News Archive - February 2001 Return to: Current News Archive Index Wednesday, February 28, 2001 Olympus Japan announces C-990ZS digicam! 23:00 EST - Update to C-990Z (Japanese version of D-490Z) announced... Olympus Japan has today announced an update to its C-990Z digital camera, according to our friends at the digitalcamera.gr.jp website. The C-990ZS has a higher resolution LCD display (114,000 pixels instead... (More) Sony announces 3mpix 3x zoom CD-RW digicam, we review it! (UPDATED) 16:00 EST - Full specifications and a review of the second of Sony's two announcements, the Mavica MVC-CD300... Sony has today announced two new digital cameras featuring CD-RW drives in a compact point'n'shoot style design. Both cameras feature 3x optical zoom lenses, along with Mini CD-RW storage, answering... (More) Sony announces 2 megapixel 3x zoom CD-RW digicam! (UPDATED) 16:00 EST - Full specifications on the first of Sony's two announcements, the Mavica MVC-CD200... Sony has today announced two new digital cameras featuring CD-RW drives in a compact point'n'shoot style design. Both cameras feature 3x optical zoom lenses, along with Mini CD-RW storage, answering... (More) Surprise Review Coming this Afternoon! 09:47 EST - Just a quick note to all our regular readers: Be sure to check back today just after 4pm Eastern time for a "surprise" review. Can't say more until then, but we think our readers will find the new product(s) very interesting! (We wanted to catch all you East Coast earlybirds, make sure you knew to stop back this afternoon...) Tuesday, February 27, 2001 Rayovac introduces long-life rechargeables! 20:50 EST - Battery manufacturer adds new rechargeable batteries, 1 hour charger to lineup... Madison, WI-based Rayovac Corp. has introduced a new line of rechargeable NiMH batteries as well as a one-hour NiMh / NiCD charger to its lineup. Targetted at digital camera users, the new batteries... (More) Mediostream announces home DVD authoring system! 12:25 EST - End-user system for creating DVDs from your digital videos under $200... Mediostream Inc. has announced the release of its CAMpeg RT bundle for creating MPEG-2 videos at home, and writing them to CD or DVD discs. CAMpeg RT consists of real-time DV to MPEG-2 transcoder software,... (More) Full review of Olympus C-2040 Zoom Posted! 11:26 EST - Wow! Has it been that long? The PMA show put a huge gap in our review coverage, but we're finally picking back up again today, with our full review of the Olympus C-2040 Zoom digicam. (Lots more coming later this week, too, including a surprise tomorrow afternoon.) Olympus is now on the third generation of its popular two megapixel C-2000 Zoom lineup, which began over two years ago with it's original... (More) Canon releases updated firmware for PowerShot S100, G1, Pro90 IS! 00:00 EST - New firmware corrects several anomalies related to external flash and date rollover, as well as enhancing shutter/aperture performance for the Pro90IS... Canon has today released updated firmware for its PowerShot S100, PowerShot G1 and PowerShot Pro90 IS digital cameras on its BeBit website in Japan. The new firmware, version 1.0.0.1, corrects a number... (More) Monday, February 26, 2001 SCM announces new Dazzle video capture devices! 20:05 EST - Two new USB video capture devices released... SCM Microsystems Inc. has today announced two additions to its 'Dazzle' line of video capture devices. The Dazzle DVC 50 and DVC 80 are both USB devices, and feature composite and S-Video connections... (More) Callisto to release PhotoParade Maker for Mac! 19:53 EST - New version of Callisto's PhotoParade Maker software for the Macintosh platform on the way... Callisto Corp. will tomorrow announce a new version of its PhotoParade Maker software for the Macintosh computer platform. PhotoParade Maker, which has historically only been available to Windows users... (More) Steve's Digicams posts Olympus E-100RS first-look! 19:20 EST - Steve Sanders looks at Olympus' E-100RS 'Rapid Shot' digital camera Our friends over at the Steve's Digicams website have today posted a first-look at Olympus' E-100RS digital camera. The RS stands for 'Rapid Shot', and this camera is certainly true to the name - sequential... (More) Visioneer announces scanner with built-in flash readers! 15:12 EST - PhotoPort 7700 features slots for both SmartMedia and CompactFlash... California-based Visioneer Inc., a subsidiary of Taiwanese company Primax Electronics Ltd., has today announced a new flatbed scanner which features built-in readers for both SmartMedia and CompactFlash... (More) Ofoto announces new services, site features! 14:45 EST - Internet photo-sharing and photo-finishing company adds new capabilities to its site, and new uses for customers' images... Online photofinisher Ofoto has today announced its addition of a number of new services and features for its website. The company is now offering both 2" x 3" wallet-sized prints in sheets of four at $1.79,... (More) Agfa joins Apple's European roadshow! 