Seagate Press Release

First-ever 750GB External Hard Drive can Store it all - Your Entire Digital Music, Movie, Photo and Data Libraries in the Same Desk Space as a Stapler

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.—27 April 2006— Seagate Technology (NYSE:STX), the world’s number one hard drive maker, today introduced the world’s first three-quarter Terabyte external hard drive - the Seagate 750GB Pushbutton Back-up Hard Drive. As the newest addition to Seagate’s award winning line of consumer products, the stylish 750GB Pushbutton Back-up Hard Drive is designed to offer the most convenient way for consumers to store all of their treasured digital content right on their desktop. For the first time, digital aficionados can easily manage their ever-increasing digital content on one small desktop device that can hold all of the following: 15,000 digital songs, 15,000 digital photos, 50 hours of home videos, 50 computer games, and 25 DVD movies - with 300GB of additional space left over to easily backup their notebook and desktop computers. What previously would have resided on multiple hard drives in a large enclosure on the floor has now been replaced by Seagate with a sleek, stylish desktop design that takes up as little space as a tape dispenser.

Jobo Press Release

Gummersbach/Germany. JOBO AG has been awarded the prestigious Best Technology in Europe Award at the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) European Photo & Imaging Awards 2006. The TIPA is an organization of 31 different specialist camera publications from 12 countries throughout Europe. It is among the leading and most influential organizations in the imaging industry in Europe. JOBO is very proud to earn this high decoration as a small medium-sized company with its long tradition in the market. The product draft is fully aimed on the professional photo features that JOBO already developed and marketed since 1923 in the worldwide photo market. With own products like GIGA Vu PRO evolution JOBO documents the jump in the digital future has been succeeded and ideas and concepts are fully aimed at the market of DSLR cameras. This is also reflected in today’s 85% of the sales at JOBO are generated by the digital business.

Nikon UK Press Release

Wednesday April 26, 2006 - Nikon has scooped three awards at the prestigious Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) awards 2006 with three top products earning best-in-class accolades. The D200 was named “Best D-SLR Expert in Europe 2006”, the D50 won the “Best D-SLR Entry Level in Europe 2006” award and the AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED has been dubbed the “Best professional Lens in Europe 2006”. Martina Beckmann, Manager Marketing Communications at Nikon Europe BV, said: “We are delighted to receive the three TIPA awards, especially after the success we had last year with the Nikon F6, Nikon COOLPIX 7900 and the Nikon AF-S VR 200 f/2 lens all winning awards.”

Apple UK Press Release

Apple Introduces 17-inch MacBook Pro with 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo Processor Up to Five Times Faster Than PowerBook G4

CUPERTINO, California - April 24th, 2006 - Apple today unveiled its new 17-inch MacBook Pro notebook computer featuring the Intel Core Duo processor and an all-new system architecture that delivers up to five times the performance of the PowerBook G4. The new 17-inch MacBook Pro features a stunning aluminium enclosure just one inch thin, weighs only 6.8 pounds, includes a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing on-the-go, and the breakthrough Front Row media experience with Apple Remote. The new 17-inch MacBook Pro also features a MagSafe Power Adaptor, invented by Apple especially for mobile users. “The 17-inch MacBook Pro delivers the speed and screen area of a professional desktop system in the world’s best notebook design”, said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With Intel’s state of the art dual-core processor, the new 17-inch MacBook Pro delivers unrivalled performance in an innovative, sleek, one-inch thin design”.

Epson Press Release

The Technical Imaging Press Association (TIPA) has awarded Epson three awards in its annual review of the best products in the digital photo imaging arena.

April 2006 - Epson, leader in digital imaging technology, has been presented with three of the most prestigious TIPA Awards 2006.  The Epson Perfection V750 Pro scanner has been voted as the “Best Flatbed Photo Scanner in Europe 2006”, the Epson Stylus Photo RX640 as the “Best A4 Multifunction Photo Printer in Europe 2006” and Epson UltraChrome K3 ink as the “Best Printing Technology in Europe 2006”. TIPA currently has 31 member magazines, making it the largest and most influential photo and imaging press association in Europe. Widely regarded as experts, the editors of the magazines test the photo and imaging products and then meet once a year to judge the best in Europe.

