 |
|
|
|
|
|
Monday morning lines were a killer for the public |
Day minus One - Sunday Evening November 11th
Sunday is really day one for us. Digital Focus is the main
event for those people looking to see the latest innovations in digital
imaging. This is an eagerly awaited for event and we forego the Bill Gates
keynote speech to attend. The exhibitors pay approximately $8,000 for an 8
foot folding table and a chance to talk to the press. When you think about
the editorial coverage they get for a fraction of the cost of an ad, it's
really a bargain. The food is to kill for, as is all the food at these
Comdex press events. |
| Sidebar - I've been adding some creative Comdex
pictures to the top of my
CoolPix Gallery |
| Some cool stuff we did see: |
| I got to spend some quality time with the new Nikon
CoolPix 5000. It is smaller than the CoolPix 990/995 but with a higher
resolution image. Due to an agreement with Mike Rubin of Nikon we can't
show pictures taken with the camera until it's actually available for
review at the end of November. (Hey come on, you can wait two more weeks.)
It will be interesting to do a side by side comparison between the CoolPix
5000 and my CoolPix 990 with both cameras on a tripod. I
did get to play with the 19mm wide angle lens and it appeared to be as close to
distortion free as they could make it. There is going to be a lens hood
and an LCD focusing hood available. I got to see the lens hood, which is
also the adapter for the new wide angle lens. The focusing hood isn't available yet. Mike wasn't sure if it would be a
magnifying hood or not. If not, I'll keep using my Xtend-a-View if the LCD
can close with the Velcro. The LCD does swivel (just like the LCD screens
on the Sony camcorders) and after getting used to won't disappoint those of you
who like the CoolPix 990's swivel body design. |
|
The Nikon Team (left to right)
"Nikon Mike" Rubin, Larry. Joe Carfora, Chris, Jerry Grossman
Missing is Bill Giordano |
 |
 |
|
Kensington had this small travel
mouse with a retracting USB cable. |
Kensington was giving away their new
Kensington Lock and this tiny USB keyboard light, which I'm
using to type this in the middle of the night. |
|
 |
One of the new Epson Photo Stylus printers. The
785-EPX uses the EXIF data from your digital camera to make
direct prints without a computer. The card reader slots
are on the bottom and take the Compact Flash, Smart Media, and Sony's
Memory Stick. This is a six color printer. |
|
| The new Epson Perfection 2450 Photo Scanner has
a 4x9 inch transparency area and can scan at 2400x4800. Comes with a
dual 35mm film strip adapter along with the standard film size
adapters. We're almost
at the point of being able to scan a contact sheet. Epson, are you
listening? We can also use a 6x17 carrier for scanning panoramic film. |
 |
|
| The Olympus E 20. It's a 5 megapixel
digital camera with the FL-40 dedicated off camera flash, Chris
demonstrates the camera at the Olympus booth. |
 |
|
 |
| John Knaur explained that
it uses a preflash for the flash to know when to cut off the light. It
also has a standard PC socket. |
|
|
|
 |
| Sony gave Chris a DSC-F707 to play with for
a day and extended it to after Thanksgiving. It's a 5 megapixel camera with infrared capabilities.
Shutterbug Magazine is extending his deadline for the article on
Digital Infrared to add the
information about the Sony. Too bad they
only gave him a 32 megabyte Memory Stick during the show so he had to return to the hotel
room every seven pictures to clear off the memory to keep shooting. But
they did make up for it by giving him a handful of 16 meg sticks. |
|
 |
| Photodex gave us their new version of CompuPic
Pro 6.0 to test. It's an image viewing program similar to ACDSee. They
also asked us to be beta testers for them. |
| Day One - Monday November 12th - Comdex officially
opens |
|
Metal detectors and explosive sniffing dogs at
the public entrances |
Security was tough. Large mirrors were used to look
under the busses that transported us from the strip. The press had it's own section but
still had to go through metal detectors. At least we could bring our
shoulder bags in, unlike the general public who had to check their bags
across the street. On a humorous note, some of the press people were
patted down on Sunday at the press center when we had to check in, to
the embarrassment of the president of the security company. |
|
|
Profile
It's always a pleasure to meet a CEO whose
understanding of the Internet results in truly useful product.
Michael Kovnick,
CEO of Cyberspace HQ, harks back to the early days of computer
communications. In 1997 he saw the need for a more efficient way for
small businesses to submit their web pages to the growing family of
search engines on the net. The result was AddWeb Website Promoter.
This is promotion software done right. We'll be doing a full review
shortly, so stay tuned. |
Michael Kovnick |
|
|
SnagIt and Camtasia are two cool programs
that were demonstrated for us by
TechSmith.
SnagIt is a screen capture program that can also mine a web site of
images and Camtasia is a screen capture type program that records
mouse movements as movies for creating tutorials and training videos. |
|
Showstoppers
Showstoppers was the Monday evening high tech party.
The land of BIG SHRIMP and Sushi
|
 |
|
 |
We spoke to
Jasc last night at Digital Focus but had a
chance to shoot their product boxes at Showstoppers. Virtual Painter
is a simple, but effective painter type plug in for PSP or Photoshop.
Namo Web Editor is a basic web design program that has the capability
of generating complex java script. |
|
Day Two - Tuesday November 13th
We started off the day with the InfoTrends ImageScape breakfast. This
year there were fewer exhibitors than in the past. Here are a few
highlights. |
|
 |
Leave your docking station at home. The Digital
Album now has an optional accessory
Travel
Jack. It replaces the bulky docking station for traveling. |
|
| Chris was not only impressed with this 350,000 piece
clip art collection from
Herema, but
with it's award winning search engine used to find anything on the CD.
Something other clip art collections are lacking. |
 |
|
|
 |
Applied Science Fiction. They are famous for their scanning
filters bundled with the Nikon scanners. Now they are on the verge of
creating Photoshop plug ins. This example is a faded 1950's picture
brought back to life with Digital Roc. |
|
| Back to the show at the convention center |
|
Jack Berlin |
Profile
Jack
Berlin is a man who can speak with a passion about the proper
way to resize, rotate, edit and compress a file that is starting out
as a JPEG. His involvement in the JPEG world goes back to the original
Joint Photographic Experts Group. His company, Pegasus Imaging, is
widely regarded within the industry as being the premier compression
technology leader. Check out his
JPEG Wizard
and see what it's regional compression can do to remove the artifacts
from your existing JPEG images. |
|
|
Diskeeper 7.0 - A defragmenter for your Windows computer. Much
more thorough than Windows Defrag and can run in the background as not to
loose productivity time. Takes minutes to do what Windows Defrag takes
hours. What they don't tell you is to run Windows ScanDisk first. Another product they have worth looking at is Undelete 2.0
which can restore deleted files. |
 |
|
|
At Comdex we discovered that the Arab country of Dubai
is one of the safest destinations in the world... |
Day three - Wednesday November 14th
There were a few more things we saw of interest today but we're not
going to post about them until we can arrange demonstrations. Also, we've
made arrangements to leave a day early so today is the last day here for
us. |
Conclusion
Comdex for us was very cool this year. Once past the extra security we had
excellent access to the people we wanted to speak with. Imagine walking
into a booth and talking to the President or CEO of a company. Even the
companies that only had press agents here, like Epson and Sandisk. They
were all too eager to make appointments at our convenience. |