14:17 EST - Belgian imaging company to demonstrate scanners at Apple's seminars... A press release from Agfa-Gevaert N.V. notes that the company will be present at Apple's European seminar series entitled "Going Digital in Professional Photography". The company plans to show its DuoScan... (More) DPReview posts Sony DSC-S75 review! 11:26 EST - Phil Askey reviews Sony's update to the existing DSC-S70 digital camera... Our friends over at the Digital Photography Review website have now posted their review of Sony's DSC-S75 digital camera. The DSC-S75 is a replacement for the DSC-S70, and has a whole slew of improvements... (More) Saturday, February 24, 2001 Kodak to license Internet imaging patents! 9:32 EST - Kodak today announced it has set up a formal network patent licensing program. In other words, the photography giant has begun to enforce the patents covering Internet photofinishing it acquired with PictureVision, as well as technology its developed itself in Rochester over the years. Last week we noted the Kodak/Olympus patent agreement was probably a precursor to just this sort of action. We hear... (More) Steve's Digicams reviews Nixvue Digital Album! 21:27 EST - First review posted of the 10GB image storage device... Our friends over at the Steve's Digicams website have posted their review of the Nixvue Digital Album, which was shown at PMA 2001, and will be distributed by Jobo... The Digital Album features a 10GB... (More) Friday, February 23, 2001 Two more new digicams from Concord! 17:43 EST - Two more digicam announcements from Concord Camera over on the PMA Event page... We posted Concord Camera's Eye-Q 3X digital camera on the PMA 2001 event page earlier today, and have just posted full details on a second camera from Concord... The Eye-Q Go! is a tiny ultra-compact... (More) PMA: Concord introduces 3x zoom digicam! 16:27 EST - Yet another new camera launched at PMA - this time from Concord Camera Corp... Concord's first of three new cameras announced at PMA is the Eye-Q 3X, a 3x optical zoom camera which interestingly uses an Electronic Viewfinder. The unit uses a 300,000 pixel image sensor (interpolated... (More) Polaroid cuts workforce by 11%! 13:34 EST - Restructuring plan announced will cut 950 jobs, save $60 million... Polaroid Corp. has announced a plan designed to save the company $60 million annually by cutting some 950 jobs globally, as well as reducing expenditures and selling underutilized assets. The plan, which... (More) Fuji Japan delays FinePix 6800Z launch! 12:19 EST - Porsche-designed 6800Z's release date slips back a week... Our friends over at the digitalcamera.gr.jp website in Japan have noted on their news page that Fuji Japan has officially delayed the release of its FinePix 6800Z digital camera. An addendum added today... (More) ACD software to be bundled with IDEO's eyemodule cameras! 01:09 EST - ACDSee to ship with IDEO's digital cameras for the Handspring Visor PDA... 60,000 copies of ACDSee will be shipped with IDEO's eyemodule and eyemodule2 digital cameras for the Handspring Visor PDA in a worldwide deal, according to a press release on PR Newswire. The versions... (More) ST Microelectronics announces mobile digicam module! 00:52 EST - Semiconductor company creates tiny CMOS digicam for use in cell-phones, PDAs and more... ST Microelectronics, formerly SGS-Thomson Microelectronics, has announced a tiny new CMOS digicam module aimed at mobile devices. Measuring just 10 x 10 x 7.7mm, the module includes an ST ColourMOS CMOS... (More) Thursday, February 22, 2001 iView releases PhotoMover 1.5! 17:32 EST - Macintosh image uploading application gets a new release... An email from iView Multimedia Ltd. tells us of the release of a new version of Macintosh image uploader PhotoMover. If you're not familiar with the program, PhotoMover allows Mac users to upload single... (More) Zoran announces Asian expansion! 14:52 EST - Californian chip manufacturer announces three new Asian offices... Santa Clara, CA-based Zoran Corp. has announced an expansion of its presence in Asia with the opening of three new offices there this month. The new offices, located in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea are... (More) Sony Japan announces DSC-F55DX! (UPDATED) 12:10 EST - Sony releases minor update to the DSC-F55V in Japan; adds support for i-Jump, Picture Paradise... Sony Japan has today officially announced the new DSC-P30 and DSC-P50 digital cameras which we saw at PMA, as well as what appears to be a minor update to the DSC-F55V digital camera (itself an update... (More) Fuji announces temporary S1 Pro price cut, adds to bundle! (UPDATED) 11:03 EST - If you're looking for a digital SLR, this really could be superb value... Fuji Photo Film USA Inc. has announced a 25% cut in the list price of the FinePix S1 Pro, along with a significant addition to the camera's bundle - a 1GB Microdrive! Fuji's press release notes that its... (More) Wednesday, February 21, 2001 Major new version of Qimage Pro (v12.0) released! 