Geotagging, in which digital photos are labeled with the location where they were taken, is mostly unfamiliar to photographers today. But new developments are likely going to put the technology on the map.
In interviews at the Photo Marketing Association trade show in Las Vegas recently, several camera executives expressed an interest in geotagging and some companies were demonstrating technology. It's clear that mainstream geotagging is a matter of when, not if.
GE's E1050 is scheduled to ship in September with a built-in GPS receiver, though a PC will be required to make use of the location data.
(Credit: General Electric)The strongest evidence I encountered is Air Semiconductor, a start-up building a chip designed to let cameras process GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite signals so latitude and longitude data can be attached to digital photos. It remains to be seen how well this works, but this idea is the holy grail of geotagging--no extra hardware or software is required.
Samples of Air Semiconductor's first chip, the Airwave-1, are due to start shipping this summer, with production versions going on sale at the end of this year or early next, said Chief Executive Stephen Graham.
"I think PMA next year is going to be when a number of companies unveil cameras with geotagging built in," said Graham, who flew in from the company's Swindon, U.K., headquarters to meet with camera companies at the photo show.
One can expect Graham to be bullish on his market, but there's independent evidence, too. General Imaging, the licensee of General Electric's new camera product line, plans to begin selling a camera this fall that takes a significant step, if not the full plunge, toward GPS integration. And market analysis firm IMS Research expects about 40 million GPS-enabled digital cameras to ship in 2011, more than a fifth of the total.
"Camera manufacturers need to differentiate in an increasingly competitive market," IMS Research analyst Matia Grossi said in a November report.
Why geotag?
Geotagging offers a new twist on digital photography, but it's got more promise than practicality today.
By adding location data into pictures, photographers will be able to search through photo archives on their computers based on where they took their pictures, not just when.
And geotags provide an easy way to figure out where a particular photo was taken, which could be useful when trying to identify something like a cathedral long after your memory of your trip to Europe two summers ago has receded into a blur. Today, software such as Apple's Mac OS X and Adobe Systems' Photoshop Lightroom can show a map when the user wants to see a photo's location.
Geotagging will be built into cameras, said Steve Haber, senior vice president of Sony Electronics' digital imaging and audio division. "It has to be," he said. "We keep hearing, 'My PC is this black hole for my photos'...People (need) as much metadata on their pictures as possible--date, location, event--which allows for easier search and for eliminating the black hole."
"There's no doubt we'll see cameras with built-in GPS within the next two years, possibly sooner," said Chuck Westfall, technical adviser for the professional products marketing division at Canon, the world's largest camera maker. "The desirability of that feature is quite clear."
The technology that's appearing extends well beyond the home PC. Photographers can share and view geotagged photos at Web sites such as Google's Picasa and Yahoo's Flickr.
Why not geotag?
Today, though, geotagging involves work beyond just taking the photos. A geotagger typically carries a separate GPS navigation device, transferring its location data to a computer along with the camera's photos and using special-purpose software to marry the information.
The process takes a lot of time, USB cables, and forethought.
Why not just build a GPS receiver into the camera? Mainly because new hardware makes cameras bulkier and more expensive, and GPS receivers draw significant battery power.
"At this time we feel there are too many glitchy things--dropouts of communication with the satellites, power consumption," said Richard Pelkowski, digital SLR (single-lens reflex) product manager for Olympus America. "We just have to overcome some limitations."
Nikon and Canon have taken baby steps toward tighter integration. High-end Nikon SLRs such as the D300 and D3 have a port that lets a GPS unit be attached directly, communicating with the camera so the location information can be recorded. A wireless transmitter can augment Canon's higher-end SLRs, including the 40D and 1D Mark III, to provide a GPS port, too.
General Electric's 10-megapixel E1050, which licensee General Imaging discussed at PMA, is a bigger step.
The company's current plans are to sell two versions of the E1050, a $249 model in May and another with a built-in GPS receiver by about September that's expected to cost about $50 to $75 more, a GE representative said.
However, the E1050 can't actually geotag by itself. When a person takes a picture, the receiver briefly powers up and records a brief signal from the GPS satellites. Later, software on a computer processes the data, in part based on GPS satellite data retrieved from a server over the Internet, and tags the photos.
That process is the very one used by Geotate, an NXP Software spinoff that showed off its geotagging technology at PMA. At the show, Geotate product manager Paul Gough specifically pointed me toward the GE cameras, saying, "We'll see our technology--we're hoping before the end of this year." GE, though, declined to confirm the partnership and said it's conceivable GE might eventually use a different supplier's technology.
