Canon A470 is a right angled, pretty thing with a metallic silver body. Models can also be found with several other color accents in the center. These colors are blue, red, orange, gray and they make the camera even more attractive, than the one colored version. This camera is not a tiny thing but it’s quite light (weighs only 165g) and is easy to hold in hand while taking photos.

This model of Canon is also outstanding for its image quality. The sharpness of its pictures shot outdoors is wonderful, the colors are bright and warm. Even with the zoom option nothing is lost, neither the sharpness nor the strength of colors. Indoor images are not much different: only some lack of brightness can be found, which can be adjusted for easily.

Its shutter lag (the delay between pressing the shutter button and the camera recording the picture) lasts 0.28 seconds which makes Canon A470 easy to use both for old and young. Children starting from 3 yrs old can take good shots. Thanks to its speed moving articles like animals, cars and, why not, babies do not cause any difficulty in shooting. No matter how fast the picture is shot, everything is focused excellently. Even the smallest texts can be read with a zoom.

Therefore, if you are fond of good memories, a great deal, and get snap happy with a camera, Canon A470 is the right solution for you. Hardly anything else comes close to matching it’s value and quality.

Photo: © Allen Qu

[…] The latest models go up to 160Gb! However, the one that caught my eye was the iPod Touch. Not so much a music player, but a portable computer. The version I have is the 32Gb version and I have my music on there as well as a few videos.

However, the thing I use it most for is presentation of work. It can can handle pictures which can be seen as a slideshow or manually flicked through. More importantly for me, it can show audio visual slideshows which are in Quicktime format. I can now carry all my photo essays in my pocket!

The Luminous Landscape looks at what this could mean for the industry and the type of cameras on offer to photographers.

I believe that we are at a point in time where a profound change is about to take place in the photographic industry. It is being driven not by user demand, but by the inevitable convergence of a number of required technologies. In combination, and when a certain nexus is reached, they will allow the creation of a new type of photographic instrument which will radically change the way photographers and film makers work.

[…]

Imagine something about the size and weight of a medium format camera. It will have optical reflex viewing and interchangeable lenses. It will be able to shoot raw still images at 30 frames per second – continuously, and without the need for a mechnical shutter at just about any required shutter speed. It will have a recycling memory buffer so that it is constantly recording images, buffering the last couple of seconds and then disposing of them if not needed. That way the image can be captured even before the shutter has been pressed.

When the shutter is pressed the last couple of seconds are saved to disk or card and the camera now continues to record, as long as the shutter release is held down, and without any real time length constraint. So if 5 seconds are recorded, 150 frames are as well. The still photographer or editor can then later choose the frame that is best.

[…]

That’s what excites me the most. Give a creative professional photographer a still camera that can simultaneously shoot movies, and a cinematographer a movie camera that can shoot pro-grade stills, and what kind of creativity will this engender? I don’t yet know, but it’s very exciting to contemplate.

The DP1’s menus are a mess. There are poorly laid out and have 15 items in a scrolling Shooting menu and another 17 items in a Set Up menu. […] Tedious and not conducive to any form of rapid and involving interaction with the user. It’s almost as if Sigma hasn’t noticed the advancements which its competitors have made in the last half decade in user interface development.

The Sigma has the usual slow contrast detection autofocus that all digicams offer; though seemingly a bit slower than some others. But again, in terms of poor user interface, though it has multiple focus points available there’s no way of getting to them other than though a menu item buried within one of the scrolling lists. Not at all good.

[…]

The LCD screen of the DP1 is a disgrace. It’s simply awful. Resolution appears low, and it simply appears dim and coarse. Yes, I know that it can be made brighter in the menus, but that still doesn’t put it anywhere near on a par with other screens. […]

[…]

In addition to ISO settings from 100 to 800 there is an Auto-ISO mode. But it only moves between ISO 100 and 200, not including any of the other speeds. Seems to be kind of pointless to me, and another example of strange oversights and omissions that Sigma has allowed to exist in this camera.

