Photoclub Alpha

October 16, 2007, Burlingame, CA — FotoNation (www.fotonation.com), a leading provider of embedded imaging solutions for the imaging industry, announced today “FastTrack IPC” (IP-Core) hardware acceleration technology that improves Face-Tracking quality and performance up to 400% in digital cameras and camera phones.

The World Photography Awards (WPA), sponsored by Sony, is an international showcase of the best images taken by renowned and undiscovered photographers alike. From landscape to music and photojournalism to fashion photography, the WPA is the first awards of its kind and is supported by hundreds of the industry’s top photographers, critics, gallery curators, directors, founders and more.

Photo © Ed Robinson/OneRedEye courtesy WPA

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.

IN 1998 Minolta published, for their 70th anniversary, a large poster featuring all the landmark cameras from their own museum and employee collections. Many of the cameras shown - all fairly small on the poster - were well used and worn examples. The original image-files for the poster, which we have archived, are of poor quality. They are Japanese inkset CMYK sharpened for pre-press, with very dark gamma. This page re-creates all the information from the original poster, complete with the photographs.

For everyone who is passionate about photography, the AOP Open is a celebration of the diversity of photography and the perfect opportunity to achieve recognition for outstanding images. You may be a professional photographer or a weekend snapper, it doesn’t matter – there are no restrictions or categories, you just have to take a great picture. Enter now, for the opportunity to exhibit at the AOP Gallery and to win a variety of outstanding prizes.

A review by David Kilpatrick from Photoworld Spring 2007 with additional updates

MY SONY Carl Zeiss 16-80mm “superzoom” arrived from Warehouseexpress - the best price I could find and one of the very best dealers in terms of service - packed rather minimally for a £465 purchase.