Kodak has announced a new class of ‘advanced digital cameras’ aimed at grabbing a slice of the burgeoning dSLR market.
They won’t be winning any hearts on looks though, with their flagship EasyShare P880 model looking like this “a cross between Bender from Futurama and an ugly tank”.
Despite looking like it’s fallen off the Ugly Tree, the EasyShare P880 serves up an attractive feature set, offering an 8 megapixel sensor, a slew of enthusiast features and an unusually wide angle 24-140mm (35mm equiv) wide-angle f/2.8 – f/4.1 zoom lens made by Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon (try saying that after a few beers).
Multiple shooting modes are provided, including auto, program, aperture and shutter priorities with fully manual and custom modes available and a handy feature letting users dial-in multiple pre-set scene modes.
Reflecting its enthusiast ambitions, the camera offers RAW file support, 16 – 1/4000 second shutter speeds, a live histogram, a 237,000 pixel electronic viewfinder, custom white balance and digital red-eye reduction.
“While serious photographers demand advanced photographic controls, they’re also craving easier-to-use cameras and systems – an area in which Kodak excels,” enthused Greg Westbrook, general manager of digital capture products at Kodak.
“The P-Series breaks new ground by deftly combining high performance and simplicity. Its flagship, the EASYSHARE P880 camera, introduces a new, highly compelling alternative to pricier, bulkier dSLRs.”
The one big advantage that compact digital cameras have over their dSLR counterparts is the ability to capture video footage, and Kodak have been keen to trumpet the camera’s movie making functions.
The P880 can capture VGA video at 30 frames per second (Motion JPEG compression) with zooming and lets users trim, cut, splice and merge clips on the camera and extract individual video frames as 640 x 480 JPEGs at 640 x 480 resolution.
Powered by a high-capacity lithium ion battery, the camera weighs in at 19.6 oz. (556 g) and comes in a reasonably compact package (4.6W x 3.8H x 3.6D in.)
The EasyShare P880 will be available beginning this September priced US$599 (~€486, ~£336).
Looking down the range, Kodak have also announced their 5.3 megapixel EasyShare P850 camera, featuring a 12X, 36 – 432mm (35mm equiv.), f2.8 – f/3.7, Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon lens with optical image stabilisation.
Sharing the same video capabilities as its upmarket brother, the 850 offers an advanced, hybrid AF system with 25 selectable points and shutter speeds from 1/2 – 1/1000.
There’s also a hotshoe for extended lighting control, the usual selection of preset scene modes with a live histogram, RAW/TIFF/JPEG support and a lithium ion battery.
The EasyShare P850 will knock out for around US$499 (~€405, ~£280).
The BBC’s online coverage of Live 8 in July notched up a record volume of Web traffic on their radio and music Websites.
The latest figures for the BBC’s online traffic also show a healthy boost in figures for their sports coverage on the Radio Five Live Website, with 910,841 unique users being recorded during June, compared with 840,019 the same period in 2004.
It was mainly good news elsewhere, with Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, 1Xtra, Asian Network and BBC 7 all increasing their unique users compared to the same period last year, with only 6 Music – one of our favourites – letting the side down with a disappointing slump from 418,729 to 356,564.
Hellomagazine.com, the online version of the ghastly celebrity magazine Hello!, is expanding its existing SMS and JAVA mobile offer with a new WAP portal.
A bookmark directly linking to the portal will be sent by return, with users able to browse the latest headlines for free.
Celeb-thirsty fans can check the headlines then go in deeper if they want the full story with photos. We’re really happy to be adding HELLO! WAP to our mobile offer and we’ll soon be beefing it up even more with wallpapers, ringtones and other entertaining stuff.”
Mobile gaming big boys I-Play have released the results of a study which revealed that only 5% of mobile users have ever downloaded a game
A further 17.5% were uncertain how to download a game while the rest said that the downloading process itself was tedious.
Pricing was seen as a discouraging factor by 51% of the respondents, with 48 percent in favour of free trail versions and 30% saying that that they would go for a game if a friend recommended it.
Technorati has launched Technorati Mobile, a stripped-down version of the popular blog search facility designed to be viewed on mobile phones and handheld computers/smartphones.
Three stories are displayed from each category, with links underneath leading to pages containing aggregated blog comment on the stories.
Sony has today announced the latest update to its range of ultra-slim DSC-T digital cameras, the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-T5.
There are a slew of pre-set picture-taking modes onboard to help point’n’shooters get the best from the camera, with a “Magnifying Glass” feature allowing macro shooting up to 1cm from an object and a “High Speed Shutter” to catch fast-moving action.
This has resulted in the company dramatically cutting its forecast earnings from ¥80 billion (~$712m ~£403m ~€582m) to ¥10 billion (~$89m ~£50.3m ~€72.8m).
Forget mobile gaming – the big money’s in mobile gambling, according a report by Informa Telecoms & Media
With casinos continuing to migrate their games to mobile, the report predicts growing popularity, although sports betting is expected to be a niche sector by comparison, despite bookmakers being keen to launch mobile applications for their customers to bet on the move.
MTV is in the mood to get all interactive with its audience with the launch of MTV: starzine, a new online magazine designed to give “music wannabies the opportunity to realise their dreams of becoming an MTV star.”
In another cunning ploy to keep users coming back for more, users will earn points for interacting with the magazine and the more material they shunt online and the bigger the audience, the more points they amass.
The all-blinking, Flash-tastic, David Carson ‘tribute’ site lets users upload unlimited images as well as text on to the magazine, with the facility to directly submit photographs taken on a cameraphone.
FinePix S9000 Zoom
The compact-based design means that – unlike dSLRs – the camera can offer 30-frames-per-second movie mode (with a manual zoom capability) – something that may prove tempting to punters after a high quality ‘do it all’ camera.
Second up is the Fujifilm FinePix S5200 Zoom, the third incarnation of Fujifilm’s S series cameras.
Finally, we come to the Fujifilm FinePix E900 Zoom, a new E series “pocket friendly” compact managing to pack 9 million effective pixels into its lithe proportions.