OmniVision’s 5 Megapixel CMOS CameraChip (TM) Brings High-Definition Video to Digital Still Cameras

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/—OmniVision Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: OVTI), a world leading supplier of CMOS image sensors, today unveiled its second-generation, 5 megapixel camera chip. The OV5620 offers a small form-factor, 5 megapixel CMOS camera that surpasses CCD sensors in performance. Furthermore, the OV5620’s advanced high-definition (HD) video modes with vivid colors make this CameraChip especially attractive for next generation digital still cameras (DSCs) and hybrid cameras, which take both still and video pictures. “After several years of exponential growth, the DSC market has slowed down significantly, and the pixel race seems to have found its sweet spot around 5 megapixels,” said Brian O’Rourke, Senior Analyst at market research firm In- Stat. “With so many DSCs sold today featuring 5 megapixels, the key market differentiators in this segment are shifting away from the pixel count and towards advanced features such as video.”

Samsung Electronics Press Release

Seoul, Apr 19 2006 - Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it has developed a 2GByte MultiMediaCard (MMCmicro TM) that combines four 4Gbit NAND flash devices. This is the smallest, fastest and highest capacity memory card for mobile phones, developed only three months after Samsung led the industry by launching a 1GByte MMCmicro. “The 2GByte high-performance MMC is a powerful indicator of Samsung’s expanding efforts to embrace the widest possible range of multimedia applications including mobile video,” said Don Barnetson, Director, Flash Marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.

Wacom Press Release

Innovative sensor integration technology enables operation using both electronic pen and finger

Tokio, Japan 18.4.2006 - Wacom Co., Ltd. announced the development of the world’s first sensor integration technology and its practical application in the “Penabled DualPad”. Incorporation of the new technology into mobile information devices such as notebook computers allows the user to perform cursor operation and input functions using the Company’s electronic pen or their finger. The technology will make its debut installed in Fujitsu’s “FMV-BIBLIO NB Series” notebook computers as “Flat Point Digitizer”, scheduled for introduction to the market in April 2006.

NE Asia Online has an interesting article about the development of an organic CMOS sensor by Fujifilm.

“The reason the organic CMOS sensor has been referred to as the ideal imaging sensor is its structure. Existing imaging devices extract only specific wavelengths, using color filters, and convert them to charges. In the green image, for example, blue and red light is discarded. The organic CMOS sensor, however, uses all visible light thanks to a vertical stack of organic photoelectric conversion films (Fig 3, p53). The per-pixel optical utilization is tripled, making it possible that sensitivity would be significantly higher than that of existing imagers.”

Website: NE Asia Online - Fuji Film’s Success with Organic Imaging Sensor

Maxtor Press Release

Bringing Digital Content to Life, a Series of New Products Are Scheduled in 2006 to Help Consumers Organize, Share, Protect and Access Their Content Anytime, Anywhere

MILPITAS, Calif. - The way people access, share, view and experience digital content is quickly evolving, and storage pioneer Maxtor (NYSE: MXO - News) is introducing several new products to address these changing consumer needs. Mike Williams, vice president and general manager, Maxtor Branded Products, today presented the future of storage innovation, and outlined a series of new products that Maxtor will make available through its retail and distributor channels during the second quarter. “Maxtor’s goal is to help people bring their digital content to life through an extended family of simple, elegant and intuitive solutions that allow people to expand, protect, and now easily organize, personalize and share their digital lives,” said Williams. “Maxtor is well-positioned to provide groundbreaking solutions and services, building off our years of success in launching value-add products.”

Maxtor Press Release

Maxtor Introduces Sleek, Trusted Storage To Go - With Mobility on the Rise, the New Maxtor OneTouch™ III Mini Edition Delivers Safe and Easy Award-Winning Backup and Content Management in a Small, Stylish Package

MILPITAS, Calif., April 17, 2006 – To meet fast-growing market demand for portable storage, Maxtor Corporation (NYSE: MXO) today announced it is shipping the new Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition drive, the company’s first small form factor external storage solution. Designed with the mobile professional in mind, the slim, elegant and portable solution is the latest addition to the award-winning Maxtor OneTouch product family. Weighing in at approximately seven ounces, it is the first mobile storage solution in the industry that comes fully loaded with the latest software innovations to protect and manage digital content, including automated backup, data encryption, data synchronization and system rollback to restore applications and operating system while keeping digital files current.

