Craig May 17th, 2007
According to a Cnet report, shipments of digital cameras increased by 6% to 4.9 million units in the first quarter of 2007. Canon continues to lead the way with 21% of market share, ahead of Sony (16%) and Kodak (13%). Samsung was the biggest improver over 2006 Q1 figures, jumping from 4% to 11% to become the 4th biggest in terms of market share, while Nikon appears to be facing some problems, dropping from 13% in 2006 Q1 to 7%.
Craig May 14th, 2007
Amazon.com have announced that they have acquired the well known news and review site Digital Photography Review, better known as DPReview. DPreview is one of the largest digital photography sites on the web, with 7 million unique visitors per month.
DPReview founder Phil Askey said “We’ve worked very hard over the last eight years to deliver consistently high quality content to our readers. It will be fantastic to be able to expand and build on that without compromising our quality or independence. With the support and resources of Amazon we can achieve this.”
The press release, taken from dpreview.com says :
Continue Reading »
Craig May 12th, 2007
One of Taiwan’s important industry’s is its fishing industry. From small scale coastal fisheries in 1945, where approximately 100 trawlers landed 40 000 metric tons, the industry has grown into a US$3 billion industry, where about 26000 boats landed 1.3 million metric tons in 2004, providing a livelihood for 137 000 households. 45% of the catch is exported with skipjack, squid, big-eye tuna, yellow-fin tuna, and tilapia being the major exports.
The industry is not without controversy though. Mutinies are not unheard of. Just last week, seven Indonesian workers onboard the Taiwanese trawler, “Hsin Ming Tsai” were questioned by Taiwanese CIB (Criminal Investigation Bureau) officers after the captain, Tsai Yun-sheng (蔡å…生) was allegedly murdered by the crew in a dispute over a pay raise, while the boat was moored near Palau. Tsai’s body was allegedly tied to a 20kg transmitter and dumped overboard. According to statistics gathered by the Pingdong county government, since 1996, more than half of the Taiwanese fisherman that have died or been reported missing at sea were suspected of being murdered by their crew (61 of 111 cases).
Economically, in November 2005, Taiwan was threatened with trade sanctions by Japan over illegal overfishing. The annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT), where Taiwan has had observer status since 1972 and cooperation status since 1999 (allowing it to receive a tuna fishing quota) ruled that Taiwan’s quota would be cut by almost 70% from 14,900 metric tons to 4,600 metric tons. In addition, Taiwan had to reduce it’s fleet of large, long-line fishing vessels from 614 to 454. In compensation payments alone, this has cost the Taiwanese government NT$4 billion (US$120 million) over two years. The steps taken by the Taiwanese government meant that in November 2006, the previous quota of 14900 metric tons was restored by the ICCAT.
Boats at Donggang (æ±æ¸¯), Pingdong county (å±æ±ç¸£) Continue Reading »
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite
Craig May 10th, 2007
Photoworkshop.com have announced the winning entries for the 2007 Photoworkshop Digital Image Competition, that was sponsored by Adobe. Now in it’s 5th year, the competition attracted a high standard of entries from all over the world. The winners and honorable mentions can be seen here. It’s worth checking out to see how little and how much can be done.
Craig May 10th, 2007
Shutter lag is the time between the moment you press the shutter button and the moment the camera takes the photo. While a modern DSLR exhibits almost no shutter lag, the same is not true for compact digital cameras. In fact, on some digital point-and-shoots, the lag can be as much as one second.
Now, one second doesn’t sound like a lot, especially when you consider that many processes take place in that one second. Once the user begins pressing the shutter button, the processor in the camera has to work out the distance to the subject, determine the light (or lack of), correctly set the white balance and balance the color and so forth. Quite a lot happens in that one second.
As I just mentioned, one second doesn’t sound like a lot, but suppose you’re taking photo’s at your son’s soccer game. Your son is about to kick the ball, you raise the camera and press the shutter as the ball is kicked. One second later, the photo is actually recorded by the sensor, but by that time the ball (and perhaps your son) are no longer in the frame. Oops.
Unfortunately, camera companies are not much help here. While they do recognise that shutter lag can be a problem, in most cases they don’t publish any shutter lag data in the spec sheets for a camera. And, in the real world, shutter lag specs have yet to be standardised, so even when you can find out what the shutter lag is of a particular camera, it’s hard to compare it to other cameras because they may be using different parameters to measure the lag.
With technology improving and prices dropping, shutter lag will one day (hopefully) be a thing of the past. But until then, it’s worth paying attention to next time you’re shopping for a digital camera.
A handy table comparing shutter lag in various cameras is available on the cameras.co.uk site. And the New York Times has a good article that can be found here.
