Moreover, have you seen the many 8 mpx cameras coming to the market: Nikon, Minolta, Canon, Olympus and who will be next?
One thing I cannot understand: Konica-Minolta anounces a 8 mpx camera, but their DSLR has "only" 6 mpx.
What will happen in September at the worlds largest trade fair Photokina in Germany? Money is burning in my pockets, but I will try to stand straight and wait for September! Please help me in my ultimate struggle for wisdom. I’m still a boy!!! And the flesh is so weak!
😉
Leen
Seems like the experience with putting 8 megapixels on an APS-sized chip has been spotty (pun intended)…several articles out there suggesting that the pixel density is too high for good image quality. Or so the pundits say… It’s like trying to put 10 pounds of ……in a 5 pound bag.
Leen
I suspect it is because of the availability of the Sony ICX456 chip that has all these camera manufactures bruising their shins jumping on the 8 MB band wagon. When we see a suitable larger chip for the dSLR I suspect we see more bruised shins.
AS far as protecting your weak flesh I am the wrong man. I think these devices are much to expensive and I still have to have them pried out of you hands every time I am in a camera store. I feel like toad of Toad Hollow in Wind and the willows …. I goda have one or two …
Grant
Leen
About image quality of digital cameras: this is a very interesting text: <
http://photography.about.com/library/weekly/aa102802c.htm>
Especially this sentence draw my attention:
"A scan resolution of around 5000 dpi is needed to get all of the information from a typical 35mm film, resulting in a file roughly 7500×5000 pixels – roughly 40Mp. Much of that information is however film grain (or rather dye cloud effects) rather than true image information."
Leen
The good thing about weekends is Leen stays up later to chat with us. The bad thing he digs up some of the best digital propaganda to get my blood boiling 😉
Grant
Speaking of the new cameras, has any place published a roundup of what all was announced this week?
dpreview has had a little info, and I’ve run across a few highly opinionated blogs <
http://dpmac.com/digitalsoup/index.html>, but no comprehensive list of what’s due to appear.
Hey Barb,
Did you check out that Nikon Coolwalker noted in the blog you linked to? Looks like that could be an answer to your portable image storage problem.
Joe
Hi, Joe. Thanks. I had seen a press release in our local paper. It does look interesting, but I’d rather wait and let someone else find out what bugs, if any, there are in the first iteration of it.
Psssst…Barb…just buy more cards. Cheaper in the long run, and simpler. Bert
Hi, Bert. Yes, the way prices are going, that may be the thing to do. They sure are dropping fast.
Fom Leen’s link:
It seems at the moment that equivalent or better results (than film)can be obtained using either the 3.5Mp X3 data or the roughly 6Mp normal sensors. The latest digital cameras with 12, 14 or more megapixels can clearly beat film within their range of operation.
Grant,
Now I see why you call this "propaganda." <grin> Bert
Bert
You ol’ booger you are stirring the pot again. 😉
Grant
Bert
But of course, and is taken that way.
Grant
guess what, I’m so embarrased…I was bored a couple of months ago and decided to read through my epson printer e-guide. I have a setting in my advanced print stage called ‘ digital camera correction ‘…the choice is there to check or uncheck. I had always assumed this was just to sharpen a digital image before print so i always left it off….because if anything needed to be done to the image I just used Elements before sending to print. Come to find out this setting is supposed to give the print a ‘film’ look….go figure. Note to self; read more.
Jodi,
What Epson printer do you have? I wonder what a "film look" is… Bert
Oh, never mind! I know…they put in some scratches and dust specs. 🙂
Bert
LMAO….thanks Bert..I needed that after reading that other thread…..some people need to get over themselves for like 5 minutes. Sheeeeesh
Beeeeeeeert
wrote in message
Oh, never mind! I know…they put in some scratches and dust specs. 🙂
Bert
Odd they have no mention of Kodak Barbara. Business news is talking about them again saying they have six new models.
