LaCie / Hitachi Press Release

LaCie and Hitachi Collaborate to Deliver Industry’s Largest Capacity External Storage Solutions

500GB Hitachi Deskstar Hard Drives Provide Advanced Features and Renowned Quality

PORTLAND, OR (July 2005) – LaCie and Hitachi, two pioneers of innovative hard drive technology and design, today announce a collaboration to deliver three external hard drives with record capacities for both consumer and enterprise users. LaCie selected 500GB Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 hard drives for its 2TB Biggest F800, 500GB Ethernet Disk mini and 2TB Bigger Disk Extreme storage solutions. Hitachi has incorporated a number of unique design features that make its 500GB hard drive well-suited for use in digital video editing, multi-drive RAID storage and numerous other high-bandwidth applications.

Pretec Press Release

Pretec Introduces 4GB SD Card, e-Disk II, and Reduces Price for 12GB CF Card

FREMONT, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—July 27, 2005—Pretec Electronics Corp., the inventor of iDisk Tiny and CU-Flash, the smallest USB flash Drive in the world since 2003, has released 4GB SD card today, the largest capacity of SD card in the world.

Pretec 4GB SD card is the newest addition of its high speed line of 133X SD card, from 256MB to 4GB, with access speed up to 20MB/s, the fastest SD card in the world so far conform to SD 1.1 specification. Constructed with 65 nano-meter 16Gb SLC NAND technology, which is typically one order of magnitude better reliability and 200%-500% faster than MLC NAND. Pretec 133X 4GB SD card is available now for customer sampling with unit price of $699 each; mass production is scheduled by next month.

Canon has announced another quarter of rising profits, boosted by sales of colour laser printers and digital SLR cameras like the 8 megapixel Canon EOS 350D / Digital Rebel XT DSLR (pictured). Sales rose 7.3 percent to 912.5 billion yen in the three months to June 30th. “Canon’s cost structure is impressive and it can stand the price pressure that other companies can’t,’’ John Yang, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s in Tokyo.

Website: Bloomberg - Canon 2nd-Qtr Profit Gains on Printer, Camera Sales

Another month, another report of falling digital camera sales and losses, this time courtesy of Sanyo. Sales of digicams and mobile phones fell by 12.2%, prompting the Japanese firm to announce 14,000 job cuts on July 5th.

Website: MSN News - Sanyo reports loss on mobile phone, digital camera sales

DIWA member and Czech website FotoAparat.cz have just published their review of the Canon Digital IXUS 700 digital camera (also known as the Canon PowerShot SD500 Digital ELPH).

Website: FotoAparat.cz - Canon Digital IXUS 700 Review

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ePhotoZine have just reviewed the HiTi 641PS dye-sub printer printer.

“Having said that, the print quality is excellent. The 641PS prints at 403dpi, which is claimed to be the equivalent of 6400dpi inkjet printers and produces good saturation and excellent definition. The technology used produces prints that will resist fading long after an inkjet has paled into insignificance and the over coating supplies a finish that won’t smudge or run as soon as a drop of water touches it.”

Website: ePhotoZine - HiTi 641PS Review

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CNET have taken a look at the new Kodak Easyshare Printer Dock Series 3 compact photo printer.

“Prints emerge relatively speedily, taking between 1.5 and 1.7 minutes per photo. The Series 3 dock’s photos displayed typical dye-transfer smoothness, broad tonal scale, and rich colors. There was lots of detail in highlights and shadows, but diagonal lines did showed stair-stepping. The composite blacks (formed by combining the cyan, magenta, and yellow colors; there is no black panel in the dye-transfer ribbon) were dense and neutral. Flesh tones were pleasing, and we detected the faintest of blue casts in the whites of some prints.”

Website: CNET - Kodak Easyshare Printer Dock Series 3 Review

The Norwegian website Akam.no have published their review of the waterproof Pentax OptioWP digital camera.

Website: Akam.no - Pentax OptioWP Review

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PhotoHobby.net published a preview of the new entry-level Konica Minolta Dynax 5D digital SLR camera that was announced last week.

“Picture quality between 7D and 5D is no virtually difference. I’ve tried both camera using JPEG Extra Fine setting. With the same scene, JPEG file from both camera has almost identical in size. With closer look, there is no way to tell the different between the 2 cameras.”

Website: PhotoHobby.net - Konica Minolta Dynax 5D Preview

The-Digital-Picture.com have reviewed the Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5 L Tilt-Shift lens, which is mainly used for architecture and wide landscape photography.

“The Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5 L Tilt-Shift Lens is not stellar in terms of sharpness. I found it to be the least sharp of the three Canon TS-E lenses. It is somewhat soft wide open, getting decent at f/5.6 with continuing improvement through f/8. Even so, I found it to be on par with the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L Lens at similar apertures. The TS-E 24mm may have a slight advantage at and beyond f/5.6. The TS-E 24mm was somewhat sharper in the corners, but still showed some extra corner softness wide open (on a full frame body). Sharpness decreases as the lens is tilted - and decreases more rapidly as the lens is shifted. Remember that sharpness isn’t everything.”

Website: The-Digital-Picture.com - Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5 L Tilt-Shift Lens Review

DigiCamReview have reviewed the HP Photosmart R717, a 6.2 megapixel digicam with a 1.8 inch LCD screen and 3x optical zoom lens in a stylish stainless steel body.

“The camera is easy to use, quick to switch on and quick to take photos, the photo / play buttons on the back of the camera makes it easy to switch between playback mode and photo mode. The screen updates are quick and smooth in good lighting conditions, inside or in dark conditions the screen updates are much slower, but the camera does ‘gain up’ very well when it is dark. The camera speed in use, seems fairly quick when taking a photo, but shot to shot time is a bit slow. The camera is a good size, and easily fits into pockets. The menus are easy to pick up and use, I especially like how each menu is a different colour, for example the photo menu is red and the playback menu is blue.”

Website: DigiCamReview - HP Photosmart R717 Review

Website: Read my HP Photosmart R717 Review

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TrustedReviews have reviewed the new 5 megapixel Sony DSC-W15 digital camera.

“The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W15 is an excellent mid-range camera, offering an easy-to-use package that would make an ideal gift for a keen amateur photographer. Picture quality and performance are outstanding, and the camera has some limited potential for creative use, although an enthusiast will want to upgrade soon. The inclusion of a leather case and spare batteries is a nice touch, although a decent-sized Memory Stick would also be a welcome addition.”

Website: TrustedReviews - Sony DSC-W15 Review

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Imaging Resource have reviewed the new Casio Exilim Pro EX-P505, which features a 5X optical zoom, an imaging CCD with 5.0 megapixels, Casio’s “EXILIM engine”, and a large 2-inch TFT color rotating screen.

“Though unusual, the Casio Exilim Pro EX-P505 should be popular for the gadget lover. The camera’s point-and-shoot style should appeal to novices, while the manual and 23 preset shooting modes give the camera more exposure versatility than most standard point-and-shoot designs. A 5.0-megapixel CCD delivers high quality images, good for printing or distributing via email, though noise suppression tends to flatten out subtle detail a little, even at low ISO, and even there’s more noise left in the images than with many competing models. The 5x optical zoom lens offers more creative options than the 3x zooms on many cameras, giving you the ability to tightly frame your subject for a photo, even if you can’t get physically get very near. The large tilt/swivel LCD display helps you frame subjects from unusual angles, although the lack of an optical viewfinder may be offputting to some potential buyers.”

Website: Imaging Resource - Casio Exilim Pro EX-P505 Review

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The Hungarian website Index Digicam have reviewed the Olympus C-480 Zoom, a 4 megapixel digital camera with 3x zoom lens equivalent to 38-114mm and 15 scene modes (called the D-545 in the USA).

Website: Index Digicam - Olympus C-480 Zoom Review

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The Hungarian website Index Digicam have published their review of the 4 megapixel HP Photosmart M22 digital camera.

Website: Index Digicam - HP Photosmart M22 Review

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DesignTechnica have published their review of the Canon PowerShot S2 IS, a 5 megapixel digital camera with a 12x optical zoom equivalent to 36–432mm on a 35mm camera.

“Another day, another mega zoom digicam with a 12x optical zoom and built-in optical image stabilization.  This one is far from plain vanilla, however, since the PowerShot S2 IS is the replacement for the popular, year-old S1 IS.  Since this is the consumer electronics business, for the same initial asking price ($499) you get higher resolution (5 megapixels instead of 3MP), a more powerful zoom (12x versus 10x), a larger LCD screen, and more importantly, the improved DIGIC II processor that speeds up all the operations (so the camera is very responsive with a minimum amount of shutter lag).  And it takes very accurate images, something Canon is well known for. “

Website: DesignTechnica - Canon PowerShot S2 IS Review

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The 55th PhotographyBLOG Portfolio has been submitted by Andrei Orlov.

“I’m a Healthcare executive, who is passionate about photography. Most of my printed work is done in black and white or PANTONE duotone mode. Taking photos mostly around New York City with a prosumer Canon PowerShot Pro 1. Processing is done in Photoshop CS (levels, curves, unsharp mask, color conversion). Some of my pictures are at http://andreiorlov.shutterpoint.com and I am an Istockphoto.com contributor.”

Website: Andrei Orlov

Ever wondered what happened behind the scenes at one of the world’s largest software companies? Well, wonder no more, as PhotoshopNews takes you on a journey to the heart of Adobe.

“I thought it would be interesting for Photoshop users to see what it’s like to visit the Photoshop engineers. Before a recent class that I taught on the West Coast, I took a couple of days to go down to San Jose and visit Adobe. This was in late June, 2005 and many of the engineers were just starting to work the kinks out of the post Photoshop CS2 ship trama. But they were in good cheer-particularly because Adobe had just reported a record quarter of earnings (even though the anaylists were a bit dissappointed by conservative future estimates).”

Website: PhotoshopNews - A Visit to Adobe

PCMagazine have published their review of the new Sony DSC-H1 digital camera. The DSC-H1 has a 12x optical zoom lens (equivalent to 36-432 millimeters), 5 megapixel CCD and 2.5 inch LCD screen.

“Boxy but well-balanced and sporting a large 2.5-inch nonarticulating LCD screen, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H1 delivers a wide array of features, shooting modes, and performance for just under $500. The camera sports a long 12X optical zoom lens, which is quickly becoming the new standard for superzoom cameras. The one glaring problem was the camera’s shutter lag—a big hindrance if you’re trying to capture that fleeting moment.”

Website: PCMagazine - Sony DSC-H1 Review

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PCMagazine have taken a look at the new Sony PictureStation DPP-FP50 photo printer.

“The Sony DPP-FP50 ($199.99 direct) is the second dedicated photo printer we’ve seen for 4- by 6-inch output that lets you preview photos on your TV. It’s also the first with thermal-dye technology. As with the ink jet–based Canon Selphy DS700 Compact Photo Printer, which was the first to offer TV output, the DPP-FP50 lets you print from a PictBridge camera or computer, but the TV connection is the main attraction. And like the Canon printer, the DPP-FP50 is more of a consumer appliance in many ways than a computer peripheral.”

Website: PCMagazine - Sony PictureStation DPP-FP50 Review

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