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› archive for August 19th, 2009

Canon Announces Powershot G11, Powershot S90, Powershot SX20 IS, Powershot SX120 IS, SD890 IS, SD940

g11So, finally appearing on Canon’s site today is the long-awaited Powershot G11, the top-of-the-line digital camera replacing the long-hard-to-find G10. It trots out with a 10 megapixel sensor, DIGIC IV processor, 2.8″ tilt-swivel LCD (man I love those things), and a 28-140mm f2.8-4.5 equivalency zoom lens. Of course it also does RAW, and has a small optical viewfinder, as well you’d expect from the G range.

The S range is also back with the S90, the two SX series get upgrades, and there are two new ELPHs. More details to come, right now Nick and I are off to frantically get those up for you to read in full over on the site.



The Digital Negative Petition

OK, so, I don’t actually believe online petitions have ever fixed anything (I notice Firefly remains canceled, for example), but, gorram it, I found a petition I believe in enough that I signed it anyway, and you should too.

dngThe petition is to the major camera manufacturers to try and convince them to add native support for DNG, the “Digital Negative” format introduced by Adobe in 2004 as an attempt to make a universal, archival format for digital photography.

In a world with a different format basically for every camera, the use of one consolidated Raw format (much as JPEG has become the clear winner in the raster arena) would simplify life greatly for any one using multiple systems (I actually tell Lightroom to import all my photos as DNGs already, I hate being beholden to a different format for every camera.) DNG, being supported by the digital imaging giant that is Adobe, also stands a good chance of surviving as long as digital imaging does (look at how long PSD has been around, for example). And, with Adobe’s editing software by and large the most popular solution for tweaking photos, it smooths things a bit more there as well.

In short, I think DNG is a freaking great idea, and more people need to follow in Pentax’s shoes and add it alongside their proprietary formats (or even replace them with DNG).

That petition I mentioned is here: http://www.ishootinraw.com/dng/



Canon’s Rebel XTi Soon To Lose Status As Flickr’s Favorite Son

flickr-iphoneFlickr is basically the best baseline for what our market is you could ask for: completely voluntary, community-driven. It has only a couple biases, and they fortunately happen to be the same biases our online store operates by: consumer- (versus professional-) centric, and of course skewed towards the opinions of consumers who are also web-savvy.

Sounds like online shoppers to me.

Anyway, it’s been a big deal around the tech blogs that the long-time top camera on Flickr– the venerable Canon Rebel XTi–is soon to be displaced by a new most-popular camera– the iPhone. No, seriously. Mock them as many of us might, the camera phone is clearly arising as the new snapshooter of preference in the internet crowd. Interesting to note, and it means I’ll pay a bit more attention to Sony’s continual efforts in that arena (boy they love putting megapixels into anything that’ll sit still long enough for them to).

Rounding out the top 5 cameras on Flickr are two more Canon’s and the legendary Nikon D80. Flickr also breaks down statistics by point-and-shoot (Canon owns the top 5), DSLR, brand, camera hone, etc.. So, if you’re looking to see what’s popular in the Web 2.0 crowd, here’s your new bookmark: http://www.flickr.com/cameras/




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