Adobe today announced the Adobe® Creative Suite® 3 product line, a revolutionary offering of tightly integrated, industry-leading design and development tools for virtually every creative workflow. Adobe’s new Creative Suite 3 line-up unites the best of Adobe and Macromedia® product innovation to provide designers and developers with a broad spectrum of creative options for all facets of print, web, mobile, interactive, film, and video production.

There are six all-new configurations of Adobe Creative Suite 3. These include, Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium and Design Standard editions; Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium and Web Standard editions; and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium (see separate releases). Rounding out the product line is Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection which combines 12 of Adobe’s new design and development applications in a single box—the most comprehensive creative environment ever delivered. The top main features are:

All-new versions of essential creative tools

Experience the ultimate creative toolset with Adobe® InDesign® CS3 for page layout, Photoshop® CS3 Extended for specialized image editing, Illustrator® CS3 for vector graphics creation, Flash® CS3 Professional for interactive design, Dreamweaver® CS3 for web design and development, and Acrobat® 8 Professional for Adobe PDF workflows.

Unparalleled integration

Use native files any way you need to: Open native Photoshop files in Illustrator, import them into InDesign layouts or Flash projects, and copy them into Dreamweaver. Open Illustrator files in Photoshop and import them into InDesign layouts and Flash projects. Open and edit Adobe PDF files in Illustrator and Photoshop, and place them in InDesign layouts.

Website :  Adobe Unleashes Creative Suite 3 Product Line

Download : Adobe Creative Suite 3  Design Premium Data Sheet (PDF)

Here is a step-by-step instructions on buliding a DIY Shutter Release for your Canon DSLR. Here are what you’ll need:

• (1) One - 3/32” Stereo Audio Plug (MUST BE STEREO, NOT MONO)
• (2) One – Small Toggle Switch
• (3) Two – Momentary Switches (SET TO OPEN)
• (4) Wire – Small Gauge Insulated wire w/ at least 3 insulated wires within the main outer insulation. (I used 20’ basic telephone wire and only used 3 of the 4 wires in it.) (length depends on how long you would like your shutter release to reach.)
• (5) Wire – Small gauge scrap wire, for wiring switches
• (6) One – Project housing or Something to mount your switches on

It is a pretty simple project and shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes from start to finish.

Website : DIY Shutter Release for your Canon DSLR

Canon Marketing (Taiwan), the Taiwan subsidiary of Japan-based Canon, has set the goal of achieving a share of more than 50% of the Taiwan DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera market in 2007, according to company chairman and CEO Satoshi Yahata at a press conference on March 19.

Canon Marketing is proud of its operating performance in 2006, with total sales revenues of over NT$2 billion (US$60.3 million) growing by 16% from 2005, Yahata indicated. Digital cameras, business-use MFPs (multi-function peripherals) and single-function printers are the three Canon product lines which the Taiwan subsidiary currently markets, accounting for 70%, 20% and 10%, respectively, of the 2006 total sales revenues, Yahata noted. Canon Marketing expects the total sales revenues for 2007 to reach NT$2.5 billion, Yahata added.

For digital cameras in particular, Canon Marketing hit historically high sales performance in 2006, with sales revenues growing by about 30% from 2005 and sales volumes of DSLR and conventional digital cameras increasing by 75% and 44% respectively, Yahata pointed out. In 2007, Canan’s market occupation for conventional digital cameras is expected to exceed 20% making the company the second largest or even the largest brand, Yahata said.

Website :  Canon to top 50% DSLR market share in 2007 in Taiwan

Camera & Imaging Products Association(CIPA) is an organization in Japan made up of members engaged in the production or distribution of silver halide cameras, digital cameras, and related devices, instruments and software. They recently announced the data on the shipment and production numbers by product-type for January 2007, compared to January 2006.

Once again, the SLR camera shipment went up an amazing 172%, the fastest growing among all categories of digital camera. The total SLR camera shipment units went up to 483, 195 and total sales amount is around US$ 286,270,740. If you look at the destination of shipment of these SLR cameras, around 40% are shipped to Europe, 34% are shipped to North America and the rest 26% are shipped to Asia. Interesting to see such a high 40% shipment are for the European’s market.

Download :  DSLR Cameras Shipment went up 172% in January 2007 (PDF with raw data)

Camera manufacturers starting to put DSLR features and apply the DSLR camera technologies to point-and-shoot camera.  The Sigma Corporation recently announced the launch of the new Sigma DP1 compact digital camera featuring a 14 megapixel FOVEON X3 direct image sensor (2652×1768×3 layers) as used in the Sigma SD14 digital SLR.