18:11 EST - Major update to popular imaging 'toolbox' Qimage Pro released! Our good friend Mike Chaney has been in touch this afternoon with news of the release of a major update to his image viewing/editing/printing program, Qimage Pro... The latest version, Qimage Pro v12.0,... (More) Kodak MC3 heralds visual communications lifestyle! 16:05 EST - Video, music, and wireless transmission make this a stand-out. One of the key themes at the PMA tradeshow this week was the convergence of still and motion digital cameras: still units that capture mini-movies, digital camcorders that take megapixel stills. No device... (More) Nichimen announces two new digicams! 14:28 EST - Nichimen subsidiary NH Japan Holdings announces two new digital cameras in its amusingly named 'Che-ez' line... Say 'Che-ez'! ;) The digitalcamera.gr.jp website has reported on two new digital cameras from NH Japan Holdings, a subsidiary of global trading company Nichimen Corp. The cameras, part of NH's 'Che-ez' line, are a 1.3... (More) Hagiwara announces new FlashGate reader! 13:37 EST - Japanese peripherals company releases new Mass Storage Class CompactFlash reader... Our friends over at the digitalcamera.gr.jp website in Japan have posted a news item pointing readers to a new flash reader from Japanese PC peripherals company Hagiwara Sys-Com. The FlashGate HBC-UCF1... (More) Mystic Color signs up with PhotoAccess! 12:09 EST - Third-largest American mail-order photofinisher and Internet photofinisher announce deal... A press release distributed yesterday by Connecticut-based Mystic Color Lab Inc. and Internet photofinisher PhotoAccess.com Corp. announces that the two have signed a deal to cooperate in providing digital... (More) Tuesday, February 20, 2001 PMA: Konica shows three further digicams! 16:26 EST - Rounding out Konica's PMA announcements, we bring you news of three more Konica digicams... As promised earlier today, we've just posted news over on the PMA 2001 Event pages of three more new digital cameras from Konica which were shown at the show. We've got full specs of two, partial specs... (More) New digicam with MP3 audio playback from Konica! 14:39 EST - Konica announces digicam with MP3 audio playback functionality and more... We've just posted news over on the PMA 2001 Event pages of a new digital camera from Konica which functions as a still camera, tethered USB web camera, audio recorder and MP3 audio player. We've got full... (More) DCRP posts Olympus C-2040Z review! 10:16 EST - The Digital Camera Resource Page reviews one of Olympus' latest cameras... Our friends over at the Digital Camera Resource Page have posted their review of Olympus' C-2040 Zoom digital camera. Here's what Jeff had to say in conclusion:"The Olympus C-2040Z is in kind of a strange... (More) Monday, February 19, 2001 Delkin shipping 128MB SmartMedia! 11:02 EST - An email from Delkin Devices tells us that they're now shipping 128MB SmartMedia cards in the US market... (More) Three new digital cameras from Vivitar - pics and specs! 22:49 EST - Three new digital cameras announced at PMA by Vivitar - we have pictures and specifications of them all... Over on the PMA 2001 Event pages, we're continuing to filter through everything we saw and write it all up. This evening, we have posted news of not one, not two, but three new digital cameras from Vivitar.... (More) Digital Eye posts PMA pics! 12:19 EST - Our friend David Kamanski over at the Digital Eye website has posted a gallery of sample pictures taken at Sony's press event a couple of nights before PMA 2001 started in Orlando, Florida. The pictures, all taken with Sony's DSC-S75 digital camera, include some great shots of a 'tribal dance' of sorts, along with a firethrower and a night-time shot of a dolphin show! Yikes - there's also a picture... (More) Saturday, February 17, 2001 Rob's at it again! - THE story on CF cards for Pros! 13:39 EST - We never cease to be amazed at the depth and quality of information pro photojournalist (well, pro photojournalist consultant, these days) Rob Galbraith manages to churn out. This time, he's written what has to be THE authoritative review of CompactFlash memory cards for use in pro SLR cameras. He tested a total of 14 cards in three different cameras, and came up with some surprising results: Cards performed very differently in the various cameras. Read Rob's report for all the details! (Kudos to Rob for another superlative contribution to the field!) Source: Rob Galbraith's exhaustive CF card report Pro SLR Price Projection Confusion (Pentax/Contax) 13:07 EST - A quick note to clear the record: Recent emails with another site publisher revealed some confusion over projected prices for the forthcoming Pentax SLR. The figure of $7,000 US has been widely circulated for both the Contax and Pentax 6 megapixel full-frame SLRs. That figure is only accurate for the Contax model though (and even there, subject to change prior to its release). When we queried the Pentax Product Manager and Marketing Manager at PMA about the projected price of their camera, they expressed puzzlement as to how the $7K figure had come to be associated with their unit: Not only have they not stated that price anywhere, but they don't at this point even know what their production costs will be, let alone what it might actually sell for. As they told us (paraphrasing here): "It *might* sell for that price, but could just as easily be more or less. We simply won't know ourselves until we're much closer to production." SO: Contax SLR - projected at "Less than $7,000 US"; Pentax SLR - NO projection at this time... Friday, February 16, 2001 PMA coverage goes on - 5 new items! 16:34 EST - Our coverage of the PMA 2001 trade show which just finished in Orlando continues today with a look at Canon's latest A-series cameras, the PowerShot A10 and A20. We have exclusive images of both new cameras, as well as the WP-DC200 underwater housing which will be offered for them... Also, in case you haven't seen, we posted 4 new items on the events page for February 15th yesterday after our last news posting - Dave brings you his feelings on the most interesting cameras and scanners at the show, whilst Kim reports on the CanoScan FS4000US and Arcsoft's latest product, PaintingMontage... Check it out! A Sad Day for Digital Photography, DigitalFOTO is no more... 13:15 EST - We just received news that financial problems at the UK-based parent company, coupled with difficulty penetrating the US newsstand market, have resulted in the closure of DigitalFOTO magazine. DigitalFOTO was our absolute favorite digital photography magazine with *great* stories and articles, interesting how-tos, and all-around excellent content. Our condolences and sincere best wishes to all our friends there! Thursday, February 15, 2001 PMA: Canon PowerShot S300 exclusive pics! 16:04 EST - We've now posted our coverage of Canon's new PowerShot S300 digital camera over on the PMA events page for February 15th... Along with full specifications (already in our camera database) we have several exclusive pictures of the camera itself, and Canon's underwater housing for the unit which is rated to a depth of 100 feet. Kim is also hard at work on the events page as well, and has now posted news of Jobo's 10GB Nixvuew Digital Album... Check it out! Rob Galbraith posts extensive "first look" of Nikon D1X! 14:11 EST - Peripatetic photojournalist Rob Galbraith has posted an "extended first look" at the Nikon D1X, including a batch of photos of its user interface. (Grr, grr - The Nikon staff explicitly asked us to *not* share photos of the UI, since it was still subject to a great deal of change. I guess Rob was a little more persistent in asking than we were...) At any rate, the info Rob has gleaned is extensive, and doubtless of interest to anybody contemplating a high-resolution digital SLR. There clearly is/will be more changes in many aspects of the UI (Rob's shots show a total of 36 entries in the Custom Settings Menu, while other cameras at PMA had 35, and only a few days before the show, the number was 33), but the information presented is nonetheless interesting, and the major features aren't likely to change much at this point. Check out Rob's excellent article for many insights into Nikon's latest take on professional digital SLRs! Source: Rob Galbraith's "first look" at the Nikon D1X Show's over, but our coverage isn't! 11:59 EST - Mike, Dave and Kim are all back home, now that the PMA 2001 show in Orlando FL is over... We've still got lots more coverage on the way for you though, including products we don't think you'll see anywhere else - some of them prototypes or mockups, and some of them real products that will be on store shelves soon! Dave has added two reports to our February 14th coverage last night on Epson's amazing new 5500 pro inkjet printer, Silicon Film's EFS-1 digital film (with sample images), and Kim has added a further report today on Kodak's mc3 'Portable Multimedia Device'. Mike is currently working on numerous other items, including a full show roundup... Keep watching over the next couple of days for more exclusive coverage of PMA 2001! Wednesday, February 14, 2001 PMA draws to a close, and an Internet tale of woe! 09:52 EST - We're still on the show floor at PMA and running round getting all of those last-moment photos and info we need for our PMA wrapup (look for this over the next couple of days, along with a lot of other info we literally haven't yet had time to report on)... The show wraps up today, and we could be forgiven for thinking that our Internet provider was trying to wrap us up too! During a routine upgrade yesterday to help with the incredible server load we've been experiencing during the show, a technical 'support' engineer (we use the term in its loosest sense) managed to hose our config and take down parts of the site left, right and center. A very long afternoon later (at least, it felt that way to us) we managed to fix everything with the exception of our camera database, which is now also (finally) back up. Thanks to the many readers who've emailed us to report the problems you've been seeing, and we apologise on our Internet provider's behalf for the inconvenience to you at our very busiest time of year! Tuesday, February 13, 2001 PMA: Exclusive pics of Pentax's EI-3000 and unnamed digital SLR! 10:58 EST - We commence Tuesday's PMA 2001 coverage with two interesting cameras on the way from Pentax... Along with information on specifications for both of the new units, we've also got 11 exclusive images of the Pentax SLR (which is based on Pentax's MZ-S 35mm film camera) as well as another 5 images of the EI-3000 (which is an update to the previous EI-2000 camera announced at last year's PMA show, but features a 3.43 megapixel frame-transfer CCD image sensor). Check it out! Monday, February 12, 2001 Contax N Digital, up close and personal! 