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Kodak Releases Digital Camera With OLED Display
arth33 writes "Kodak has announced the LS633 Digital camera with OLED display. The camera and imaging specs are pretty standard (3.1 MegaPixels, 3x Optical Zoom, etc) but the viewfinder screen is a 2.2" OLED screen with a resolution of 512 x 218 pixels. According to the press release at DPreview, 'This large, full color, full motion, flat panel display is sharp, bright and features 165 viewing angles for on-camera viewing and sharing. Packaged in a stylish, metal body, the LS633 is perfect for users who want to show off their pictures on a cutting-edge OLED display.' All this and it's pretty cheap at US$399, and is expected on shelves in April in Australia, Europe and Asia.
More pics and information is also available at LetsGoDigital."
Could somebody please explain what an OLED is, and how is it different from a standard LED?
Is it smaller or brighter or what?
Thanks!
E000-VB14-G8RY
OLED.. Organic LED
for a camera with 3.1megapixel and a screen that doesn't need back lighting. Now if only manufacturers would rate the battery life based on how many pictures it can take with one charge, that would help consumers.
why havent other companies implemented these into their high-end cameras? I would think somebody would first use these before kodak, I've always seen them as being a little slow on the digital camera technology...
And of course, the info is on their website. Including ``Not currently available in the U.S.''
Can someone explain why this is important at all? Kodak probably releases new cameras every week, it's what they do.
LS633 is perfect for users who want to show off their pictures on a cutting-edge OLED display.
That's about the most informative sentence I've ever read.
So, um. How about some more vital stats, such as life expectancy (since that is one of the drawbacks of organic LED)?
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
LetsGoDigital is going to fry any time now. Mirror available here.
Please use, I'm measuring the Slashdot effect. (Seriously! There's no such thing as a karma whoring AC.)
Is this camera anything to be excited about? I 'ass'ume that that the camera's batteries last much longer than most digital cameras.
Any slashdot'rs own/played with one? I'm interesting in these new OLEDs and their real world usefulness.
--Thei Antispamist A useless endevor that will cer
This may be the first Kodak product that uses their own OLED technology, but does anyone remember the article (I think it was from CNET) which contained a quote by a Kodak executive saying they were already shipping 8-inch OLED displays in quantities to a "manufacturer" who they couldn't disclose? A very high resolution screen that would be used in a product that they didn't know much about but that would be a revolutionary one and be released in the first half of 2003?
Somehow, the article has vanished. Even from Google.
The truth is out there and yes, I want to believe.
This is great. A consumer device with an OLED display. One of many technologies to counter our lack of significant innovation in batteries. I think that one of the best places for an OLED display is a pda. I hope one is out by the time that my NR-70's batteries die. Neither Handspring or Sony sell replacement batteries, which means that the PDA is a throw-away item, even if I can take out the battery by my self...
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Why have digital camera displays been so small traditionally? Most models I've seen have had 1.5 or 1.8 inch displays. This 2.2 inch display is a nice boost, but there seems to be a lot of unused room (especially to the right of the screen, and below it, in the space occupied by a largish Kodak logo) on the back of this camera. I'd like a bigger screen to preview and review shots better. Is battery life the main concern that's keeping screens small?
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.
Organic Light Emitting Device/Display
More comparible to TFT diplays than to LEDs.
Cheaper
x10 (or more) faster response times (compared to traditional TFTs)
No need for backlight
Even thinner than TFTs
Can be completely transparent
Can be flexible
see universal display
extract: greater brightness
faster response time for full motion video
fuller viewing angles
lighter weight
greater environmental durability
more power efficiency
broader operating temperature ranges
greater cost-effectiveness
Think how much the industry is making on Plasma screens. Do they have any real incentive to start selling a cheaper alternative?
I don't mean to sound harsh but why don't you sell your computer so you can donate the money to starving children in Africa?
?Who controls the past now, controls the future.
Who controls the present now controls the past.?
it's my understanding that OLEDs use signifigantly less energy...right?
--Thei Antispamist A useless endevor that will cer
...They don't want US liability when the OLED display goes tits up 2 years after you buy the camera.
Kodak is the leading developer of OLEDs and owns almost all the patents on them.
Which really makes sense, since organic LEDs are fancy organic chemicals printed on a film, along with printed wiring.
Right up a film manufacturer's alley.
Only surprise (if any) is that Kodak beat Polaroid to it. Polaroid has always been about doing off-the-beaten-track tricks with films.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Wow, this means my chances for getting laid . . . remain completely unchanged!
