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September 26, 2006

Photokina Day One Updates

As we noted earlier, updates have been coming in fast and furious from the show floor. It would seem some vendors have been waiting for Day One to reveal some of their best stuff. While not a comprehensive report, here's what's been seen to date, courtesy of our colleagues at LetsGoDigital and Imaging-Resource.

Sigma has been saving up a lot of buzz energy for today - the SD14 Digital SLR specs were finally revealed and the good news is the camera is no longer a RAW only device - there's three JPEG recording modes. The 14MP Foveon X3 sensor should put the company back in the playing field. The new sensor also makes an appearance in the Sigma DP1 digital compact camera, featuring a 16.6mm/f4 fixed lens which gives a 28mm field-of-view. On the lens front, Sigma updated several lenses to the Four-Thirds family mount - the 18-50mm f2.8 DC lens with macro, the 24mm/f1.8 EX DG wide angle also with macro (7.1" at 1:2.7), the APO 135-400mm/f4.5-5.6 telephoto zoom and the supertele APO 300-800mm/f5.6 EX DG HSM lens. But the kicker came last - Sigma's second Optical Stabilization (OS) lens: The 18-200mm/f3.5-6.3 DC OS appears to be a direct competitor to the Nikkor 18-200 VR!

On the storage front, SanDisk updates their Extreme III family to a whopping 16GB CompactFlash card, and Pretec responds with their 80x version. SanDisk also made inroads in the Secure Digital segment with their new 4GB SDHC (High Capacity) card rated at Ultra II speeds. Epson updates their image tank/viewer line with the 40GB P3000 and the 80GB P5000, both have an enormous 4.0" LCD and fast USB 2.0 connectivity.

Finally, if you can't make the show, then enjoy some of the sights of the event from ground level with Imaging-Resource's roving reporter Mike Pasini.

Posted by covey22 at September 26, 2006 3:12 PM