17:43 EST - Another exclusive on our PMA 2001 events page - this time Contax's N Digital SLR, an exciting camera which will offer a full 35mm frame-sized image sensor... We got hands-on with the camera on Saturday, and have plenty of photos of the camera body, which is being shown under glass at PMA but was brought out especially for us. There's also an added bonus at the end, an exciting film camera accessory that Contax is planning - we have photos of the prototype and a little on just what it does! Check it out... DCRP reviews the Canon PowerShot Pro90 IS! 11:33 EST - Jeff Keller reviews Canon's latest PowerShot, the 2.6 megapixel, 10x optical zoom PowerShot Pro90 IS... Our friend Jeff over at the Digital Camera Resource Page has today posted his full review of Canon's PowerShot Pro90 IS digital camera. What did he think? Read on:"The Canon PowerShot Pro90 IS is the... (More) PMA: Exclusive news on Epson's latest print technology! 11:05 EST - Over on the PMA 2001 events page, our Monday coverage starts with interesting news of a new technology from Epson that promises to bring better prints from your next digicam with less effort. We attended the press conference last night, and have plenty of information that you won't find in the press releases, which we collected from talking to the companies present (you read that right - this is not just an Epson announcement, look for plenty of other big names throwing their weight behind the new technology too!) Check it out! Sunday, February 11, 2001 PMA: Exclusive images of new 5Mpix Minolta, and more! 17:09 EST - Over on the PMA 2001 Event page for Sunday February 11, 2001 we've added quite a few news items today! The most recent - exclusive hands-on pictures of Minolta's latest three digital cameras, the Dimage S304, Dimage 5 and Dimage 7. The Dimage S304 is a 3 megapixel point'n'shoot-style unit with a 4x optical zoom lens, whilst the Dimage 5 and 7 have SLR-style bodies with 7x optical zoom lenses,electronic viewfinders and sensor resolutions of 3 and 5 megapixels respectively - check it out! PMA: Epson printers added, DigitalFocus and much more coming! 11:04 EST - Over on the PMA 2001 event page, our Sunday coverage begins with Epson's latest printers at the DigitalFocus 2001 press event last night, with much more from the event coming during the day. We'll also be reporting live from the PMA show floor as the show opens today, with numerous new cameras that weren't even on show last night at DigitalFocus will be appearing! We took the site down briefly in the early hours of this morning for an upgrade that will hopefully alleviate some of the problems we've been having, but a reminder - during the show our server is incredibly busy. We don't have the exact data yet, but yesterday and the day before are already looking like possibly our busiest ever! With that in mind, please help your fellow readers, and do try and hold off for a few days before you download all the latest sample images from our new Sony reviews (posted a couple of days ago). Thanks! Saturday, February 10, 2001 Newsflash: Exclusive details and pics on Kyocera's FineCam S3! 19:03 EST - Kyocera will tomorrow unveil at PMA 2001 in Orlando Florida their latest digital camera, the FineCam S3 - and we have exclusive pictures! Hop on over to the event page for the full story! More on our server problems... 18:03 EST - An update on our off-and-on server problems... It seems that the cause is simply that our server has been under a very heavy load (quite understandeable, what with PMA beginning tomorrow!) - we've taken some steps to try and ease the strain, but we'd like to ask readers to help as well. We've posted several new reviews over the last couple of days, and it seems one thing that may be the cause of the intermittent problems is the fact that a vast number of sample images from the new cameras are being downloaded. Hence, we'd like to ask that readers help us out by not downloading every single sample image for the new cameras, at least not all at once. Thanks! ;) Yikes - what a day for server problems! 