digital camera into an instant photo machine no matter where you are?  All you need is the new Olympus P-200 portable, 320dpi dye sub printer. Thanks to a hefty NiMH battery pack this printer can go anywhere and make photo-quality prints from any SmartMedia or CompactFlash Type I or II card without a computer....[read more]

01/17/2001: inCamera Professional Software Offers Digital Camera Profiling And Color Enhancement

Pictographics International Corp., Burnsville, Minn., USA, released inCamera Professional, a new digital camera ICC profiling and color enhancement software for professional photographers. The new product enables professional digital photographers to profile and optimize the color accuracy of digital cameras in a controlled lighting environment using a GretagMacbeth ColorChecker Chart or the new ColorChecker DC Chart. It also includes Pictographics iCorrect Adobe Photoshop® Plug-in for fast color-correcting and profiling of digital images shot outside controlled lighting situations or of unknown origin without repetitive trial-and-error methods. The new inCamera Professional accepts 8-bit or 16-bit color images, and it automatically applies an adaptive noise removal filter before applying a profile to an image. A Mac-based version of inCamera Professional is currently available for at www.picto.com. A Windows version is scheduled for future release....[read more]

01/15/2001: Verbatim Expands Removable Storage Offerings with New Families of Flash Memory Products

CHARLOTTE, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 15, 2001-- Verbatim Corporation established its presence in the rapidly expanding Flash Memory Card market today with the unveiling of two new product lines. The new miniature storage solutions include Verbatim CompactFlash cards with capacities ranging from 16MB to 128MB and SmartMedia cards with capacities of 16MB to 64MB. Featuring the inherent reliability, optimized performance and competitive pricing that resellers and end users have come to expect from Verbatim brand products, the new flash memory devices will be used to expand the storage capacity of digital appliances such as cameras, audio players, camcorders, PDAs and "smart" cellular phones. According to a recent IDC report, the Flash Memory Card market will grow from 12 million units in 1999 to 66 million in 2003 and CompactFlash and SmartMedia will continue to dominate the digital camera market. The digital camera market in North America in 2000 is expected to have...[read more]

01/14/2001: New and Improved MacBibble Released

Of interest to those with a Nikon D1 and a Macintosh computer -- The latest update of MacBibble has just been posted and includes the following new features and fixes: The big new feature for this version is tethered shooting over firewire. Just like the PC version, you can now shoot directly to your Mac from your D1 and see the results instantly. Make sure your camera is on and in PC mode before running MacBibble. File Operations have now been added to the browser menu. Using this, you can copy/move/delete/batch selected files. Since this is my first attempt at file management on the Mac, I encourage you to not use these functions on Important files that you don't have backed up. I have tested them quite extensively here at the lab, but we all know about the law of Murphy. Finally, I took a lot of time this go...[read more]

01/14/2001: Nikon Extends 950 and 800 Rebate Again

Nikon has once again quietly extended the Coolpix 950 and Coolpix 800 rebates through 3/31/01. This offer is good only for buyers in the 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands....[read more]

01/12/2001: New Reviews at Imaging-Resource

Dave Etchells emailed to say that he had just posted two new reviews, one for the Toshiba PDR-M60. To quote Dave, "Toshiba seems to be steadily improving their color management, the M60 actually does pretty well. Not a barn-burner on any characteristic (except maybe shot to shot time for an inexpensive camera), but a solid middle of the road offering." They also posted a review of the Olympus P-400 dye sub, the IR's first full-length review of a printer. "Image quality was quite good, but we found some oddities in the print-driver scaling of images up or down in size to match engine resolution. If you resize in Photoshop to exactly 314 dpi though, the images are stunning, as they are if you print directly from a memory card."...[read more]

01/11/2001: Fire Picture Has Caused Firestorm of Controversy

I have never received as much email about any Photo of the Day picture as I have about the one we posted on Dec 5, 2000.   It's a fantastic picture to say the least. Seems there were more rumours than facts about this photo circulating the Internet.  Happily someone got to the bottom of this story and the photo is real, it was not faked. It was taken with a Kodak DC280, click the thumbnail to see the BIG picture. You can read Rob Chaney's article posted online at MontanaFires.com for all the info. Thanks to reader Walker Blanchard for sending me the URL....[read more]

01/11/2001: Taiwan To Step Up Digital Camera Production

Taiwan's production of digital cameras is being tipped to grow by 60.2 percent this year, according to the Institute for Information Industry (III), said a Newsbytes report. The III says growth will continue in 2002, by which year the nation will have a hold on 57.2 percent of the global market, according to a report by Taiwan's Central News Agency. During the Christmas period, online shopping destinations like Yahoo Shopping consistently saw digital cameras in the top five types of products searched for, the report said. Japanese firms like Sony Corp. and Casio Corp. dominated the market in 1999. But in the report, the III said that Taiwanese companies increased output from 1.62 million units in 1999 to 5.63 million during 2000 with a total value of million. The III said that Taiwan is now home to 21 digital camera makers....[read more]

01/04/2001: Think You're Beautiful? Let the WWW Audience Be The Judge

ShutterPort.com, Boca Raton, Fla., USA, found a creative use for photos - the Picture Judge "Red Hot or Not?" online rating system. Users can submit photos, anonymously and free of charge to ShutterPort.com, where the Internet audience will judge just how handsome or beautiful the person is, whether the person should lose weight, what the new haircut really looks like. Participants will score the photo and offer commentary on just how "hot" the person is. Picture Judge "Red Hot or Not" is run with proprietary software developed by Santyware Inc., a co-venture between ShutterPort.com and Santy.Net, and is being offered as an ASP to other websites. Visit www.PictureJudge.com....[read more]