Contax TVS Digital press release

[Guest]

New Digital Contax TVS??

Kyocera Germany News Release:
BIG FOCUS FOR SMALL COMPANION

More and more amateurs leave their Single Lens Reflex cameras and their bulky photo cases at home and join the photo safari with ultra compact digital cameras. The Finecam S5 digital camera is a real alternative for ambitious amateur photo-graphers. Three brand new models from Kyocera will be presented at this year's PHOTOKINA in Cologne (hall 1.2,stand F29).

Kyocera increases their range of digicams with check card sized 3 and 5 Megapixel digicams.
Finecam S3L and S5 for amateur photo enthusiasts and the Contax TVS digital with 5 Megapixel for the semiprofessional use.

With the Finecam S5 - an absolute highlight of the exhibition, Kyocera presents one of the smallest and lightest digital cameras of the 5-Megapixel class.

 

[Guest]

Hi Hercules,

yes, there will come a nice surprise at the photokina. But I can not go into detail here at the moment. I made this subtopic already for future hot discussions

I will try to put a bunch of news together latest at the beginning of september for your preparation of the photokina

dirk

 

[Guest]

Hi Drik:

Nice to see you here, so i repost the news here again, I'm hurry and looking for any surprise from Kyocera/Contax/Yashica also Olympus/Kodak "Olydak" alliance product from photokina, if anymore here can attend the photokina, give us some first hand info.

Drik, I place some photo by Contax lens on Hong Kong Contax Forum, if u have time, please take a look.

hercules

 

[Guest]

**** Too many mistake on previous message ****

Hi Dirk:

Nice to see you here, so I repost the news here again seems more fit, I'm hurry and looking for any surprise from Kyocera/Contax/Yashica also Olympus/Kodak "Olydak" alliance product from photokina, if anymore here can attend the photokina, please give us some first hand info.

Dirk, I place some photo by Contax lens on Hong Kong Contax Forum, if you have time, please have a look.

Hercules

 

[Guest]

On http://www.focus.de/D/DC/DCA/DCA40/DCA40E/dca40e.htm

there is a picture of the new Contax TVS Digital.
It looks very similar to the T3, with some
differences (e.g. no passive AF sensor needed).
The lens seems to be a Vario Sonnar 35-105mm
equivalent, 1:2.8-4.0. Looks like it is no competitor for the likes of the Canon G3 (more like the Canon S45).

Oliver

 

[Guest]

Thanks for posting the link to the Tvs Digital PDF Dirk...

Apart from being a compact 5MP with a Vario Sonnar T* lens and a 1/2000 max shutter, many of the other Tvs Digital's specs are disappointing.

There is no mention of either uncompressed TIFF or RAW output, no shutter priority mode(except 3 "long shutter" settings), no shutter speeds longer than 8 seconds, and no F stops lower than F2.8 or higher than F6.7.

The year-old Sony DSC-S85(4MP) has a faster lense(F2.0-2.5), many more aperture and shutter settings, a shutter priority mode, a full manual mode, stops down to F8, and it also has a Zeiss lens!

I hope that the Contax Tvs Digital is capable of a picture quality that puts it into a class of its own. You would think that for the money that Contax is likely to ask for the Tvs Digital, they would have created a model that doesn't skimp on features that other vendors have been offering for quite a while. The specs make the camera appear to be not any more than a Zeiss lens on an immature Finecam chassis, that happens to be wrapped in Titanium. IMHO, the Finecam S5 looks like a deliberately "crippled" version of the Tvs Digital.

Anyway, I hope I am wrong...because I would really like to buy a compact digital camera that lives up to the Contax name.


-SJV

 

[Guest]

> > > > I think many current mini digital camera of the similar size are not having > those functions anyway. I am more concern its makro ability which has been > very important for digital P&S. Brgds/Kaisern > > >

 

[Guest]

can't agree more with SJV.

based on the specs the TvsDigital is no more than a Finecam in Contax disguise which itself is hardly worth mentioning.

imho a major disappointment from Contax.

i am glad we are not seeing a G Digital any time soon.

 

[Guest]

Hey guys, you judge a product before anybody has seen it. Up to now it's all guessing.

But since we already know about the zoom range, here is one point of meat:
I absolutely do not understand why so many digital p&s users want for long focal lengths! Are they all would-be wildlife photographers?

I think a 28-85 zoom range would have been ideal. 35-X is insufficient. :-(

Puh, seems that I have to keep on lugging my G2 and think about a film scanner.

 

[Guest]

Till-

Here's the link to the Tvs Digital specification sheet that Dirk provided in another thread:

http://www.contaxinfo.com/discus/board-auth.cgi?file=/858/News51_D_GB_photokina-38416.pdf&type=application/pdf

How well the camera works, and how good the pictures look have yet to be seen, but my year-long research on digital cameras leads me to believe that although JPEG compression can be an acceptable trade off in quality to maintain smaller file sizes, the serious digital photographer needs lossless compression, no compression, or raw image data in order to retain maximum image fidelity. JPEG compression, to my knowledge, is none of these.

Even though digital cameras may impose new limitations on photography, they do not share all of the limitations of traditional cameras. Many current compact digital cameras offer f2.0-2.8 standard since the focal lengths start at 7mm. Magnification comes with less penalty than they do in 35mm. A 1/1000 or faster shutter speeds in compact digital cameras are also common, and a 15 or 30 second shutter speeds are not unheard of in other MIDRANGE digital cameras.

In other words, although 35mm film may still outperform the image quality of a 5MP camera, compact digital camera features can be much more sophisticated than even an aperture-priority P&S.

The lack of uncompressed or raw output is my main gripe. Perhaps this could be solved through firmware revision before release, who knows. A camera that is advertised in press releases as "semi-pro" should atleast offer an uncompressed option.

Shutter priority and/or full manual is also possible in such a compact camera. This is where the Tvs Digital could have been more superlative than its competition. The current specifications for the Tvs Digital are merely average in the "pro-sumer" class of cameras.

---

BTW: My information comes mostly through comparison of the reviews and photographs at the following (excellent) digital camera review sites:

http://www.dpreview.com
http://www.imaging-resource.com
http://www.steves-digicams.com