The next step in cameras

I'm relaying this from my College Media Advisers e-mail list: Nikon is introducing the first digital SLR camera that can also shoot video. My colleague Adam Drew at the University of Texas at Arlington writes this:

What really makes this camera interesting to me is that you can use a full array of lenses, including high power zooms and fisheyes — for video. It will be neat to see how people use prime lenses like the 50mm f/1.4 for shallow depth-of-field and blurred backgrounds. It should do very well in low light since it can use fancy lenses with large apertures. The sensor is also considerably larger than the ones in most camcorders, so the images should have much less noise. The only limitation is that sound is mono and clips are limited to 5 minutes in HD mode, or 20 minutes in regular (640x424) mode.

More info here. Amazon is taking pre-orders and listing it for $1,299.95.

Digital Ink, for real

The October issue of Esquire will feature the world's first digital magazine cover. That means moving, changing images on a paper magazine cover, and it just might change everything.

It runs on a tiny battery that lasts about 90 days. I've heard the magazine will cost $7, with a lot of the cost having been underwritten by Ford Motor Co. Esquire hasn't said exactly what this is going to look like, or whether we're talking words, pictures or both. I'm imagining the digital-print equivalent of Pong.

But still. Can you picture a day in the not-too-distant future when a newsstand will basically be about a hundred TV screens with moving pictures? Or when newspaper pages will be updated via a satellite beam before readers' eyes?

Tons of trade articles on this. Here's a Google search page that will give you a bunch.

Tribune redesign coming

If you haven't heard, the Chicago Tribune's print edition is undergoing a radical redesign, to debut sometime in September. Here's one of several prototypes being circulated.

Editor & Publisher story here.

Back after these important messages

Digital Ink is taking a short hiatus for the end of summer and start of the academic year here at NIU. New posts soon.