Underexposed

The camera industry and photographers, having just gotten accustomed to the arrival of video in point-and-shoot cameras, just now are beginning to grapple with its arrival in the more serious SLR realm.

Chuck Westfall, technical adviser for Canon's professional products marketing division and a 26-year veteran at the Japanese company, is in the thick of it. Nikon was the first to market with a single-lens reflex camera equipped with video, the D90, but Canon offers video in two SLRs: the high-end EOS 5D Mark II, with a large sensor the size of a full frame of 35mm film, and the Rebel T1i, a more affordable, mainstream model.

Chuck Westfall

(Credit: Canon USA)

These cameras combine high-definition video--1900x1080 pixels at 30 frames per second in the case of the 5D Mark II--with SLRs' advantages when shooting in dim conditions and with a broad variety of lenses. But even though today's video SLR features offers hold some appeal to enthusiasts and professionals, they're something of an awkward afterthought. SLRs and those who use them that haven't yet had much time to adapt.

Welcome to the world of digital photography, where change is incessant. In an interview with CNET News, Westfall talked about not just video, but also OLED displays, the arrival of rival full-frame SLRs from Sony and Nikon, changing flash card and file format standards, wireless networking, and more.

Question: The age of the video SLR has begun. A lot of people in the high-end camera market are set in their ways, and video is a radical difference for a lot of them. How does that change the camera design, the marketing, and everything you have to do to sell a camera? ... Read more

LAS VEGAS--Lexar plans to introduce faster, higher-capacity CompactFlash cards using a new generation of the flash memory technology, a company executive said Wednesday.

Lexar's top-end 300X cards will be outpaced by new models shipping later this year.

(Credit: Lexar)

Lexar's current top-end 300X-rated CompactFlash cards use a standard called UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access) to transfer data at 45MB/second, and their capacity tops out at 16GB. But using a new generation of the standard, UDMA 6, Lexar will release cards that have significantly faster transfer speeds and larger capacity, Jeff Cable, director of marketing, said in an interview here at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show here.

Cable wouldn't be pinned down on precise details, but he said the new cards' capacity "probably" would be 32GB, and their transfer speeds likely would "pretty close to" UDMA 6's threshold of 100MB/sec, which is more than double that of today's UDMA.

Only newer SLR (single lens reflex) cameras support current UDMA technology, but it's spreading, and there are benefits. For example, cameras can take longer continuous bursts of photos, and photographers can zoom faster to check focus when reviewing shots on the camera LCD. Video, which is arriving in new SLRs, also can saturate data-transfer pathways.

Olympus' E-3 SLR, with its flip-out screen, will accompany me on my travels.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

I'll be on vacation for all of March, so except for a couple posts timed to pop up later, the activity on this blog is going to be awfully light.

I'll be trying out an Olympus E-3, to see if a weatherproof Four Thirds camera really is better for traveling. And for those of you who helped steer my thinking on my plea for help on how best to store photos while traveling, here's what I settled on.

I know I said I wasn't going to lug a PC, but I am after all. I can burn backup disks (and mail them home), winnow out the duds, and surf the Web from cybercafes for our urban moments. And the unglamorous 3-year-old laptop is a sunk cost, unlike lots of CompactFlash cards I don't already own. Thanks to all of you who provided advice.

So who knows--with the camera and the computer, maybe I'll post a gallery of Torres del Paine photos.

A speed-boosting overhaul of CompactFlash memory technology could start arriving in cameras next year, but it's incompatible with the version used in today's higher-end models

The new version, called CFast, has faster data-transfer speeds that could let photographers take more continuous shots without waiting for the camera to catch up, cut camera makers' costs for built-in buffer memory, and make it swifter to review photos on a camera or copy them to a computer.

