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You didn't do quite enough research. The Nikon WT-1 transmitter supports WEP, MAC Address, and ESS-ID.

Check out Digital Photography Review's preview here

...because Japanese companies do not waste time with suing each other for every little poop. American companies behave like a 3 year old whom the lollipop was taken away.

Now serious: Japanese are more ready to spend huge money on new neat innovative gadgets than enybody else in the world.

It is the perfect platform for testing new products... check this: Sony QUALIA 016.

i have ran into this problem before in 2000... some of these problems have been solved now. there are a few ways.

just buy a camera that can handle CDRWs... like the sony CD mavica:
Sony Mavica CD 300 or any other of these series. the media is not the standard but carrying 10 of them won't be much of a problem. mailing will be simple too. since it's a smaller CD, whenever you run into civilization, you can back up onto something else (the internet, bigger CDR, DVD, etc.) without needing non-standard parts.
(note: smaller camera would be better, but if you're travelling for that long, you will want zoom...)

if you want something else that can handle PC card (all memory types has PC card adapters) like a digital wallet from minds@work (who are out of business... XD ) but there are some out that are previously posted. here's one on ebay: here

that would have kicked ass when i was travelling. shoot until have no battery instead of wasting time dumping pictures...

another would be to get one of these: VAIO C1 note. a picture book. that way, when you have dead time on the train, plane, etc, you can blog on it. adding more details to your pictures, etc. definitely worth thinking about. C1s can be had pretty cheap since they've come out with a few versions already... you gotta hunt on Ebay for a good deal. there are lots here in japan.

email me if you want some more suggestions/tips. i'm not a pro, but i have been on the road with consumer digital camera without a padded wallet and know what it's like.

Not always true. Reputable companies sometimes throw cheap stuff at you, too. The camera in question here is a Pentax Optio S, and Pentax certainly has a good reputation in optics (maybe not as good as Nikon, but certainly good enough). The problem with the Optio S is its "revolutionary sliding lens design", which makes the camera as thin as a deck of cards. However, as in world politics, revolutions often introduce a whole new set of problems...

True. However, my film SLR has no noticeable distortion at 35mm. With my pocket digital, the issue is clearly the inferior lens, and not the fundamental limitations you're mentioning.

You'll probably want a better lens anyway for doing any sort of quality photography.

I'm well aware that it's impossible to get high-quality pictures from an ultra-compact camera. I chose this particular camera, however, because it's easy to carry around in a shirt pocket. When an unexpected opportunity for a good shot arises, it will be there, while my film SLR will be lying at home.

What I'm looking for is therefore a compromise: Acceptable image quality with a small form factor. And I think an ultra-compact digital combined with some software-based distortion removal might just do the job. Well, thanks for all the suggestions so far!

For the curious: The camera I'm talking about is a Pentax Optio S.

A preceeding article mentions the 2.4 Gb Magicstor already in production with 3.6 Gb on target this year and 4.7 next year. The same article predicts that 0.7 inches will be the next big standard if some barriers are passed.

If Cornice or some other company bought Ritek's Microstor is unkown to me (it seems to have been related to dataplay developers too) but it's clear that there is a shortage of good brand names for this product. The Press release for Magicstor was hilarious, promptly stating that the company GS Microdrive released a harddrive called Magicstore, showing a picture of the HD with MICRODRIVE written all over it and stating that this is the company's name not the brand name since Microdrive is a trademark of IBM (Hitatchi Storage) ((Sorry lost the couldn't find the pressrelease again on nikkeibp.com))

I've had a 6MP camera for over a month.

Well, Kodak screwed the pooch with the new DCS-14n. They just posted a super-indepth review of it over at Digital Photo Review and it performed pretty miserably compared to the Canon 1Ds. Personally, I'm quite happy with my Canon 10D :)

One word. Foveon.

More info, and more yet. Combine this with high resolution and good lenses - digital is about to surpass film in quality.

Steve's Digicams

Epinions

Digital Camera Resource Page

Digital Photography Review

CNet User Reviews

Google Search

Did you try searching Google?

4 GB of Compact Flash

There are some "generic" memory sticks now Lexar for example.

I've been looking at a digicam to replace my aging Olympus 2500.

