Cameracraft magazine – Taking your practical photography further
OBERKOCHEN/Germany, 15.04.2009.
Carl Zeiss today announced that its Camera Lens Division will extend their successful collaboration with Sony Corporation for a further 5 years. Taking full advantages of their competence both companies agreed to cooperate even closer in developing and commercializing new imaging devices in the future.
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Nikon has announced a May 1st launch for a competitor to the Canon EOS 500D, in their D5000. This camera has the first articulated screen (only 230,000 pixels) to be designed by Nikon. See:
http://www.dphotoexpert.com/2009/04/14/nikon-d5000-live-view-hdv-articulated-screen/
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Canon has announced a consumer level EOS 500D camera, with 1080p resolution video limited to 20 frames per second, and 15.1 megapixels but a maximum shooting rate of 3.4 frames per second:
http://www.dphotoexpert.com/2009/03/25/canon-eos-500d-151-mp-plus-hd-video/
This continues the trend for all new DSLRs to have HD movie shooting in addition to live view modes, something which Sony to date shows no sign of catching up on. However, the obvious compromises present in the 500D would be criticised harshly if they were to have appeared first in a Sony model, so this is good news. Canon has made it acceptable for others to follow with 20fps instead of the required 24fps, and still claim true 1080p video.
– DK
Tamron Co., Ltd (Mr. Morio Ono, President), a comprehensive manufacturer of optical products with its head office in Saitama City, has announced the development of the SP AF60mm F/2.0 Di II LD (IF) MACRO 1:1 (Model G005), a life-size macro lens designed exclusively for digital SLR cameras with APS-C size image sensors* that offers a fast maximum aperture of F/2.0. (Text here is directly from their press announcement).
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There is a white paper by Sony Semiconductor on the imaging processing which I think is in the HX1, http://www.sony.net/Products/SC-HP/cx_news/vol55/pdf/featuring55.pdf. I assume it is the IMX-032 CMOS sensor (http://www.sony.net/Products/SC-HP/cx_news/vol55/np_imx032cqr.html) mated to a CXD4109AGG image processing chip. There seem to be some interesting techniques employed, multi-plane synthesis to combine several frames for low light and HDR capture.
With the IMX-032, it is interesting to note that the on-board programmable gain amplifier has a gain value of up to 18dB or a factor of 8, so if base ISO is 80, then maximum “analogue” ISO is 640. If we compare the IMX-032 versus Sony’s first column ADC CMOS chip (IMX-017), the IMX-32 has an 11.8% better photo-electron efficiency per unit area (2300e per 1.75 micron square pixel compared to 4500e per 2.5 micron square pixel). Might be a sign that Sony is improving the process and design used to make their CMOS chips.
The backside illuminated chip is called the IMX-061, http://www.chipworks.com/uploadedFiles/Aliased_Pages/CMOS_ImageSensors_Spotlight/Chipworks%20-%20Sony%20IMX061%20EXR-0902-813.pdf
6MP and 1.75 micron pixels in ClearVID (45 degree) layout with a 1:6:1 RGB Bayer filter array, sacrificing colour resolution for spatial resolution.
The Nikon D90 chip is called the IMX-038 (not the IMX-021 as for the A700), so this suggests it has significant revisions compared to the IMX-021 (possibly linked to LiveView and HD Video?).
– Dr Daniel K. L. Oi
Adobe has released Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 and Camera Raw 5.3, available immediately for download at www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/. The Lightroom 2.3 and Camera Raw 5.3 updates, originally posted as release candidates for community testing on Jan. 23, provide raw file support for the newly-released Nikon D3X and Olympus E-30 cameras.
The Lightroom 2.3 update also provides support for eight additional languages including Dutch, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, Swedish, Korean, Chinese (simplified) and Chinese (traditional). Additionally, it addresses several issues including a solution to a memory leak that affected some customers of the Lightroom 2.2 release.
Lightroom has received tremendous support from the photography community, and companies have released plug-ins that further extend Lightroom 2’s capabilities. Today, Nik software announced that its Viveza plug-in for colour refinement and light control is now compatible with Lightroom 2, and Photomatix recently updated its Lightroom HDR plug-in to work smoothly with Lightroom 2. To discover more plug-ins compatible with Lightroom 2 visit the Lightroom Exchange home page: http://www.adobe.com.
Pricing and Availability
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 update is available as a free download for existing Lightroom 2 customers and the Photoshop Camera Raw 5.3 plug-in is available as a free download for existing customers of Photoshop CS4, Photoshop Elements 7, Premiere Elements 7 and Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac. Both updates can be downloaded at www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/.
Press release from Sony, March 3rd 2009 – important bits highlighted in bold, uncalled-for comments in italics:
The Cyber-shot HX1 by Sony, teams stunning picture quality, lightning-fast shooting and powerful creative features in a stylish, supremely easy to use camera. The new flagship of the Cyber-shot range showcases a range of sophisticated image sensing, optical and processing technologies that offer unrivalled creative possibilities.
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Stock library Getty Images has added the Sony Alpha 900 to its rather restricted list of approved cameras – a very recent move, as it happened between the writing/research for my article appearing in the British Journal of Photography on February 18th, and publication. See: http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=840375
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SONY has a stand at Focus on Imaging in the UK after an absence of three years for the Alpha brand from this major annual photo fair, said to the be largest national show in Europe with the exception of photokina. On Stand L28 – right next to the Canon exhibit – the UK’s technical sales executive Paul Genge has lined up a nonstop programme of speakers and demonstrations.
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