December 2002 news and reviews

Merry Christmas to all our readers, supporters, sponsors and fellow digital camera site webmasters. I hope you've all treated yourselves with lots of digital photography related goodies. December 25th also marks our fourth anniversary. Four years on and I'm happy to report the popularity of digital photography and dpreview.com continues to grow. Once more, Merry Christmas everyone!

Sigma Japan has posted a recall notice for the 'battery case' (the cartridge which slides into the base of the camera) for cameras with a serial number between 1000251 and 1000459. This is to correct a fault where the amount of remaining power is incorrectly reported when using NiMH batteries, this problem does not occur with Lithium CR-V3 type batteries. The notice states that only the battery case need be returned and new cases will be supplied in return. It's not clear yet if this range of serial numbers affects any cameras outside of Japan.

Just posted! Our full in-depth review of Canon's latest and greatest digital SLR. The EOS-1Ds has an eleven megapixel full 35 mm frame CMOS sensor.The 1Ds is heavily based on the excellent EOS-1D D-SLR with that superb environmentally sealed magnesium body, 45-point AF, selectable colour space, Firewire connectivity, FAT32 support for CF cards greater than 2 GB and RAW+JPEG image output (as well as many other features). Also new to the 1Ds is control of personal functions from the camera menu. The EOS-1Ds has a continuous shooting capability of 3 frames per second for up to 10 frames. Read our review to see how the 1Ds performed in our tests.

Sony US has contacted us with an official statement on the CNET story posted yesterday. It reads: "The information presented on CNET's News.com regarding new Memory Stick Pro media has several inaccuracies, which seem based on rumors and conjecture. We urge you and your readers to wait for the official Sony press release." This obviously confirms that there was something to the CNET story but that the entire truth isn't yet available. We know from several sources that there'll be some news at CES next month so my suggestion is that everyone enjoy the Christmas holidays, take lots of digital photos and look forward to new products in 2003.

CNET's News.Com is currently running an article in which they hint that a new Memory Stick standard called 'Memory Stick Pro' will be announced at CES next month. This new standard is supposed to be based on a totally new architecture which will not only increase capacity (256 MB, 512 MB and 1 GB) but also improve performance (write speed). Sony are at this stage not commenting although it's expected that the new Memory Stick Pro cards will not work in existing Sony digital cameras, this could indeed be bad news for current owners. This news seems to be confirmed by the fact that Sony has removed the Memory Stick roadmap from the memorystick.org page, replaced with the notice "Sorry, Road map is now updating..."

Kodak Professional has posted a Q&A page on the DCS-14n. On this page they explain that they will not be shipping the DCS-14n in December as originally planned, instead the camera will be released 'mid January 2003'. The reason behind this delay is described as "...the initial user experience is critical to its success. Furthermore, we know that professional photographers rely on only the highest image quality to showcase their creativity and achieve their business goals. This brief, one-month extension will help Kodak ensure optimal customer satisfaction and "out of box" product performance for our valued customers. "

Exclusive: Today we received test samples of the largest capacity Compact Flash cards currently available. Pretec recently announced 1.5, 2.0 and 3.0 GB Type II CF cards, we have the 1.5 and 3.0 GB for testing. The 1.5 GB can be used in almost any digital camera that supports CF Type II, the 3.0 GB requires a digital camera which supports FAT32 (in our case we tested it with Canon's EOS-1Ds). Performance was up there with some of our faster cards and the 3 GB card appeared to work without any problems on Canon's latest D-SLR. UPDATE: Also works with Kodak Pro Back, Kodak DCS 14n, Canon PowerShot G2 and PowerShot G3.

Canon announced the new PowerShot G3 at Photokina this year, it builds on the PowerShot 'G' platform by increasing the optical zoom to four times, adding a built-in ND filter, a new control dial, power dial, orientation sensor, one-button RAW creation and more. The G2 was one of the most popular digital cameras here on dpreview, you'll have to dive into our review to discover if we think the G3 is capable of taking that crown.

Pentax Japan has posted updated firmware, version 1.11, for their Optio 330GS, we're currently unsure as to whether this can be loaded onto European or US cameras. It is of interest because it appears to provide direct printing over USB, and Pentax were not part of the Direct Print Standard announced at the weekend.

UPDATE: Today, 3rd December Canon USA has added the PowerShot S45 to PowerShot.com, further confirming that this model is now official in the USA. This comes after our first news article that Amazon.Com were listing the S45 and that our own affiliate, State Street Direct had been shipping S45's for around a week. Anyone interested in this camera shouldn't miss our review (as it's the only one available at the moment). Press release inside.

0900 2/Dec TOKYO: Six leading digital imaging companies have today announced a new direct printing standard for the connection of digital cameras and photo printers. With DPS you will be able to connect a compatible digital camera directly to a compatible photo printer (initially via PTP USB) and initiate prints directly from the camera - no need for a PC. This new standard was initially developed by Canon, HP, Epson and Sony. Fujifilm and Olympus joined discussions later and a collective specification has been finalized.