Photography

In a decision inauspicious for XQD, SanDisk is skipping over the new memory card format for high-end cameras.

"At this time, SanDisk has chosen not to productize the XQD format," SanDisk spokeswoman Wendy Vlieks told CNET News late yesterday.

The ringing non-endorsement is particularly notable since SanDisk helped create the format in the first place.

The comment also means that XQD--developed by the CompactFlash Association (CFA) as a successor to CF cards--currently lacks support from the two top-tier flash card makers. The other, Lexar, was noncommittal about XQD last week: "As a leading CFA member, Lexar has … Read more

It's flash card season at CES (especially given the shutterbug boost by the conjoined Photo Marketing Association show), and SanDisk has a contribution with high-capacity mid-range SDXC cards.

The two SanDisk Extreme models, 64GB and 128GB, can transfer data at 45MBps. That's less than half the speed of the company's top-end Extreme Pro line of SD cards at 95MBps, but it should be good enough for many photographers and videographers.

The high capacity comes with a price premium--prices for the cards are $200 and $400--but could be useful for those shooting lots of video or traveling away … Read more

Adobe Systems has responded to complaints about its Creative Suite upgrade prices with a new option for customers who bought earlier versions of the software.

The company, which plans to release its CS6 software bundles in the first half of 2012, had offered upgrades only to those who'd bought CS5 or CS5.5. That raised a ruckus, especially after Scott Kelby, president of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, griped about the upgrade pricing in an open letter.

Adobe's now changed course with an upgrade offer for CS3 and CS4 users, too. That offer, though not yet detailed, … Read more

Adobe Carousel, the lightweight app for Macs, iPhones, and iPads that lets people edit photos and share them with contacts, has been renamed Adobe Revel.

Adobe announced the change today on its Photoshop blog, hinting that the new name better represents broader plans the company has in store:

Revel means to take great pleasure or delight...and that's what we hope to do in the future as we continue to add more functionality and fun to the app. In the future, you can expect we will also be able to offer additional photography solutions on the newly named Adobe … Read more

Panasonic announced four converters at CES to make its Lumix G series lenses photograph subjects that are farther, closer, and wider.

The four converters increase the flexibility of the lenses--and of Panasonic's Lumix G series of Micro Four Thirds. These cameras, one of the early entrants and now strong players in the interchangeable lens camera (ILC) market, forsake SLRs' reflex mirrors for a smaller design. So far even relatively strong ILC companies like Panasonic can't match the range of lenses available to SLR leaders Canon and Nikon.

Enter the converters, which will ship sometime in 2012 for as-yet … Read more

No longer is video such a second-class citizen with Adobe Systems' release of the first beta version of Photoshop Lightroom 4.

Today's Lightroom 3 understands videos in the same way a typical baseball fan understands cricket: poorly. Lightroom 4 advances several steps with video, but stops well short of taking over as a full-fledged video editor.

The new beta, downloadable from Adobe Labs, also has a host of other features, according to Tom Hogarty, principal program manager for the software:

• New editing controls to better balance changes to highlights and shadows. • The ability to geotag photos by using a … Read more

Lexar announced a gaggle of new SD memory cards at CES today, with 400X and 600X data-transfer speeds to keep up with professionals' needs higher resolution videos and photos.

The SDHC and SDXC cards use the UHS-I interface for faster transfer speeds (SDXC is a newer version of the SD standard that extends to higher memory capacities.) Most of them will arrive in February, but Lexar is particularly chuffed about a 400X 128GB SDXC card due in April that the company boasts will be the first at that capacity using UHS-I.

For those who prefer absolutes, 400X translates to 60MBps … Read more

Corel, a longtime maker of image-editing software, has acquired Bibble Labs and will introduce new software at CES based on Bibble's technology for processing raw photos from higher-end cameras.

Bibble President Jeff Stephens announced the acquisition and new software plan in a blog post Friday. Bibble Labs' latest product, Bibble 5.2.3, will be the last, and Stephens now is leading development of the new photo "workflow" software at Corel, he added.

Further details of the software aren't yet clear, but it sounds an awful lot like Adobe Systems' Lightroom and Apple's Aperture. Both … Read more

Just in time for the flagship Nikon D4 SLR, Sony has announced an XQD flash memory card--the first example of a new format developed with better speed and capacity than its CompactFlash predecessor.

Most devices these days use smaller SD Card technology, but high-end SLR cameras from Canon, Nikon, and Sony still keep CompactFlash alive for performance and capacity reasons. The new XQD format follows in the same direction, trying to keep ahead of SD by borrowing the PCI Express (PCIe) high-speed serial communications link interface from computers.

Sony announced two models of the card, the 16GB QD-H16 card for $… Read more