January 2006 news and reviews

Kodak digital sales made up 54% of total revenue for 2005, marking the first time in the company’s history that digital revenue exceeded film. The news came on the same day that the company reported that total losses for this year could top $1 billion, after the fifth consecutive quarter of losses - due mainly to the restructuring that the shift to digital required. On the positive side, sales of Kodak digital cameras are up.

Pre-PMA 2006: The cherry on the top of a raft of new Olympus products today is the new E-330 (to be known in North America as the 'Olympus EVOLT E-330'). The E-330 has a similar appearance to the E-300 (although slightly narrower) and inherits many improvements seen on the E-500, however it has one major new feature. The seven-point-five megapixel E-330 is the first digital SLR designed to provide a full-time live view on its LCD monitor while still providing a usable through-the-lens viewfinder. It provides two live view modes, the first uses a small CCD sensor integrated into the viewfinder chamber, the second mode uses the main sensor but this blocks the viewfinder and disables auto-focus. We have a detailed hands-on preview of the E-330 available.

Fuji Photo Film USA is now offering the same hardware upgrade for the FinePix S3 Pro as originally launched in Japan in September 2005. The upgrade doubles the camera's internal memory capacity from 128MB to 256MB. This increase in buffer space means up to 8/16 RAW/JPEG frames (Wide dynamic range) or 17/33 RAW/JPEG frames (Standard dynamic range) in a single burst.

Panasonic has announced the successor to the popular 12x zoom lensed Lumix FZ5 in the shape of the DMC-FZ7. The main differences are the sensor (up from 5 megapixels to 6), larger 2.5-inch screen, ISO 1600 mode, longer battery life and the adoption of the 'joystick' control system first seen on the DMC-LX1. The FZ7 also offers a manual focus option, something missing from its predecessor.
UPDATE: we have an exclusive hands-on preview of the DMC-FZ7 after the link.

Sigma has announced a new 17-70mm F2.8-4.5 standard zoom lens designed specifically for APS-C sensor digital SLR cameras. The lens offers a minimum focusing distance of 20cm (7.9”) throughout the entire zoom range and a maximum magnification of 1:2.3 enabling extreme close-up photography.

It's been rumoured for weeks, leaked ahead of annoucement and now it's here; Samsung's first digital SLR, and the first fruit of the Samsung / Pentax tie-in announced in October. The GX-1S is a lightweight 6 megapixel camera with a 2.5-inch screen, ISO up to 3200 and a Pentax AF lens mount. Nothing we haven't seen before; the GX-1S is a rebadged Pentax *ist DS2 (there's some new Schneider lenses too, but they also appear to be straight re-badge jobs).

Pre-PMA 2006: We are proud to announce that the Photo Marketing Association have asked the Editor and Owner of dpreview, Phil Askey to be one of the judges of the 10th annual DIMA 2006 Digital Camera Shoot-Out which will take place on Saturday 25th Februrary, the day before the PMA show opens. The results of the shoot-out will be announced in a press conference the following morning. Judging will be made of prints viewed using a D50 Viewing System from GTI Graphic Technologies.

In 1969 Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, while working at Bell Laboratories, designed the first Charge Coupled Device (CCD), a working version was produced just a year later. The CCD as we know has become the bedrock the digital imaging revolution including digital photography and video. They have just been honored with the Charles Stark Draper Prize which is presented by the National Academy of Engineering, this includes a $500,000 award.

CES 2006: Panasonic has announced two new cameras to replace the budget DMC LZ1 and LZ2 models. Like their predecessors, the DMC-LZ3 (5.0 megapixels) and DMC-LZ5 (6.0 megapixels) sport image stabilized 6x optical zoom lenses. The new models have improved focus speed and power consumption, a low resolution ISO 1600 mode and large screens (LZ3: 2.0-inch, LZ5: 2.5-inch).

CES 2006: Pentax today announces its flagship model and the introduction of a new range, with the Optio A10. Most noteworthy is the proprietary Shake Reduction system that Pentax is has included on this 3x zoom camera, which uses two internal gyro sensors to detect the amount of camera shake and compensates by shifting the CCD (the same as Konica Minolta). The A10 also boasts 8 megapixels, a 2.5-inch LCD, 15 scene modes and a 640x480-pixel 30fps movie function.