AgfaPhoto Digital Film is to be launched at the PMA Show 2005. AgfaPhoto’s new rnage of memory cards, dubbed “Digital Film”, includes Secure Digital, Compact Flash, MultiMediaCard, Memory Stick and SmartMedia memory card formats, ranging from 64 MB to 1 GB in capacity depending on the particular format.

AgfaPhoto Press Release

AgfaPhoto launches storage media for digital cameras

Orlando, February 14, 2005 – At PMA 2005, AgfaPhoto is demonstrating a key element in its strategy for leveraging the boom in digital photography, and introduced a diverse family of flash memory cards for digital cameras called “Digital Film”.

“Our new Digital Film offerings are the latest step in our evolution as a leader in the worldwide digital photography marketplace,” said Bing Liem, President and CEO, AgfaPhoto North America. “They build on our solid reputation and long expertise as a provider of advanced digital lab equipment by extending our product strategy to now include digital image capture solutions.”

Sandisk 1-gigabyte miniSD memory card is announced, aimed at the mobile phone market. The Sandisk 1Gb mini SD card will cost $99.99.

Sandisk Press Release

Large Capacity Ideal To Store Digital Music, Video, and Photos On The Latest Mobile Phones

Cannes, France, Feb. 14, 2005 – SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) today announced that it is doubling the current capacity of its popular SanDisk miniSD™ card to 1-gigabyte (GB)*. The miniSD card is used in a growing number of mobile phones with multimedia capabilities such as digital cameras, music players, video recording and playback, games and more.

“The 1GB miniSD card provides a level of storage that significantly enhances the features and usability of these full-featured mobile phones,” said Nelson Chan, executive vice president and general manager of SanDisk’s consumer and handset business. “For example, with a 1GB card you can store approximately 16 hours of MP3 songs, record up to several hours of MPEG-4 video or take more than 2000 digital photos on a 1-megapixel mobile phone. With that level of capability, consolidating music, video, digital camera and other key features into the mobile phone platform is much more meaningful and powerful.”

Kodak and Lexar Press Release

Kodak and Lexar Expand Flash Memory Card Line-Up to Include Popular Mobile Card Formats

CANNES, France—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Feb. 14, 2005—miniSD, Reduced Size MMC (RS-MMC), MMCmobile Formats Make It Easy to Print, Share, and Store Pictures Anytime, Anywhere

Eastman Kodak Company (NYSE:EK) and Lexar Media, Inc. (Nasdaq:LEXR) today announced the further expansion of the KODAK flash memory card line to include popular formats for mobile devices including mobile camera phones and PDAs.

“Generations of people have trusted Kodak to help them take and preserve pictures. Our introduction of the new KODAK memory cards is yet another way of extending such trust and reliability to the mobile imaging market,” said Claudio D’Amico, general manager, worldwide memory business, Digital and Film Imaging Systems, Eastman Kodak Company. “The mobile memory card formats—miniSD, Reduced Size MMC, and MMCmobile cards—will be competitively priced and offered at retail locations where memory cards and mobile devices are currently sold.”

ColorVision Spyder2 Plus has been announced by Datacolor ahead of PMA 2005. Dubbed the “Digital Darkroom in a Box”, Spyder2 Plus is a suite of tools for colour calibration and digital imaging. ColorVision Spyder2 Plus has a recommended price of $269.

Datacolor Press Release

Datacolor Announces ColorVision Spyder2 Plus, The ‘Digital Darkroom in a Box’ Provides ‘Start to Finish’ Accurate And Affordable Color on Monitors and in Print

ORLANDO, FL, Photo Marketing Association Show (PMA) – February 19, 2005 – Datacolor, a world color technology leader, today announced ColorVision® Spyder2 Plus™ (“The Digital Darkroom in a Box™”), a complete digital package for on screen and final output color accuracy. This new PANTONE® COLORVISION® product debuted today at the photo industry’s premiere press event, SNEAK PEAK, at the International PMA trade show, which runs from February 20 - 23 in Orlando, Florida. (ColorVision Booth No. 1908.)

ColorVision Spyder2 Plus provides a full suite of tools for anyone working with digital images and is frustrated by color discrepancy between the monitor image and final printout.  Based on ColorVision’s award-winning color display and output technology, Spyder2 Plus is combined (for FREE) with the latest digital imaging software from Adobe®–its hot new PhotoShop® Elements 3.0.

