What's New in Digital Cameras

What's New - June 2000

June 20
Full review posted on Canon PowerShot S100 Digital ELPH!
Dave left this one for us as he headed out on vacation, now it's ready for your reading pleasure! A lot of folks (ourselves included) called Canon's earlier compact digicams "Digital ELPHs", referring to the wildly successful line of compact film-based cameras sold by Canon under that name. The resemblance was there but not exact, and Canon themselves held the ELPH name in reserve. Now, there's a 2.1 megapixel digicam that Canon has finally felt worthy of the coveted ELPH name. Actually smaller in frontal area than a standard playing card(!), the new digicam is housed in an exceptionally rugged all-metal body. The result is a camera that will likely just live in your pocket, it's so compact and rugged. (Do take it out before putting the pants through the wash though!) We put the Digital ELPH through its paces, and found that its image quality was just a notch off the high standard set by Canon's own PowerShot S10 model. It's clearly a 2 megapixel digicam though, offering resolution and image quality superior to the range of 1.3 megapixel models, in a form factor that is literally the smallest in its class. Check out our review for the full details!

June 18
Dave's last gasp! (Well, figuratively, anyway...) Clearing the pipes as he heads out on a long overdue vacation, Dave has blessed and posted the latest fruits of our labors: A couple of new full reviews, sample pictures pages on a couple of other cameras, and a thumbnail index of scads of sample pictures we shot with the Sony MVC-CD1000 we broke the news on earlier in the week!

Full review of Olympus C-3000 Zoom posted!
This has actually been on the site for a week or so, we just hadn't gotten around to formally introducing it to our readers on the News and What's New pages! Every once in a while, a product comes along that really blows the market open price-wise. We think the Olympus C-3000 will do that for the 3 megapixel camera market. Olympus took the (excellent) C-3030 Zoom (which we previously reviewed), decreased the size of its buffer memory, dropped Photoshop LE from the software bundle, and packed it with an 8MB card instead of a 16MB one. Oh, and they chopped fully $200 off the list price in the process! The result is a very full-featured 3 megapixel digicam with excellent image quality, that's just a bit slower than it's big brother the C-3030. And the price...! - At a list of $799, the C-3000 arguably represents one of the best bargains in the entire digicam marketplace! Read the review for all the details!

Full review of Olympus D-460 Zoom posted!
Must be "Olympus Day" on the Imaging Resource! We've also just completed our review of the Olympus D-460 Zoom, a very worthy upgrade to their earlier D-450 Zoom. In virtually every parameter, the D-460 provides noticeable enhancements over the (already very good) D-450: Colors are more pure and more accurately saturated, and the lens appears sharper as well. We did note that low-light capability is slightly diminished, but overall, it's a great upgrade. Simpler menus & controls, too! A great point & shoot camera in the important "mid-market" resolution range of 1.3 megapixels. Read the review for all the details!

Picture analysis & samples posted for Sony MVC-FD95!
Sony's significantly upgraded their Mavica line for 2000, with the FD95 currently at the high end of it. (At least, until the MVC-CD1000 hits the streets!) Sporting a 2.1 megapixel sensor and a host of improvements over earlier Mavicas (including great low-light performance), the MVC-FD95 takes the Mavica line into multi-megapixel territory. We'll have our full review up shortly after Dave returns, but until then at least have a full set of test images posted on our sample pictures page for the FD95, along with our usual detailed analysis. Check it out! (It's in the Comparometer(tm) too!)

Picture analysis & samples posted for Canon S100 Digital ELPH!
Yup! That's a standard-sized playing card peeking out from behind the new Canon "Digital ELPH" digicam! This nifty unit has packs more "wow" factor per cubic inch than any digicam we've seen to date. It's incredibly small, with an exceptionally rugged all-metal body. We'll have a full review posted sometime next week, but for now do at least have a full set of test images available on the S100's sample pictures page and in the Comparometer(tm)!