Wow…a 14 megapixel point-and-shoot camera!! So far point and shoot digital cameras incorporated small size image sensors, and researches for increasing the number of pixels by keeping the image sensor small is still continuing. However, there are limitations in these researches, because keeping image sensor size small will result poor capture of the light poorly. In this respect, enlarging the image sensor will result in better capturing color signals.

The direct image sensor featured in the SIGMA DP1 ensures the capture of full and complete color. This camera incorporates both RAW and JPEG image recording formats. The unique image processing algorithm developed throughout the development of SD9, SD10 and SD14 cameras is incorporated into “TRUE” (Three-layer Responsive Ultimate Engine) and enables high-speed image processing.

The accumulated lens design technology and SD series are used for DP1 development.  A 16.6mm F4 lens, with a wide angle field of view equivalent to 28mm on a 35mm film camera, has been specially developed to maximize the image quality in conjunction with the full color capture image sensor.

Website : Sigma 14 Megapixel DP1 Incorporates DSLR Image Sensor

Download : Sigma DP1 Specification PDF

Macworld has posted a great six-page article entitled “How to buy: DSLR cameras” written by Ben Long, author of “Complete Digital Photography” that gives a fantastic overview on what to look for and how to buy a digital SLR. Here’s a summary of the article:

“Camera manufacturers now recognize that hobbyists and other nonprofessional shooters have become more serious—and more skilled—at producing a wide variety of photographic images and are demanding more-affordable DSLRs to help them do it. While the $1,000 DSLR price barrier was broken several years ago, lower-priced cameras with more-extensive features have been released in the past year. If you’ve thought of switching to a DSLR, considered upgrading from the one you already have, or wondered what all the DSLR hoopla is about, read on to learn the differences between SLR and point-and-shoot cameras and to check out our reviews of five of the newest DSLR models:

• Canon Digital Rebel XTi; ; (Best Current Price: $649.00)
• Nikon D40; ; (Best Current Price: $519.95)
• Nikon D80; ; (Best Current Price: $909.99)
• Pentax K100D; ;(Best Current Price: $535.00)
• Sony Alpha DSLR-A100K; ; (Best Current Price: $641.00)

Macworld’s buying advice

Both the Nikon D40 and the Pentax have excellent lens selections, and both are fun and comfortable to use. The D40 wins the contest because of its many fine features and strong battery life.

Should I keep my point-and-shoot?

If you already have a point-and-shoot camera and are planning to buy a DSLR, you may be considering selling your current camera to help finance your new purchase. A better option, though, is to keep it. Point-and-shoots are smaller and easier to carry, so they’re ideal for situations in which carrying a DSLR is not possible or necessary.

Also, almost all point-and-shoot cameras provide excellent macro features for extreme close-ups. If you’re interested in macro photography, you’ll find that working with a point-and-shoot is usually easier and cheaper than investing in a DSLR macro lens. Finally, many point-and-shoots now include excellent movie modes, which make them a great resource for taking short video clips, something you can’t do with a DSLR.”

Website : MacWorld - How to buy DSLR cameras

At the recent PMA 2007 show, Texas Instruments were telling attendees that they’ve developed technology that will allow digital camera manufacturers to bring the type of burst capture performance, among other higher end features, normally found in DSLR cameras to low-cost, point-and-shoot digital cameras.

Cameras as cheap as $99 ill be able to shoot in high definition utilising their technology. Whilst the quality isn’t likely to be that of a high-end camcorder, that’s pretty exciting for bringing HD to the masses. The latest version of TI’s DaVinci processor, though optimised for the digital camera market, may well be useful for other products such as camcorders and digital video recorders. TI worked in collaboration with Micron Technology, who we recently reported have developed 5 and 8 megapixel CMOS image sensors. Cameras using this technology can shoot 720p footage at 30fps.

EDN Senior Technical Editor Brian Dipert tooks a series of pictures from the show floor at PMA, check them out! Here shows the massive lens Sigma’s 200-500 zoom, with a fixed f2.8 maximum aperature through the entire focal range. Approximate weight is 15 kg (33 lbs). It comes with a matched 2x teleconverter for an effective f5.6 400-1000 mm zoom range.

Website : Photos from PMA 2007