LAS VEGAS (djc Features) – It looks like it’s going to be a great year for the digital photography industry. With 46 million digital cameras sold worldwide in 2003, industry experts anticipate an annual growth rates of 20 per cent for the next five years. For the 31 per cent of us who currently own digital cameras, and the 11 per cent of us who will probably buy one this year, what can we expect from the industry?
The answer is at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) convention in Las Vegas. Since the opening on Thursday, about 30,000 people are expected to attend the gathering to witness the unveiling the latest in cameras, most of which will ship in the spring.
From what we’ve seen so far, the 2004 models are smaller and simpler than ever, with higher resolutions, more advanced features and larger LCD screens. They’re also a lot cheaper than they used to be.
Kodak’s new EasyShare CX7300, for instance, is an entry-level three-megapixel camera going for $129 (US). Just a few years ago, a camera of this calibre would have hovered in the $400 range. Nowadays, $400 could buy you Polaroid’s new 4.5-megapixel x530 with Foveon’s X3 sensor, with an advanced image-capturing technology formerly available in only the most sophisticated cameras.
Today’s digital photography standard is about eight megapixels. Most of the bigger names — Canon, Olympus, Fuji, Nikon — are offering eight-megapixel deals for around $1000. These include anything from full-featured SLRs to pocket-sized point-and-shoot designs.
Goodbye Red Eye
One exciting feature popping up this year is instant red-eye removal. Instead of relying on your computer’s photo-editing software to fix the red-eye predicament — which will increase as camera sizes decrease — two new models promise to automatically get the red out.
Nikon’s four-megapixel Coolpix 4200 and Hewlett-Packard’s five-megapixel Photosmart R707 include red-eye removal and should ship as early as May, at the street price of $499 and $349 (US) respectively.
According to Nikon, the system’s software is intelligent enough to target just the eyes, so your picture of a rose garden won’t suddenly turn grey.
HP’s Photosmart technology encompasses a host of other features to guarantee perfect prints each time, such as automatic adjustments for bad light and high-contrast situations, and a unique advice system that provides tips on how to compensate for bad shots.
Video Killed the Photography Star
Many digicams offer the option to shoot video, but the quality and length of the clips are consistently laughable. Canon’s $499 S1 IS can shoot video at 30 frames per second, twice the quality of older models. An optional 1GB memory card will set you back another $300, but it will give you enough room to shoot an hour of decent-looking video.
Perhaps mapping out the future of this technology, Zoran Corporation unveiled its seventh-generation COACH (Camera On A CHip) processor, which offers DVD-quality video capture in cameras and cell phones. Previous incarnations of COACH have showed up in units from Minolta, Kodak, Samsung and Pentax.
Of course, shooting hours of high-quality video will require plenty of space, and there are plenty of companies willing to provide it to you.
Among them is Lexar, who has released a new 8GB CompactFlash cards featuring a 40x speed rating and a sustained write speed of 6MB per second. The Professional Series cards also include the company’s new Write Acceleration technology, further speeding up the card’s performance. Lexar will also be releasing new Memory Stick cards with up to 256MB of memory and read speeds that clock four times faster than the current standard.
At Your Service
It’s not just parts and accessory manufacturers being represented at PMA; several online services and software makers have booths as well. Even Microsoft made its first appearance at PMAI this year, demonstrating how Windows XP, MSN, Digital Image Suite and Messenger can contribute to the digital photography market.
A Toronto-based entrepreneur, Richard Nadel, showed off his unique venture: TreasureKnit.com, a company that offers a customized 40-by-60-inch throw blanket featuring your favourite photograph. The image is not silk-screened or printed, but woven directly into fabric, meaning your memory will never fade.
Film? What’s that?
The sharp rise in digital photography’s popularity hasn’t been good news for the photo lab industry. In Canada, film sales dropped 18 per cent last year and digital cameras outpaced film camera sales by more than double. Kodak even announced that it would stop selling film cameras in North America and Europe altogether.
Most people don’t bother printing the images from their digital cameras (especially cell-phone cameras) but as quality improves, the photo lab industry is optimistic that people will want to better preserve their memories.
For those already nostalgic for film rolls, SanDisk has announced that it will release inexpensive Shoot and Store cards that tell you how many pictures it holds, not just the megabyte count. Costing about the same as an equivalent roll of film, you can expect to see them in a supermarket check-out aisle near you.
