Compact cameras

Olympus' compact E-P1: A breath of fresh air

The Olympus E-P1 camera, a hybrid designed to combine advantages of both compact cameras and SLRs, is a welcome arrival in a digital camera market struggling to find new directions.

The small and light camera that debuted Tuesday features interchangeable lenses and relatively large sensor that endow SLRs with flexibility and higher image quality, but it's also got a small body of a compact camera. It has the potential to appeal to SLR owners who want something smaller and to compact camera owners who want something better, if Olympus can convince people to surmount a significant obstacle, price.

Like most hybrids--gaming laptops, for example, or bicycles with aspects of both road bikes and mountain bikes--the E-P1 sacrifices specialization for versatility. But the digital camera market is saturated, and the E-P1 is a promising member of a newer camera breed.

There are a handful of competitors with similar aspirations. Canon's G10, the newest in its G series of high-end compact cameras, is one example. Nikon's GPS-enabled P6000 is another, though, like the G10, it doesn't have an interchangeable lens. And Panasonic's G1 and GH1, which employ the same Micro Four Thirds lens and sensor standard as the E-P1, are probably closest.

The biggest knock against these cameras is price. Their relatively large sensors--especially those in the Micro Four Thirds cameras--cost a lot to manufacture, and fast electronics and high complexity just make things worse. Few people are willing to spend more than $300 on a camera, much less the hybrid cameras.

Brace yourself for some sticker shock.… Read more

Sony, Zeiss renew lens partnership

Carl Zeiss' camera lens division renewed a partnership with Sony for another five years, the companies announced Wednesday.

The partnership began in 1996 with a Sony camcorder using a Zeiss lens, then extended to compact cameras. More recently, with Sony's entry into the SLR market, Zeiss-branded lenses are available on those high-end cameras, too.

Another electronics giant making its way into the camera market, Panasonic, has adopted a similar strategy with another German camera company renowned for its engineering, Leica.

Study: Camera market slump to hit SLRs, too

Thus far, SLR camera sales have been a bright spot in the camera market, but analyst firm IDC expects the recession will hit the higher-end models, too.

Worldwide camera shipments are expected to drop 6 percent to 129 million units in 2009. Single-lens reflex (SLR) shipments won't be hit as hard, but still will drop 5 percent to 9.2 million units, according to an IDC forecast released Monday.

"Countries will emerge from the global recession in mid-2010, starting with the U.S. However, unemployment will lag behind the recovery, dampening consumer spending for the next two years, … Read more

Q&A: Canon helps usher in the video SLR era

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.

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

Olympus: 12 megapixels is enough for most folks

A correction has been made to this story. See below for details.

LAS VEGAS--Olympus has declared an end to the megapixel race.

"Twelve megapixels is, I think, enough for covering most applications most customers need," said Akira Watanabe, manager of Olympus Imaging's SLR planning department, in an interview here at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA). "We have no intention to compete in the megapixel wars for E-System," Olympus' line of SLR cameras, he said.

Instead, Olympus will focus on other characteristics such as dynamic range, color reproduction, and a better ISO range for low-light shooting, he said.

Increasing the number of megapixels on cameras is an easy selling point for camera makers, in part because it's a simple concept for people to understand. Even though having more megapixels can enable larger prints and enlargement of subject matter through cropping, adding megapixels comes with some drawbacks.

For one thing, smaller pixels can mean more noisy speckles at the pixel level and can reduce the dynamic range, so brighter areas wash out and darker areas become swaths of black. For another, images take more room on memory cards, hard drives, and Web servers, and cameras need more powerful image processors to handle them. And yesteryear's cameras already had plenty of pixels for making 8x10-inch prints, a size few people exceed. … Read more

Analysts see bright spots in dark photo market

LAS VEGAS--The bad economy has hurt the photography business, but there are a few areas of growth amid the gloom.

Among the bright spots are digital SLR cameras, photo books, memory-keeping moms, and Web sites adapted for mobile phone use., concluded InfoTrends analysts sharing research results at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show here Wednesday.

Overall, though, the mood is grim.

"It sure feels different at this year's PMA. There's not so much booth space, not so much traffic. The energy level is down. This recession feels different from back in '01 (which was) somewhat contained to the tech sector," said InfoTrends President Jeff Hayes. "Now it has become an issue of a consumer confidence crisis and has become a lot more broadly based. The photo industry is feeling this." … Read more

Olympus high-end compact due by summer

LAS VEGAS--Olympus has set a ship date, albeit one with a lot of wiggle room, for its first high-end compact camera using the Micro Four Thirds technology.

The camera maker first showed a nonworking "concept model" of the camera at the Photokina show last September, and the same model is on display here at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) trade show. Now, though it sports a label, "launching this summer." … Read more

High-end ideas reshape compact-camera market

Compact-camera manufacturers have begun testing the waters with a wealth of high-end features as they search for new ways to gain revenue, market share, and recognition.

In earlier digital photography days, a camera with an extra megapixel of resolution, face recognition, or image stabilization could stand apart from the herd. But now that herd has grown larger, most folks who'll buy a digital camera already have done so, the economy has put consumer spending on ice--and camera makers are making some bolder bets with high-end features.

Among them: Nikon's built-in GPS support to record where a photo was taken, Casio's high-speed video, and the Micro Four Thirds camera system from Panasonic and Olympus.

Premium features aren't an easy sell. They tend to appeal to market niches rather than the mainstream. Early implementations are often rough around the edges. And it's hard enough to convince people to buy a new camera, much less one with the higher price of premium features.

But winning those customers can have a good payoff with better profit margins. And that's critical in this day and age. Market research firm IDC expects that after years of growth, the shipments of digital cameras will decline in 2009.

"It's crowded, and it's getting crowdeder," IDC analyst Ron Glaz said of the digital camera market. "We're anticipating that with the slowdown in economy and disposable income, we'll start seeing consolidation of the vendors." In other words, even though something in the neighborhood of 38 million digital cameras are sold annually, some companies will throw in the towel. … Read more

Tests show ups and downs of Four Thirds cameras

Panasonic's $670 G1 and Olympus' $540 E-520 and $450 E-410--that show both the advantages and disadvantages of the Four Thirds standards the companies use.

The Four Thirds system governs image sensor sizes and the mounting mechanism for interchangeable lenses on the companies' SLR cameras, and the companies announced a new variation called Micro Four Thirds for smaller cameras that have SLRs' interchangeable lenses but not SLRs' "reflex" mirror, which directs light through an optical viewfinder before a shot is taken.

Four Thirds SLRs have a smaller sensor than lower-end SLRs from market leaders Nikon and Canon, which poses image quality challenges because there's less surface area to gather light. However, the sensor size is the same for Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds, which means that cameras using the latter have a much larger sensor than typical compact cameras have. … Read more

Apple software supports 5D Mark II camera

Apple has added support for raw photo files from Canon's vaunted if imperfect 5D Mark II to its Aperture 2 and iPhoto 08 software less than a week after rival Adobe did so with Lightroom.

The Digital Camera Raw Compatibility Update 2.4 also supports Canon's high-end compact, the PowerShot G10, and the Pentax K2000/K-m (presumably the white version, too), according to Apple. It requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or Mac OS X 10.5.3 or later.

Also supported is Leaf's higher-end digital photography hardware, the AFi-II 6, AFi-II 7, Aptus-II 6, and … Read more