Such a pity, but as The Luminous Landscape says, perhaps the potential of the idea behind the DP1 might now lead Canon to produce a G10 based on an APS-sized sensor if Sigma can’t get its act together to resolve the flaws of the DP1.

And boy has it changed. Casio’s new F1 doesn’t just beat high-end professional models by a few frames, but rather by a factor of six. The Casio F1 can shoot images at a staggering 60 fps which brings the model into the realms of high-speed photography. Therefore, it is somewhat fitting to discover that the New York Times had none other than the great-nephew of stroboscopic photo pioneer Harold Edgerton review the camera. According to David Pogue, the camera isn’t perfect in low light and is rather large, but can’t be beat for action photography for $1,000 rrp.

A typical shirt-pocket camera, if you’re lucky, can snap one photo a second in “burst mode.” A $1,000 semipro model will get you 3 shots a second. But this Casio can snap — are you ready for this? — 60 photos a second. These are not movies; these are full six-megapixel photographs, each with enough resolution for a poster-size print.

After such a burst, you’re offered three options: delete all 60 shots, keep all 60, or review them and pluck out the individual frames worth keeping. The whole batch begins to play like a flip-book movie; you control playback with a back-panel control dial. As you watch, you press the shutter button once to identify each frame you want to keep; the rest will be discarded.

[…]

(As I experimented with the F1, I couldn’t help feeling that my great-uncle Harold Edgerton would have approved. He was the M.I.T. professor who, in the late 1930s, pioneered the art of high-speed photography: the bullet piercing an apple, the splash of a milk drop, and so on.)

[…]

But make no mistake: no camera has ever offered anything like the F1’s high-speed stills, high-speed videos or high-speed flash for anywhere near its price. Everybody who sees this camera in action winds up slack-jawed with disbelief.

Casio deserves congratulations for innovating in so many big, bold, industry-defying ways. Instead of pushing misleading metrics like megapixels, the company went its own defiant way and came up with a camera with an extremely clearly defined identity.

The NYT review is here.

There is competition in the marketplace — something that is more than illustrated by two recent announcements from Apple and Adobe, the manufacturers of two such professional digital manipulation and workflow software. First off, let’s deal with Apple who’s Aperture software has been updated to 2.1. Rob Galbraith takes a look at the changes, and in particular, its support for third-party plug-ins.

Without much fanfare, Apple introduced in Aperture 2.0 an architecture with which third-party developers could create image adjustment plug-ins. Now that v2.1 is out, the company is bringing this feature to the forefront, revealing both how image editing plug-ins work and who has already signed up to make them. Let’s look at who first.

Apple Apple itself is one of the first plug-in developers. Included with Aperture 2.1 is Dodge & Burn, a tool for brushing in tone, colour and detail changes to a photo. Dodge & Burn can of course be used to lighten and darken areas of a photo, as well as adjust contrast, saturation, sharpness and blur.

[…]

Apple is describing Dodge & Burn as an “example” plug-in, but this understates its usefulness, since you can perform a fairly broad range of selective adjustments with it, and do so with relative ease. We expect that for some Aperture users, Dodge & Burn will quickly become an indispensable tool.

[…]

Image editing plug-ins are a powerful new Aperture feature.

(more…)

Image quality, color, and exposure are all good with the Canon PowerShot A470. Overall color is bright and vibrant, yet still natural. […]

[…]

The PowerShot A470 captures a lot of fine detail, with minimal noise suppression to blur detail at ISO 80. In the crop at right, the mosaic shows great detail, with only a little smudging in the background and clothing.

[…]

The Canon PowerShot A470 handles image noise very well at its lower ISO settings, and even at ISO 400, noise is higher but still not too distracting overall. You can see it best in the gray squares of the color chart, demonstrated above. At ISOs 800 and 1,600, noise is much higher, with a more pronounced grain pattern and greatly decreased detail definition. Still, even at these higher settings, noise isn’t as bad as we’ve seen in other point-and-shoot digital cameras.

