Kris Krug, photographer extraordinaire, organized a conference within a unconference within a conference at this year’s Northern Voice. He collected an exceptional panel of other photogs and tech geeks.

High end consumer cameras

Tim Bray did a talk on high end compact cameras. Made me think about using the G3 again. It does shoot in RAW and it has the intervolator. I wonder if the G6 has that? If you are looking for a new camera, Tim posted his talk at the here.

Tim’s talk brought up some points that I’m always thinking about: I love my Canon Rebel, but there are serious costs to bringing it with me all the time. It takes beautiful pictures, but it’s big and bulky. The vast majority of the photos that I take are on my Canon SD450. Maybe I could learn to use it a bit better…

Color Profile Love

A huge THANK YOU to Matt Trent at UBC for teaching me in 10 minutes everything I needed to know about color profiles in Photoshop. I sat through an hour at a Macworld session years ago from someone who worked at Adobe and I didn’t get it. Now, I think I’ve got all I need to know.

The secret – if you work on a Mac and are posting photos online work with Adobe SRGB. Why? Safari reads numerous color profiles, but almost no other browser does. The color profile is smaller than Adobe RGB, but it is the lowest common denominator, thus will look the same on most browsers.

Hopefully, next year I’ll get to see your lab and work in HDR.

Matt Trent’s Moosecamp Presentation

Adobe Lightroom

Roland Tanglao led a session about Adobe Lightroom, which looks a lot like if iPhoto and Adobe Bridge had a kid. Oh, and apparently, in the photo world, black is the new white.

Lots of good features here, but not enough to pull me into another app. One interesting thing, though, it looked like Roland was running an older G4 laptop, but Lightroom really seemed to fly. If you’re looking for something a little more robust than iPhoto, Lightroom might be for you.

Thanks everyone for such an informative session! Look forward to seeing you next year.

It’s a Wiki, but Pretty
Wetpaint lands a deal American Express to help power their Executive Travel SkyGuide. The article sites Wetpaint’s leadership in the areas of ease of use and its general lack of ugliness.

Flickr’s Camera Finder
Looking for the perfect camera this holiday season? Let the wisdom of crowds decide for you! Instead of reading reviews, Flickr has exposed the most popular cameras being used by Flickrites. Being a bit of a gadget nerd, I’ve often wondered why Flickr had not created this before.

Yahoo! acquired Bix
Ok, this is a little old, but Yahoo! has added the contest creation site, Bix to their stable of social media properties. This is a fun site that should fit in well with the rest of Yahoo’s social media acquisitions.

Walt Mossberg, venerable old fogey of personal electronics, likes the new set of big LCD compact digital cameras introduced at PMA this year. Tested were the Olympus Stylus 710, Nikon Coolpix S5, and the Canon SD630 with the Canon coming out on top.

Overall, we preferred the Canon. In addition to its superior pictures and larger screen, the Canon had a much cleaner user interface than the others. Many things about the Canon felt more like a tiny computer than a digital camera.

The Nikon and Canon were on par picture quality wise, but the Nikon requires a dock to actually remove pictures from the unit. The Olympus requires xD storage, which automatically deducts points from any review(we need to do a review of why to not buy cameras that don’t use SD or Compact Flash, but trust me, just don’t). Walt also found the Olympus a little more difficult to use.

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With digital cameras, I love both ends of the spectrum. There are a lot of great cameras out there right now, but I always feel like the middle kind of sucks. It just seems like there are too many compromises. I like digital SLRs and barring that, I like little pocket cameras. Canon’s announcement of the inexpensive A-line cameras is a little yawnsville for me. While I don’t d find them that exciting, the A75 I bought my parents last year for $200 was a delightful, feature packed performer and it occupies another great area of the spectrum, cheap.

New A series cameras include the A430, A530, A540 and A700. The A430, the smallest and cheapest of the lot is a 4 megapixel, 4x zoom camera for $179. The 530, 540 and 700 are basically the same camera with 5 , 6 and 6 megapixels respectively with a 6x zoom on the 700 rather than 4x on the lesser models. At $229, $299 and $349 these are respectable little shooters with many automatic and manual features.

One last Canon to mention, at the top end, the 20D got a modest upgrade to the 30D with a larger 2.5″ LCD and 5fps shooting in JPEG mode for $1399.

Canon’s Elph series got an upgrade today with 3 new models, the Canon PowerShot 600, Canon PowerShot SD630, and Canon PowerShot SD700 IS. All pack 6 megapixels, the 600 has a 2.5 inch screen, the 630 and 700 upgrade to a 3 inch screen (although the 630 loses it’s viewfinder) and the 700 adds a 4x zoom rather than the 3x that has been standard on most of the Elph line.

Canon has introduced image stabilization to the Elph line with 700 IS. In theory, this will help make those long zoom shots less blurry. This is unique in the compact digicam space and new for Canon.

