A great first person review of the Canon EF 100mm f2/8 MacroUSM Lens by Darren at Digital Photography Blog. He captures some great shots of bugs in his lawn to show the quality of the zoom lens that Canon has come out with for the Canon EOS 20D.

100mm gives plenty of working length and allows you to get in nice and close. Focusing is fast (although it takes some practice to get a bug in front of a distant background). Contrast and sharpness seem good although I’m looking forward to using it on the weekend with my tripod attached.

The lens is a little bigger than I was expecting but not as heavy as some of my other lenses. I’ve heard it’s a very good portrait lens also so this one might be regular feature on my 20D. Digital Photography Blog

CNET recommends these cameras for  the coming Christmas season.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX9
Canon PowerShot SD450
Casio Exilim EX-Z750
Kodak EasyShare V550
Nikon Coolpix S4

The one I am looking at is the Nikon Coolpix S4. It has a 10X Zoom, and a 6 megapixel sensor for about $350.00. It also looks very cool.

The Canon Powershot SD200 micro digital camera takes a great picture for a camera its size. Bob Atkins at Photo.net has a good review of the camera. “You don’t buy an SD200 (or SD300/400) for advanced photography. You can get cameras with more capability (aperture priority, shutter priority and manual exposure for example) for the same price or maybe less (e.g. Powershot A510 or Powershot A520) However they are larger and the major reason you’d buy an SD200 is because it’s small. Despite the lack of full manual control, I still like the SD200. In fact I bought one myself so I’d have a camera that I can carry with me at all times. Image quality is quite good and you do have manual control over almost everything except for exposure (and even there you do have exposure compensation). You also get some remarkably good video modes (with audio) including 640×480 at 30fps. The 3.2MP is enough for excellent 4×6 and 5×7 prints and even 8×10 doesn’t look too bad. The price (currently under $180) is pretty low too. If you want more pixels, the SD300 has 4MP  and the SD400 (around $265) has 5MP   in essentially the same camera body with the same camera features. The step up from 3.2MP to 4MP is pretty insignificant, so if you want more pixels than the SD200, I’d go to the 5MP SD400.”

For more information on the Canon Powershot SD200.

The Nikon D200 Digital SLR Camera offers the best of breed SLR functionality and 10.2 megapixels of resolution.

Lets Go Digital has a review of the camera today. “Nikon D200 Digital SLR camera : Nikon Corporation is pleased to announce the introduction of the D200. Combining newly developed Nikon technologies with advanced features, the Nikon D200 is a precision-engineered, high-performance digital SLR designed to satisfy the requirements of passionate and demanding photographers. Employing a newly developed 10.2 effective megapixel Nikon DX Format CCD image sensor, and featuring Nikon’s exclusive image processing engine and image optimizing functionality, the D200 captures images with sharp detail and faithful color to deliver extraordinary resolution that supports significant image enlargement while enabling greater freedom for creative cropping.”

For More Information on the Nikon Coolpix D200.

The Nikon Coolpix P1 is an 8 megapixel camera which offers wifi connectivity. Lets Go Digital has a review of the camera. “During the IFA event 2005 in Berlin I attended the press conference of Nikon Europe. In this conference Nikon introduced their first series of digital cameras with built-in Wi-Fi functionality. Nikon were not the first to announce a camera with Wi-Fi availability, but they were definitely the very first to deliver a camera with this function built-in the camera unlike Kodak did with the EasyShare-One; using a memory card with Wi-Fi functions. Nikon has obtained a lot of experience in the professional segment and by introducing the Nikon Coolpix P1 and P2 with built-in Wi-Fi functionality they take the first steps in the consumer market. “

Get more information on the Nikon Coolpix P1 here.

This is still in the prototype stage, but we are looking at the next breakthrough in digital photography. This chip will make cameras cheaper to produce, easier to power, and will run off of power supplies such as solar for years. Digital cameras, security cameras, and cameraphones  are the most likely candidates when this chip goes into production.

They’re only in the design prototype phase right yet, but a couple of dudes by the names of Mark Bocko and Zeljko Ignjatovic at the University of Rochester have apparently worked out a way to digitize photography at each pixel of a CMOS sensor, the results of which are actually nothing less than fifty times less power consumption in taking a shot, and ten times the dynamic range of light captured — on chips expected to be smaller and less expensive than current devices. via Engadget