Phase One have released a new firmware update for the Phase One P25 and P20 medium format digital backs.

New improvements in firmware version 3.10 for the P25 / P20:

Custom White Balance
Button lock function (avoid unwanted button operation when transporting)
Capture initiated from host computer is now supported on all P-backs
Improved EXIF information in the raw file
Overall stability improvements

Website: Phase One - Phase One P25/P20 Firmware Update

Yahoo News have posted a review of the Olympus m:robe MR-500i photo viewer/MP3 player, which also has a built-in 1.2 megapixel digital camera.

“As I aimed the 500i, a jostling and sluggish image previewed on the LCD screen. I trusted the unit’s brains to focus this as I tapped on the screen to snap the shot, but what I got wasn’t much better than the preview — too blurry, and of little use. A letdown, considering that this gadget comes from Olympus, a company that made its name on optics and imaging and whose digital cameras are often top-rated. “

Thanks to Sanj for the link.

Website: Yahoo News - Olympus m:robe MR-500i Hands-On

Panasonic have announced that they have developed the smallest CMOS sensor in the world, which allows 2 million pixels on a 1/4-inch MOS sensor instead of 1 million.

Panasonic Press Release

Matsushita Electric (Panasonic) Develops World’s Smallest 2.0µm-Pixel MOS Image Sensor

2.0μm-pixel MOS image sensor (2.0μm-pixel MOS image sensor, 27KB)
Technological Developments

Osaka, Japan - Panasonic, the leading brand by which Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. is known, today announced the development of the world’s smallest image sensor. The revolutionary MOS image sensor has only 2.0 × 2.0 μm pixels which is now officially the world’s smallest sensor, where the previous standard was 3.1 μm. Matsushita’s technological breakthrough allows two million pixels on a 1/4-inch MOS sensor instead of one million. This size reduction was also achieved without sacrificing sensitivity by minimizing the number of transistors required for each pixel. Details of the sensor will be presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) held in San Francisco during February 6 - 10, 2005.

Toshiba/Sandisk Press Release

TOSHIBA AND SANDISK DEVELOP 8-GIGABIT NAND FLASH MEMORY CHIP WITH 70NM PROCESS TECHNOLOGY

Sunnyvale, CA, February 7, 2005 – Toshiba Corporation and SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) today announced an 8-gigabit (Gb) NAND flash memory chip fabricated with 70-nanometer (nm) process technology that ushers in the new era of gigabyte chips: 1-gigabyte data storage capacity on a single chip. The new chip was today reported at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2005 in San Francisco.

The new NAND flash memory utilizes multi-level cell (MLC) technology that allows two bits of data to be stored in one memory cell, doubling memory capacity. Innovative circuit design techniques were utilized to improve chip area efficiency resulting in an 8Gb chip size that is less than 5 percent larger than the previous generation 4Gb chip on 90 nanometer. At 146 square millimeters, the 8Gb chip has an areal density of 6 billion bits or 3 billion transistors per square centimeter (20 billion transistors per square inch of silicon).

Olympus m:robe goes to the Super Bowl. The m:robe 500i, a digital music player with built-in digital camera, is to be advertised by Olympus during the American Football Super Bowl this coming Sunday.

Olympus Imaging America Press Release

Olympus Goes To The Super Bowl To Launch First Picture-Taking Digital Music Player

Olympus m:robe - the First Digital Music Player With a Built-in Digital Camera - will be Featured in the Brand’s First Super Bowl Commercials Since 1981

Melville, New York, January 6, 2005 – A wild blend of digital music, photographs and extreme alternative dance will appear on the telecast of Super Bowl XXXIX, as Olympus Imaging America Inc. launches m:robe 500i, the first digital music player with a built-in digital camera. The Melville, NY company has announced plans to run two 30-second television commercials promoting m:robe on the Super Bowl XXXIX telecast, scheduled for February 6, 2005 on the Fox Television Network.

Olympus m:robe 500i is a portable digital music player unlike any other. It stores and plays as many as 5000 digital songs and also includes a digital camera. With m:robe users can create personalized dynamic “remixes” that blend music and pictures together to, as the Super Bowl commercials’ tagline suggests, “Let Your Pictures Groove.”