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
You can order a development kit, complete with a working OLED screen at this link:
j ht ml
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/display/AM550L.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
What's even more interesting is that Kodak is finally shipping their 14n (full frame dSLR). Teeny tiny P&S isn't where all the cool stuff takes place, you know ...
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
The display is incredibly vibrant. It's hard to describe in words, but the colors are very saturated, unlike the washed-out look of most LCD's. It almost looks like you're looking at a piece of paper, everything is so crisp, clear, and vibrant. Kudos to Kodak for getting this technology out into the marketplace. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of this in the near future!
But it kept melting at room temperture...
This is actually something that Kodak has worked hard on, and they've come a long way. The colors you see in OLEDs are based on organic dyes. The dyes must have good saturation, but also last a long time (i.e. not "photobleach" or fade). One of the best dyes they've found for the blue is a compound called indole (it looks a lot like the purine bases in DNA, oddly--how organic is that?!) that is a very bright blue color, and is extremly stable.
The big problem with these right now, as has been pointed out many times, is that they fade over time. No one really knows the exact reason for this, but oxygen is a big culprit. They are combatting this with diffusion barriers, similar to the oxygen diffusion barriers used on plastic beer bottles, which use cobalt scavengers to trap oxygen.
Jeeze I remember when I was reading about this almost over three years ago! I'm glad to see that they are finally coming into the retail market. I'll be really excited when the flexible OLED screens become a retail product.
Wonderful, now I can see a high-resolution preview of a grainy underlit image 20% more clearly!
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
How many times have you read the screen resolution specs of a monitor or something else and multiplied the numbers together? A couple times when you were eight, right? The two smaller numbers, multiplied together, make one huge one! Impressive! Put that on the box and hide any useful information in tiny print behind five levels of links.
Perhaps I'm just ill-informed, and I can take a picture of any resolution as long as the product is less than the advertised megapixels- Here's the 1,500,000x2 panoramic shot from my hiking trip...
Maybe someone who knows more about OLEDs can answer this...
Why the 165 degree viewing angle? Why not 180? Since unpolarized light is being emitted, why should there be any limit less than 180?
Just curious =)
What's organic about them?
Are you trying to say "fhqwhgads"? Everybody to the limit!
It doesn't say that it is viewable from 165 degrees, it says there are "165 viewing angles".
:-(
It must be hard to position yourself at exactly one of those 165 descrete angles, though.
But seriously, how do you propose to view what is, for practial purposes, a two dimensional display from 90 degrees off the normal?
IOW, it is viewable from 180 degrees, but only if you point it at something that looks like the side of a camera body. Or a vertiacal line.
-Peter
There are people who have explained OLED, etc.
But even with all the explanations on how much better than LCD it is, its hard without at least a picture. Here is that picture. It was taken at the CES trade show.
WARNING: looking at this picture may make you realize how crappy your LCD monitor really is and what you have settled for:
Ta da!
It really shows the drawbacks of LCD's viewing angle and thickness because of backlighting. In the board the picture taker explains he has seen solid colour on this monitor there (demo running i guess) and the picture was perfectly even.
Anyways, thought i'd share! Enjoy.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
the Gameboy advance
now that would sell!!
Don't worry!
There is an INCREDIBLE push in the laptop/tablet market (from engineering depts.) to get lighter, thinner, brighter, more energy efficient, and faster refreshing displays.
I'm a Lead EE guy for laptops/tablets here and we REALYL REALLY want to see these OLEDs get bigger.
We're working on those R&D companies.
Some company did release a PDA that does that. It's called an Apple Newton. When you went to buy an eMate, the salesperson would have you drop it from a few feet onto the store floor. In fact, I have one that survived a three story drop without any cosmetic damage, let alone functional damage. I've even heard of them making it through being hurled at concrete pillars in a parking garage. Apple made sturdy stuff. Of course, with 4 good rubber feet, you wouldn't be able to brush it off your desk unless it was on top of some paper.
That doesn't look all that different from the screen of a Titanium Powerbook. I know, my desktop LCD is much thicker as well, but apparently that's not an intrinsic constraint of LCDs, it's just the way desktop displays tend to be built.
An XGA size display seems much more useful. Press release from Toshiba Matsushita Display. ...though may not be so useful in a digital camera!
Ouch, you may not have noticed Widescreen TV's. Using the same diagonal measurement you can sell these at a higher price since you get a longer diagonal for the same area compared to the old 4:3 aspect ratio. Like Megapixels this is just a marketing trick which not everybody have been cool about...
Though, I must admit that the actual number of pixels isn't really as deceptive. You could argue that a small increase in x and y resolution is advertised as 4x the change, but at least it encourages improvement.
