The Norwegian website DigIT have posted their review of the Samsung Digimax U-CA 3, a 3 megapixel digital camera aimed at the young photographer or the budding photo enthusiast.

Website: DigIT - Samsung Digimax U-CA 3 Review

DCViews have just reviewed the 5-megapixel Olympus E-1 DSLR.

“The E-1, which is the central part of the new system, is a very good camera indeed. Although it does not offer the resolution of other professional cameras, or the AF speed required for professional sports photography, it is designed and built extremely well and certainly has that professional feel to it. In use it feels solid and reliable and is responsive enough for most shooting situations.”

Website: DCViews - Olympus E-1 Review

A-Digital-Eye have just reviewed the 4-megapixel, 10x zoom Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z2.

“The DiMAGE Z2 is an impressive little camera featuring a new GT lens that uses AD (anomalous dispersion) glass (APO lens). It corrects a large portion of the color aberration on the telephoto end and delivers sharp images of high contrast across the entire display from the center to the edges. Moreover, it employs two aspherical lenses (one of which is aspherical on both sides), which effectively corrects spherical aberration and distortion aberration.”

Website: A-Digital-Eye - Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z2 Review

The 9th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by Greg Taylor.

“My theme is ‘contrasts of light and dark’.

My name is Greg Taylor. I am 16, live in one of the suburbs of London and am a student in the first year of college, but due to lack of funds, my school is unable to run any kind of photography class, so I do it in my own time.

I usually have sudden urges to take photos of a certain location, often at a ridiculous time of day (5:30 am for the London sunrise shots!). At the moment I use a fuji S7000 and a range of wideangle and other lenses. This will be the first time I will have shown my photos to anybody and certainly the first time to be possibly displayed on the net!

I like to take emotional style pictures, often including some form of heavy light and dark contrast, and a focal point on the picture (where the eyes are drawn to). I also like to take action photography of anything that moves, really! Objects such as running, greyhound racing, mountain biking etc.”

Website: Portfolios: Greg Taylor

The 8th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by Elie Dinur.

“This portfolio is drawn from a large body of work done along the Mediterranean shore of the Western Galilee, Israel which may be viewed at http://www.imageevent.com/elied/coastofgalilee.”

“I began photographing fully forty years ago while living in New York and studied photography at NYU and The Visual Studies Workshop. After immigrating to Israel I was for many years the resident photographer of my kibbutz - doing everything from advertising brochures to documentation of kibbutz life to my own “art” photographs - but eventually drifted away from it and left the cameras to gather dust. Now, however, excited by the possibilities for creative control offered by the “digital revolution” and the level of quality of affordable digital cameras, I have returned. I started a year and a half ago with a Minolta 7i and have recently traded it for a Minolta A1.”

Website: Portfolios: Elie Dinur

The 7th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by David Leafe.

“I am a very amateur photographer (as you can see) just starting out on a new hobby but very excited by images I saw on a recent holiday in Morocco. Tried to capture some of the flavour of the people of the country in relaxed and un-posed shots as well as a few other interesting details e.g. the urns and the flags attached to the mooring buoys in the beach town of Essouria.”

Website: Portfolios: David Leafe

The Discovery Channel have shared the details of a trip out to the zoo, armed with 4 compact digital cameras:

“There are so many great animals to see at the zoo. It’s a picture perfect setting. In fact, it’s a great place to test out some new digital cameras.

I took 4 digicams to the zoo with me: two high-end models - the Sony Cyber-shot and the Nikon Coolpix, as well two funky new cams from a Japanese company called Che-ez! Che-ez makes the world’s smallest digital camera, called Snap, and the VU - a pocket-sized video camera!”

Website: Discovery Channel - Digital Cameras: A Trip to the Zoo

A new article over on Luminous Landscape will be of interest to all Nikon DSLR owners:

“Nikon uses the autofocus sensing mechanism from their film cameras (except for the D2h), and hasn’t scaled it to the smaller sensor size. The net result is that the autofocus sensors, which on the film cameras are bunched inside the 1/3 lines of the full frame, are stretched towards the edges on the digital bodies. This has two consequences:

1. Autofocus occurs with objects closer to the edge of the frame on a Nikon DSLR than it does with 35mm bodies.

2. The “spread” between autofocus sensors is larger, leaving a gap where autofocus doesn’t occur.”

Website: Luminous Landscape - Focus Sensor Locations on the Nikon DSLRs

PCMagazine have published a short article which wonders how long digital photos will last for…

“I should be happy. I’m a proponent of digital photography and digital video. I use it and write about it. But I’m also plagued by little panic attacks. I haven’t taken a 35mm photo of my kids in months. What if my computer hard drive dies? I have all my photos backed up on a CD, but what if I lose that or it somehow becomes corrupted?”

Website: PCMagazine - Will Digital Images Last?

CNET have reviewed the 4.0 megapixel Canon Powershot S410 (known as the Digital IXUS 430 outside North America).

“Although the Canon PowerShot S410 lacks the manual controls that serious photographers demand, as well as the scene modes and the high-res video capture that some of its competitors offer, it has enough shooting options to please those in the point-and-click crowd who just want a good basic feature set and high-quality snapshots. Replacing the very similar Canon PowerShot S400, this 4-megapixel PowerShot’s major new feature is a Print & Share button for easier direct printing.”

Website: CNET - Canon Powershot S410 Review

Website: Read my review of the Olympus Mju 410 Digital

A new version of Qimage has just been released.

Qimage v2004.200 (05/14/04):

New Features:

Full IPTC support: Many of our users requested the ability to print IPTC captions with their images, so we added the ability to print a range of IPTC fields including title, author, caption, copyright, and more! In addition, you can use Qimage to manage your IPTC data since v2004.200 allows you to add IPTC data to JPEG and TIFF images, view the data, print it, and even do multi-folder searches for IPTC data using our IPTC data search facility. Looking for all images where you entered a keyword of “bird”? Just go to a folder, right click in the thumbnails, and select “Search IPTC Image Info”. Qimage will search that folder and even include subfolders based on your search criteria and will show you the results by displaying both the image and the IPTC data right beside it. IPTC data is also carried over to saved/converted images when creating new images! Keep in mind that IPTC is a standard by which data fields can be embedded in JPEG and TIFF format images, so this option is not available for other image formats…. yet. :-)

Canto Press Release 13/05/04

New Cumulus module lets users publish images as Web ready albums.

May 13, 2004, San Francisco, Berlin. Canto, a global leader in Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions, today announced the immediate availability of Cumulus WebAlbum, a tool to create Web-based albums that are built on static HTML pages. Displaying images and even entire Cumulus catalogs on the Internet in a customized and personalized album is now a simple process.

The layout and functionality of WebAlbum can be customized using different skins, such as those provided by Canto, other providers or ones created by the user. This gives the user full control of the design and look of each and every album.

America Online, Inc. Press Release 11/05/04

America Online’s Digital Pictures Survey Finds That Instant Gratification Factor Tops List of What Consumers Love Most about Digital Photography

DULLES, Va.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—May 11, 2004—America Online, Inc.

The Ability to See Images Instantly, Print Images Whenever They Want and Share Images Easily With Friends and Family Are Favorite Benefits; Number One Method For Sharing Digital Photos Today is Online

Digital Cameras Beat Out Sunscreen, a Good Book and Video Cameras as the Top Item Survey Respondents Must Have When Leaving for Vacation

It’s not the hottest page-turner or coolest PDA that most vacationers will be packing for their summer vacation this year. According to America Online’s Digital Pictures Survey of digital camera owners, more than one-half of the respondents, 54%, won’t leave for vacation without this hot little item: their digital camera. The choice ranked significantly higher than sunscreen, a good book, a video camera, an address book, a digital music player and PDA device.

Funtigo LLC Press Release 13/05/04

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—(MARKET WIRE) - 05/13/2004—San Francisco-based Funtigo LLC today announced a new version of its Funtigo photo sharing site, which now includes music and group email features.

“Funtigo is more than a digital replica of traditional paper-based photo albums,” according to founder Jim Conning.  “It lets you share photos in your own personal way, arrange them on Web pages, in albums or high resolution slideshows   while supplementing these photos with text, callouts, and high quality clipart. Music was a natural next step that our customers demanded.  It lets them further personalize their memories and share them they way the want to.”

DP-Now have just published their review of Roxio Easy Media Creator 7, a digital media software package .