This a closeup of the a CFast-era CompactFlash card. Note that it's got a slot instead of pins and that it's got different ridges called keys down the sides to prevent it from being used in today's style of CompactFlash slot.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com)

"It's going to end up in the high-end cameras. The reason to move to it is purely for speed," said John Santoro, senior product marketing manager for Lexar, a flash card maker and Micron subsidiary. He predicts its arrival in 18 to 24 months. "It's my feeling the camera companies already have this on their road maps and want to start working on prototype samples as soon as the specification is finalized."

But as with many upgrades, the standard will break compatibility with today's technology. That means today's CompactFlash cards won't work in CFast slots, and CFast cards won't work in today's slots.

So the more certain you are that you'll buy a new high-end camera in the next couple years, the more cautious you should be before investing in an expensive collection of shiny new 32GB CompactFlash cards.

CFast spec almost done; prototypes to come
Last year, the CompactFlash Association began work on the new standard, and the specification is in its final stages, said Bill Frank, executive director of the CompactFlash Association.

"We expect the CFast specification to be published for distribution in the second quarter--hopefully in April or May," said Frank, who showed off CFast prototype cards and slots at the Photo Marketing Association trade show last month in Las Vegas.

Top-end CompactFlash today cards reach 45MB/sec, a speed rating also called 300x (1x is 150KB/sec). CFast, though, uses an interface called Serial ATA that today reaches about 375MB/sec.

In practice, today's cameras can't keep up with those speeds, and flash card readers struggle when transferring images to computers. But faster speeds are useful in cameras, as newer SLRs show: when data can be written to a flash card faster, it's easier to design faster burst-shooting modes into camera that otherwise must rely on more built-in conventional memory.

CFast cards have a different electronic signaling technology that requires a different physical interface, and cards and sockets are shaped differently to prevent people from mixing the older and newer cards. The new socket is tested for 10,000 insertions, just as with current CompactFlash, Frank said.

Camera adoption?
The next question is how CFast will arrive in cameras. CompactFlash today is used in higher-end SLRs from Nikon, Canon, Sony, and Olympus. But camera makers are reluctant to describe particular technology plans, and Nikon didn't even respond to a request for comment.

When I asked Chuck Westfall, technical adviser for Canon USA's professional products marketing division, whether CFast would catch on, he was equivocal. "It remains to be seen. What drives the market is cost and performance issues and availability," he said. Canon's caution, for example, meant it only moved its low-end Rebel SLR line to SD flash memory when the card format was very well established.

Richard Pelkowski, digital SLR product manager for Olympus America, also wouldn't commit, but he did acknowledge the general advantage of CFast. "Greater speed and greater capacity--we certainly realize the benefit of that," he said, adding that card speed not only lets images be written faster, but also lets photographers review them more easily and take advantage of features such as the side-by-side comparison in Olympus' new E-3 SLR.

SanDisk, another top flash card maker, was more circumspect than Lexar.

"At some point, the industry is going to have to transition to some other type of high-performance card," said Jonathan Hubert, SanDisk's director of strategic marketing for flash cards and accessories. CFast is one strong candidate, he said, but then suggested that the SD Card Association isn't resting on hits SDHC laurels.

Frank, perhaps unsurprisingly given his leadership at the CompactFlash Association, was the most bullish of all. He said that Canon and Nikon engineers are participating in the CFast specification development and that the first cards likely will hit the market in the second quarter of this year. "Since this affects the silicon (chips) in cameras, expect no less than a year for cameras to appear using CFast," he said.

Jump-starting the market
If it were up to the camera makers alone, CFast's future would be more uncertain. But there are industrial uses of CompactFlash, too, for computing devices embedded into all manner of things.

CompactFlash is used in routers, defibrillators, Apache attack helicopters, and General Electric locomotives, Frank said. Some slot machines have two--one for holding the operating system and another for logging transactions.

The CompactFlash future in some ways isn't hard to predict. The technology uses the same interfaces as conventional computer hard drives, and it's been following that road map with a few years' time lag.

