March 2005 news and reviews

Just posted! Our full in-depth review of the latest digital SLR from Pentax, the budget priced *ist DS. The DS is quite similar to its bigger brother the original *ist D, both in size and design, however the DS does give up a few features and a little performance. Interestingly though the extra development time has afforded the DS some advantages over the *ist D and over some of its competition. See how the DS performed and how it compares in our review.

Adobe has announced the launch of a Photographers Directory, which will list professional photographers accessible from with Adobe's creative professional products. It will initially be available in North America, but over time will be extended to other countries. Adobe is working closely with the America Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) to produce the directory, which will be searchable by geographic location or by photographic specialty and will include portfolio imagery. Photographers who want to be a part of the directory should visit the ASMP website.

Toshiba has today announced a new lithium ion battery, which, it claims, can recharge 80% of the battery's energy capacity in just one minute, 60 times faster than the other lithium ion cells. It takes an unspecified 'few' more minutes for a complete recharge. The battery has a long life cycle, losing only 1% of its capacity after 1,000 cycles of discharging and recharging. Due to be launched next year, it will initially be used to power hybrid electric vehicles but could be used for smaller devices in future, such as mobile phones and digital cameras.

Olympus has today posted a new firmware update for its E-300 digital SLR. Coming just over a month since the last update version 1.2 adds four new 'professional like' features to the E-300, some of which existed on our pre-production E-300 but were removed in the final production model, now they're back! Features added: Shading compensation (lens shading / vignette correction), Anti-Shock (mirror-lock up to avoid vibration), Release Priority S (shutter priority over focus in S-AF mode), Release Priority C (shutter priority over focus in C-AF mode).

Over the last six years the dpreview.com discussion forums have grown to become the largest photographic community on the Internet and one of the largest forums of any subject. Today we crossed a pretty amazing milestone, the ten millionth message posted. We are fortunate to have a very high ratio of helpful and knowledgeable posts and regular posters who make our forums the place to learn and develop your digital photography. The dpreview.com forums average over 11,000 new message posts every single day and we have just over a quarter of a million subscribed forum members. Our thanks to each and every one of you.

On Wednesday a Californian jury found Toshiba guilty of theft of trade secrets from Lexar and issued damages of $381.4 million dollars, a day after they awarded an additional $84 million in punitive damages. The total awarded to Lexar in this case is some $465.4 million which is apparently the largest IP verdict in California history and the third largest IP verdict in the United States. This case relates to the use of Lexar trade secrets in Toshiba's NAND flash chips, CompactFlash cards, Secure Digital and xD-Picture Cards. Toshiba said that it 'believes that the verdict rendered by the jury was in error, and we plan to pursue all available legal avenues to correct it'.

Just posted! Our review of the big hitting 12x zoom Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z5. It is the latest in the range to feature Konica Minolta's unique CCD-shifting Anti-Shake system seen in the A2/A200 and Maxxum 7D digital SLR. The five megapixel has a love-it-or-hate-it design like the rest of the Z series. Find out if we think you should pack the DiMAGE Z5 in your suitcase for your summer vacation.

Two photo sharing websites have been snapped up by major corporations. Internet portal Yahoo! was the first to announce that it had acquired Canadian company Ludicorp Research & Development Ltd, which operates year-old photo sharing website Flickr. While HP has just announced that it has agreed to buy Snapfish, which has 13 million registered members. Snapfish offers free photo sharing, editing tools and software as well as online print ordering. In 2001 Canon bought photo sharing site Fotango and Eastman Kodak acquired Ofoto.

After floating on the stock market just five months ago UK camera retailer Jessops has announced that its shares fell 30% yesterday due to a decline in digital camera sales. Trading has slowed considerably in February and March and shares fell 47.5p to 107p. The shares cost 155p when they were first issued. The competition on the high street and the internet is fierce and Jessops has had to slash the prices of digital cameras to entice sales and compete with other retailers. Despite the drop in sales in the last two months, Jessops says that overall sales were up by 1% in the first half.