Air apparent
Air Semiconductor has its own way of working around GPS limitations.
First, the Airwave-1 chip is designed to consume very little power most of the time. As with regular GPS receivers, it takes awhile to find itself--the unpleasant half-minute minimum wait called time to first fix. But then, it goes into a low-power mode, even when the camera is off, that keeps track of its position with a very rough accuracy of about 100 meters, Graham said.
Then, when a person takes a picture, the chip goes into a higher-power mode for substantially less than a second to capture more precise data. The rough location data already present essentially gives the chip a running start on figuring out its location, sidestepping the time-to-first-fix wait, Graham said.
"The power consumption we're taking is completely negligible compared to the power consumption of the (camera) system," he said. The chip consumes 1 milliamp of current when in its low-power mode, compared with about 30 to 100 milliamps for handheld GPS chips and 400 to 500 milliamps for a camera overall.
Graham wouldn't divulge the Airwave-1's power consumption during peak activity, but said it would consume less than one-tenth--and probably less than 100th--of the camera's battery capacity even with heavy use.
The chip isn't designed to work in weak-signal areas such as indoors, a task that consumes a lot of power. Instead, when the satellite signal is lost, the chip tells the camera the last known position.
Graham was previously marketing manager for Renesas' radio-frequency products group, and the other Air Semiconductor co-founder, Chief Technology Officer David Tester, was GPS group leader for Conexant. The 12-employee start-up uses Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to build its chips.
It looks like Canon's intermediate-size APS-H sensor line, found in the 1D Mark III SLRs used by photojournalists, may be at the end of its life span.
A silicon chip wafer from Canon can fit only 20 full-frame sensors, and there's lots of wasted real estate.
(Credit: Canon)The sensor is larger than the APS-C sensors used in mainstream Canon SLRs such as the EOS-40D or the new Canon EOS Rebel XSi, but it's smaller than those in a 1Ds Mark III or 5D, which is the size of a full frame of 35mm film. With Nikon now selling its first full-frame model, the D3, and Sony planning to launch its own full-frame competitor by the end of 2008, I have been curious if those developments meant momentum is shifting toward full-frame. Accordingly, at the Photo Marketing Association trade show, I asked Chuck Westfall, technical adviser for Canon USA's professional products marketing division, about the future of APS-H.
He didn't say anything definite (click here for the full Westfall Q&A), but it's hard to feel optimistic about the format's future. Westfall said the only advantage APS-H has over full-frame is price. And although that's significant, I can't help but notice that Nikon's full-frame D3 is a strong competitor to the 1D Mark III that largely matches its price.
"When we started it at the time, the idea was to compete against APS-C. In that respect it was successful...We've had a good, long run with APS-H," Westfall said. "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."
With a rosier future for full-frame cameras, it's not clear to me that anyone will really miss APS-H if it goes extinct.
Chuck Westfall
(Credit: Canon)With Nikon showing that price doesn't need to be as much of an issue, the photojournalists who are the core market for the 1D Mark III could fare just fine with a full-frame model designed for their high-speed, low-light needs--the 1D Mark IV, perhaps. And for those photogs on the NFL sidelines who might like APS-H's slight telephoto effect, there could be an equivalent to the Nikon D3's DX crop mode that captures only central pixels from the sensor.
For background, there are some good reasons to employ different sensor sizes. Larger sensors of a given megapixel count permit larger pixels that do a better job distinguishing the signal of incoming light from electronic noise in the sensor, so photos have fewer speckles, colors remain more true, and cameras work better in low light. But large image sensors cost a lot more to build.
In the compact camera domain, there are multiple image-sensor sizes in use, but customers rarely know which because the lens is matched to it. In SLRs, though, where lenses are interchangeable, sensor size makes a difference. Lenses behave the same way as in the film era with cameras equipped with full-frame sensors, but the field of view is cropped more narrowly with APS-H and APS-C.
Because of this field-of-view crop factor, the field of view is 1.3 times narrower on an APS-H camera than a full-frame camera and 1.6 times narrower on an APS-C camera.
So for example, a 50mm lens on a full-frame 1Ds Mark III has the same field of view as a 38mm lens on an APS-H 1D Mark III and a 31mm lens on a Rebel XSi.
For telephoto shooting, smaller sensors are generally OK, in effect amplifying the ability to reach distant subjects. For wide-angle lenses, though, the arrival of SLRs with sensors smaller than full-frame initially posed problems. Now, though, camera makers have released new lenses with shorter focal lengths to cover the wider field of view.
Update 12:21 p.m. PST: Mike Baird, Ask.com's first vice president of engineering but now an avid camera buff, is one photographer who expects his 1D Mark III to be his last camera to have a sensor smaller than a full frame.
