photokina 2010

COLOGNE, Germany--For those who find Hasselblad's 60-megapixel H4D-60 camera a little too confining, the company plans to sell a 200-megapixel model in the first quarter of 2011.

The Copenhagen-based medium-format camera maker announced the product today at the Photokina imaging show here. Interestingly, it uses the same camera body as its current H4D-50MS, which will be upgradable, said Peter Stig-Nielsen, director of product development.

However, even in the rarefied air of the medium-format market, where image sensors are very large and very expensive, the 200-megapixel "extended multishot" technology won't appeal to everyone: each shot will take about 30 seconds to capture, restricting the camera to stationary subjects such as cars, watches, and jewelry.

That's because of the design of the Hasselblad multishot-series cameras such as the H4D-50MS. The current model uses tiny piezoelectric motors to shift the sensor a very small amount to combine two shots into one higher-quality image.

"We are now building it into a real product that's going to hit the market in the first quarter of next year," Stig-Nielsen said. "It is going to be an extension of the current H4D-50 multishot."

Most digital cameras capture color with a checkerboard of color filters called a Bayer pattern over image sensor pixels; each pixel captures only red, green, or blue color information. The multishot technology shifts the sensor so the same pixel can capture each of the colors, ridding the camera of the need to mathematically infer the missing values of red, green, and blue. … Read more

COLOGNE, Germany--Camera makers must wake up to the competitive threat of mobile phones by embracing networking technology or face unpleasant consequences as photography habits shift profoundly.

That was the warning from Ed Lee, an InfoTrends analyst speaking to a photo industry audience at this week's Photokina imaging show here. Change has been unceasing in recent years, with the arrival of digital photography paving the way for electronics manufacturers to join traditional camera companies. Now, camera makers face new disruption.

"The digital camera vendors need to be much more aggressive about getting their cameras connected," Lee said. "Otherwise, I can see a world where the mobile phone will be king and the digital camera will be relegated to just taking pictures. I don't think that's a world the camera vendors want to see happen."

Fundamentally, mobile phones and social networking sites such as Facebook have transformed the practice and purpose of photography so it's less about preserving memories and more about sharing what's happening.

"Smartphones allow people to capture an image and share it with an online site or a social network. You're allowing your friends and family to be in the moment with you as the event is still going on," Lee said.

Indeed, smartphones are advancing rapidly. Apple's iPhone, a standout product when it comes to Internet connectivity, rapidly ascended the Flickr ranks of most-used cameras because it makes sharing images easy. With Android and other operating systems, such smartphones are spreading rapidly. At the same time, their cameras' quality is steadily improving with higher resolution, built-in flashes, and in the case of the iPhone 4, a new HDR mode for high-dynamic range shots. … Read more

COLOGNE, Germany--Panasonic, perhaps the company with the most aggressive effort to push the transition to 3D technology, added another arrow to its quiver today in the form of a new camera lens.

The company debuted its first 3D-capable videocamera earlier this month at the IFA trade show, and now it's matched that move with a $250 still camera lens that can be attached to its Lumix G series of Micro Four Thirds cameras.

"The next step is to record your own memories of friends and families in 3D," said Mamoru Yoshida, senior vice president of Panasonic's AVC networks group, speaking at a press conference at the Photokina show here. … Read more

COLOGNE, Germany--Sony's two translucent-mirror cameras are going to get a big brother, an advanced model geared for enthusiasts, the electronics giant said Tuesday.

The Sony Alpha 33 and 55 arrived earlier this year sporting an SLR look but lacking a mirror that flips out of the way when it's time for the photo to be taken and the light to go to the sensor rather than the viewfinder. Instead, these models use a translucent mirror that sends most of the light to the sensor but shares some with an autofocus subsystem. Sony's SLT (single-lens translucent) cameras use an electronic viewfinder; there's no optical viewfinder.

One result of the SLT designs is a camera that can shoot 10 frames per second with autofocus continuously engaged and that can use autofocus even when shooting video. Another result is demand for a55 and a33 that pushed back until 2011 availability of Sony's A560, which uses the same image sensor.

So it's probably no surprise that Sony is pushing ahead with further models. … Read more

Owners of the video-optimized Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1 have been hacking away at it for months, trying to get higher bit rates out of the poor thing--the latest hack claims 86 megabits per second. (To recap, the higher the data bit rate is at a given resolution and frame rate, the better the video quality; it's a measure of compression.) Now they get to start all over again for the GH2, which doesn't offer astronomical bit rates, a limitation of its AVCHD format, but does offer video and still shooters a few other sought-after enhancements.