Today's mainstream CompactFlash cards use an interface called IDE or parallel ATA, and a newer generation just arriving use a speed bump called Ultra Direct Memory Access (UDMA) that in practice tops out at about 80GB/sec. The CFast version uses Serial ATA technology, which was announced in 2001 and connects hard drives in virtually all PCs today.

Those industrial computing customers, who often don't suffer the power-consumption constraints of camera makers, are eager for the new technology, Frank said--indeed, they were the first to ask for it. Because they're using conventional SATA computer chips, it's not difficult to move to the new technology.

From there, it's a matter of jumping to the camera market, where Lexar focuses. "I think it's inevitable," Santoro said.

I'm going to Latin America for the month of March, and I don't know what to do with my photos. Does anyone out there have any advice they'd like to share?

For the gearheads out there, here are my constraints.

First of all, I'm trying to travel reasonably light--I'll only be backpacking a little, but I will be schlepping luggage a lot, and I don't want to lug a laptop. Second, I probably won't have to go more than two or three days without a wall socket for charging.

Wolverine Data's $370 ESP 5000 has a 120GB drive and can show raw image files.

(Credit: Wolverine Data)

I'm guessing I'll need about 100GB of capacity. I'll be shooting raw images with an SLR (single-lens reflex), and there should be some mighty scenic spots. On two weeks in Ireland last year, I shot about 30GB of files, winnowing lightly as I went. So here are my options as I see it.

• Option 1 is a portable hard drive with a flash card reader and display.

I've been trying Wolverine Data's ESP 5000, a 40GB model with a screen. I like its ability to review raw images as well as JPEGs, and its battery power seems sufficient for my needs. And I like these for giving impromptu slideshows.

But I found the user interface clunky, and its raw image quality isn't always enough to check focus quality, even with the latest firmware. A 100GB model costs $370.

Anybody have any experience with the Epson P-5000 or similar products? They're even more expensive--an 80GB version costs nearly $700!

One advantage of these devices is that I could also use them to play video and music files and collect photos from others' digital cameras while I'm traveling.

• Option 2 is a hard drive without the fancy display. Wolverine's 120GB FlashPac costs $140. I'd have to rely on the camera for weeding out the dud shots, which probably is OK, but this is definitely the minimum-thrill approach.

And how reliable are hard drives anyway? My photos are precious, but I can say right now I'm not going to carry a second drive for backup.

• Option 3 is a bunch of CompactFlash cards. I have 16GB so far, but getting up to 100GB would cost something like $400 more even if I didn't pay for premium brands like SanDisk or Lexar. Watching the ever-dropping prices on flash memory cards would be depressing, though.

Flash cards have a lot to recommend them, though: are pretty durable, reliable, lightweight, and don't require batteries.

• Option 4 is whatever options readers are about to tell me about. I welcome your thoughts in the TalkBack section below or by e-mail to stephen.shankland@cnet.com.

Panasonic's 32GB SDHC card, with a 20MB-per-second transfer rate, will cost about $700.

(Credit: Panasonic)

Panasonic announced a new SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) flash card on Tuesday that offers both high speed and lots of space for those willing to pay.

The 32-gigabyte card, called the RP-SDV32GU1K, is due to ship in April for about $700. It's a high-speed "class 6" card that can transfer data at speeds of 20MB per second--the world's first at the 32GB capacity, Panasonic asserts.

SD is the dominant format for flash memory, and with the newer SDHC technology that extends capacity beyond 2GB, it's begun spreading into space-gobbling videocameras. SanDisk, a top flash card brand, announced a 32GB SDHC card costing $350 in January, but it transfers data a notch slower, at 15MB per second.

One major flash card alternative to SD, CompactFlash, can transfer data at a maximum of 45MB per second. However, top transfer speeds are often more useful when copying files from a flash card, since cameras and videocameras often can't write data at those top speeds.

