Digital Camera and Photography: Tips, Information and News | Neocamera Blog

Olympus just announced the E-400, the smallest DSLR yet with 10 megapixels and a 4/3 mount. Without taking about image quality, this sounds like good news since it brings a 4/3 DSLR that finally achieves the promise of being smaller and raises Olympus’ megapixels to the current market standard.

It won’t be available in North America though. When that was all the information we got, it seemed surprising but it would not be the first time. It could have been a question of part supply, but here is an excerpt from an official Olympus statement posted on DP Review:

It is not uncommon for products to be available in select regions. In the Americas, we chose to focus on the Evolt E-500 and Evolt E-330 due to their overwhelming success. Both products have won multiple awards.

So, there we have an annoucement from Olympus UK which says that they will introduce a better camera, the E-400, in November and a statement from Olympus US that they rather sell us their older models since we are still buying them. We presume Europeans have not been buying enough E-330 and E-500 cameras and therefore they are rewarded with a new an improved model. So much for North Americans supporting Olympus and encouraging them to grow!

This reminds me of yield management. Yield management is concerned with extracting the most money possible from customers. It is a common practive within airline companies for pricing plane tickets. For Olympus, it translates to keep selling the E-330 and the E-500 until people no longer buy them, thus maximizing the possible revenues from these models. Presumably once this happens, they will start selling to E-400 to realize its revenue potential. If they were to introduce the E-400 while older models are still selling well, then some people would put there money on the superior E-400 instead and therefore Olympus would collect less money for their older models.

This reinforces what most people already knew: companies are not driven my innovation but by maximizing profits. Innovation is simply a competitive tool. Where no innovation is required, none would be produced, as is the case for companies in near-monopolistic market positions.

With all the talk about 10 megapixel cameras, including 6 DSLR models and 13 fixed-lens models, the just-announced Leica M8 is of no real significance. Historically, it is the second range-finder digital camera. After the quasi-failure of the already expensive Epson RD1, the even-more expensive Leica M8 should probably be the last.

Some people care about range finder cameras and not without reason. There are advantages to range finders over other camera types but there are also a great number of disadvanatges. See DP Review’s preview of the Leica M8 for a detailed list.

Advantages of range finder cameras, including the M8, are few and of limited use when we consider the existance of high-quality compact cameras. Compact cameras are ultra-quiet, have more flexible lense and some have extremely short shutter lag. This leaves the range-finder’s 1:1 viewfinder its only significant advantage. This is quite small compared to having autofocus, live-preview and zoom. When using a lens longer than 50mm on a range-finder, the subject’s view becomes very small, even though the viewfinder still shows a big image – only a small portion stays relevant.

With a conservative and very traditional range-finder design, Leica is clearly aiming at current range finder users. Unfortunately, at nearly 5000 USD, most Leica-lens owners could by a DSLR plus high-quality lenses for that sum. This damages the M8’s chances in its most likely market.

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This week, two new 10 megapixels cameras were announced, the Pentax K10D and the Olympus E-400. Together with the recently announed Canon Rebel XTi and the already available Nikon D80 and Sony Alpha A100, there are now five 10 megapixels digital SLR cameras costing around 1000 USD. Admitedly, two of my predictions from last month were wrong: both Canon and Olympus upgraded their entry DSLR offerings to 10 megapixels. Until detailed reviews are available, we won’t know if this is due to technical achievement or to a marketing requirement.

The Pentax K10D, image on the left curtesy of Pentax, has made things very interesting by adding unexpected capabilities to this price point. The K10D is now the least expensive weather-proof DSLR on the market. It is also one of only two digital SLR cameras to include body-based stabilization, the other one being the Sony Alpha A100. This new Pentax camera includes a number of innovative features such as white-balance preview and sensitivity priority mode. It also has a built-in dust-reduction system, making the Nikon D80 the only DSLR without this feature among the five.

It would be too easy if one of these cameras had all the best features and image quality, so chosing among them will be a difficult task for most people. Neocamera will have a detailed feature-comparaison among these shortly.

At the high-end, the 10 megapixels Nikon D200 is a powerful contender, yet its price premium is high compared to the newly introduced 10 megapixels models. Now that the Pentax K10D has been announced, the D200’s only clear advantage is 5 FPS continuous drive. Previously, the D200 was the cheapest weather-proof DSLR available. This was seen as a high-end feature justifying its price premium over competitors like the 8 megapixels Canon 30D which also shoots at 5 FPS but costs several hundreds less.

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Several digital cameras now sport a 3″ touch-sensitive LCD screen. Yesterday, Sony introduced the follow up to its Cybershot DSC-N1, the Cybershot DSC-N2, and a new addtion to its ultra-slim line of cameras, the Cybershot DSC-T50, also with touch-sensitive LCD. Pentax has the Optio T10, which also follows this trend.

Each one of these touch-screen-enabled cameras is a point-and-shoot model a large LCD screen as its only viewfinder. To some users, not having an alternate viewfinder is already disturbing enough. Under bright sunlight, most LCD screens are illegible or severely washed out. Some are better than others, but even the best LCD screen reflects sunlight at some point. Now, add finder-prints and it is quickly over. Some models, such as the Kodak Easyshare One, come with a stylus. However, that becomes difficult to handle since the user is already busy handling the camera.

Camera manufacturers probably started this trend either to save manufacturing costs of external controls or to provide easy access to additional functions. Accessing functions easily is an important goal, but adding touch-sensitivity to a camera’s only viewfinder probably is not the way to do it.

This time, it seems that Samsung came up with an innovative alternative which does not have the drawbacks of a touch-sensitive LCD. Honestly, this is surprising because Samsung has rarely came up with anything new, let alone something new and usefull! Sure, this company has a history of producing devices with extreme specifications like its Pro815 camera with 15X optical zoom and a 3.5″ LCD, but that is just pushing specifications.

With the NV7 and NV10, the LCD screens are lined on two sides by a series of unmarked buttons. The function of these buttons is context dependent and is displayed adjacent to it on the LCD screen. This way, each button can be dynamically assigned a different function and labeled by the LCD screen. This gives a flexible user-interface which does not leave any fingerprints on a display which serves as a camera’s only viewfinder.

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