Ok, they don't need a backlight, but as the display is emitting light, it will undoubtedly draw more than the 'raw' tft panel in an LCD - the question is how much power does the OLED+drivers take compared to the oldTFT+drivers+backlight. The review doesn't mention this, and as display power is usually the major battery-sucker on a digital cam I'm surprised this is not mentioned. The fact that this camera also has an optical viewfinder makes me suspect that maybe the power advantage isn't all that great, although even if there is no pwer advantage the improvement in display resolution and view angle is still a worthwhile advance.
I am pretty sure that Nintendo is shopping around for a company that can make OLED displays at a reasonably price for a future variant of the Gameboy Advance.
Sure, it may end up making the unit cost US$150 instead of the current US$100, but I'm sure not a few users would love the brighter, clearer display of OLED compared to the current LCD display on the Gameboy Advance models.
How long till we get digital cameras that can imitate film. Why would I want to pay hundreds of dollars for a camera with a single level of color saturation and still won't let me play zone system. As soon as someone makes a camera that I can do that with out having to spend time in photoshop I will be sold. OLED is great but it doesn't solve the core problems of digital cameras.
Some one should make a digital camera that has a built in system that lets you imitate different film types, and prohaps even do black and white properly (as none do yet). However on the side of digital there are some out there with some REALLY nice IR sensitivities out there.
The other item about these displays is that they put off little to no heat and are thinner due to the lack of little lights needing to be placed behind the glass panel.
There is rumor that Apple has been developing an OLED with with it's partner Samsung for about a year now. Two of their manufacturing partners are suppliers to Kodak.
I would link, but it's hard to give links to Digitimes and Japanese articles.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
No, it means almost half of 360, a semi circle. Meaning there are a few degrees +/-1-5 & +/- 175-180 that aren't viewable anyway because they are either dead on with the sides of the camera or a glare will hit the screen, or you actually viewing the side of the "diode" =( each little pixel is a tube of light) - a tube has a certain viewing angle for the hole
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
The Kodak EasyShare LS633 zoom digital camera is designed for photographers who want to capture and share photos while enjoying the benefits of advanced technology.
Criminy, who writes this crap -- Kodak's marketing division? If I was going to waste my education by rearranging cliches on paper instead of doing actual writing, I'd at least have the respect for my audience to use a cliche dictionary to hunt down some really good ones. This sucks! It is actually **so** **painful** to read, I can't stop reading it. I might have to print it out and put it on my refridgerator at home. I'll be saying this to my wife and friends and greeting people in church with it while it haunts my down-home midwestern Ohio sensibilities like a crummy Britney Aguilera J'Sync song.
You know, I can live with the evil, but I can't stand the stupidity.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
If Kodak owns all the patents and they don't have a vested interest in producing general purpose computer or video displays, does this explain why we keep hearing about OLED but we don't have many products? Or is the technology still not fully baked?
Personally, i'll never buy a Kodak product again. I have a DVC-323 sitting here that basically only works well with Windows 98, because Kodak refuses to release the specs for it, even after it's been discontinued.
Screw them.
Since sales of the LS633 Digital camera with OLED display weren't what was expected for the first two days of it's avaliability, Kodak has decided to discontinue the model and cancel any future support for the product.
I've worked there, and bought their products. This isn't too far off the mark for them. They've come out with some great products, but overpriced them at release, then discontinued within 6 months because sales weren't as expected. (Their sales expectations are usually very high.)
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
When I read about OLEDs a couple of years ago they seemed to offer brilliant displays compared to competing technologies, such as LCDs. I don't know how the cd/cm^2 compare quantitatively, though.
But, IIRC, there was some mention of problems having to do with the lifetimes of the displays, blue colors, over a year.
Have all of the problems with OLEDs been overcome? Will the viewfinder look as nice 5 years from now?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I know there's been some research on that (ePaper ?) but what's the current state of it ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I don't know how you're measuring this. I would measure it from an axis perpendicular to the screen plane (right in front = 0 degrees). so NO screen can be seen at angels above 90 degrees. (an if you took one of the other 2 axis 90 degrees would be straigh in front so that doesn't make sense either)
...when we start to see images on the net that was calibrated to look nice within the silly intense gamut of a OLED screen: it'll prolly look like washed out puke on all ordinary screens. :)
That makes more sense... Thanks
Even if an OLED screen could be as thin as the one pictured, I would not begrudge the designers an extra inch of thickness if if made the display much more robust ... things get dropped / twisted / untentionally torqued, etc.
:)
I'd like a display that could be dropped a bit and still work happily
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I had no idea they put cobalt on beer bottles. I guess I'll have to keep the beer away from my tabletop cold fusion device, lest a twelve pack and an accident spell the end of the world.
This is my sig.