Don’t blink or you’ll miss all the advances taking place in the world of photography. Tis the season for camera manufacturers to unveil new products they hope will be ready in time for the holiday shopping season. The following examples are so cutting edge they may not complete final production in time to sit under your tree this year–but there’s always next year.
CASIO
The company recently announced it has developed a digital camera that can shoot at a rate of 60 photos per second at full resolution.
Amazing, right?
According to the company, the new camera has a large 12X optical zoom lens that fronts a 6.6-megapixel-image sensor. The technology allows the camera to take up to 35 images at the rate of 60 frames per second — that’s much faster than is possible with traditional digital cameras.
The new device also has a high-speed shooting mode that manages as many as 300 images per second, but not at full resolution. The images will be recorded not as individual JPEG files but as a Motion JPEG movie file, which means the only way you can see each individual image is to pause the movie and advance frame-by-frame.
Nice, but the feature that has me the most excited is the pre-shot function that lets the camera capture images and buffer them before the shutter button is actually pressed. That’s a saving grace for photographers like me who are a little slow when it comes to pushing the shutter button for action shots. On this new camera when the button is pressed, the device records the images taken from that moment and onwards, and also those captured in the viewfinder immediately beforehand. Other fancy features on the new camera include a 2.8-inch rear monitor and a viewfinder.
So how much is all this razzle-dazzle going to cost you? The company hasn’t come out with a price point, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out it won’t be cheap.
NOKIA
Nokia announced yesterday it plans to team up with competitors (gasp) Samsung and Sony Ericsson to debut a flash memory card that works with a variety of cell phones and other gadgets, regardless of the brand.
The good news: the removable memory card would be used in handsets, digital cameras and other electronic devices, and according to the company, it could cut the current three-minute access time for a 90-minute movie to a few seconds. The product will use the new Universal Flash Storage specification, which removes the need for adaptors to accommodate different memory card sizes.
The bad news: the product isn’t expected to be ready until next Christmas.
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