The Powershot G3 seems to have all the features I need (3-4Mpixel, good lowlight, long battery life, non-proprietary media).

Then again the Gameboy SP has a non-standard headphone jack. I'd take away a few points for that.

Not having a headphone jack is a little annoying, but there is a pigtail you can buy to use headphones. I have one on order.

Also, I have to disagree with the fellow who talked up the NiMH batteries in the old GBA. I had a GBA with Afterburner and used NiMHs. There are several problems with that setup.

1. NiMHs have a high internal discharge rate. Put your GBA away for two weeks and the batteries are near dead. This makes the GBA bad as a "ready when you are bored" solution.
2. NiMHs are heavy. I swear that two sets of NiMHs are about the same weight as the GBA including it's own battery.
3. The GBA battery life was not great with the Afterburner installed. It can't have been 10 hours. Comparing backlight on to backlight on, the battery life is very similar.
4. The Afterburner backlight was barely more than half as bright as the GBA SP's backlight.

You can get extra batteries for your SP. so you can carry two if you want. But I do agree it would be nice to be able to buy a disposable battery for occasional on-the-go use.

Duracell recognized this problem and has a solution for the future. It's too large for the SP, but may catch on in the future.

Duracell CP1

I was one of the lucky ones who got a Kodak DX3700 digital camera for £100, so these things do sometimes pan out.

I looked into the legal aspects back then, when I was busy shouting at Kodak. There are a few interlocking issues.

Firstly, a contract is only formed if one party makes an offer to tender and the other party accepts this offer. For most web retailers, the most you get back is a "confirmation of order" email that has a dubious legal standing. Kodak's email, however, states in very clear terms that it is a receipt, suggesting a contract has been made.

Secondly, if one party can be shown to have acted in bad faith, the contract can be annulled. This occured in the case of people buying a £299 TV for £2.99 from Argos: the price was ruled to be clearly in error, the buyers must have known it was an error, so they were acting in bad faith. In Kodak's case it was not so clear cut; the price was low, but it was marked as being a special offer, so not utterly incredible.

In the end, Kodak decided the legal waters were muddy enough that it didn't fancy trying them out, so it gave in and sold the cameras at the advertised price. But that's not to say it would have lost, merely that the bad PR of fighting it and the chance of losing would be too costly.

In any event, if you were quick enough to get one of these PDAs ordered, don't get too excited: I'll be shocked if you get one. Amazon wouldn't lose if this went to court.

(IANAL, of course)

Look at this review of the Canon G3 on dpreview.com. Scroll down to the "Battery Life" section...

This looks like a nice, comprehensive comparison based upon battery life.

Just check around on the site... you never know what is out there until you look..

-------------------
Stupid should hurt.

Phil Askey, who runs www.dpreview.com has performed this test with many cameras, such as the Canon Powershot G3 (table at bottom of the page).
I don't know if he'll review the Kodak camera or not, but DPReview is a good site for practical information like that.

Phil Askey, who runs www.dpreview.com has performed this test with many cameras, such as the Canon Powershot G3 (table at bottom of the page).
I don't know if he'll review the Kodak camera or not, but DPReview is a good site for practical information like that.

DPReview covers the MacBibble 3 announcement here:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0301/03012901macbibbl ev3.asp

Is the IBM MicroDrive still around?

Hitachi Microdrive Website

What's more they have recently announced a 4GB model due by the end of the year. Which would be ideal for use in HD based camcorders.

It's is too expensive to do this now. At $5-$6 for the chip currently plus the space taken up makes this prohibitive. Second the Bluetooth penetration is very small currently. The solution will be the Multifunction cards like the ones announced by Sandisk. They combine I/O like Wi-Fi or later BT on the CF card with Flash memory. That way you get the machine out now at a reasonable price point and secure later connectivity at much better price later.

There is a a discussion of this over at Digital Photography Review.

Here is another Mac vs. PC test entitled Mac Slaughtered Again, which includes this quote: "Of course, Mac stalwarts will cling to the notion that Mac OS X is so much better and easier to use than Windows XP, but if you're spending all day inside After Effects, which operating system you're using makes little difference. What does make a huge difference is if you have to sit and wait for rendering any longer than necessary.

