Canon's next model annouced by the 24th Jan 2008?

If all the rumors are true, then maybe Canon's replacement for the 400D or the 5D could be announced by the 24th January 2008, a week before the 2008 PMA. Apparently this information came from one of Canon's international executive, Robert Westin who leaked the news in this Swedish aticle. A rough English translation of the article can be viewed below. Good on ya Westin!!

More news from Canon during 2008 than this year
Canon will skruva up the rate next year and assures to release more products during 2008 than during 2007. We know when the first new products for 2008 släpps.

Trots flera helt nya kameramodeller är 2007 inget höjdarår för Canon. Start of
Translation

- 2007 blev ett mediokert år, säger Robert Westin som är vd för Canon Svenska AB. He does not blame on the products without means that it depends on that Canon introduced a new business system pursues the whole Europe.

The new system means that an acting area on Iceland sheep to pay equally a lot as one handlare in Portugal. With the new system, it goes then to send cameras and other products over the whole Europe there demand is high.
- I do not want to to claim that our new systems were received with some bigger blessing. But they will introduce similar system, and we are first out within this sector. About three - four years come our competitors to do same thing. Good luck taking H afternoon then! , Robert says Westin.
- our board chairman comforted me with that we in all cases the increased volume this year.

News January 24
Canons Swedish CEO tell also for camera&picture that next big product lance ring comes January 24, some week before PMA in Las Vegas hits up your gates.

Of: Magnus Fröderberg

Out 2007-12-14 16:22
Canon has good products no chat about it, but it is very remarkable that it meagre be some Canonprodukter with in those Christma dispatches from supermarket unite, type competent, OnOff, Elgiganten, osv. It learns to be noticed substantially in Canons cash carton. Does it have become for complicated with the the new business system for handlarna or for Canon alone or for both perhaps?

/Kalle

Replies: Out 2007-12-14 16:28
Interesting question. The suppliers have often a finger with in the playing about which products that will campaign carcasses, it sow should last a choice that Canon done. But why they do that choice is of course more difficult that sia about. I will try few forward a reply from Canon.

/Magnus Fröderberg

As vendors… 2007-12-14 17:00
... holds I with to 100%. In my case that shop vendor states the office that the margins for canonprodukter entirely simple is for low…

/Experten

Canon 2007-12-14 23:06
Is it pursue difficult for Canon to release one “amateur camera” in 1Ds execution? Most amateurs that buy cameras buy nevertheless a battery grip, but it becomes never same thing that to amuse it 1Ds: a? Call these D50 or anything, but it is rotten nice….

we may well see 2007-12-15 01:01
Canon invests still on MP, begins to compare tradera-kameror as. Others produce as nikon has invested with on iso what canon seems faith that judgement joints but ikke.

Late thinks I nikon has come with a part smart (perhaps oanvändabara things) as lodfunktionen in the camera osv.


Sony are well on g with one fullfromatare, then can well canon sit there with the beard in the mailbox

1D mkIII, 40D, 5D mkII… 2007-12-15 01:13
I that Canon-användare is most smalest said little worried over that they will draw in in one MP-race. Cannot unfortunately claim annat. With the said, it be very in t.ex. 40D that would can to be pursued over to one 450D, t.ex.



Source

Could the future of camera chips be based on light?

Could the future of camera chips be based on light? Scientist has discovered that light can be slowed down so that a beam of sunlight can travel at a leisurely stroll and be brought to a standstill, or even stored for later use in the form of a rainbow.

The details of an exotic kind of material that can slow light from its top speed of around one million million metres per hour so that it can be trapped as a crescent of colour is published by a team that suggests if could mark a revolution in computing.

This remarkable feat could allow "broadband storage" for "broadband computing" capable of much greater power than conventional silicon chips because it can process information in the form of many light beams simultaneously, just as optical fibres can carry lots of conversations simultaneously. And it could also mark an advance in quantum computing, named after the strange quantum properties of matter at the atomic level, that could enhance the power of computers millions of times beyond anything available today.

The extraordinary feat of optical sorcery is described today in the journal Nature by Professor Ortwin Hess and Kosmas Tsakmakidis at the University of Surrey, working with Professor Alan Boardman from Salford University.

