Photoclub Alpha

Today, Sony introduced a new service to grow its digital photography business across Europe: www.printbysony.net/storelocator.

The new Multimap mapping service, which links customers to Sony’s digital photography services, launched today in the UK and Greece and will soon feature locations throughout Germany, Spain and Sweden.

BRANCHES of Currys, the large UK electronic box-shifter, have been displaying notices saying ‘Discontinued’ under their remaining Alpha 100 kits. This needed some explanation, so we contacted Sony UK to ask whether the camera was genuinely discontinued.

INSIDE sources – mainly people who have been invited to press launch events – confirm that Sony is to show its new Advanced Amateur camera, thought to be called the Alpha 300, on Thursday September 6th. A press conference is being held in Italy on the 5th/6th, and journalists from European mainland countries have been invited to attend. Nigel Atherton, editor of What Digital Camera magazine, wrote on the Amateur Photographer public website forums that the product/s would be unveiled on the 5th. (I have now seen a programme for the event, and the main launch conference is on the 6th).

This article has been edited on January 28th 2008 – the Alpha 700 was known shortly after it appeared, but I left the original title with ‘A300′. Since there is to be an Alpha 300 (probably the cause of the confusion originally as this model number was identified in Sony website databases) I am changing the title and references to the body to avoid search engines finding the wrong information.

Poway, CA. August 22, 2007 -Delkin Devices, Inc. today announced its new UDMA enabled line of CompactFlash PRO cards is now shipping to camera stores, distributors and international channels. These new memory cards deliver industry-leading read/write speeds with a minimum sustained transfer speed capability of a blazing 305x (45MB/sec) in all capacities of 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB.

Here is one for all you film users in the UK –

Fujifilm Professional has announced details of a photographic competition held to celebrate the re-launch of Fujichrome Velvia 50. The winner will jet-off to Turkey on a photographic holiday-of-a-lifetime worth over £2,000.

Weybridge, 22nd August 2007 – For sports, for travel or simply for having fun with friends and family – the Cyber-shot H3 from Sony packs big-camera features into its ultra-compact body at a price that’s irresistible (reads Sony press release).

Weybridge, 22nd August 2007 – The stylish, slimline Cyber-shot T Series from Sony gains two feature-packed new models that make it easier than ever to grab great pictures (reads a press release issued by Sony UK).

THE PRESS and trade announcement made below on August 20th 2007 does little to confirm on deny rumours about the forthcoming AA and Flagship DSLRs. Why? You need to study the image, and study the dimension data, and fully understand what they are talking about, before the implications are clear.

DUE to be launched on Monday August 20th to the press, and to reach the shops a month later, the new Canon EOS 40D anticipates some of the rumoured features of the Sony AA (Advanced Amateur) project also known as the A300. It also leapfrogs the more conversative rumours.

To save a few dollars, whoever assembled a double page advert for Sony-sponsored photo workshops which (I gather) has just appeared in the US magazine Popular Photography went to cheap online stock library iStockphoto and downloaded this image: