New Developments in Digital Cameras

While we are ready to accept and use 2M digital cameras, digital camera manufacturers have developed 3M point high resolution cameras. This new camera model costs about $1,000, and they also lower the selling price of 2MB products. Nikon announced that their Coolpix 990 is a 3.34M point camera with a 3x optical zoom lens. The camera has a resolution of 2,048*1,536 and a file size of about 10MB. Fast Exposure: The company claims that the camera can reach full-resolution levels with an exposure rate of 2 frames per second, virtually eliminating most of the digital camera's exposure delay. When exposure is performed in the movie mode, the camera can be exposed at a resolution of 320*240 for 40 seconds, and the number of image frames that can be exposed per second can reach 15 frames. The Coolpix 990 product accepts CimpactFlash memory cards and has a USB interface. Its predecessor, the Coolpix 950 is currently priced at $900. Nikon plans to introduce this new product in April 2000. Olympus also announced a 3.34M point product - the C-3030. This product has a 3x optical zoom lens, and a USB port and a serial port. The camera's QuickTime movie mode can reach 15 frames per second, recording at 160*120 point resolution for 191 seconds, and recording at 320*240 point resolution for 46 seconds. The C-3030 comes with a 16MB SmartMedia card that will be released in May 2000. Toshiba plans to launch the PDR-M70 product in March 2000. This camera is said to be a 3.37-M point camera type that produces 2,048*1,536-point images. The camera also has a 3x zoom lens and a video image that can take 320*240 points for 30 seconds and 15 frames per second. And can be compatible with USB and SmartMedia cards. Fujifilm recently announced their FinePix 4700 Zoom product. This camera uses super CCD image sensor technology. Diode design: This CCD has about 2.4 million photosensitive spots. These photosensitive spots are photodiodes that are used to record image information. Fujitsu said that because of using this technology, this camera can produce 4.3M point image files. Instead of placing rectangular light spots on rectangular squares, Fujitsu integrates many hexagonal diodes in the shape of a honeycomb. Because it maximizes space, the company uses this technology to increase the size of the spot. Because this super CCD spot is close to each other and has a larger size, this technology can measure the amount of light more accurately when there are the same number of diodes as a conventional CCD. The FinePix 4700 Zoom camera has AVI video capabilities and comes with a 3x optical zoom lens and three measurement modes. This USB-compatible camera can use the SmartMedia card and will be available in April 2000.