Photography

Digital cameras continue to be the hottest gifts of the season. New from Samsung is its DIGIMAX i5. Don't let this tiny (17.3 mm) camera fool you, it's loaded with high tech features including five megapixels, a super bright screen, 3X zoom and a new lens technology that takes pictures like its bigger brethren.

You want entertainment? Whether it's your family, friends or that holiday trip, the Sony DCR-DVD403 Handycam Camcorder aims to please! The camcorder is the best of quality and entertainment by its ability to record in Dolby Surround Sound, straight to DVD. After a day out with the family, come home and put your latest and greatest captured on your DVD right into your home theater and enjoy the memories you've captured with movie-like quality. Just a warning...next year for the holidays you just may want to upgrade your home theatre systems to match the quality of the camcorder DVD! $999.99; www.sony.com

November 18, 2005 -- Digital Foci, Inc. introduced today Media Buddy portable digital photo storage with hard drive and card reader that lets you instantly and securely save digital photos on a hard drive wherever you go, so you can keep snapping away and not worry about running out of memory card space.

Nov. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Sprint and CEIVA Logic have teamed to fully integrate Sprint PCS Picture Mail into the CEIVA Network, enabling Sprint PCS customers to send and receive digital images on their Sprint PCS Vision Phones, CEIVA Digital Photo Receivers, on-line Sprint Picture Mail albums and CEIVA on-line albums.

Nov. 16, 2005--Kodak innovation was spotlighted last evening at the International Consumer Electronics Show Press Preview, where the company's digital products and services won four prestigious Innovations 2006 Design and Engineering Awards. The groundbreaking KODAK EASYSHARE-ONE zoom digital camera and the EASYSHARE Photo Printer 500 were named "Best of Innovations 2006" award winners for the digital imaging and digital imaging accessories categories, respectively, while the KODAK EASYSHARE Gallery Premier Service and EASYSHARE V550 zoom digital camera garnered Innovations 2006 Design and Engineering honors.

The new PENTAX OptioWPi is packed with 6.0 megapixels and captures images up to five feet underwater. Perfect for extreme indoor or outdoor activities, the OptioWPi offers high resolution images with a quick start-up, a 3X zoom lens and an ultra-fast 9-point Autofocus.

With Samsung's tiny SPP-2040 photo printer you can print digital snap shots with or without a PC. Features 60-second print speed and produces 4" x 6" prints that are dry, with a water and fade resistant finish protecting photos from fingerprints and smudging. Print from PC via USB 2.0 or from a camera phone, camcorder, or digital camera using USB 1.1 PictBridge. Features a 2" color TFT-LCD screen for photo selection, editing, and deletion without a PC. 7-in-1 memory interface including Flash type I, II, Microdriver, SmartMedia, SecureDigital, MultiMedia Card, Memory Stick, and XD Cards. $199.99; www.samsung.com

NewTech Infosystems is now shipping CD & DVD-Maker 7 Titanium Suite. Based on the NTI CD/DVD burning engine, the new version can be used for all of the popular computing, music, photo, home video, and backup/recovery tasks. By combining features and NTI’s EasySteps interface with support for the full-range of recordable and rewritable CD and DVD functions, the software suite is for both novices and experienced users.

November 8, 2005 --Finally there's a solution that can end the "blues" for fixed lens prosumer and entry-level digital SLR cameras at the point of capture. It's called ExpoCap from ExpoImaging www.expoimaging.net.

I have always been a stickler for using paper and ink manufactured by your printer maker. If you have a Canon, get Canon paper and ink, if you have an Epson, get Epson paper and ink... PERIOD. No exceptions! I still believe that to be true with regard to ink, but have found a superb alternative when it comes to photo quality paper.

Konica and Minolta have always been top quality companies. Minolta mainly in cameras and optics and Konica in professional traditional chemical paper manufacturing, such as you find in many professional labs. I doubt anyone with even a passing interest in photography has not heard of these two brands. Following the 2003 merger of the two companies, they developed a special Konica-Minolta branded photo quality inkjet paper. I have been testing both the "Premium" and "Professional" Glossy and Satin versions and actually prefer them to some of the printer companies' own branded paper. The "whites" appear whiter, as does the paper itself. This gives you a brighter picture with more snap.