CNET News are running an interesting story on the use of image processors, looking at which digital camera manufacturers make their own and which use chips from 3rd partys like Pixim, Texas Instruments and NuCore.

“So far, progress is proceeding in a bottom-up fashion. NuCore has landed deals with Contax, Kyocera and JVC, among others, and has shipped a million chips since production began in 2001. Texas Instruments maintains comfortable relationships with Kodak and HP, the top two U.S. manufacturers, and sells its chips for use in cameras from Olympus and Samsung.”

Website: CNET News - Who will become the Intel of photography?

The Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA) has released a report that which claims that sales of digital cameras will rise by 20.8% in 2005, to a total of to 72.2 million units. The actual growth rate has slowed, as in 2004 sales rose by 37.7% on the previous year.

“Digital single-lens reflex cameras performed favorably amid such bleakness, though. The volume of global shipments sharply increased 167% compared to a year earlier to 300,000 units, while the worth also sharply soared 152% to 22.9 billion yen.ly.”

Website: Graphic Exchange News - Japanese camera makers predict 20.8% rise in digital camera shipments

DPNow are running an interesting article on the future of memory cards from a Sandisk point of view. According to the memory giant, digital cameras are no longer the primary driver for memory card production, with mobile phones, USB flash drives and digital music players overtaking them. Also compact flash cards are in decline and are likely to be overtaken by other formats by the end of 2005:

“This doesn’t mean the future for compact flash is bleak, though it is rapidly being phased out of compact digital camera lines in favour of SD/MMC and xD. CF will eventually be the mainstay of DSLRs. It looks like unit sales of CF cards will still grow, but not nearly as fast as other card types. The good news is that the generous dimensions of the Compact Flash form factor will ensure CF cards will continue to offer the highest storage capacities of all compact memory cards and this stretches to 8GB today. The cost per megabyte of all cards, including CF, will also continue to fall steadily.”

Website: DPNow - SanDisk says Compact Flash sales will be flat in 2005

Update: LetsGoDigital have more details from Sandisk’s press conference here.

Kodak Press Release

KODAK Consumer Digital Photography Products Soar; Company Leads in U.S. Digital Camera, Snapshot Printer, Photo Kiosk, and Online Picture Sharing Markets

Accomplishments Buoyed by Global Attention Surrounding Forthcoming KODAK EASYSHARE-ONE Digital Camera> ROCHESTER, N.Y.—(Business Wire)—Feb. 2, 2005—Continuing to demonstrate strong results against its digital strategy, Eastman Kodak Company now has the market lead in four major United States consumer digital photography segments: digital cameras, snapshot photo printers, retail photo kiosks, and online picture sharing sites.

Market research firm IDC, in its full-year 2004 digital still camera study* issued today, reports that Kodak’s digital camera shipments give the company an industry leading 21.9-percent U.S. market share—the first time that Kodak has held this top position. Kodak was also the fastest growing brand among market leaders, with a 66-percent year-over-year increase.

NuCore Press Release

NuCore Wins 21st PC Magazine Technical Excellence Award For Digital Imaging

NuCORE CleanCapture™ and InfiniteBurst™ image processors win prestigious award
 
Sunnyvale,CA – February 2, 2005— NuCORE Technology’s CleanCapture image processor family has been selected as the 2005 PC Magazine Technical Excellence Award winner for digital imaging. This award is given to the most pioneering and innovative products as reviewed by the PC Magazine editorial staff during the year. NuCORE’s Clean Capture image processors were chosen from the hundreds of digital imaging products seen by the editors. NuCORE’s innovative image processors for both digital video and still photography have set new expectations for image quality and performance. The hardwired processors produce superior images with greatly improved performance by reducing the noise and digital artifacts common in digital cameras. A cleaner, sharper image,while simultaneously reducing the image file size is the result.

Creative announces the DiVi CAM 316. An all-in-one digital camera, camcorder, webcam, MP3 Player and voice recorder with a 3.1 megapixel sensor.

Creative Technology Ltd. Press Release

Records everything and incorporates multi-functionalities - Digital Video Recorder, Digital Camera, WebCam, MP3 Player, and Voice Recorder

SINGAPORE - February 1, 2005 - Creative Technology Ltd. (NASDAQ: CREAF), a worldwide leader in digital entertainment solutions for PC users, today introduced the Creative DiVi CAM 316, an affordable digital MPEG-4 video recorder that doubles up with all-in-one functionalities such as digital camera, webcam, MP3 player and voice recorder.

The Creative DiVi CAM 316 is equipped with an effective 3.1-Megapixels CMOS sensor capable of recording video with audio at up to 640 x 480 resolutions in MPEG-4 format - a storage-efficient format that enables users to record longer durations using the same memory capacity. With the provided video and audio cables, users can also playback video or still images on TV to share with their family and friends.

The NPD Group Press Release

Canon Named ‘America’s Choice’ For Digital Cameras in 2004, According to Leading Industry Data Source; Canon’s PowerShot and EOS Digital Cameras Capture the Overall #1 Brand Ranking from The NPD Group

Feb. 1, 2005 America has spoken, and it has chosen Canon as the leading brand for digital cameras in 2004, according to recently released retail sales data from The NPD Group, one of the leading providers of retail market information.

The NPD Group reports that the Canon brand captured the number one position in Total Digital Camera Sales in 2004, with a market share of 20.4 percent, based on unit sales of both compact cameras and digital SLR cameras combined*. In addition, Canon was the number one brand in both NPD’s Digital Point-and-Shoot and Digital SLR categories, with market shares of 18.6 percent and 62.8 percent, respectively.

Fujifilm is introducing its own range of high performance CompactFlash, SD and miniSD memory cards, as well as new Fujifim RS-MMC and miniSD cards.

Fujifilm Germany Press Release

Now in two categories, new appearances: RS-MMC and miniSD card

With the breakthrough of digital cameras onto the mass market there has also been a steep increase in demand for memory cards. The market volume in Germany is currently at approximately 9 million pieces per annum and has risen by more than 50% in comparison to last year. The digital memory cards are not, however, only used in digital cameras. They also store images, text or sound in PDAs, laptop computers, MP3 players and mobile phones.

Fujifilm is constantly expanding the range of memory cards and will offer two different categories in the future. In addition to the present range, currently sold under the name of High Quality Card, there will also be a series of High Performance Cards. Both card types use the tried and tested SLC (Single Level Cell) technology, which stands principally for speed, durability, compatibility and efficient energy consumption.

I watched this mildly diverting debate on BBC’s Click Online TV program last week; which future disk storage format will win, Blu-ray or HD-DVD? You probably don’t care too much, just so long as the winner offers greater capacity, more reliability and cheaper prices than ever before. Richard Doherty, speaking for Blu-ray, and Vic Harasimow, standing up for HD-DVD, do care (principally because they may be out of a job if their respective companies don’t win…).

“Certainly a format war is unfortunate, but there is a lot of time left, so nothing is inevitable and we maybe able to fix something up in the next year before we reach product. At the same time it is very difficult for us to imagine what we might give up in a very successful and what we think is a compelling format to try and make a merge.”

Website: BBC News - Blu-ray versus HD-DVD

PCMagazine have taken a look at the Gateway MP3 Photo Jukebox, and they generally like what they see:

“The Gateway MP3 Photo Jukebox combines a 4GB digital audio player with a color screen and a photo viewer, and includes the ability to upload images from your camera. It has an interesting blend of features at an attractive price, and digital camera owners will appreciate the ability to upload and view their pictures while on the go.”

Website: PCMagazine - Gateway MP3 Photo Jukebox Review

Professional photographer and Nikon user Moose Peterson has posted a review of the Nikon Coolwalker MSV-01, a 30GB portable image storage device for the organisation of digital images.

“The display on the MSV-01 is a 2.5”, TFT color LCD 117,600 pixels (490x240). What does that translate to? The D1 has a 114,000 2” display and the D2H has 2.5-in., 211,200 display. The MSV-01 falls somewhere in between and is a pretty good display but not killer. I found by raising the display brightness to 10 (default is 8) that a slight improvement could be made. The display is such you can see images in daylight. In a darken area and with fresh eyes, I think the display will be good enough for a short term means of uploading images and learning from them.”

Website: Moose Peterson - Nikon Coolwalker MSV-01 Review