I once estimated that you'd need around 60 MP to equal film. But the signal-to-noise is so low in some digital imaging sensors that you don't such extreme resolution to have comparable image quality. See the Digital Camera Image Quality page.

Also, check out the Canon EOS-1Ds review where this 11 MP camera's image quality comparable to 35 mm film.

Starting with the "butterfly picture", this article is so biased it would even shock Apple's marketing department (and possibly even Microsoft's legal department, although they have an even wilder imagination).

A multi-layered sensor is a great thing as long as they manage to make it with more than one third of the size of competing "traditional" sensors. If you compare a "X3" sensor with 2000x1500 pixels with a traditional "RG/GB" sensor with 4000x3000 pixels, the traditional sensor still gives you better resolution (you can simply scale it down to 2000x1500, getting one sample of each colour per pixel - in fact two green samples, which gives you even better colour fidelity and less noise). And then there's the fact that the Foveon sensor tens to lose colour in areas with high luminance. In other words, you get gray pixels around highlights.

The SD9 is promising, but it's still no real competition for Canon's EOS-D1s or Kodak's DCS Pro 14n.

If you want to read an objective review of the SD9 (with tons of example pictures, and a comparison with other high-end cameras), go to DPReview.

And this has nothing to do with "the way our eyes see". Our eyes don't see at all. It's our brain that sees. If the camera worked like our eyes, it would have a ridiculously high resolution in the centre of the image, and a terrible resolution near the edges (not to mention all the other differences).

RMN
~~~

The pro cameras have significantly better dynamic range than the consumer cameras. There is, however, a great deal of variation among pro cameras as well with the Fuji S1/S2 apparently turning in the best results (I shoot with Canon glass, so I haven't used the Fuji cams). This site's pro -level camera reviews often quantify each camera's dynamic range compared to others.

In my opinion, the real key is the storage format. Consumer cameras generally store in 24-bit (8 per channel) compressed (i.e. JPEG) format and you lose a great deal of information that way -- the limitation is the storage format itself (JPEG), which isn't capable of holding all of the color and light information the camera captures -- the camera simply throws it away before storing the image. Of course in some low-end consumer cameras, the sensor is that poor to begin with.

With pro cameras you generally store the important shots in a raw format (12-bit per channel, 36-bit total) that discards nothing; you can then manipulate this in Photoshop as a 48-bit uncompressed image in a wide colorspace and get dynamic range and color reproduction very similar to what you can get with good quality film. If you happen to be on the road with your pro digital and need your images to stay as small as possible, many higher-end cameras will also allow you to shoot in JPEG format but using an enhanced colorspace (i.e. Adobe RGB rather than sRGB) to try to preserve this additional information while still gaining the benefits of compression. However, to use such JPEG images you must have software which supports these enhanced colorspaces (i.e. Photoshop does, GIMP does not).

I disagree. You can put together quite a nice film-based SLR system for around $500-800 or so (camera and lenses -- tripods/bags/filters extra). To get similar quality from a digital SLR would add at least $1000 (probably more) to the price tag. $1000 will buy a lot of film and processing. I am sticking with film for now.

My Canon A1 has sat on the shelf for about two years now; the only time it's been used has been when the digicam (Olympus C2100UZ) was away for repair. Yes, the Canon is a slightly better camera and at the limits takes bettwe pictures - the Olympus is slightly flimsy, its viewfinder isn't really good enough for precise manual focus and its autofocus isn't always trustworthy. But the Olympus is far more versatile and far more useable. I take far more photographs with it. As to the range of photograhic situations it's useful for, I've taken a lot of wildlife photographs, including dragonflies and other insects. I've taken a lot of night-time landscapes, moonlight and starlight shots. I've taken literally hundreds of photographs from and of fast moving boats in bumpy water. And of course I've taken the usual photos of house, friends, pets, etc.

As for resolution, 1600x1200 pixels is good enough for 8"x10" photos and doesn't look too bad blown up even further; obviously it isn't as good as 2000x3000. But for the amateur photographer the digi wins every time. It's lighter and more conenient to carry around, while still having as wide a range of focal lengths (equivalent of 38mm to 400mm) as I've ever carried. It takes snapshots without need for thought; and if you want to set things up to take a proper photograph, control over everything - shutter, aperture, focus, focal length - is there.

You'll get the little Olympus for the same $500ish you were quoting for an SLR kit, but provided you use rechargeable batteries that's all you'll pay. With an SLR, every shot you take costs film and processing, so if like me you take several thousand photographs a year that easily adds up to more money than the camera.

The next camera I buy will have a metal chasis and a proper optical viewfinder. It will also be more optimised for manual focus than the Olympus. But it will definitely be a digital - there's no way I'm going back to film.

Anyway, the presentations look compelling. I await cameras with reasonable numbers of megapixels (say 4Mpixels +) and reviews...

Then check out the Sigma SD9 reviews at Steve's Digicams and Digital Photography Review as it comes pretty close at 3.5Megapixels (and claims to create images equal to a 6Megapixel camera).

Film still rules for taking pictures in low-light. Digital cameras just can't handle low-light situations, by their very nature.

Go here and look. That's an image taken by a digital camera (Canon D60) with a four minute exposure.

Still think digitals cannot handle low-light situations?

Plus, the speed of film is better. Digital cameras aren't very good for action photography.

Ah, so that's why all pro sports shooters have switched to digital, I see...

Get a clue.

Wrong. Said software or hardware takes two green pixels, a red pixel, and a blue pixel and recreates four RGB pixels. It conjures two thirds of its information out of thin air. (I've written software to do this for the Color Quickcam.) The worst two effects of this hack are color moire and blurring. Color moire is when detailed B&W objects (detail above the Nyquist frequency) gets colorful edges. Blurring is the loss of detail that occurs when cameras use an anti-alias filter to reduce color moire.

dpreview.com has an excellent review of the Sigma SD9 in which they examine the pros and cons of the Foveon image sensor. It really does eliminate both color moire and blurring, but there new artifacts to be fixed.

Actually, that's not the case any longer. There's a nice piece of open-source code available to convert the X3 RAW image format (among other proprietary formats). Here's a direct link to the source.

Supposedly it even compiles on OS X, click here for a discussion of its use for the SD9.

Actually, that's not the case any longer. There's a nice piece of open-source code available to convert the X3 RAW image format (among other proprietary formats). Here's a direct link to the source.

Supposedly it even compiles on OS X, click here for a discussion of its use for the SD9.

Do you mean long exposures, or low contrast? For long exposures, this four minute exposure disagrees with you. In the article the guy says he couldn't even see that terrace it was so dark.

What do you think it is about low light situations that precludes digital cameras from working well?

As for speed.. yeah, my digital camera only goes up to ISO 1000. But you don't have to go to 1000 to take normal non-posed shots successfully (There's a lot of space between posed shots and extremely fast moving action shots.)

You forgot to add that you can't use UV or IR film in digital cameras. :D

While an excellent review, if you're just looking for a good sense of what the sensor can do without reading all twenty four pages (and completely slashdotting dpreview), check out this page.

The net-net of the review is that it's a great sensor, very accurate, the camera as some first-generation issues, and, of particular interest to this audience, uses a proprietary x3f raw image format that must be converted with Mac or Windows software.

A good review is at dpreview.com (skip to conclusion if you're in a hurry).

This technology still has a way to go, but the SD9 certainly is an interesting camera.

One huge problem is with adaptation - Sigma makes consumer-grade lenses and cameras, some of which are of poor quality (but quite affordable). For these cameras to be adapted by professionals, Sigma need to create a camera with Canon or Nikon mounts, but furthermore, they need to erase the stigma attached to their equipment by many professional photographers.

If they were to make a full-frame sensor in a Canon mount that worked better at higher ISOs, this camera would be a huge seller.

The Foveon sensor has been much hyped, and due "any time now" for years. Well, it's finally here, being used in a digital SLR by Sigma. It does indeed seem to have a lot of potential, but it's not perfect yet. Basically, camera makers need to play with it some more to get their firmware exactly right. Also, the sensor itself isn't as sensitive in low light as current models. But it's competitive already. Future versions should be even moreso, but it depends on how much it can be improved, and at reasonable cost. Only time will tell...

For those of you interested in a review of a X3 camera and a simple explanation of the technology behind it, this review is pretty decent.

for an excellent (as usual) review of a camera based on this sensor check dpreview

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigmasd9/

Have you considered a small digital photo-camera?

You can find good ones will little lens-distortion (although most cheap lenses tend to have some barrel-distortion) that will take 2-3 megapixel pictures for under $300. 2MP is really enough to do accurate OCRing.

One of the best sources for review and sample pictures is dpreview.

While an 11 Mpixel sensor does have 11 million spatially separate elements, they are monochrome, filtered to capture R-G-B or C-M-Y, and cross-interpolated to provide a true colour image. This gets you close to 11 Mpixels of luminance resolution, but almost a third of that in chroma resolution. A RAW format image from such a sensor could probably be exported to a pretty sharp B&W image though, good enough to resolve alternating black & white lines.

There's also the Sigma SD9, using a Foveon X3 sensor. Only 3.4 Mpixels, but with RGB elements for each one, stacked vertically. That means the chroma resolution is almost that of the Canon 1Ds, but without any artifacting caused by the cross-interpolation of the colour elements. It more closely mimics film. Can't wait to see what a 14 Mpixel Foveon sensor can do :-)

b) You won't get anything usable from scanning 35 mm film beyond around 4000 x 3000 anyway, with most film stocks - the grain overwhelms the pixel size.

c) The Canon 1Ds (and Kodak 14n) have 12 bit sensors, which gives a dynamic range of 1:4096.

d) The Kodak DCS 14n is built with a standard Nikon SLR lens mount. The Canon EOS 1Ds is compatible with over 60 of Canon's EF lenses.

OK, a decent SLR is a lot cheaper, but it doesn't have any of the advantages a digital camera gives you, either.

b) You won't get anything usable from scanning 35 mm film beyond around 4000 x 3000 anyway, with most film stocks - the grain overwhelms the pixel size.

c) The Canon 1Ds (and Kodak 14n) have 12 bit sensors, which gives a dynamic range of 1:4096.

d) The Kodak DCS 14n is built with a standard Nikon SLR lens mount. The Canon EOS 1Ds is compatible with over 60 of Canon's EF lenses.

OK, a decent SLR is a lot cheaper, but it doesn't have any of the advantages a digital camera gives you, either.

I could have dreamt it, but I do recall reading on dpreview.com that some high-end camera came with fingerprint firmware. That would solve some of this problems.

For those still holding on to analog film, check these links out with samples taken with the Canon 1Ds.

This link are Canon's official images.

And this link is of an independent reviewer's images in the field.

The amazing thing is that this is a first-generation true-high-end digital product behaving as a latest-generation super-high-end analog product. Expect the image quality to go even higher in the coming months/years.

You're absolutely right about CMOS vs CCD. What's insane is that this is CMOS! Now we'll get to see what another manufacturer can do with the way-cool technology let Canon blow past it's competitors. (Info from http://www.dpreview.com/news/0209/02092304kodakdcs 14n.asp)

And for those interested, read this review on the D30 about why MP quality at luminous-landscape.

You're referring to the xD-Picture Card, which was announced back in July. 128MB cards were supposed to be available this month, with 256MB cards coming out around Christmas and higher-capacity cards (eventually topping out at 8GB) in 2003 and beyond.

Personally, I'm waiting for Dr. Arroway's camera in the movie Contact:
"...we have your personal recording unit. Normal, infrared and ultraviolet lenses. Digital microchip, good for thousands of hours of recording."

Maybe that will be Nikon's response!

Check out some pictures of the new Kodak at dpreview. It looks pretty nice. I like big cameras that fill my hands, have a nice solid feel, and weigh a few pounds.

Of course my dream camera is 4-6 megapixel SLR that has a full-35mm-size *interchangeable* sensor (in case I want to upgrade to more pixels), low noise, good color, and takes EOS lenses. All for $500 or less. Just a few more years....

dpreview.com is running quite a bit of news about Photokina 2002. They've even got 2 images of the new Kodak. (Note: that's /of/ not /from/).

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0209/02092304kodakdcs 14n.asp

I don't think it was neccessary this time.

Quote from the website: "Just a quick note to the tens of foreign websites who regularly copy our content without permission. We are now actively seeking you out." Full note here.

"Sinar has today announced the development of a digital back (for medium format cameras) with an amazing 1-shot resolution of 22 million pixels." article here