LAS VEGAS--Two's company, three's a crowd, and Canon's Chuck Westfall is a lot less lonely these days.

Canon once was the sole camera company offering a digital SLR whose sensor is the size of a full frame of 35mm film, a technology that can increase the performance advantage and price penalty that SLR cameras already have compared with compact cameras. In November, though, Nikon began selling its full-frame rival, the D3, and last week Sony said it will launch its own full-frame competitor by the end of 2008.

Chuck Westfall

(Credit: Canon)

Westfall is a camera tech guru and the technical adviser for Canon USA's professional products marketing division. In his 25 years at Canon, he's amassed an encyclopedic knowledge not only of official camera specs but also deeply buried engineering details.

Westfall shared his opinions about the full-frame market and other camera trends during the Photo Marketing Association trade show here. He also discussed fuel cells to replace batteries, flash memory technology, OLED displays, and geotagging.

Talking tech might sound like fun if you represent the company that leads market share both for compact cameras and in the higher-end SLRs, but Westfall also has had to deal with unpleasant autofocus trouble that's afflicted the company's $4,500 photojournalist-oriented EOS-1D Mark III during some shooting conditions. A quality and reputation problem is the last thing a camera maker wants for a model aimed squarely at the professional photographer market that Canon dominates but that Nikon is aggressively courting.

Though Canon is repairing affected 1D Mark III models and has issued a firmware update, the issue still hasn't gone away: Rob Galbraith, the photographer and consultant whose tests brought the problem to light, still believes the 1D Mark III's predecessor has better autofocus, and he reported Monday that Canon is working on yet another fix.

Read on for Westfall's response to the autofocus issue and other thoughts.

CNET News.com: Sony now has said it'll join Canon and Nikon in offering a full-frame camera--its flagship 24.6-megapixel SLR due to launch by the end of the year.
Westfall: It's quite flattering the other companies have recognized what we've known for years--that full-frame is quite a desirable imaging format. I think the full-frame market is set to expand in 2008. There's no doubt about it.

With Nikon and now Sony adding weight to the full-frame market, what role is there for the in-between sensor size, APS-H? (It's about halfway between the full-frame sensors used in the high-end SLRs and the APS-C sensors use in the top-selling models such as the Rebel XTi and 40D. The APS-H is used in the 1D Mark III and its predecessors.)
Westfall: When we introduced APS-H in 2001 with the original EOS-1D, the idea was to compete against other professional DSLRs with APS-C. In that respect it has been extremely successful. At that point it was about what the competition had to offer. It's only been in the last six months that there has been an alternative. We've had a good long run with APS-H.

Going forward, it remains to be seen whether it will continue to be a desirable format. We're not ready to say it's over.

Is there a unique advantage APS-H has over full-frame sensors besides price? Nikon's D3 is a full-frame competitor to the 1D Mark III at about the same cost.
Westfall: At this point, no. Price would be the only thing.

Do you think you've resolved the 1D Mark III autofocus issue?
The hardware fix and firmware update has effectively brought the camera within our design specifications. Under the vast majority of study conditions, the camera is functioning exactly the way we expected it to.

So is it better at autofocus than the 1D Mark II N (the camera's predecessor)?
Westfall: Overall, yes. The system has a lot more to it. There are improvements to the Mark III's autofocus sensor, with 19 cross-type focusing points throughout the frame compared to 7 in the center for the 1D Mark II N. This is an area Rob Galbraith's tests did not address. And there are a lot more customization settings to be able to tweak autofocus accuracy according to the way you shoot--focus priority versus release priority for example.

That said, we are continuing to investigate. We're not disputing anything Rob wrote--he's made a fair and objective test. We have no argument except that the 1D Mark III is a lot closer (to the 1D Mark II N's autofocus performance) in overall performance than his severe tests indicate at first glance and that he doesn't test the full range of conditions. There's more to it.