Most important, the GH2 incorporates a new sensor, which drives at a higher frame rate--it can natively output 60p vs. 24p. That, and a bump to the AVCHD maximum bit rate of 24 megabits per second, are almost guaranteed to deliver improved results over the GH1; that's equivalent to current AVCHD-based prosumer camcorders. While the GH1 had a flip-and-twist LCD, the GH2's is a touch screen, which has the potential to make rack focus doable for the nonvideographer, and theoretically offers improved color rendering, especially in the reds and blues. The camera now provides a microphone levels meter and a much-demanded HDMI connector. Panasonic also claims to have improved wobble suppression during full-time autofocus, and added the capability to record specifically for slower or faster playback. And for the consumer, Intelligent Auto mode now works in video capture.

For still shooters, Panasonic claims it has the best image quality of the G series; it uses the new noise reduction algorithms as the LX5. The company has also worked on speed, saying its autofocus is twice as fast as its predecessor, beating out some of the fast phase-detection systems in some popular dSLRs (it uses three image processors compared to 2 in the GH1). The EVF is slightly higher resolution, but the image-processing engine performs some aberration correction in the viewfinder; because of the faster sensor, the viewfinder should refresh faster as well.

Here's the current field:… Read more

COLOGNE, Germany--Sigma, the Japanese company best known for its lenses, announced an overhauled effort yesterday to expand to camera making as well with an SLR called the SD1 due to ship in February.

Like Sigma's current SLR, the SD15, the SD1 has at its heart a Foveon image sensor, an unusual design that departs significantly from prevailing industry practice with a design that captures red, green, and blue at each pixel site rather than just one of the three colors.

The Foveon sensor made Sigma's SD line stand out from the crowd--but often not in a good way. Some critics didn't like its images, Foveon delays set back Sigma products such as its SLRs and its DP1 compact camera that used it, and the cameras didn't live up to their revolutionary promise. In 2008, Sigma acquired Foveon.

Now Sigma is trying again with a larger, much higher-resolution sensor. It's awkward to compare megapixel ratings with Foveon and conventional Bayer-pattern sensors, because the latter must interpolate the missing red, green, and blue data for each pixel through a process called demosaicing, while the Foveon chips capture all that data. But what's clear is the new SD1 will be much more competitive.

Specifically, where the SD14 had a 4.6-megapixel sensor, the SD1 will have a 15.3-megapixel sensor, a "giant technological leap," said Chief Operating Officer Kazuto Yamaki at a press meeting at the Photokina show here.

He promised the 4,800x3,200-pixel sensor would have the superior color resolution and color sharpness and that its black-and-white resolution--a sore point for earlier Foveon designs--would be vastly improved, rising to the equivalent of a 30-megapixel sensor with a conventional Bayer pattern color filter array.

"It indicates a new beginning for Sigma cameras and Foveon sensors," Yamaki said. … Read more

Lensbaby made a name for itself by providing selective-focus lenses and adapters for various dSLR mounts. For the uninitiated, the system allows you to use its various special-effects lenses, such Double Glass, Single Glass, Plastic, and Pinhole, in a special adapter that tilts in order to produce standard or odd depth-of-field effects. And it's not surprising that the company decided to branch out into the new interchangeable-lens (ILC) camera systems, starting with a Micro Four Thirds (MFT) mount. What is surprising is that the company's MFT debut includes a gratifying double bonus: it split the Composer into two … Read more

COLOGNE, Germany--Canon, adapting to the high-end video revolution its SLRs are helping to fuel, plans changes to its cameras and lenses to make them friendlier in cinema hands.

The company already announced that two of the company's newest lenses, Canon's updated professional 300mm and 400mm F2.8 models, are equipped with a mechanism to permit smooth, steady, motorized focus changes. And at the Photokina show here, the company said further adaptations are coming. Specifically, the camera maker is working on an ability to set specific focus points the lens can move between.

That sort of feature is suited to the cinematographer crowd. Today, even with the new lenses, they must physically mark two focus points and manually change focus until they reach their desired spot.

However, the feature will require updated camera bodies to work, said Mike Burnhill, a Canon Europe representative here. … Read more

When Pentax briefed me on the K-5, its latest midrange dSLR--midrange for the market as a whole, but at the top of Pentax's food chain--its PR spokeswoman downplayed the announcement. "It's just an updated version of the K-7" was the gist of her pitch.

Then the team began to detail the changes: a beefed-up autofocus system, a switch to a Sony CMOS sensor with on-chip noise reduction, an increase of 2fps in continuous shooting, 1080p video capture. I pointed out that these were nontrivial changes, and that just because the body was fundamentally the same as the K-7--same weather sealing and magnesium-alloy build--didn't mean that people wouldn't recognize the importance of the enhancements.

It's not the replacement for the K-7 that many were expecting, instead filling out Pentax's lineup a price class up. Here's the company's current dSLR line:… Read more