"I thoroughly expect the sub-35mm sensors to go away in the pro market," Baird said. "The APS-H 1D Mark III has replaced all of my APS-C cameras...I'd like the 1Ds Mark III, but I'm spending all my money on lenses."
Update at 8 a.m. PST on February 7: Westfall's title at Canon has changed and been duly noted.
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.
Update at 8 a.m. PST on February 7: Westfall's title at Canon has changed and been duly noted.
PicWash plans to expand its online photo-retouching service.
(Credit: PicWash)LAS VEGAS--PicWash, a Web site that offers to retouch photos for $7 and up, has plans to offer premium services in coming months.
Currently, PicWash's staff of 30 retouches photos--including those stored on PhotoBucket and MySpace--to clean up acne, remove wrinkles, reduce red-eye, and whiten teeth. It costs $7, or $10 if you attach a note requesting specific fixes, said founder Daniel Ciraldo (who notes on his biography that he's the son of "renowned Miami-based dermatologist Dr. Loretta Ciraldo").
Coming later--probably March--will be a variety of premium services that will cost up to $30, Ciraldo said here at Photo Marketing Association trade show.
Among those new options: getting rid of braces, getting rid of double chins, and slimming bodies down. Of this latter category, Ciraldo hopes people will use the service as "slimspiration"--giving themselves a vision of what they could become if they lost some pounds.
The company promises a 48-hour turnaround for its current services.
The Leica M8, the company's first digital rangefinder.
(Credit: Leica)LAS VEGAS--The good news is that Leica designed its $5,500 M8 rangefinder camera so its hardware components can be upgraded to ward off the obsolescence that afflicts digital cameras. The bad news is that an upgrade Leica announced this week at the Photo Marketing Association trade show costs 1,200 euros, or about $1,775.
The price includes shipping and replacement of the camera's glass LCD cover and shutter, said Brian Bell, national sales manager for Canada, in an interview here at the trade show.
The new shutter is quieter and has less tension in its spring, making it more durable and reducing the amount it vibrates the camera, Bell said. The new sapphire crystal LCD cover is more scratch-resistant.
Other core components of the camera, including its image sensor or image processing-chip, also can be upgraded, he added, but Leica hasn't announced any program for that.
Nikon's PC-E Micro-Nikkor 45mm f/2.8D ED
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)LAS VEGAS--Nikon just introduced a 24mm "perspective correction" lens, but the camera maker also showed off two new prototypes of the same ilk.
As promised last week, Nikon showed off a new PC-E Nikkor 45mm f/2.8D ED at the Photo Marketing Association trade show here. Also under a glass booth was the PC-E Micro-Nikkor 85mm f/2.8D.
Note that the latter model lacks the "ED" suffix that indicates extra-low dispersion glass used to maximize sharpness and minimize chromatic aberration. Nikon last week employed the ED suffix in describing the lens, but there was a conspicuous rectangle carved out of the name badge right where those two letters would have appeared.
Regardless of what the 85mm lens composition and name, it definitely looks different from Nikon's existing PC Micro-Nikkor 85mm f/2.8D.
Nikon's PC-E Micro-Nikkor 85mm f/2.8D lens
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)The perspective-correction lenses, also called tilt-shift models by rival Canon and others, let a photographer optically alter the perspective of a view, for example changing the vertical lines of a building so they are parallel rather than convergent.
Architects are a particular market for the specialty lenses, which aren't cheap: Nikon's PC-E Nikkor 24mm f/3.5D ED will cost $1,930 when it goes on sale this fall.
The two new perspective-correction lenses "are scheduled to become available through Nikon authorized dealers during the summer of 2008," Nikon said last week.
Speaking of coveted lenses, Nikon also showed a D3 SLR with the newer 14-24mm zoom lens mounted--both sawn in half down the middle. All I can say is I hope it was a factory reject.
Nikon's newer D3 SLR and 14-24mm zoom lens, shown here sawn in half.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)
Sigma's DP1 should go on sale this spring for $999. This working model was on display at the PMA show in Las Vegas.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)LAS VEGAS--Sigma announced its delayed DP1 camera Thursday, a high-end compact model whose unusually large image sensor is matched by an unusually large price tag.
The 14-megapixel camera likely will ship this spring for a retail price of $999, said a Sigma representative, Desiree Gaige, at the Photo Marketing Association trade show here.
The camera uses the same Foveon X3 sensor as Sigma's SD14 SLR camera. In comparison, compact cameras almost invariably have sensors that are much smaller and cheaper, but that are at least theoretically responsive for a given megapixel count.
