Hey all (both of you) – I’ll be on a vacation for a couple of weeks so posting will be at best very light and at worst not at all. Enjoy the Apple event on Tuesday… here’s to a Disney branded iPod that docks with Intel Mac Mini that has been built into a plasma tv.
See you on the flip side….
Apple’s iTunes Music Store hit their 1,000,000,000th download this evening around 9:35 PM Pacific Time. One lucky SOB got their grand prize of an iMac, 5 black and 5 white iPods and maybe best of all, $10,000 to spend on the store. I dunno about you, but 10k tracks would take me a long time to download.
Congrats to Apple on this tremendous milestone.
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.
The last few weeks on iTMS have been busy ones with swimsuits, weed, mice and buttheads, so maybe they let their engineers out of their cages last weekend. Only two new shows (although I’m not sure one counts) this week, America’s Funniest Home Videos and the more interesting release, Conviction, a soon-to-air new TV show from the creators of Law and Order. Best thing about the show, it’s a free download. Being a complete sucker for free, I watched it on the treadmill this morning… not bad, but like I need more TV in my life.
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.
(via Imaging Resource)
Now, these haven’t been announced, but a good source has confirmed them.
Pentax brings us new thin cameras as well as a new underwater addition to their line.
(via DPReview)
Kodak updates their consumer friendly line of cameras.
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.