Matrox Press Release

Matrox brings unique TripleHead support to leading workstations and laptops with breakthrough new product - Matrox TripleHead2Go adds Surround Design to existing systems

Matrox Graphics Inc., the leading manufacturer of professional graphics solutions, is pleased to announce the new TripleHead2Go, a palm-sized box that uniquely allows supports of a Microsoft® Windows® desktop with a stretched resolution of up to 3840 x 1024 across three displays with full acceleration on all displays. TripleHead2Go appears to the system as an ultra-widescreen monitor and simply connects to a computer using a standard analog VGA monitor cable. Using Matrox patent-pending technology, TripleHead2Go then splits the Microsoft® Windows® desktop into three separate 1280 x 1024 screens of information, and displays across three independent monitors. “The flexibility afforded by a Digital Content Creation (DCC) application and the inherently large amount of user interface needed to expose it, demands a correspondingly large amount of screen real estate.” says Caroline Injoyan, product manager, Matrox Graphics Inc. “Matrox TripleHead2Go’s Surround Design feature and TripleHead™ output configuration, effectively meet these needs.”

Digital Marketing Services Press Release

Fast Flagship Rollei 6008 AF Medium Reflex Camera With Sinarback emotion22 Digital Back, Top-of-the Line Lens, And Editing Software

CONCORD, CA, APRIL 4, 2006 –  Professional and high-end amateur photographers can now a leading medium-format single reflex camera and a 22-megapixel high-performance digital back with a “Super Bundle” now available in the U.S. from Digital Marketing Services. The bundle includes the Rollei 6008AF, the world’s first single lens reflex camera in a 6x6 medium format, a Sinarback eMotion22 digital back, editing software, and an AF Xenotar 80 mm F2.8 lens. The bundle gives photographers film and digital picture taking capability in one package. The interchangeable film packs allow a photographer to shoot film, Polaroid-type shots as well as digital shots with very high speeds, high quality digital files, and a large landscape surface area. The 6008AF bundle is ideal for photographers who need maximum mobility—from portrait, fashion and landscape photographers, to photojournalists, and corporate/ government photographers involved in “workflow” photography. Pricing is expected to be in the $24,999 range.

X-Rite Press Release

OPTIX XR2 offers unparalleled colour accuracy - X-Rite Raises Bar On Monitor Calibration And Profiling

Birmingham, UK ? IPEX 2006, Hall 9, Stand C40 ? 4 April, 2006 ? X-Rite Inc. is giving creative professionals a new level of confidence in the accuracy of the colours displayed on their monitors with its introduction of the OPTIX XR2 display calibration and profiling solution. Combining a state-of-the-art colorimeter with enriched software, the OPTIX XR2 delivers an unparalleled colour management solution for displays; including LCD, CRT and newly developed wide gamut technologies. “Creative professionals like photographers and graphic designers know that accurate colour counts,” says Terry Denczek, worldwide product manager for X-Rite. “And the surest way to obtain consistently accurate monitor colour is a properly calibrated and profiled display. OPTIX XR2 ensures that you’ll get dependable colour representation on your screen.”

GfK Press Release

30.03.2006 - In their 25th year of working within, and supporting the Photographic industry, GfK in conjunction with the Photo Imaging Council announce another year of continued growth within the Imaging markets. For the past three years GfK Marketing Services have worked closely with the Photo Imaging Council to formulate complete market sales figures for Imaging products within Great Britain. Once again for 2005 the two companies are pleased to publish their findings.