Canon has once again made the naming of these cameras confusing as they have fewer megapixels than the SD500 and SD550, but seem to have more features . I can’t wait for the questions as to why the 600 has a higher model number but fewer megapixels. No prices on these digicams yet, but I’m sure they’ll be priced somewhere around the $400-500 mark.

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(via Imaging Resource)

Now, these haven’t been announced, but a good source has confirmed them.

• Cybershot DSC-H5 7 megapixels, 3.0 inch LCD, 12x zoom, 1000 ISO
• Cybershot DSC-H2 6 megapixels, 3.0 inch LCD, 12x zoom, 30 fps 640×480 movie mode
• Cybershot DSC-W100 8 megapixels, 2.5 inch LCD, 3x optical,
• Cybershot DSC-W70 7 megapixels, 3.0 inch LCD, MPEG4 640×480 30fps movie mode

Pentax brings us new thin cameras as well as a new underwater addition to their line.

• Pentax Optio W10 Waterproof/Underwater 6.0 megapixels, 2.5 inch LCD, 3x optical zoom, 30 fps 640×480 movie mode.
• Pentax Optio T10 Ultra thin compact ,6.0 megapixels, 3 inch touch LCD, 3x optical zoom, long battery life and a stylus for drawing on the screen.
• Pentax Optio M10 Compact 6.0 megapixels, 2.5 inch LCD, 3x optical zoom, long battery life.

(via DPReview)

Kodak updates their consumer friendly line of cameras.

• Kodak EasyShare V603 Compact, 6.1 megapixel, 2.5 inch LCD, 640×480 MPEG 4 30 fps movie mode, $299
• Kodak EasyShare Z612 6 megapixel, 12x zoom, 2.5 inch display, 640×480 MPEG 4 30 fps movie mode, $399
• Kodak EasyShare C643 Entry level, 5 megapixel, 3x zoom, 2.4 inch LCD, 640×480 30 fps movie mode, $249

Ah…. just recovering from the cornucopia of electronics announcements at CES and Macworld, it appears PMA is upon us. PMA (Photo Marketers Association) is held once a year in Orlando, FL and is the photo nerd’s paradise. The show doesn’t start until next week, but that doesn’t stop the early announcements (and rumors).

We’ll be rounding up the the new digital cameras announced prior to the big camera show, so stay tuned.

I love researching new products for people. I love learning all the intricacies of new gadgets and why one thing might be better than another. I spend waaaaay too much time thinking about the trade offs between model ‘x’ and model ‘y’. Why do I do this? So when someone asks me “Which x should I buy?,” I have an answer for them.

Most people don’t do this. Often times, they get to their favorite (or least favorite) electronics store and know they want to buy a digital camera (in this case) but don’t know where to start. So naturally, they talk to the salesman whose best interest isn’t always theirs.

“What to Buy?” will tell you the best product to buy in a given product category. Today, we’ll focus on sub compact digital cameras. Sub compacts are the smallest digital cameras available.

Canon Powershot 450

Sub Compact Digital Camera

Why? Big LCD, bulletproof build, 5.0 megapixels, SD memory and good picture quality.

Who? Novice-Advanced person who wants a pocket camera with a big LCD and decent picture quality.

How Much? Street prices ~$300

Reviews

CNET – 7.4/10
DPReview – Recommended
Epinions.com – 5/5
Steve’s Digicams – Liked it.

After making the rounds on various rumor sites, Nikon has announced their successor to the very popular D100. This camera packs a 10.2 megapixel sensor, a 2.5″ LCD and combines many of the advanced features of the more expensive D2x with the size and weight of the D100.

The D200 is aimed squarely in the middle of Nikon’s SLR range of cameras and spec-wise very close to the D2x. At $1700 clams for the camera body, this baby ain’t for everyone, but prosumer photogs everywhere will be lining up for this one.

Nikon D200
DPReview Preview

The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that digital camera manufacturers are quietly offering to repair over 80 models of digital cameras from brands such as Sony, Canon, Nikon, and Olympus due to a malfunction in the CCD image sensor. The CCD used in these cameras has been found to fail in hot and humid conditions. Cameras affected by this problem will show “black images or distorted colors in the viewfinder or LCD display and in any print or digital output.” No recall has been issued, but customers with the problem can get their cameras repaired free of charge.

Imaging Resource had this story a few weeks back.

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Canon threw their hat into the WiFi camp today with their introduction of the SD430. This camera has virtually the same specs as the recently introduced SD450 but it is a half inch wider presumably due to the inclusion of WiFi.

Much like the Kodak EasyShare-one, this camera can connect to computers and printers wirelessly. Phil Askey of DPReview says that Wi-Fi in digital cameras is “a solution looking for a problem” and that when “when WiFi is enabled the small batteries in these compact cameras are likely to be sucked dry pretty quickly.”

Not sure that I feel that strongly, but currently, WiFi is an interesting curiosity at best.

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