The link I tried o post will not work so here is what the article said in Forbes. It is a bit long so if not really interested just skip this;
(I do not currently own or anticipate purchasing EK or have any other interest in this company)
Pete
____________________________________________________________ ___________
Eastman Kodak, which sold more digital cameras in the United States during the end-of-year holiday season than any of its Japanese rivals, introduced six new camera models Thursday in hopes of surpassing top-ranked Sony this year.
Kodak (nyse: EK – news – people ) is scrambling to make the transition from film to digital photography after getting blind-sided by the swift rise in popularity of digital cameras. It lost ground to Sony (nyse: SNE – news – people ), Canon and Olympus and even gave up a chunk of market share to computer giant Hewlett-Packard.
The struggle seems all the more painful since Kodak invented the world’s first digital camera prototype in 1976. But the picture appears to be changing.
Kodak jumped ahead of Sony, the No. 1 U.S. seller of digital cameras for the past five years, in both November and December, market researchers say. “It is our goal to move into the No. 1 position in 2004,” said Nancy Carr, Kodak’s director of worldwide consumer advertising.
Its latest EasyShare consumer cameras, priced between $129 and $499, were unveiled Thursday at the annual International Photo Marketing Association trade show in Las Vegas.
The aim-and-shoot digital line, launched in 2001, comes with a docking station that enables images to be transferred to a computer at the touch of a button. The cameras also can be hooked to printers that deliver 4-by-6-inch prints in 90 seconds.
Until a few years ago, “the problem with digital photography was that it was very cumbersome and slow to get your prints,” said industry analyst Ulysses Yannas of Buckman, Buckman & Reid in New York.
“What Kodak did, and it helped them a lot to gain this No. 1 position, is make it very easy. You take your photograph, press a button and it downloads all the photographs in seconds.”
In all of 2003, when digital cameras outsold traditional film cameras for the first time in the United States, Sony ranked first in sales with a 22% market share, down from 24% in 2002, according to IDC, a market research firm in Framingham, Mass.
Kodak moved into second place with an 18% share, up from 13% in 2002, IDC said. Canon (nyse: CAJ – news – people ) was third with 15% and Olympus kept ahead of Fuji (nasdaq: FUJIY – news – people ) with 12%. Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ – news – people ) was in sixth spot with 8%.
The Photo Marketing Association, based in Jackson, Mich., estimates that 15.7 million filmless digital cameras and 10.6 million film cameras will be sold this year.
Kodak grew into an icon on the strength of its chemical-based film, paper and photofinishing businesses. It is aiming to invest $3 billion in digital markets – consumer photography, commercial printing and medical imaging – over the next three years.
The digital businesses generated $4 billion, or about 30%, of its $13.3 billion in 2003 sales. Kodak said it expects digital imaging to account for half of its profit and 60% of sales by 2006.
Pete
What a very interesting article on Kodak in particular and the digital market in general. Lots of facts both obvious and some more subtle. Thank you very much for posting this.
G.
I agree with you, Jodi.
Kodak has done so much for bith amamteur and professional photography over the past decades, that I hate to see a decline and fall of the yellow empire.
Those people in Rochester helped me out several times when I had questions nobody was able to answer.
Leen
I thought Kodak was the evil yellow empire and the other one was the equally evil green empire.
Yes Leen the technical support that comes from Rochester is very very hard to beat
I use to love Kodak but have been turned over to the dark green side. Well for slide and colour prints that is. Also my black ad white has switched to Ilford with the one exception of Tri-X ( now 400TX) a film that is hard to beat.
Doreen still is true Yellow.
But one should never forget the inception of Ilfort if you what to know how aggressive Kodak can be … they are a survivor.
g.
What is "inception"? What happened?
I always have been choosing my films depending on the subject. This way I always carried Agfa, Kodak and Fuji films in my carrying case adn sometimes even Konica, in my opinion a much underrated film.
I have been using the Agfa Portrait 160 film in the studio for many years and the Optima films at weddings. Agfa films used have a nice tone, a tonal scale close to the colours of painters from Rembrandt to Van Gogh. Somewhat less saturated than both other makes. Fuji NPH films came in with pretty dull weather. Later I switched completely to the Kodak Portra range of films.
Now I”m working digital, I create my own kinda film.
Leen
