Dptips :. Digital Photography Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

In a not-that-suprising move Google today announced a new web albums feature for their acquired photo management application, Picasa. The new feature, available currently only by invitation, enables quick and easy uploading of images from Picasa to a Google hosted gallery system, you get just 250 MB of storage free and for $25 a year can get an additional 6 GB of storage (ad free). Picasa Web Albums will no doubt be of interest to existing Picasa users but probably won’t be that attractive to new entrants or existing users of web sync’d software such as Phanfare.

DALSA Semiconductor, a division of DALSA Corporation (TSX:DSA), an international high performance semiconductor and electronics company, announced today that it has successfully fabricated and delivered the world’s highest resolution image sensor chip to its customer, Semiconductor Technology Associates (“STA”) of San Juan Capistrano, California. The CCD device, which measures approximately four inches by four inches, has a total resolution of over 111 million pixels (10,560 pixels x 10,560 pixels at 9µm). It is the world’s first imager to break the 100 million pixel barrier.

DALSA Semiconductor has today announced that it has developed the worlds first sensor with a total resolution of over 100 million pixels. To be more specific this single sensor, developed for astronomy, has 10,560 x 10,560 pixels, 111 million in total. The active area of the sensor measures approximately four by four inches and has a 9 um pixel pitch. This sensor has been developed in conjunction with Semiconductor Technology Associates for the US Naval Observatory.

We have just updated our Sony Alpha DSLR-A100 preview to include a gallery of sample images from the camera. This brief gallery is intended to give prospective buyers a taste of the image quality they should expect before we complete our review. Note that we will of course add a second more comprehensive gallery in our final review.

Leica has announced that all new M system lenses will carry a new 6-bit code (painted in black/white dots) which will allow the upcoming digital M camera to identify which len is being used (up to 64 in 6-bit coding) and also to store this information in image metadata. As well as applying this coding to new lenses Leica has announced an upgrade service which allows owners of existing M series lenses to have the coding written onto each lens at a cost of 95 EUROs. The press release also hints that the new M series digital will appear in the second half of 2006 (at Photokina no doubt).

Tampa, FL – June 9, 2006 – Adobe® Photoshop® Elements Techniques newsletter and website, the most complete resource for Adobe® Photoshop® Elements training and education, is offering free sample image-editing video tutorials in their Learning Center.

The Leice M lenses will be equipped with a new code on the bayonet ring in future to enable the planned digital Leica M camera to recognize the lens type.

According to a story over at ScienCentralNews researchers at MIT are working on a new type of battery which is more like a capacitor than todays ‘chemical reaction’ battery. Typically a capacitor has a far lower capacity (by size) than a battery but researchers are using tiny nanotube filaments to increase the surface area within the capacitor to increase storage. These new ‘batteries’ could in theory charge in just a few seconds yet be the same size and capacity as todays rechargeable batteries, they may also never need replacing as they wouldn’t degrade in the way current batteries do.

We’ve seen this story reported in many forms on many sites but only truly accurately on Imaging-Resource. The reality is that HP are not recalling the R707 but have instead issued firmware which can prevent a fire hazard. If the camera was used with a non-rechargeable battery (such as a Lithium Duracell CP-1) and then connected to the AC adapter or docking station there was a potential for the battery to overheat and even catch fire. This new firmware resolves this issue.

Sony has today officially revealed the new Alpha DSLR-A100, a ten megapixel Digital SLR, the first to come out of the Sony and Konica Minolta marriage, with many similarities to the Konica Minolta 5D. The A100’s ten megapixel CCD is mounted on a CCD-shift Anti-Shake platform (now named Super SteadyShot) which delivers both image stabilization and Sony’s own form of dust reduction (by shaking the sensor at power off). There’s also a new image processor called ‘Bionz’ (hmmm) which delivers hardware based dynamic range optimization (with only a slight impact on performance). We have a full hands-on preview of the Sony Alpha DSLR-A100 available now.

Nikon has today announced the D2Xs, a subtly upgraded D2X. The key points of improvement are a larger 2.5″ LCD monitor, electronic masking of the focusing screen in high-speed crop mode, modified metering in high-speed crop mode, a longer lasting battery, black and white mode, Adobe RGB in all color modes, up to 3 custom tone curves, 1/3 step ISO boost options, in-camera trim function, image authentication system compatible and save/load settings between cameras.

As well as the D2Xs Nikon are also announcing two new software packages. The first is Nikon Camera Control Pro which is a development of Nikon Capture Camera Control, this new ‘Pro’ version compatible with Nikon Capture NX, other differences aren’t made clear by the press release. The second is Nikon Image Authentication (Windows only) which enables the verification of the authenticity of images captured with the D2Xs, it can report if the image information (metadata) or image data itself has been modified since the image was taken and is clearly aimed at the law enforcment, government, media and insurance markets.