Ultrawide Zoom in a Compact Camera

manavendra writes to tell us that Image-Resource has an interesting writeup on the recently released Kodak EasyShare V570 digital camera. The V570 is a dual lens camera that incorporates an ultra-wide angle lens and an optical zoom lens. The camera will feature 5 megapixel resolution, 5x optical zoom, in-camera panorama stitching, video recording, a 2.5 inch LCD screen, in-camera distortion correction, and picture blur alert.

Comments

Why new D-SLR announcements

[yorkpaddy]

Why doesn't slashdot post announcements on D-SLRs. The D200, D50, and Canon 5D have come out in the past year and not a single annoncement. I want to hear what slashdot users have to say about these cameras, not cutesy point and shoot cameras. Once you use a digital SLR you will never want to use a point and shoot again. There is no delay between pressing the button and the shutter firing. The manual control is nice as is changing lenses, but the zero delay is the best part of these cameras.

Re:Interesting...

[Kadin2048]

You know, as cynical as that is, you're quite right.

Kodak isn't the only company that's doing this either; there are a lot of "entry level" digitals that are basically aiming for the group of people who are moving up (or over, one might say) from disposable film cameras. There are a ton of these people around. They honestly don't care about quality in the same way that even the most novice photography student does: if the image is recognizable, and doesn't have hideously obvious defects like big dust specks (and maybe not even then), they don't care. They've been buying, using, and throwing away plastic-lensed disposables that are nothing but some 400 or 800 speed film with a shutter and a strobe light -- probably not much better than a box with a hole in it -- for years, and they're happy with the results.

What they really want from a digital camera has nothing to do with quality, it's immediate gratification and the ability to share pictures. Why do you think that Kodak's digitals have HUGE displays on the back? Because that's what a lot of people care about: they want to take a picture and then be able to show it off to their friends. For some, they may not even really look at the photo once they take it off of the camera; it's something taken in that moment, for use the moment later. The next thing people want is to be able to share (via email) pictures, and perhaps print a few off here and there, so those are the next easiest functions to do.

The quality of the image -- once you get above a certain point, which I think is about 1024x768 pixels -- doesn't matter to a lot of people. The reason people buy multi-megapixel cameras (aside from the fact that they "want the best" without knowing why, which is probably the dominant reason) is so they can zoom in on things in the frame later. Megapixels are like megahertz were a few years ago: people have this dim understanding that they should be buying more, but no idea why. However they do it anyway.

Kodak's cheap digitals are perfectly designed for a certain kind of person. They let you take an image, show it off to people on the big built-in screen, shove it into a dock and email or save or print it. For 90% of the people who buy them, that's all they ever have to do. If you want more from a camera, don't buy one of the entry level models!

There was a time when the fact that a camera was digital implied that it was somewhat high-end. That era is over, and you can't blame Kodak's engineers (whether they were in-house or outsourced) for designing a camera that matches its target market.

I think that what will eventually spell the end of the true entry-level digital cameras is when cellphone digitals become easier to use. Right now they're too complex for most people. I know quite a few people who have cellphones with cameras, but don't use them because they don't want to figure out how. There isn't (on most phones I've seen anyway) just one button that you can press to take a picture. On mine, it takes four (Camera->Capture->Store->In Camera), and that's three too many. And getting the pictures off requires having Bluetooth working and manually selecting the files -- no iPhoto/Picasa integration. Once the phone manufacturers make it easy enough for a braindead person to use (and this includes the sharing end, not just the picture-taking end), I think the demand for cheap dedicated still cameras will decrease sharply.