Whoooee!! LOTS of Sony CD1000 Photos!
Our First Look review of last week broke the news to the world of the new CD-R based Sony Mavica. (See our First Look review for details of this amazing new camera.) We'll have our usual absurdly detailed, "more than you probably wanted to know" full review posted sometime shortly after Dave'd return, but in the meantime are making available the full set of test images we shot with the camera, via a thumbnail-index page. This page takes quite a while to load, due to the nearly 140 thumbnails on it, but if you're looking for more sample images from the CD1000, it'll be worth the wait! (Hey, more good news: The CD1000 *finally* includes EXIF header info for exposure parameters!)

June 13
Now it can be told! We're finally able to tell you what we know about the new CD-R equipped Mavica MVC-CD1000 from Sony. We've had a prototype unit for a couple of days now, and have had the chance to put it through its paces a bit. Very impressive! The image quality is very equivalent to the (excellent) results produced by the MVC-FD95 2 megapixel camera, but without the JPEG artifacts. The new CD1000 makes roughly 800K files, vs the 300K or so of the FD95, and can even record uncompressed TIFF files. (And a lot of them too, given the 156 megabyte capacity of the 77mm CD-R drive it incorporates.) 2.1 megapixels, no JPEG hassles, virtually unlimited storage at low cost ($4/CD), and a 10X zoom lens. What more could a Mavica Maven want? While the camera won't be in stores until sometime in August (at a list price of $1299), we felt this was such a significant announcement that we've gone quite a bit beyond our normal "First Look" treatment of it. This is more than just another new camera announcement, but really opens up new territory in the digicam marketplace. Read our full First Look article to see why we consider this to possibly be the most significant digicam announcement of the last 12 months! PS: Steve's Digicams has also posted some CD-1000 info on the camera on his site, and promises to have some "First Look" material of his own up shortly.

June 12
A big day, several reviews, after a 2-week hiatus, to be followed by something "really big" tomorrow! (Check back around noon EDT on June 13th!We'll have a few more review-related things over the course of this week, prior to Dave leaving on vacation on Saturday. After that, things will go quiet on the review front, through the end of the month (Dave will be attending PC Expo and doing some business travel up & down the East Coast the last week of June, should be back in the saddle the first week of July.) Everything else will proceed as normal (or what passes for it around here) during Dave's absence: News updates, Newsletter publication, etc, there'll just be a gap of a couple of weeks for new review postings. We expect to have several reviews in process while he's away though, so things should pick up again pretty quickly upon his return. Meanwhile, here's some of what's been occupying us over the last couple of weeks:

Full review of Minolta Dimage Scan Elite posted!
We've completed our review of Minolta's latest slide scanner, the Dimage Scan Elite. This unit sports the same 2820dpi maximum resolution of their previous top of the line 35mm film scanner, but now includes the (amazing) Digital ICE technology, licensed from Applied Science Fiction (cool name, that). Digital ICE uses an infrared-derived "defect channel" to map-out image defects such as film scratches and dust specks automatically, rendering perfect images from dusty film, and good scans from even badly scratched emulsions. Previously only available on Nikon film scanners, the addition of Digital ICE to Minolta's lineup will be welcome news for fans of their products. Besides the new Digital ICE capability, Minolta has made significant improvements in their scanning software, which was already one of our favorites. Read the review for all the details!

Full review of Fuji FinePix 1400 posted!
This is another one that's been in the queue far too long: Fuji has developed one of the nicest entry-level digicams we've seen in a while. The key (IOHO)? A true 3x zoom autofocus lens on a camera selling for under $400 list. This wouldn't be particularly compelling, if the camera didn't take good pictures though. But it does! Also not to be underestimated is the exceptionally appealing shape of the new camera: We're told that this is the first camera developed by Fuji specifically in response to studies of preferences of US consumers. We think that focus shows, if the responses of people we showed the camera to was any indication. Nice pictures, low price, and a 3x optical zoom with autofocus, decent exposure control, and great looks - We think this one's going to be a real winner. Read the review for all the details!

Full review of Sony DSC-F505V posted!
Although we had the distinction of posting some of the very first images from this camera on the 'web, we've taken an unconscionably long time in getting the full review to you. As it happens, it's actually been posted for over a week, just waiting final review. It's finally been deemed fit for public consumption. Check it out, a very impressive camera!