Official Olympus E-520 Press Release >>
Olympus E-520 Beta Sample Photos >>

Olympus was kind enough to send me a pre-production E-520 and I’ve been playing with it for a few days now. Since it’s a pre-production camera and the firmware isn’t final yet, I can’t really evaluate the camera’s performance or image quality. However, it does have all the best characteristics of its predecessor, the E-510 - and then some. I liked the E-510 because of the compact size of the body, the built-in image stabilization, and the 2x crop factor of the Four-Thirds lenses. This combination of features made the E-510 - as well as other Olympus digital SLRs - great for travel and outdoor photography, where minimal weight and size make a real difference.

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Olympus E-420 - World’s Smallest Digital SLR

The 10-megapixel Olympus E-420 is currently the world’s smallest digital SLR. It makes the Canon EOS Rebel XSi / 450D look positively chunky. Olympus recently sent us an E-420 for evaluation so I thought I’d get a short preview up while we work on our comprehensive review.

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Lexar’s Professional UDMA card reader is a compact, collapsible memory card reader with slots for SecureDigital and CompactFlash memory cards. It has a USB 2.0 interface and can read the new UDMA CompactFlash cards as well as high-capacity SDHC SecureDigital memory cards. I’ve been using the Lexar Professional UDMA reader in the office and on the road for a few months now and recently tested it against a couple of other card readers.
 

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Every mother wants to keep pictures of her loved ones close to her, so cameras and photographs make ideal Mother’s Day gifts.

When it comes to finding the perfect gift for your mom – and don’t forget grandmothers and wives! – there are many photographic options, from cameras and accessories to prints and collectibles. We’ve come a long way since the days of photo calendars and coffee mugs. Here are some gift ideas sure to please every mother on your list (including a few do-it-yourself options for kids and the budget-minded).

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A New Twist On The Photo Album,
Photo Books Come In All Sizes And Styles

Back in the days of film photography, pictures that didn’t make it into photo albums languished in shoe boxes under beds or on closet shelves. However, the modern equivalent of a shoebox - a computer hard drive - is generally a far less safe location .

On a computer, photographs are extremely vulnerable to being lost in hard-drive crashes, unless they are regularly and securely backed up onto an external hard drive, CD or DVD. But while archival digital storage is important, it’s not much fun for viewing.

The best way to enjoy photographs while ensuring they last for years is to place them in a photo album or its more recent variation, a photo book.

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Rugged Digital Cameras For Backpacking,
Cycling, Boating, And The Worksite

With the summer beach and travel season coming up and the recent announcement of Ricoh’s new G600 water-resistant and shockproof digital camera, I thought it would be good to do a roundup of current outdoor-friendly compact digital cameras. By “outdoor-friendly,” I mean cameras that have some level of moisture resistance and can take some physical abuse - cameras you can take to the beach, camping, etc. Right now, between Olympus, Pentax, and Ricoh, people who want a rugged, moisture-resistant digital camera have plenty of choices.

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Canon EOS Rebel XSi - Much More Than A Beginner Camera

Canon announced their latest entry-level digital SLR, the 12.2-megapixel EOS Rebel XSi, at the annual PMA tradeshow this January. Last week, when Adobe released the update for Lightroom 1.4.1 with support for the Canon EOS Rebel XSi, I decided to see if I could buy one. None of the big online camera dealers listed it as available. But my hunch proved right when I got lucky at my local big box electronics store and snatched up their only XSi kit. I have a mountain bike festival coming up in a week and rather than wait for Canon to send me an XSi, I figured I’d just buy one so I could test it at the bike event.

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Hot on the heels of Apple’s release of Aperture 2.1, Adobe let Lightroom 2.0 loose on April 1st. Though the specs will undoubtedly change before release, the current build adds some features that Aperture has had for a while, while simultaneously adding some that move LR2 ahead of Apple in some aspects.
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