Geotagging is a hot subject, and much of the discussion at the PMA show seems to have moved from when it will arrive in cameras rather than whether it will. When do you think it will?
Westfall: The desirability of that feature is quite clear. You can see reasons why--classifying, sorting, and searching photos--especially with the advances in technology starting to appear that is taking advantage of the (location) information. That's why we started putting in the optional capability with the wireless transmitters (accessories available for higher-end Canon SLRs).

How far away is the geotagging era?
Westfall: There's no doubt we'll see cameras with built-in GPS within the next two years, possibly sooner. I'm not able to give guidance regarding Canon specifically.

Are you getting pressure to add geotagging support from Web sites such as Google and Yahoo that enable users to make use of geotagged photos?
Westfall: Mostly we're hearing from the vertical markets--professional, commercial, and industrial applications. And the military.

Some envision geotagging as an aspect of "autotagging," in which a rich set of metadata is recorded when the photograph is taken. It might be possible to combine face recognition with autotagging to label photos automatically.
With our PowerShot line, we started autotagging a year ago. We call it "My Category." It has a total of five or six presets and three customizable tags. When you choose a scene mode, it associates for example a "landscape" tag. It can be done in review, too--you can apply it after the fact. For a camera with face recognition, we know when people are present. This will become much more valuable in the future. Facial recognition is a very powerful feature.

Are there any developments in battery technology?
Westfall: Lithium-ion is still dominant. Battery manufacturers have been able to increase the storage density lately. The Canon Rebel XSi battery has a capacity of 1080 milliamp-hours compared to 720 for the Rebel XTi (whose battery is about the same size).

Is there anything more radical on the horizon?
Westfall: Fuel cells. Within the same physical space, you have maybe twice the capacity as lithium-ion batteries. There's a lot of incentive to deliver that. And it's environmentally friendly--it's disposable and refillable.

Samsung is showing its NV24 HD camera, which uses an OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display. Is Canon planning on making that shift?
Westfall: Yes, definitely. We began exploring OLED several years ago. We showed in 2005 a prototype EOS-5D SLR. It was demonstrably brighter, had better color accuracy, and lower power consumption.

A prototype Canon EOS-5D SLR using a OLED display.

(Credit: Canon)

It's common knowledge that Canon is investing in OLED manufacturing ability, making big acquisitions last year. We have the infrastructure needed to bring this online.

And unlike with LCDs, it means you have more of the technology that actually ships in a camera under the Canon roof?
Westfall: Right. We're looking to implement OLED in all our consumer products: digital still cameras, camcorders, and inkjet printers.

There's a new version of CompactFlash memory cards under development that uses the Serial ATA technology rather than the current parallel ATA. You guys use CompactFlash in your SLRs. Will that technology catch on?
Westfall: It remains to be seen. What drives the market is cost and performance issues and availability. That's one reason we elected to wait until now to switch to SD (memory cards) for our Rebel line. The availability of SD cards is better now than even a year ago, and people are more comfortable with it.

I was interested that the 1Ds Mark III has an SD card slot in it as well as a CompactFlash slot.
Westfall: We actually started that with the 1D Mark II in 2004. We were able to add a second slot without changing the overall size of the camera. Now you see a second slot capability on other cameras.

What's changing in the compact camera market?
Westfall: The pricing on these cameras will continue to decline. It's become a more commoditized market, but it's bigger. The forecast for the next three years is it will continue to grow. CIPA (the Camera and Imaging Products Association) forecasts global shipments of 126 million units in 2010 compared to 93 million last year. The challenge is to continue to expand the feature set in the face of price erosion while maintaining profitability. We've got good technology and the highest level of profitability in the digital camera market.

Who's the top competitor?
Westfall: Sony is a very strong competitor. Once you get past them, there are a lot of other companies in there.

Are you worried about Sony entering the SLR market, too?
Westfall: Between us and Nikon, we've got 90 percent of the SLR market. Sony is only in the 5 percent range so far.

