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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NHP who wrote (28056)	4/27/2005 1:00:09 AM
From: Done, gone.	Respond to of 60323

Ansel Adams said something to the effect that the line between still photography and action photography would blur sometime in the future. Maybe this is the beginning of that time. Absolutely. Just yesterday I posted about a motion picture made with a still camera: Message 21258881 The cameras I use for work -- Canon 1D Mark II... canon.com ...record 8 frames per second, and have a buffer of 40 frames before the frames per second slow down. That's pretty much making movies, in my book. In the future the frames per second will exceed motion pictures, and so will the buffers. Photographers such as myself will become videographers who then edit out single frames. Pretty much what I do now anyway, on a slightly smaller scale: tonite's two hour job resulted in almost 3000 recorded frames.

To: NHP who wrote (28056)	4/27/2005 7:13:32 AM
From: limtex	Respond to of 60323

NHP - Funny but I'm prejudiced against a movie camera that doesn't look like a movie camera<g>. There was some discussion last year about the speed that CF can capture data at that may affect what kind of video the CF based movie cameras can deliver. Can they for instance deliver the same qualtiy video as current MinDV movie cameras. I am afraid that the standards involved as just above my ready comprehension level but there may be others around who can explain that to us. It is however crystal clear that if we can get equal video quality then:- 1. Tape is going the same way as film probably within say three years. 2. Video cameras are going to get cheaper by an order of magnitude as the most expensive bits are the tape transports. 3. Video cameras are probably not going to look like what we have become used to becuase tape was very much like film and the same design style worked for both but this does not apply to CF based video cameras. 4. Movies use up prodigious amounts of memory..far more than still shots.....ie an order of magnitude increase in demand for CF. 5. Even better that 4. above people will need to carry some spare CF modules when taking video becasue it always takes more than you thought it might. 6. Since these devices are smaller lighter and easier to use than tape of film people will use their video cameras much more than was previously the case...just becasue it has become so easy just let it run..indeed that should be Sandisks motto...Just Let It Run. All of this adds up in my view to good news for the CF business. I hope SNDK is working on some nice patents especially for cf based movie cameras. Best, L

To: NHP who wrote (28056)	4/27/2005 10:42:07 AM
From: Bruno Cipolla	Respond to of 60323

re: film and pictures (canon camera) NHP, video capture is done by the camera at 30FPS VGA Mjpeg (Motion Jpeg). It's not state of the art, recent solid state camcorders do VGA 30FPS Mpeg4. With Mjpeg the memory consumption per second is more than 1 MB. With Mpeg4 it is much lower (about 4-8 seconds with 1 MB) Better wait for VGA, 30FPS, MPEG4+Jpeg shots. BTW, The next logical step for solid state camcorders is SVGA (800600) and then XGA (1024768) at 30FPS Mpeg4. (DV resolution is 720*480) regards Bruno

To: NHP who wrote (28056)	4/27/2005 2:59:46 PM
From: clix	Respond to of 60323

This new Canon S2 IS is an incremental improvement on the S1 IS, which has been around for more than a year. Their video capabilities are the same, except that the S2 allows taking hi-res stills while you are shooting video. That will have obvious appeal to people who record sports events or children. However, both of these cameras can only record 1GB of video at a time -- even if you use a card that is larger than 1GB. I believe this is about 9 minutes at the high quality (30fps 640x480) setting. After 1GB of continuous video, you have to start another video file -- if you have more space on your card, or more cards. I believe that all digicams (except the very low-level ones) have video clip capabilities these days, though many only at 320x240 pixels. The Canons go up to 640x480, but 800x600 already exists (Minolta) at 15fps. It curious that, despite this wide availability of video on digicams, consumers don't seem to be using it much. Should this change, it could add new momentum to the slowing digicam flashcard market. The most remarkable feature of the Canon S1 and S2 is the image stabilization feature, which, along with the long zoom (10X for the S1, 12X for the S2) makes it possible to take extreme tele shots without a tripod. Panasonic also offers this feature, but has inferior video (320x240). Finally: The Canon S1 has a CF slot (like other high-end Canon digicams) but the S2, although bigger and heavier, has SD. This may have something to do with the fact that SD controllers are faster. S1 user groups have long maintained [in]compatibility lists for CF cards when used to capture video on the S1.

To: NHP who wrote (28056)	5/8/2005 10:11:47 PM
From: NHP	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 60323

I'd like to thank everyone (Michal, Limtex, Bruno, Clix) who responded to my request for opinions and comments on the "Canon PowerShot S2 IS" hybrid camera. Some of the reservations you expressed about the Power Shot might now be overcome by the Casio EX-P505 camera. The Casio was reviewed on 3/25/2005 at: steves-digicams.com "Steves-Digicams" thinks that the Casio is overpriced when compared against the Olympus C-5500 Sport Zoom. Since I have settled on the SD card for storage, the Olympus has been ruled out because it uses an xD card. From Steve's revue "The EX-P505 can record MPEG-4 encoded video at: 640x480 HQ (30fps), 640x480 Normal (15fps) 320x240 (15fps) The length is only limited by the capacity of your memory card and the life of your battery. [see firmware update]." Casio Announces Firmware Update For EX-P505 [extends the memory limit to beyond 1 GByte] Casio has released EX-P505 Firmware Update version 1.01, the improvements in this update: * Increases USB communication speed. * Adds autumn leaves scene to snapshot BEST SHOT scenes. * Provides support for SD memory cards greater than 1GB. My concern now is, how important is Image stabilization? NHP ps What is "Autumn leaves" ?