We've just received a production sample of the recently announced Panasonic SD CardBus PC Card adapter (BN-SDPC3E). This works in the same manner as the 32-bit CardBus CF adapters we've seen in the past. With more and more devices using SD cards and now even some digital SLR's faster access to SD cards will become more important. If you use a laptop or notebook the Panasonic SD CardBus adapter is now the fastest method for reading (and writing to) SD cards. (Windows only at the moment).

Nikon has announced that its 4.1 megapixel professional D-SLR, the D2Hs, will be on sale worldwide from March 25. It will retail for around £2,499.99 ($3,733). The D2Hs, which was announced just before PMA, offers a range of improvements over the D2H, including a burst rate of 8 fps up to 50 JPEG frames or 40 NEF shots. It has also borrowed some features from the D2X, including sYCC color space support, 3D Matrix Metering II and a higher resolution 2.5-inch LCD.

Kodak has today issued a press release which reveals a little more information about the sensor used in Pentax's yet to be fully revealed 645 medium-format digital camera. The sensor is named the KAF-18000CE, it has 18.6 million total pixels producing an 18 million pixel final image. Pixel pitch is 9 x 9 µm, no other specs are currently available but if we assume a 4:3 aspect ratio we can guess the total pixel size to be something like 4992 x 3744 which would make the active sensor area approximately 45 x 34 mm (a 1.3x FOV crop for a 645 medium format camera).

Pentax has today announced the development of an 18.6 megapixel 645 Digital medium-format camera which will be revealed at the Photo Imaging Expo in Tokyo from March 17th 2005. Details are thin on the ground at the moment but the current press release reveals that the camera will use a large format Kodak CCD with 18.6 million total pixels.

CeBit 2005: Konica Minolta has announced three digital lenses designed specifically for use with digital cameras that use an APS-C size sensor such as its Maxxum series of digital SLRs, the first of which is the Maxxum 7D. All three Digital Technology (DT) lenses are wideangle optics and will be available in the summer/fall. The first is the AF DT Zoom 18-70mm f3.5 - 5.6(D) (which on the 7D would provide an equivalent field of view as a 27 - 105 mm lens), secondly there's the AF DT Zoom 11-18mm f4.5 - 5.6(D) (16.5 - 27 mm equiv) and lastly the AF DT Zoom 18-200mm f3.5 -6.3(D) (27 - 300 mm equiv).

CeBIT 2005: While it took the photographic industry several years before it produced the first 7 megapixel compact digital camera, the mobile phone industry is wasting no such time. Samsung has today announced a world first with the 7 million pixel SCH-V770 which, it has been reported, boasts manual focus, shutter priority, AE lock and an optical zoom as well as MP3 functionality and a business card reader. The SCH-V770, which can also take telephoto and wideangle converter lenses, is due to make its debut at CeBIT, Germany tomorrow.

Sony has today announced the ultra-slim Cyber-shot DSC-T7. This camera is the latest in the T line of ultra-compact digital cameras, the unique feature of this amazing little digital camera is that it is only 14.8 mm / 0.6 in 'thin' (9.8 mm / 0.4 in at the thinnest part). It feels about half the thickness of the recently announced DSC-T33 and is approximately the same size from the front. Sony has achieved this by placing the LCD monitor to the side of the lens assembly (yes, this camera still has a three times optical zoom folded lens). Unlike the recent T models the DSC-T7 has has sliding cover / power switch just like the original DSC-T1. We have some exclusive hands-on images of a darker colored DSC-T7.

Sources at Kyocera have confirmed that the company is to cease production of film and digital cameras, putting a huge question mark over the future of one of the oldest brands in photography, Contax. Contax cameras have been produced since the early 1930's, when the brand was launched by German optical legend Zeiss Ikon. Contax joined forces with Japanese manufacturer Yashica in the 1960's, becoming part of electronics giant Kyocera in the mid-1990's. UPDATE: Kyocera Japan has officially confirmed that it is to quit production of digital cameras.