Digital Camera News Bits: Casio YouTube Contest, Pentax Delays Camera After Battery Supplier Fire

Casio Dream Digs YouTube Contest

To promote their new cameras with the YouTube movie capture mode, Casio is holding a video contest that will get the winner a $3000 Best Buy gift card. You don't need a Casio camera to upload your movies.

Your video should be 2 minutes or less and be in one of four categories: the ultimate sporting digs; extreme gaming digs, the supreme film experience digs or digs that bring out the inner-tech geek in everyone. Upload your movies to www.youtube.com/casiousa.

The grand prize winner gets a Casio Exilim EX-V8, a 4GB SD card, carry case, and $3000 Best Buy gift card. There will be two first prize winners who will receive a $500 Best Buy gift card, Casio Exilim EX-S880, case and 2GB SD card. Five second place winners will receive a Casio Exilim EX-Z77, case, and 2GB SD card.

The Casio Dream Digs contest starts on October 25 and runs through December 31, 2007. The contest is only open to people in the United States and District of Columbia who are 13 years and older.

Pentax Camera To Be Delayed

A fire at a battery supplier is going to delay a Pentax camera that was expected to be launch in November of this year. Their estimate is that it will now be available in February 2008. A fire at a lithium-ion battery plant, operated by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd on September 30 has essentially halted production.

Matsushita will boost output from other plants in Japan and China and is considering the procurement of batteries from other suppliers.

It's not clear about whether the camera in question is a new model that was expected to be announced in November, or if it's one of the newly announced Optio models that were going to be available in November.