14:48 EST - Just a quick note from PMA to let everybody know that we seem to be experiencing some intermittent problems with our server... If pages seem to be loading very slowly, we apologize - hang in there and the pages do seem to load in eventually. We're working as hard as possible to get this issue fixed, so we can get back to the equally important job of hunting out the latest news for you! Read it here first - new Casio digicam! (UPDATED) 14:35 EST - Just a note to let readers know we've just released a newsflash over on the PMA 2001 event page - the web's first news of a new digicam from Casio, along with exclusive photos of the camera! Hop on over to find out more! PMA event pages go live! 12:26 EST - We've just added our PMA 2001 event pages to the site... Click on the source link below to see our PMA news live from the show floor, starting with our news on Sony's new digital camera announcements! Source: Imaging Resource PMA 2001 Event pages Friday, February 9, 2001 Full review of Sony DSC-S75 posted! 17:56 EST - Wow, a big day for Sony, and we've got all the details! Sony announced a total of no less than SIX new cameras this afternoon, and we have reviews of several of them! The first is a nifty new 3.34 megapixel, updating their already-impressive DSC-S70. Lots of improvements, at a drastically low price! Today sees a bevy of new Sony product announcements, and we're happy to be able to bring you full reviews of two of the most interesting. (As well as a "first look" review of another pair.) ... (More) Full review of Sony MVC-FD97 posted! 17:53 EST - Trick questions: What's the best feature of Mavica digicams? - They store their images on standard floppy disks. What's the worst feature of Mavicas? - They store their images on standard floppy disks. ;-) The big news in the Mavica camp is that Sony's added "Memory Stick Direct" slots to two new models. We tested one. It really IS big news! For those of you wondering where Sony's Mavica line would be going, as file sizes continue to grow and floppy space doesn't, here's the answer: The 2.1 megapixel Sony MVC-FD97 sports Not only the trademark... (More) "First Look" review of Sony DSC-P30/P50 posted! 17:43 EST - Sony's price-and-features attack on the digicam market extends to the "low" end, in the form of two new Cybershots. Not earth-shaking prices, but very strong value for the dollar, perfect for serious users wanting good image quality and rich features at affordable prices. Not bargain basement, but serious competition with good value in the crucial "mid market" for digicams... Phew! "Sony Day" at the Imaging Resource, for sure! The last item today is a quick peek at a pair of cameras at the low end of Sony's latest round of announcements. The new DSC-P30 (1.3 megapixels)... (More) Yamada posts FinePix 6800Z, 4700Z, Oly-E10 comparison! 16:10 EST - Japanese digital imaging guru Yamada Kumio posts comparison photos from 3 high-end consumer digicams... Mike's now in Orlando, Florida for the PMA show, and back online. Having checked a few other sites to see what was new, I spotted an interesting item on Yamada Kumio's digitalcamera.gr.jp website. No... (More) Thursday, February 8, 2001 Off to PMA! 16:41 EST - With PMA starting on Sunday, Mike is getting ready to leave (with a 4AM start tomorrow to catch my flight - yikes!)... I'm going to be out of email contact for the rest of the evening and probably most of tomorrow too, so please hold any non-urgent email until then! Look for our PMA event page to appear some time tomorrow or Saturday, with live reports from the show on all the latest in digital imaging! :) Japanese retailer Muji announces own-brand digicam! 4:20 EST - Trendy retailer Mujirushi Ryohin (Muji), founded in the early 1980s by Japanese retail giant Seiyu, has announced its first digital camera according to the digitalcamera.gr.jp website. The Mujirushi-Ryohin digital camera features a 350,000 pixel 1/3" CMOS image sensor that gives a file size of 640 x 480 pixels, along with built-in memory for storing up to 30 photos. The lens used is a fixed focus type,... (More) Full Review of Canon PowerShot Pro90IS Posted! 15:47 EST - Great stuff! A 10x optically-stabilized zoom lens, 2.6 megapixel sensor, MicroDrive compatibility, tilt/swivel LCD, flash hot shoe, and burly LiIon battery. Oh yeah, the pictures look great too!... We've completed our review of the excellent Canon PowerShot Pro90IS digicam, and have the results posted. The "IS" in the name stands for "image stablilizer", as the camera sports a... (More) A third round of FinePix 6800Z samples from Yamada! 15:16 EST - PC Watch adds a third round of sample photos from FujiFilm's recently announced FinePix 6800 Zoom digital camera. The Japanese PC Watch website has today posted 20 more sample photos from Fuji's upcoming FinePix 6800 Zoom digital camera. Following on from the two previous postings Saturday of last week, and yesterday,... (More) PhotoAccess announces 'SNAP' in-store system! 11:51 EST - Online photofinisher announces its new software solution for in-store digital camera photofinishing, to be shown at PMA... PhotoAccess.com Corp. has announced its new 'SNAP' (Software for Network Albuming at Photo-counters) solution, targeted at retail photo stores. SNAP allows customers to upload their digital photos from... (More) Win an Olympus D-460 Zoom digital camera! 