Nikon D40 announced

Four days ago, Nikon announced the D40, an update to the D50. It has been rumored for the past few weeks and is now confirmed. While it is not a huge improvement over the D50, it does offer a lot more features some of them to note include:

*6.1 effective Megapixel DX CCD
*Only 5.0 x 3.7 x 2.5 inches big and it only weighs 482g
*SDHC cards are now supported
*A Flash Off mode turns off the flash and adjusts the ISO and shutter speeds for optimization of natrual light (similar to Fuji's Natrual Light mode)
*Uses a EN-EL9 lithium-ion battery which allows for up to 470 shots per charge
*Has D-lighting feature from the D80
*2.5fps burst mode for up to 100 JPEG images

This seems like a very consumer like camera. Although it offers so much more features and so much better quality than competing 6MP consumer cameras plus interchangeable lenses.

Canon XH A1 vs Sony HVR-V1U: My Debate

In July, Canon announced their new HDV camera which is the successor to the GL-2 and a slightly stripped down version of the XL H1, the main differneces from the XL H1 include the Professional Jack Pack (HD-SDI, Genlock and SMPTE Timecode output), the XL interchangeable lens system and the quadrophonic sound recording (Canon also announced the XH G1 at the same time, which features the Professional Jack Pack). The XH A1 features recording in 1080i60, 1080 30f and 1080 24f. 30f is virtualy 30p but different in format, as with 24f.

In September, Sony announced their HVR-V1U, which is also an HDV camera with very similar features. Only this camera can record true progressive 30p and 24p

More about the V1U and the XH A1 in my debate, which is coming tommorow. Although I do not own or have even used either of the cameras (the V1U isn't even out yet), I will compare the cameras. Seeing that I am not a very rich person, I will probably ask both companies to supply me with a camera for a review but not for a direct comparison (I don't want them mad at me). But I don't see that happening since this weblog is so small.

Nikon D40 rumored

There are rumors that Nikon is planing to release a 6MP entry level DSLR.

Nikon's last entry level DSLR was the D50, why they would go backwards I don't know. D55 would be fine by me.

Updates Arrive

I haven't posted anything in a few months, so I'll give a few quick updates on editors and cameras.

By quick I mean really quick. Here are some new editors:

Adobe Camera Raw 3.6
Apple Aperture 1.5
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom beta 4.0

And some cameras:

Samsung GX-10 Samsung's version of the Pentax K10D
Sigma DP1 A compact camera with a 2,652 × 1,768 sensor in red, green and blue layers to create a 14MP image
Sigma SD14 A DSLR version of the above
Hasselblad H3D A high end 48mm equivalent digital camera
Seitz 6x17 Digital
Roundshot D3

And one camera accessory I would like to mention, the Canon Media Storage M80 and M30 which can hold and play your Canon video and picture files the M80 is 80GBs and the M30 is 30GBs.