June 14, 2003

Sony has a new brand — Qualia — and some OLED display promises: Creo-Leaf has formally announced their 22 MPxl Valeo: Umax has a new 2 MPxl low-camera, cheap:

Sony has created a new brand for a line of "luxury" electronics. The first four Qualia products are a 2 MPxl camera that is even smaller and lighter than their smallest "U" model, a video projector, an LCD monitor and an audio system. The Qualia 016 camera is shown here with its main attachments — the flash and a magnifying shaded hood for the half-inch LCD. The main unit is a little more than 2.5 inches long. Edgy technology includes navigation by way of the touch-pad seen on top (said to have a slight learning curve before it's effective); quadruple bracketed exposures combined for each image file; a price tag of something like $3000. This is the one that meets the limits for your personal spacecraft to the moon. (Japan specs page)

Sony is also promising new mobile electronics — including cameras — that will use the small OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) display that they are making in partnership with Kodak. (This or a similar display is used in Kodak's LS633 camera.) OLED displays need no backlight and require far less power than the usual digital camera LCD.

Creo is promising to ship the 22 MPxl medium format camera back system that they announced back in October of 2002. The date set for shipping the Valeo 22 is September 1st of this year. The sensor is said to take advantage of the "full coverage" from a 6 x 4.5 camera lens. They also say that the lens's "focal length needs minimal conversion." The integrated hardware includes the sensor back; a 10 gig hard drive for storage, housed in the box under the camera; an HP iPAQ pocket PC, with dedicated "proofing" software. CreoScitex.com doesn't provide actual specs.

Umax has a new 2 MPxl upgrade to their low-end line of cameras. The fixed-focus lens, CompactFlash, USB AstraPix 540 saves JPEGs, AVI and MP3 files for about the price of a good MP3 player alone — $149 (introductory) direct from Umax. Full info and specs.