CAMERAS A SIGN OF DIGITAL DAYS.Byline: Staff and Wire Services LAS VEGAS Las Vegas (läs vā`gəs), city (1990 pop. 258,295), seat of Clark co., S Nev.; inc. 1911. It is the largest city in Nevada and the center of one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the United States. - Cameras with lenses that swivel in a circle. Cameras so tiny they get lost in a shirt pocket. Cameras smart enough to analyze the scene and decide where to focus. Welcome to the next generation of picture taking. Exhibitors at this year's Photo Marketing Association trade show going on this week in Las Vegas are parading out a number of advances in digital photography, addressing an increased demand among consumers. Manufacturers began the push into consumer digital cameras about five years ago with fairly conventional designs - often taking the bodies of 35 mm point-and-shoot cameras A film or digital camera in which the focus and exposure is entirely automatic. You aim and press the button; the camera does the rest. Point-and-shoot cameras can range from cheap throw-aways to pocket-sized digitals. and replacing the film mechanism with an electronic sensor. The emphasis in the first generation was improving picture quality, most often measured in millions of pixels See pixel. , or megapixels. But the megapixel One million pixels. Refers to the resolution of a digital imaging device (monitor, scanner, video camera, still camera, etc.). For example, a five-megapixel digital still camera might take a picture composed of 5,038,848 red-green-blue color dots (pixels). race, while far from over, is becoming much less of a priority. The ``sweet spot'' - the amount mainstream consumers are willing to pay for a digital camera - is now entrenched en·trench also in·trench v. en·trenched, en·trench·ing, en·trench·es v.tr. 1. To provide with a trench, especially for the purpose of fortifying or defending. 2. at $200 to $400. All the major manufacturers - including Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, Nikon, Olympus and Sony - offer two-megapixel cameras within the sweet spot. That's enough resolution to make 4x6 prints nearly indistinguishable from 35mm photos, and even respectable 8x10s if the image isn't heavily cropped. In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke" put differently , two megapixels are sufficient to meet the needs of ordinary people. ``At $200, any of these digital models is an ideal camera for the roughly 40 million U.S. households that have a PC, but not a digital camera,'' wrote Andrew Johnson of the Gartner market research firm in Stamford, Conn., in a January report. ``It's hard to believe many consumers will upgrade their film camera when they can get involved in digital photography at these prices.'' Having achieved an attractive price point, digital camera makers are now stressing innovative features and designs to stand out in a crowded field. ``You're starting to see digital capture migrating into a lot of different form factors,'' says Alexis Gerard, president of the market research firm Future Image in San Mateo San Mateo (săn mətā`ō), city (1990 pop. 85,486), San Mateo co., W Calif., on San Francisco Bay; inc. 1894. It is a commercial and retail center with some high-technology manufacturing. San Mateo, Spanish for St. . CAPTION(S): photo Photo: (color) The FlashTrax unit lets the photographer see images downloaded from a flash card on a 3.5-inch screen. Gene Blevins Special to the Daily News |
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