Slashdot Mirror

There are phones with real cameras in them.

Also, the comparison blogs are less likely to have evaluated the particular part number in the store resulting in reduced sales. When I shopped for a camera, I looked at the physical stores, which only had limited comparison information on the display cards. I also looked online at http://www.photographyblog.com/ and other comparison sites. The blog was a big help in narrowing down the options to the camera I wanted. In the end, Target and Office Max did not carry the camera I wanted. I could have bought it cheaper online but went to Best Buy to get it sooner. The moral of the story is that the online blogs were more of a showroom for the product than the physical stores.

The latest version of Elements is actually a pretty nice, powerful package now that Adobe has (finally!) stopped playing games and is no longer leaving out vital tools like Curves:

http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews_adobe_photoshop_elements_6.php

The Express edition is just a very basic editor written in Flash that barely competes with Picasa, but with Photoshop branding.

Why would anyone want this new model instead of the existing Archos AV4100:
http://www.archos.com/products/prw_500697_specs.ht ml
which also has 100GB, is similarly priced, also records from TV, is smaller, weighs less, and has better resolution:
"DVD playback is full DVD resolution up to 704x480; recording is standard TV resolution, up to 512x384 (SVCD)." according to:
http://www.photographyblog.com/index.php/weblog/co mments/archos_av4100_portable_video_recorder_playe r_announced/

The only advantage of the new 700 model seems to be that the screen is bigger, but the price is size and weight that make it significantly less appropriate to also use as an mp3 audio device.

Sooner than you think. Kodak announced a year ago that they were getting out of the traditional film camera business (but they are still manufacturing the film itself of course.)

Do you have any references for this idea that all inkjet printers use ionized ink? It's true that the IRIS (now IXIA) printers use continuous-flow inkjet printing, where the ink is ionized and the droplets are "steered" by running them past charging plates and deflection plates. But most inkjets use thermal printing, where the ink is rapidly heated in the print head to make a bubble, which pressurizes the ink and squirts it out the nozzle. It is only aimed based on careful positioning of the print head. Epson, and some high-end professional printers like Roland, use piezoelectric printing. The piezoelectric effect is where a mechanical stress occurs in a material due to an electrical charge. A small piezoelectric diagram forces the ink out through a narrow (10 micron) orifice. Again, dot-placement is controlled by careful print-head placement, not by electric plates guiding ionized ink.

In fact, while Epson and HP's ink formulations are not known, there are many third-party ink sellers who do list their formulations, and they tend to be rather clear about the fact that they de-ionize the carrier (water) before making the inks. And they don't add anything ionized. Yet, these non-ionized inks work with these printers. How is that? Fuji also mentions that only a few expensive large-format printers use ionized ink.

Even if the inks were ionized, it is entirely unclear that oxidation would break down the large color particles in pigment based inks like Ultrachrome inks. Your arguments fail to address this. Pigmented inks are what were used in classical oil paintings, many of which have been displayed without glass since the renaisance, probably without significant fading. During this time, they've been heavily oxidized. You do not present any case that adding an ionizing agent to the ink would accellerate the breakdown of the pigments to make the inks significantly unstable. Do you have any research, or math, or arguments as to what makes you think that the addition of any ionizing agent would break down any conceivable pigment too quickly to make it stable?

"I won't even get into the chemical formulation of dyes, and let me make it clear, there are no inkjet "inks," they are all dyes. Inks have a binder, and dyes do not. Dyes cannot be deposited on a surface in sufficient quantities to provide a stable layer of pigment, they merely stain the surface of the substrate."

Yes, that's why, at least with dye-based inkjet inks, the paper is critically important to the life of the prints. The paper is the binder. There are two main types of inkjet photopaper coatings. Microporous coated papers provide the least protection against oxidation. Still, good microporous papers, like the microcermaic coatings invented by Asahi Glass, allow large amounts of ink to be deposited with quick drying and without smudging, and the more ink, the more it can oxidize without changing. They use tiny ceramic (alumnia sol) particles in a silca gel, which rapidly sequesters the ink. Viewed under a microscope, this paper looks like jagged mountains. This is how they gather enough ink to "provide a stable layer of pigment." That's why these papers are usually used with more stable inks, they don't protect the ink much, but they take a whole lot of it into the paper.

Swellable Polymer papers use a nonporous coating of organic polymers that are water-receptive and SWELL TO SURROUND THE INK after it hits the paper. The majority of the ink is completely protected from direct air exposure. How do the inks oxidize, then?

Kodak has managed to combine these two approaches in their latest Ultima Picture Paper, which both takes a heavy coating of ink and en

Bummer. I was hoping it would be a display to match Sony's sensors with R, G, B, E [emerald]