The camera uses a 16.6mm f/4 fixed-focal-length lens, equivalent to 28mm in 35mm film camera terms. It produces raw image files for those who want the higher quality possible from using the unprocessed sensor data.
Sigma showed off the DP1 at the PMA show in 2007, and the camera has caught the attention of photo enthusiasts who want a large, sensitive sensor in a compact camera body. However, Sigma delayed the DP1 because it had to redesign the image-processing components later that year.
Probably the closest thing to an SLR shooter's compact camera today is Canon's PowerShot G9, a 12-megapixel model with raw-image capture, a 6X zoom lens, a price tag under $450, and a sensor that's larger than average for compact cameras if not actually as large as the DP1's.
The 18-125mm F3.8-5.6 DC OS HSM has Sigma's optical stabilization technology built in to counteract camera shake. It's for Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Sony, and Sigma SLRs. The stabilization feature doesn't work on Pentax and Sony cameras, which have that built in.
(Credit: Sigma)LAS VEGAS--Sigma, a third-party maker of lenses for SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras, has expanded the range of Optical Stabilization (OS) lenses, those with a moving lens element that can compensate for camera shake.
Of eight mainstream lenses the Japanese company announced at the Photo Marketing Association trade show here, three new telephoto lenses include OS. (I'm not counting Sigma's 200-500mm f/2.8 super-telephoto behemoth as mainsream.)
The three stabilized lenses are the 18-125mm F3.8-5.6 DC OS HSM, the APO 120-400mm F4.5-5.6 DG OS HSM, and the APO 150-500mm F5-6.3 DG OS HSM.
However, several new 70-200mm telephoto zooms, each with a wide f/2.8 aperture, lack the stabilization feature.
Sigma also announced two lenses for Four Thirds System SLRs, which are sold by Olympus, Panasonic, and Leica. Those are a wide-angle zoom, the 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC HSM, and the telephoto zoom, the APO 70-200mm F2.8 II EX DG MACRO HSM.
Update 1:20 p.m. PST: There's no price or availability information yet on the stabilized lenses, said Sigma spokeswoman Desiree Gaige, but they'll likely arrive sometime this summer. The 50-150mm will cost about $1,350, the 70-200mm models $1,420, and the 10-20mm $730, and those probably will be available in the next couple months, she said.
Here are some photos and details on the other lenses:
The APO 70-200mm F2.8 II EX DG MACRO HSM is for Pentax and Sony SLRs.
(Credit: Sigma)
The APO 70-200mm F2.8 II EX DG MACRO HSM is designed for Four-Thirds system cameras.
(Credit: Sigma)
The APO 120-400mm F4.5-5.6 DG OS HSM is an optically stabilized model for Nikon, Canon, Sony, Pentax, and Sigma SLRs. Its close-focus distance is 59 inches.
(Credit: Sigma)
The APO 150-500mm F5-6.3 DG OS HSM is for Nikon, Canon, Sony, Pentax, and Sigma SLRs. It's got optical stabilization built in.
(Credit: Sigma)
The APO 50-150mm F2.8 II EX DC HSM is for Pentax and Sony SLRs.
(Credit: Sigma)
The 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC HSM is for Four-Thirds cameras from Olympus, Panasonic, or Leica.
(Credit: Sigma)
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.
Olympus cameras are shown here frozen in a block of ice.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)
An Olympus Stylus 830 SW splashes into water after banging down a pegboard.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)Correction 7:50 a.m. PST: The lower-end model is the Stylus 850 SW.
LAS VEGAS--I can't speak for their optical quality or performance, but I like the idea behind Olympus' shockproof and waterproof compact cameras--and I liked the publicity stunts the Japanese camera maker used to show them off at the Photo Marketing Association trade show here.
In one demonstration, the camera drops down a pegboard, banging off several on the way down before splashing into a tray of water.
On another, a handful of cameras were frozen in a large block of ice.
And several cameras were positioned in a number of aquariums decorating the company's booth.
Olympus announced the two waterproof models, the Stylus 850 SW and 1030 SW, earlier in January.
Both are dustproof and can withstand temperatures as low as 14 degrees Fahrenheit. The 10-megapixel 1030 SW has a 28-102mm equivalent zoom, can be dropped from 6.5 feet up, and will work as deep as 33 feet underwater, and the 8-megapixel 850 SW has a more stylish design, is equipped with a 38-114mm lens, can be dropped from 5 feet up, and will work as deep as 10 feet underwater.
The 850 SW should be on sale now for about $300, and the 1030 SW in March for about $400.