Indeed, Imaging Resource liked the Canon PowerShot A470 so much that they made it a “Dave’s Pick,” setting the camera apart from many others in its price range.

Overall, the Canon A470 is a good performer. It captures good exposures with sharp details and accurate color under most average shooting conditions. Given its selection of preset shooting modes and built-in features like Face Detection and Motion Detection, the PowerShot A470 is equipped for quick handling of common, yet tricky situations. The Canon A470’s automatic features will keep novices comfortable, while available options such as Long Shutter mode, an adjustable metering mode, and a manual white balance setting cater to more savvy users. The Canon A470 is a very capable camera that’s a snap to use, and an easy Dave’s Pick.

The Canon PowerShot A470 can be purchased in a variety of colors from Amazon. Specifications can be found in the official press release from Canon posted on the Digital Photography Review web site.

It used to be that digital SLRs cost thousands of dollars, but in recent years prices have plummeted. For the price of a serious digital compact camera five years ago, you can now pick up an advanced DSLR from brand leaders Canon and Nikon. Two such models are the Canon 450D (Rebel XSi) and the Nikon D60.

Both cameras are sold in a kit version that includes a good 18-55mm zoom lens with an anti-shake system. Canon calls its system IS (Image Stabilization), whereas Nikon calls it VR (Vibration Reduction), but it’s just the same thing. This feature alone, combined with high ISO sensitivity, makes it possible to shoot hand-held in situations that would have required the use of a tripod previously.

Although admitting bias towards Nikon, Agylen compares the two and weighs up the pros and cons of both. On paper at least, the Canon has the advantage over the Nikon with a resolution of 12 over 10 mp (although in reality this makes little difference), Live View and a larger LCD screen for reviewing images.

There are many other elements that could be compared between the two, but these are the most relevant ones, in my opinion. Both are probably very good cameras and you won’t be disappointed with either one. Personally, I would go with the Nikon because of the higher auto-ISO range and the Active D-Lighting, but that’s just me. You might be a big fan of composing and reviewing using the LCD, so the larger screen and the Live View feature of the Canon will certainly appeal to you.

In reality, though, you can’t go wrong with either.

SpinXpress, for example, is a site that allows global searches of some image sites for photographs, video and music that can be used according to a variety of licenses such as Creative Commons. The situation has now gotten even more diverse with one of the largest photographic libraries, Corbis, making use of its images free for bloggers.

Probably, confronted with widespread theft of images, they figured it would be easier and more commercially productive to allow use on their terms. The Photography Blog has more.

PicApp gives bloggers and other online publishers access to copyrighted news and creative images, completely free. Now available in public beta, PicApp features images from Getty Images, Corbis and other prestigious image agencies. Each image is accompanied by a non-intrusive ad to drive royalties to the related content partners, instead of the traditional license fees. “Bloggers are the new journalists and they can now get great images - and use them legally, with no charge whatsoever,” said Eyal Gura, CEO, PicScout. “Through PicApp, we are providing today’s new media with access to the latest images and an easy way to enrich their readers’ experience.”

Mashable has more on the Corbis PicApp Beta while the actual site is here.

I’m sure you’ve all seendigital photo frames at the stores. I think a digital photo frame would make a great Mother’s Day Gift. I recently got a small photo frame for Christmas. I would love a bigger one for the living room. Not only do they make great gifts for mom but the prices are so reasonble now that you could also grab some for Dad, Grandma and your favorite client. Imagine Grandma’s face when she opens a photo frame and you’ve preloaded it with all the special photos of her favorite grandkids.

Interested? Well, check out Sony’s new digital frames — the DPF-V900, DFP-V700 and DFP-D70 — which all have a resolution of 800×480 and from 256MB to 512MB of internal memory. The three new additions recognize JPEG, RAW, TIFF and BMP picture formats and come with USB and a multi card reader. The DPF-V900 looks the most promising with a 9 inch LCD screen.