Hello ,
Just like that a 1/4 of 2012 has disappeared as we close in on the 12 month anniversary of the disasters in Japan that rocked the photographic industry globally. With almost all of the biggest names in photography having a head offices situated in the region, still 12 months many of these companies are feeling the after effects as too are retailers.
However, this didn't stop the big headlines rolling in with Olympus at the top of the list creating a major media buzz announcing the Olympus OM-D digital camera a month ago, featuring an integrated 1.44 megapixel electronic viewfinder and 16 megapixel LiveMOS image sensor. It claimed the mantle as the world’s fastest auto-focusing camera and is equipped with the world’s first five-axis image stabiliser integrated into a weather-proof alloy body. View our hands on preview.
Canon also created an equally loud noise with the much anticipated 5D Mark III accompanied by the new Speedlite 600EX-RT Flash and EF 24mm & EF 28mm f/2.8 IS USM Lenses.
Pentax announced the launch of the Pentax K-5 Silver Special Edition. Available only as a limited edition of 1,500 sets worldwide, the package consists of the Pentax K-5 digital SLR camera body matched with the new, ultra thin smc Pentax-DA 40mm F2.8 XS lens.
Western Digital came to the party on the storage front announcing its next generation of top-selling My Passport line portable hard drives adding a first-ever 2 TB My Passport capacity drive supporting ultra-fast USB 3.0 connectivity.
Sony announced the A57 (SLT-A57) adding to the Translucent Mirror Technology family, with a 16.1 megapixel capture, 12fps tele-zoom high speed shooting, high quality, high-sensitivity image performance, as well as full HD video recording (60p).
Rounding out the news is Apple's Third Generation iPad, featuring a stunning new retina display, Apple’s new A5X chip with quad-core graphics and a 5 megapixel iSight camera with advanced optics for capturing amazing photos and 1080p HD video. But the real catch, as quoted by Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing Philip Schiller was “The new iPad now has the highest resolution display ever seen on a mobile device with 3.1 million pixels, delivering razor sharp text and unbelievable detail in photos and videos" ...could this spell the end of the good old fashioned printed photo portfolio?
The Last Word: Nokia have ushered in a new era in high-end smartphone imaging with the Nokia 808 PureView offering an amazing high-resolution 41 megapixel sensor with high-performance Carl Zeiss optics and new pixel oversampling technology. What is of real interest though is Nokia's thought process around zooming and the problem within mobile phones, where they still use digital zoom. Nokia have now set the image size default at 5 megapixels but when you zoom (up to 3x) the power of the large 41 megapixel sensor is used and as a result there is no compromise in image quality, apparently.
Although it hasn't been suggested yet it's something that one day might sneak into a DSLR line up of the future...
Regards,
Michael Gazzola - e.SHOOT editor.
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