Samsung PL90

We have had digital cameras for a long time, and many of which can be plugged directly in to your computer or laptop via a USB cable. Despite this it can be awkward to carry a cable around, and it is never truly portable.

The Samsung PL90 is a unique digital camera since it has an inbuilt flip out USB connection which means no more computer connection cables, no more lost connection cables (Very annoying) and the ability to use your camera anywhere, with any computer.

It is actually surprising that a feature such as this has taken so long to appear in digital cameras, but now it has arrived we should soon see this fantastic feature in more digital cameras soon.

The Samsung PL90 is pretty average when it comes to it’s other features. A 12 megapixel resolution, 4x optical zoom and VGA video make the Samsung PL90 a strong, serviceable, but mediocre digital camera.

WIth the Panasonic FP8 the research bods decided to take an innovative new approach.  Instead of simply increasing current specifications they did something rather radical.

After much stagnation in the digital camera industry, panasonic went to it’s customers and asked what they wanted.

Quite surprisingly the customers said they did not care that it’s current digital cameras could take pictures with 12 megapixel resolution, neither did they give the proverbial about being able to put a picture frame around someones face.  Infact the only real complaint was that it can sometimes take up to 10 seconds for a camera to start up, and two seconds for it to take a photo.

The people up at Panasonic HQ thought long and hard about this, after all they have spent 10 years working out how to fit more mega pixels in to a smaller space.  But in the end they admitted, maybe it was time to listen to the consumer.

And the results do not dissapoint, the Panasonic Lumix FP8 starts in under a second, it has a new high speed auto focus system, which before was the domain only of Sony. Even with this high speed picture taking you get anti-blur technology and auto flash/whitebalance settings to give you the perfect picture!

This dinky little camera even comes with HD video capabilities, a sweet topping to this already delecious treat!

My only worry is that Panasonic may have come a little bit too late with their realization.  Sony alraedy has sone pretty quick consumer digital cameras with the DSC series, and many casual photographers swear by it.  However the New Panasonic Lumix FP8 is a very strong contender, which will do Panasonic proud!

For the last ten years the amount of pixels pushed into each image a digital camera takes has steadily increased.  While professionals can use camera’s with much higher resolutions your general consumer really does not need more than 10 mega pixels.  For this reason we applaud Olympus for ending the Mega pixel war and instead focusing their efforts on size, features and picture clarity.  

If more companies follow the olympus lead we could soon be seeing camera’s of SLR quality reaching the consumer market! 

The use of digital SLR cameras has managed to remove many problems found in the original cameras.  One major issue however has always been that there has never been a duel lcd screen to allow off the hip or from the ground easy picture taking.

This issue is mainly because an extra LCD screen would make the camera extremely bulky and much heavier. This is something that has hindered progress on flexible screens on digital SLR cameras since they first became available.

Until now.

In recent years technological advancements have been focused around the high tech industry, but rather like a caveman in the 90′s it has taken the genius of the team at flipbac to provide us with a genius cheap and flexible device.

The Flipbac angle viewfinder is an amazing product which allows the photographer to change his viewing angle of the digital camera screen with nothing more than a small mirror with a small attachment device that fit most Digital SLR Cameras!

This handy little viewing divice has raised a storm from the digital SLR enthusiasts, many of whom still promote the optical viewfinder as the only true way to take photo’s.  The truth of the matter is though that this growing minority are keeping themselves locked away from a huge convenience and speed factor in picture taking!