11:29 EST - Well-known travel website offers Olympus' D-460 Zoom digital cameras as a prize in their monthly travel photo contest... Frommers.com, the web site of American travel magazine 'Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel', has announced a themed monthly photo contest featuring Olympus' D-460 Zoom digital camera as a grand prize. The... (More) Sanyo offers IDC-1000Z registration incentive! 10:49 EST - Sanyo Japan offers teleconverter lenses to 100 Japanese customers registering their IDC-1000Z digital camera... Our friends over at oani.net, who always seem to be in touch with the latest Sanyo news, today emailed us to point out an interesting promotion for Japanese buyers of Sanyo's IDC-1000Z digital camera.... (More) Wednesday, February 7, 2001 PhotoWorks to purchase ememories.com 23:44 EST - PhotoWorks announces plan to purchase ememories website... PhotoWorks Inc. has announced an agreement to acquire the ememories.com Web Site from ememories, Inc. The transaction is expected to close within 60 days, the company notes. Further details have not been... (More) Site News: MAJOR overhaul of the News page! 15:42 EST - In response to the ever-increasing flow of news, and the fact that our news archives are now getting into the region of 1/2 a megabyte of text each month, we've completely overhauled our news system just in time for PMA! The main change is that we now post a summary of each news item on the news page, and provide the full news item on its own separate page. This change is designed to keep load times down, and ensure that you're only spending time downloading the items you want to read... Another big change is that, as well as linking to the source of our news items, we are now storing the original press releases alongside each item where appropriate. This alleviates a problem we've long faced - that sites such as Yahoo! BizWire and the like only archive press releases for a short period of time. We've also updated our 'My Netscape' channel, which now lists article summaries under each news headline... We've been running the new system alongside the old one in a private test for the last week or so, and think we've ironed out the majority of the problems... If any bugs do creep in, please let us know! We also welcome feedback on the new design, and have more changes on the way... We're planning to provide 'previous/next news item' links on the individual items, so that you won't have to return to the news index between items, and are also working on a complete revamp of the news forum software to work with our new system, amongst other changes on the way! Second round of FinePix 6800Z samples online! 13:25 EST - Japanese website PC Watch posts a further 21 Fuji FinePix 6800Z samples, adding to the 7 previously posted... We reported last Saturday on the first sample images posted from Fuji's recently announced FinePix 6800 Zoom digital camera by Yamada Kumio of the PC Watch website, in our news item entitled 'First Fuji... (More) Canon announces EOS D30 US firmware upgrade! 00:10 EST - Canon announces a fix to the EOS D30 "Auto Power Off" problem for American users... Canon USA has added a popup window to its EOS D30 web page announcing that the company has arranged a program to upgrade firmware of certain cameras which have problems with the Auto Power Off feature,... (More) Tuesday, February 6, 2001 Olympus announces P-400 Business Edition! 2:27 EST - Olympus America Inc.'s Consumer Products Group has today announced a 'Business Edition' of its P-400 dye sublimation printer, which we recently reviewed here at the Imaging Resource. Billed as a 'complete photo printing solution for the fast paced work environment', the P-400 Business Edition combines the P-400 printer with photo paper and ink cartridges to print 150 full-size (A4) sheets, and a One... (More) First Nikon D1X sample photo published! 11:14 EST - Our Japanese friend Yamada Kumio has published the first sample image we've seen from Nikon's D1X on his digitalcamera.gr.jp website - well, almost anyway! The image (which is listed on the site's main page on the 5th Feb) gives an idea of what the camera can do, but it is *not* straight out of the camera - it is instead a 180dpi scan of a print from the camera. Bear in mind that this process will have caused some loss in image quality, and that we also don't know how the image has been manipulated before being printed... Thanks to digitalcamera.gr.jp / Yamada Kumio for this item! Monday, February 5, 2001 Toshiba PDR-M11, PDR-M21 specifications revealed! 18:58 EST - Read it here first - we've done a little digging and bring you full (preliminary) specifications of the two new Toshiba cameras announced earlier today... Earlier today, Toshiba announced that it will be showing four new cameras at the PMA show in Orlando FL next week (see our previous item 'Toshiba announces PDR-M11, -M21 and -M61 digicams!'). The PDR-M65... (More) Updated! Nikon D1X/H - Prices, Further Details! 5:45 EST - As mentioned in our earlier coverage of the "leaks" in the Nikon D1X/H announcement, we were under NDA on the details of those cameras, so couldn’t comment on the information floating around. As it turns out, the leaked specs were accurate (no surprise, since it was Nikon France who inadvertently first let them out), but some details were missing. The first key detail was the US pricing:... (More) Imerge sees digicam sales growth slowing! 13:43 EST - Market research company Imerge Consulting finds that digicam sales growth slowed in 2000... A new consumer digital camera report from Imerge Consulting Group LLC finds that U.S. consumer digital camera sales growth slowed from 79.3% unit growth in 1999 to 51.4% in 2000 with 3.8 million in units... (More) Toshiba announces PDR-M11, -M21 and -M61 digicams! 1:28 EST - Toshiba Imaging Systems today announced that it would unveil a new line of digital cameras at the Photo Marketing Association trade show on February 11, 2001 at the Orlando Convention Center. Toshiba, which took top honors at last year�s DIMA Digital Camera Shoot-Out at PMA with its PDR-M5 two-megapixel model, will be introducing four new cameras at the show. The company notes that, as a special... (More) Nikon officially announces D1X and D1H digital cameras! (UPDATED) 1:06 EST - Nikon will today announce its D1X and D1H digital cameras, rumors of which first surfaced last week after unintentional leaks in France and Australia. Specifications of both cameras follow: Nikon D1X Type of camera Lens-interchangeable digital SLR camera CCD 23.7 x 15.6mm RGB CCD; ... (More) Sunday, February 4, 2001 Ricoh releases RDC-i700 firmware, acknowledges award! 14:02 EST - Japanese electronics manufacturer releases new firmware for the RDC-i700 'Internet Ready' digital camera, and acknowledges Time magazine's 'Invention of the Year 2000' award... Ricoh Japan has announced a new release of firmware along with new Windows software for its RDC-i700 digital camera. The Windows software has been updated to version 2.24, which works under Microsoft's... (More) Saturday, February 3, 2001 First Fuji FinePix 6800 Zoom samples posted! 20:08 EST - Japanese web site PC Watch delivers the first sample photos from Fuji's recently announced FinePix 6800 Zoom digital camera that we've seen... PC Watch's Yamada Kumio has posted 7 images taken with a development version of the 3.3 megapixel FinePix 6800 Zoom. As is usual with photos from development cameras, bear in mind that image quality may... (More) Friday, February 2, 2001 More on EOS D30 firmware, and Canon Microdrive statement! 20:35 EST - Canon provides more details on its Japanese EOS D30 upgrade, and issues a statement on use of IBM's Microdrive with its PowerShot and EOS Digital cameras... Canon Japan has posted further information on its firmware update program to resolve problems users have been experiencing with the 'Auto Power Off' feature of the camera, our friends at digitalcamera.gr.jp... (More) Full specifications for D1X and D1H posted! 18:23 EST - French website posts full specifications of the D1X and D1H, that were earlier accidentally posted early by Nikon's Australian distributor... We somehow knew we'd be returning to this story a little sooner than Monday... Earlier today, we posted that news of two upcoming cameras had been broken after a French website called Chasseur d'Images... (More) megapixel.net February 2001 edition now online! 15:46 EST - megapixel.net posts February 2001 edition; 4 new camera reviews, 2 new articles and lots of beautiful photography! The February 2001 edition of the bilingual megapixel.net website is now online... Reviews this month include the Canon EOS D30, Sony DSC-F505V, Kodak DC 5000 and Fujifilm FinePix 40i digital cameras. There's... (More) Info on two new Nikon digital SLRs leaked! (UPDATED) 12:40 EST - Information on two new cameras, Nikon's D1X and D1H, leaked by Chasseur d'Images and Nikon Australia distributor Maxwell! Camera manufacturer Nikon is, according to numerous web pages as detailed below, preparing to announce two new SLR digital cameras based on its existing D1 model at the PMA 2001 show in Orlando Florida.... (More) Thursday, February 1, 2001 Two new Fuji digicams - FinePix 4800Z, 6800Z! (UPDATED) 01:00 EST - Fuji announces two new digicams with SuperCCD imagers and some rather unusual features - cradles and the ability to double as webcams! Fuji Photo Film USA has today announced two new digital cameras based on the vertical form of its previous 700 series cameras, and styled by F.A. Porsche. The FinePix 6800 Zoom and FinePix 4800 Zoom both... (More) And then there were three - FinePix 2300 announced! (UPDATED) 01:00 EST - Adding on to its previous announcement of two new FinePix digicams, Fuji unveils a third - this time a 2.1 megapixel fixed focal length model! Following on from Fuji Photo Film USA's announcement of the FinePix 4800 Zoom and 6800 Zoom, the company has added one more model to the day's announcements. Announced separately from the previous cameras,... (More) Return to: Current News Archive Index