By collaborating on this project PIC and GfK have been able to jointly use each other’s market figures to agree total market size in volume (Millions). The Imaging market grew by 2.6% in value in 2005, which is an extremely strong performance compared to other durable markets. The continued growth of the Imaging market is driven on through strong sales of Digital Cameras and Memory Cards. The figures below clearly demonstrate the positive effect the “Digital Age” is having on the Imaging markets, however as we move further into 2006 the continued growth of this sector looks to be challenging. As price erosion continues, manufacturers and retailers will be faced with more challenges over product assortment and pricing. The growth of Digital SLR products has seen a notable difference in 2005. GfK recorded sales of these products growing by over 118%, giving an annual volume of nearly 190,000 units.

Lyra Research Press Release

Newton, MA (March 30, 2006) — According to Lyra Research, the digital imaging authority, the number of digital images captured worldwide has grown from under 40 billion in 2002 to nearly 200 billion in 2005, and in 2009 close to half a trillion digital images will be captured. A key concern in the digital camera industry is the growing importance of camera phones, which accounted for virtually none of the images captured in 2002 but will account for close to 60 percent of the total in 2009. Lyra expects that many of these camera phone images will be short-lived, never making it to print, while digital cameras will remain the device of choice for consumers to capture images they actually care enough about to print. “As camera phone penetration rises and their image quality improves, hundreds of millions of consumers around the world will become accustomed to grabbing spur-of-the-moment photos with their phones,” explains Steve Hoffenberg, Lyra’s director of consumer imaging research. “But, for those precious family moments that people want to preserve for posterity by printing, they will still primarily turn to their digital cameras.”

Aplus.Net Press Release

Aplus.Net Joins Forces With TiVo to Provide an Easy Means of Viewing Digital Photos

SAN DIEGO, March 30 /PRNewswire/—Aplus.Net is the first company to fully integrate its photo storage service, Web-a-Photo(TM) (www.web-a-photo.com), with a TiVo(R) Digital Video Recorder. With this new development, TiVo users can now view all of their photos stored online on their television screen. Photos can be rotated, zoomed, e-mailed, and ordered, all via TiVo remote. Slide show mode is also available. The new TiVo enabled Web-a-Photo service is intended to provide TiVo users with a more convenient way of viewing their photos and sharing photos with family and friends. The service enables users to view photos on a television screen without the hassle of digital camera equipment. This means that the user has access to his/her photos at all times and the ability to display them on a large screen anywhere with a TiVo connection. Furthermore, the service is excellent for gatherings, since a PC screen is too confining as a photo viewing source.

Leica have released a firmware update, version 1.2, for the Leica Digital-Modul-R digital back.

The following technical features are optimized by the Firmware Release 1.2:
- Improved image reproduction on the display
- Improved color reproduction in the images
- Compatibility for 4GB SD cards
- Compatibility for MAC OS version 10.3
- Improved Japanese menu language
- Bug for saving of settings eliminated (ISO Push)
- Optimizing of internal data processing

Advice: Due to the compatibility the data format on the SD cards has been changed. Therefore the SD card has be to formated after update.

Website: Leica Digital-Modul-R Firmware v1.2

Sharp have developed a CMOS sensor that can calculate the distance between itself and the subject using infrared light. Sadly the resolution is only 320 x 240 pixels, so one for the future then in terms of digital cameras (found via digicamera.net).

“In order to provide these two functions, the company has adopted the Time-of-Flight (TOF) method as the distance measurement technique, in which a distance is back-calculated from the flight time of light. Commercialization is in progress, aiming at home appliances, automotive and security related products as its target applications.”

Website: TechOn - Sharp Develops CMOS Image Sensor Able to Measure Distance to Object

DPNow have reviewed the ColorVision Spyder2 Express, an entry-level on-screen color management tool for digital imagers and enthusiasts.

“I also compared the Spyder2express to its chief rival, the Pantone huey. The two basically do the same job, but the huey hardware is a newer design and much more compact. The software is also prettier, but I found its brightness and contrast aids less easy to use than the Spyder2express software. But where the huey trounces the Spyder2express is in its speed. The colour measurement and priofile building phase takes just a minute or so with the huey, compared to over seven minutes with the Spyder2express.”

Website: DPNow - ColorVision Spyder2 Express Review