Digital Camera News: Three Inch LCD from Samsung, Higher Capacity xD-Picture Cards, Digital ELPH Microscope...

Samsung Develops Three Inch LCD with VGA Resolution

Last week, Samsung announced that they had developed the first VGA (640x480) resolution screen that conforms to industry interface standards for digital cameras.  Typically, LCD screens operate at 60 Hz.  However, digital camera manufacturers use an interface called ITU-R601 which specifies that the screen operate at 30 Hz.  In the past manufacturers have reconciled the difference by compressing the images or manipulating the signal.  These methods only work at qVGA (320x24) resolutions or less. 

The new screen from Samsung can operate at 30 Hz and a dot inversion scheme that lowers power consumption and reduces the image flickering.

Visit www.samsung.com for more details

2 GB xD-Picture Cards from Olympus and Fujifilm

Within days of each other, Olympus and Fujifilm announced the arrival of new higher capacity xD-Picture cards.  The new capacity, 2GB, would provide enough storage for approximately 1,640 5 megapixel images.  The Fujifilm branded cards will be available in September, while the Olympus branded cards (M2 GB, since it's an "M Type" card) will be available in August.

Turn your Digital ELPH Into a Microscope

The X-Loupe is an attachment that will fit on many of Canon's Digital ELPH (or SD) digital cameras.  The extra attachment can turn your camera into a microscope with lenses with magnifications of 60x, 100x, and 150x.  An LED lens ring, powered by a lithium-ion rechargeable battery provides variable illumination on your close up subject.

See www.x-loupe.net for more details.

Firmware Update for Pentax K100D

The new firmware update for the Pentax K100D (v1.01) adds SDHC support and allows the manual shake reduction settings to show up in their Photo Browser 3 software.  To perform the update, you'll need a blank SD card with a capacity of 8MB or higher.

To get the update and installation instructions, see the page for the Pentax K100D 1.01 firmware update