DigitalPro Shooter Volume 2, Issue 5, March 5th, 2003
Welcome to DPS 2-5, a special report on PMA 2003. The best news at PMA is that the show is alive and well. It filled the entire South Hall at the Las Vegas convention center with some events overflowing to surrounding hotels. This was a sharp contrast from Seybold last fall which was very slow. There were dozens of announcements and many new products as well--far too many to report here. So I've picked out some of the show highlights that are of most interest to our readers.
Nikon Lenses: The 70-200, 12-24 and 24-120 were all there, all usable, and all sweet. My only problem know is deciding which ones I can truly justify on a business basis as they're all lenses I'd be happy to spend more time with. I'll have a 70-200 on Friday to start testing, and as we get the opportunity to shoot more with the other lenses we'll be posting real reviews.
Canon 10D: A very nice camera and a compelling entry in the $2K D-SLR category. From shooting with one briefly it is clear that Canon has improved the AF speed over the D60, and the new 7-sensor arrangement is much more flexible than the previous 3 sensors. Canon folks believe the 10D is a "D100-killer". I'm not sure I see how that would happen as the cameras don't appear different enough to justify changing brands, but I'll know more after I have one to review.
Digital Photo Summit: Adobe hosted a "summit" for digital photographers, including a panel with Epson, Nikon, Adobe, HP, and Canon. While the panelists clearly wanted a love fest, the photographer on the panel, Douglas Kirkland, and photographers in the audience including Jeff Schewe, were having none of it.
In particular shooters hammered the panelists for sloppy progress on EXIF without input from photographers and for a total lack of effort towards a standard Raw file format. In particular Nikon's Richard LoPinto said that Nikon viewed their NEF format as a proprietary advantage and was currently unwilling to work with other vendors on a standard--presumably because by having the format closed they can increase the highly profitable sales of Capture. This position has clearly been infuriating to the Adobe team developing the Camera Raw plug-in. My personal vote is for Adobe to move forward with a hybrid format similar to Kodak's ERI--one that provides the size and viewability of JPEG while also including the additional "hints" needed to allow post-processing of exposure and white balance. That format would be open, documented and fully supported in Photoshop. The format could also clean up the EXIF mess (where only about 1/3 of all shooting data is recorded in a standard way and the rest is hidden in vendor specific tags). Frankly, if these vendors don't pull together, they are likely to all fall separately when Microsoft addresses the issue and makes this quibbling moot.
Lexar cards: Lexar introduced and was showing 32x 2GB & 4GB cards! In particular, the 2GB Type I card with an expected price of $699 and availability in March will likely be of interest to Raw file shooters looking for the largest fast, affordable card they can find. They also introduced 40x cards, plus faster 1GB cards. Estimated retail will be $140 for the 256MB and $240 for the 512MB 40x cards, and $400 for the 1GB Type 1 32x card. If you're looking to speed up your shooting or card downloading, these should be a great tool. Lexar said that cameras will only write up to 32x, but the additional speed of the 40x cards may still be useful to you for speeding up the loading of images onto your PC. For more info
Aquatech was showing a very, very nice line of rain covers for pro SLRs and D-SLRs. They are well designed, with an elastic fit for the front of the lens as well as a screw-in holder for the eyepiece area that locks the cover to the camera. They have several other nice features and a rugged design as well. They'll be sending us one to review so we'll report on our results from testing.
Battery updates: Two impressive battery companies worth watching were there. North American Battery, which makes the Polaroid EN-4 replacement had the happy news that they'd be shipping an updated version with a fixed end cap in a couple weeks. They also have very price competitive Lithium and rechargeable AA batteries which we'll be evaluating over the next few weeks. Also, UniRoss Batteries, the former European sister company of NAB is entering the US battery market with a high performance line of rechargeables including NiMH AA and AAAs. They are offering 2100mAH AA batteries immediately with 2300 to follow soon. They are looking for distributors in the US at PMA, so look for them to be generally available soon. We'll be trying these out as well.
Nixvue Vizor: Nixvue, maker of portable storage devices, showed a 'technology demonstration' of a CD-burner based alternative to their popular Vista product line. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Rather than a hard drive they have brought costs down by putting a CD-R/W burner in the unit. So far, so good. However, it doesn't run on batteries, so it would need to stay in your car or hotel room. It does do disk spanning, so large cards can be supported. It certainly seems like an interesting concept. If you need permanent archives in the field and don't want to carry a laptop with CD-burner, then clearly it is a nice option. The unit is expected to ship in about 6 months for $299 with an optional $99 LCD display. My other concern for the product is that in 6 months photographers will be expecting DVD-based burners, so Nixvue may need to offer a higher-end DVD unit soon after the first version ships.
For casual use, Olympus introduced the Olympus C-750 Ultra Zoom, worlds' smallest compact 4MP camera. Also the Stylus 105 and 120, entry-level cameras which are interesting because they include a "shake detector" that won't release the shutter if the camera is shaking. I'm not sure whether it will help or frustrate, but it might be a good tool for beginners to practice their technique.
The wildlife forum has been hopping, with lots of new posts sharing photographers favorite techniques.