Google's Street View now is augmented by photos supplied by contributors to the company's Panoramio service. This shot of the St. Louis courthouse is more scenic than the official Street View version. Note also the advertisement below the photo. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: Screenshot by StephenSince I helped open this particular can of worms, I feel responsible for sharing the latest news about an issue in which Adobe Systems' software opens Internet Explorer even when Chrome is set as the default browser.
I had a Twitter tirade in January after the umpteenth time that Lightroom ...
Compact-camera manufacturers have begun testing the waters with a wealth of high-end features as they search for new ways to gain revenue, market share, and recognition.
In earlier digital photography days, a camera with an extra megapixel of resolution, face recognition, or image stabilization could stand apart from the herd. But now that herd has grown larger, most folks who'll buy a digital camera already have done so, the economy has put consumer spending on ice--and camera makers are making some bolder bets with high-end features.
Among them: Nikon's built-in GPS support to record where a photo was taken, Casio's high-speed video, and the Micro Four Thirds camera system from Panasonic and Olympus.
Premium features aren't an easy sell. They tend to appeal to market niches rather than the mainstream. Early implementations are often rough around the edges. And it's hard enough to convince people to buy a new camera, much less one with the higher price of premium features.
But winning those customers can have a good payoff with better profit margins. And that's critical in this day and age. Market research firm IDC expects that after years of growth, the shipments of digital cameras will decline in 2009.
"It's crowded, and it's getting crowdeder," IDC analyst Ron Glaz said of the digital camera market. "We're anticipating that with the slowdown in economy and disposable income, we'll start seeing consolidation of the vendors." In other words, even though something in the neighborhood of 38 million digital cameras are sold annually, some companies will throw in the towel.
...SAN JOSE, Calif.--iStockphoto, which helped pioneer the "microstock" market for inexpensive, royalty-free imagery, plans to launch an audio-licensing business Wednesday.
The Getty Images subsidiary already offers photography, illustrations, Flash animations, and video. iStockaudio was a natural extension--one the company's customers had sought, iStock Chief Executive Bruce Livingstone said ...
Apparently, it wasn't as easy to launch a microstock site for lower-cost photography sales as Corbis thought it would be.
Corbis, one of the established powers in licensing stock photography, launched SnapVillage in 2007, arguing that the microstock market was still young. But on Thursday, Corbis announced that it ...
It looks like Canon and Nikon weren't blowing smoke when they said their high-end SLRs cameras will compete with medium-format digital cameras used almost exclusively by professionals.
Given the image quality advantages that SLRs with larger "full-frame" sensors have over mainstream and much less expensive models with smaller processors, one might have expected another quantum leap from costly high-end medium-format digital cameras with sensors twice the area of top-end SLRs. Not so, according to new DxOMark Sensor test results set for release Tuesday by French test and measurement firm DxO Labs.
In the digital era, Canon's top-end SLRs give medium-format cameras a run for their money. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: DxO Labs)The company tested image sensors from several medium-format cameras--the Mamiya ZD Back, Leaf Aptus 75S, Hasselblad H3DII 39, and Phase One P45+. These are the sorts of cameras used by fashion photographers and others who need lush tones, fine detail, and lots of megapixels to handle big photos such as magazine spreads.
But none outperformed the Nikon D3X SLR, whose score of 88 gives it the current top rank on DxO's sensor tests.
...