Once theory is turned into reality, the technique will allow the use of light rather than electrons to store memory in devices such as computers and cameras. The team predicts an increase in operating capacity of 1,000% over the use of conventional electronics by exploiting light's broad spectrum to lay down lots of different information simultaneously in the first "optical capacitor."

Slow light could also, paradoxically, be used to increase the speed of optical networks, such as the Internet. At major interconnection points, where billions of parcels of information from myriad phone calls arrive simultaneously, these materials could be used to slow, divert and allow through information, working in the same way as traffic congestion calming schemes do on motorways, when a reduction in the speed limit can lead to a swifter overall flow of traffic.

Previous attempts to slow and capture light have until now required extremely low temperatures, have been extremely costly, and have only worked with one specific frequency of light at a time. The new technique proposed by Prof Hess and Kosmas Tsakmakidis involves the use of exotic "metamaterials" with extraordinary optical properties.

These materials, which consist of carefully-designed shards of metal a billionth of a metre across (nanometres), have the strange property of negative refraction, which means that light bends in the opposite direction to the way it shifts when passing from one ordinary material into another (think of how a straight stick in water looks bent.) This means that, in theory at least, a metamaterial could be designed so that light would curve around it, making the object invisible, an idea already under serious study for cloaking devices. When combined with the "Goos Hänchen effect," where light can even go backwards, Prof Hess's team has shown it is possible to use metamaterials to halt a light beam in its tracks.

As different component 'colours' of white light have different frequencies (colours) each individual frequency be stopped at a different stage of a wedge of such material, he said, likening the way the light slows down to walking on shingle. At the point that every step of the light beam forward leads to an equivalent slip backwards in the metamaterial, an effect that depends on the colour of the light.

The result is a 'trapped rainbow'. "The key to understanding the trapping of the rainbow," he says, "is that every frequency of a white light wave packet has in a tapered shape of metamaterial its own particular width where it eventually stops – the result is the spatial spread of stopped/trapped light – the trapped rainbow." Prof Hess said that an onlooker could in an appropriate arrangement of metamaterial layers (as shown here) see the rainbow of trapped light.

This ability to store light will conceivably provide a powerful new tool to control optical information, even harness the quantum properties of atoms, and so exploit the possibilities of quantum computers that, in theory, will be able solve problems millions of times faster than current machines.

The extraordinary properties of quantum computers were first explored by theorists such as the late Richard Feynman at Caltech and David Deutsch of Oxford University. While a conventional PC shuffles information in the form of binary numbers, those containing only the digits 1 and 0, which it remembers as the "on" and "off" positions of tiny switches, or "bits."

By contrast, the switches in a quantum computer can be both "on" and "off" at the same time. A "qubit" could do two calculations at once, two qubits would do four and so on. Thus, it was theoretically possible to use quantum computers to explore vast numbers of potential solutions to a problem simultaneously. The new work, which suggests a way to create optical qubits, adds to a range of recent advances that make scientists confident that quantum computers will be feasible within a few years.

An artist's impression depicting how the trapped rainbow is displayed below.



Source

Nikon Increases Market Share, Profits and Efficiencies

According to Nikons Quaterly report, it looks like they will have a great year in 2008. So far they have grown market share, exceeded their forecast and are now trying to increase production to meet dermand.

Here are three supporting questions and answers mentioned in their financial results for the first half of the year ending March 31, 2008.

Question: What is the outlook for the digital camera market?

Answer: Nikon's digital SLRs led the market during the first half of the year ending March 2008 in Japan. And they sold in other regions as well. October sales in the US exceeded our forecast, and while we as yet do not see any slowdown in consumer spending due to the subprime mortgage problem, we are paying close attention to how the Christmas selling season is going. Next fiscal year our competitors will develop their marketing to full extent in the digital SLR market, and we expect this will stimulate market growth and contribute to sales.

Question: What is the profit outlook for Imaging Products Business?

Answer: Robust digital SLR and interchangeable lens sales are being boosted by the appreciation of the exchange rate. We forecast an operating profit rate of 13.5%, higher than the 10.2% of the previous fiscal year. Currently, we are moving ahead with our manufacturing reform projects with the aim of achieving profit margins and cost efficiencies that rival our competitors.

Question: How are the new digital SLRs, D3 and D300, performing?

Answer: They have been extremely well received on the market since their announcement and we receive a great number of orders. In response, we are preparing to increase production of both models.