“Practically everything you could expect for an introductory and up to intermediate level digital media asset management and project creation package is there. None of the applications are best of breed and you may quickly grow out of some of the components, but they are all competent and easy to use. Having them in one place, all at once and with a semblance of coordination means this is a good example of where the package is greater than the simple sum of its parts.”

Website: DP-Now - Roxio Easy Media Creator 7 Review

It has come to my attention that the Photo of the Week contest is not being conducted in the spirit in which it was originally intended - to be a fun way to show off your latest photos and invite constructive criticism. Today one of our most active members has decided to delete all of their photos and leave the Gallery for good.

I am therefore planning to change the way in which the Photo of the Week contest is run, in the next couple of weeks.

I’m currently looking at something along the lines of the contests over at [URL=http://www.fredmiranda.com]http://www.fredmiranda.com[/URL], where Fred selects the best X number of entries from the week (in his humble opinion), and then sets up a Poll where everyone can vote for their favourite - therefore you would effectively only get one vote, which would remove any chance of vote-rigging.

So it would be a 2-stage process. I would pick my favourites and create a Poll on the Forum, and you would have a certain number of days in which to vote for the overall winner.

This will only work if:

i) you all trust my judgement and don’t question it too much :)
ii) you all take the time to vote for the overall winner

I may also introduce a weekly theme, rather than it being an open contest, and also add some prizes.

The Monthly Competition will stay as it is.

You will still be able to rate photos and leave comments on the Gallery, where you can choose to ignore them if you want to. These will not be taken into consideration when either the Monthly Competition or Photo of the Week is judged.

Please leave your comments in this thread on the Forums:
http://www.photographyblog.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=101&st=30&#entry522

Whatever I decide to do will probably not please everyone, but it will hopefully prevent people being driven away from the community…

The German website Photoworld.de have published their review of the 6 megapixel Nikon D70 DSLR.

Website: Photoworld.de - Nikon D70 Review

Imaging Resource have reviewed the 5 megapixel Minolta DiMAGE G500, which has a 3x zoom lens with a range that is equivalent to 39 - 117mm on a 35mm camera.

“Minolta’s latest DiMAGE digicam bears a striking resemblance to the Konica KD-510Z digital camera, no surprise, since it’s essentially the same camera with a new logo. Thanks to a merger between the two companies, the DiMAGE G500 is simply Minolta’s repackaging of the previous Konica model. The dual-slot digicam accepts both SD memory cards and Sony Memory Sticks, a feature that first debuted on the Konica KD-400. Adding to the G500’s attractions are its tiny size and stainless steel alloy body, as well as a high-resolution, five-megapixel CCD.”

Website: Imaging Resource - Minolta DiMAGE G500 Review

The Hungarian website Index Digicam have posted a review of the Sanyo DVP-P1 EX printer, which uses the dye-sublimation process to create prints up to a maximum size of 10x15cm. The DVP-P1 EX supports the PictBridge standard, so you don’t need a PC to use it. The new printer is available now with a suggested retail price of ?349.

Website: Index Digicam - Sanyo DVP-P1 EX Printer Review

iView Multimedia Press Release 11/05/04

Cross-Platform Media Manager Speeds Workflow for Digital Pros

LONDON, May 11, 2004 - iView Multimedia (iView) today announced that its awardwinning rofessional media management software iView MediaPro is available for the Windows platform. iView MediaPro 2.5 now offers the same robust, highly flexible media management for both Windows and Mac users. Designed for creative professionals in film, video, photography, broadcast, education and scientific fields, iView MediaPro helps streamline workflows. Professionals can quickly and easily import, sort, organize and manage very large volumes and types of digital files?helping cut costs and speed project delivery.

iView MediaPro 2.5 features an improved user interface, enhanced folder and file management, and Adobe XMP support. Windows users can now enjoy all iView MediaPro?s competitive advantages. Unlike other applications, iView MediaPro is supremely flexible. It integrates seamlessly into a user?s worfklow, letting them capture, annotate, organize, search, repurpose and present their digital files in the manner that best works for them.

“I depend on iView MediaPro - it does everything I need and more. Most important, I can configure it to work the way I want it to, because it’s so highly configurable, logical and easy to use and at the same time, powerful,” said Elliott Landy, photographer, known for his photographs of Woodstock generation music legends. (See www.landyvision.com).