With pricing pressures, will you outsource more manufacturing to outside companies?
Westfall: That's not for us. We've increased our Japanese facility for better R&D and manufacturing. We have some outside manufacturing, especially in the point-and-shoot cameras. But we doubled the capacity of our main camera plant in the last two years. To control costs, we're developing more automation in manufacturing.

The jump from 2 megapixels to 4 megapixels is significant, but the jump from 10 to 12 is less dramatic. Is the megapixel race over?
Westfall: We're trying to upgrade the entire camera. The megapixels rating is only one thing. When upgrading, you have to look at more aspects.

Update 5:40 p.m. PST: Westfall requested a few minor changes to his quotations for clarity, such as changing "they" to "battery manufacturers," and I obliged.

SanDisk's 32GB Ultra II SDHC card will cost about $350, including a USB card reader, when it goes on sale in April.

(Credit: SanDisk)

Correction 10:00 a.m. PST: This blog initially misstated the speed at which SanDisk's top-end Extreme Ducati cards can write data. It is 45MB/sec.

LAS VEGAS--SanDisk, one of the best known makers of flash memory cards, has started making the jump to 32GB capacity.

The company announced its 32GB Ultra II SDHC card Thursday at the Photo Marketing Association trade show here, a model designed with the needs of flash-based video cameras.

It will cost about $350 when it goes on sale in April, the company said. A $180 16GB Ultra II card will be available in March, and both come with a MicroMate USB card reader.

In addition, SanDisk announced a $100 8GB Ultra II Plus card. It hinges open to reveal a USB plug that lets the card be directly connected to a computer.

All the new cards can write data at 15 MB/sec, a notch up from the 9 or 10 MB/sec of earlier Ultra II models, SanDisk said. However, that's not as fast as CompactFlash models, where SanDisk's top-end Extreme Ducati cards reach 45MB/sec.

SanDisk's $100 8GB Ultra II Plus card hinges open to reveal a USB plug

(Credit: SanDisk)

SanDisk spokesman Ken Castle wouldn't comment on when the company's 32GB CompactFlash cards might reach the market. Competitors PNY and Transcend announced their 32GB CompactFlash cards in January.

"We've chosen to go with the SD first. That's where the momentum has been," Castle said. "Camcorders with HD (high-definition video) can eat memory pretty quickly."

SanDisk in 2007 sued 25 flash-card competitors, including Transcend and PNY, alleging patent infringement.

Canon's EOS Rebel XSi goes on sale in April.

(Credit: Canon)

Canon faced some modest compatibility risks when it chose to design its new EOS Rebel XSi camera with SD flash-memory cards rather than the CompactFlash cards it's used for all its SLR cameras until this point, but I think the move is smart overall.

It's a drag for consumers that there's such a profusion of flash card formats. Customers often must pay extra when moving from one camera maker to another just to replace flash cards. And indeed, owners of Canon's existing Rebel, Rebel XT, or XTi cameras will find their CompactFlash cards useless if they upgraded to an XSi.

But the reality is that Rebel XSi (also called the 450D and Kiss X2 in various parts of the world) customers are more likely to be upgrading from a compact camera, a market where SD dominates. And from a technical perspective, SD performs fine, takes up less critical room in the camera, and in the newer SDHC incarnation can match CompactFlash's 32GB capacity.

CompactFlash memory has been a mainstay in the SLR (single-lens reflex) camera market, but SD has gained a foothold. Nikon's entry-level SLRs use SD cards, as do all from Pentax, Panasonic, and Samsung. And Canon's top-end 1Ds Mark III accepts both SD and CompactFlash.

Now if we could just get rid of xD Picture Card from Olympus and Fujifilm and Memory Stick from Sony, we'd all be better off. Fujifilm wisely has started selling compact cameras with a dual-use adapter that can accept SD as well as xD, and I'm hoping that's a harbinger of things to come.