Gizmodo: jpeg

JPEG XR Means Faster Burst Shooting for Less-Than-Pro DSLRs

matt buchanan — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 21:30:45 EST

One obvious way to speed up continuous shooting bursts on DSLRs is to drop the image format down to JPEG, which takes less processing power to deal with than RAW. But, since JPEGs are compressed, you lose a lot of info, which doesn't cut it for a lot of photo folk. Canon and Casio think Microsoft's JPEG XR (formerly HD Photo) might be the middle-ground solution, especially for cheaper DSLRs.

It has a wider color palette and can show finer gradations than regular JPEG, but it's also got a better compression algorithm, so even with the extra info, it doesn't drag as hard on the camera. It's not going to be a solution for pros, obviously, who demand RAW, but for the regular people to accomplished amateur range, it'll probably be fine. Exactly how often do you shoot in RAW, anyway? [Crave]

Microsoft's HD Photo Is Official JPEG Successor, Redubbed JPEG XR

Matt Buchanan — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:20:04 EDT

Microsoft's HD Photo standard is now officially tapped to become JPEG's successor by the Joint Photographic Experts Group, but it'll be known as JPEG XR.

XR stands for extended range, given the wider color palette and finer gradations it can show. Other benefits include in-camera imaging processing support and, supposedly, better compression. Besides losing its Windows-y name (in a former life, it was Windows Media Photo) it's dropping proprietary control by Microsoft to become as neutral as JPEG is now. Though support's already built-in to Windows Vista, it'll take a year to get standardized, at which point large-scale adoption will probably start picking up steam. [Cnet via Electronista]

Microsoft's HD Photo standard, which compresses...

Brian Lam — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 13:10:58 EDT

Microsoft's HD Photo standard, which compresses more easily than JPEG2000, could be the next generation JPEG. [Ars]

Mustek PF-A1020BC Frame Comes With Changeable Faceplates

kevinhall2 — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 15:00:00 EDT

If all digital photo frames are starting to look alike, try this Mustek PF-A1020BC with its big 10-inch LCD and swappable frames, coming with silver, "frosted white," or Mahogany faceplates. Pictures should look pretty nice as the 9.5-inch viewable area displays at a 720 x 480 resolution, and you can store around 45 JPEGs thanks to the frame's internal memory. But are the pretty colors going to be able to justify the frame's $200 price tag?

It's not as radical as some of Mustek's previous offerings, though it doesn't do less than the competition: MP3s, slideshows, and direct transfer from a USB drive or memory card are all supported. If you're still in the market for a digital photo frame, the PF-A1020BC is certainly one to look at. Keep an eye out for them this summer.

Product page [Mustek]

Canon Says G7's JPEG Mode On Par With RAW

Gizloco — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:19:04 EST

Canon's PowerShot G7 doesn't feature raw mode support and that upset quite a few people when it was released just a little while ago. We've also been wondering why Canon would seemingly go out of its way to not include a feature that many higher-end digital cameras just throw in nowadays. The official response from Canon is that by increasing the amount of megapixels in the camera, the amount of noise per pixel increased to such an extent that their was little difference in quality between JPEG compression and raw mode. Straight from Canon gatekeeper Chuck Westfall:

The net result is that even if the G7 offered raw image capture...there would be no discernible improvement in image quality compared to...superfine JPEG mode.

Conspiracy theorists say that Canon actually removed raw support so as not to cannibalize sales of its digital SLRs. But with the recent post by the New York Times' David Pogue that proved (anecdotally, at least) that people cannot even tell the difference between all those megapixels, maybe Canon is trying to make a statement. – Nicholas Deleon

Why Canon's PowerShot G7 lacks 'raw' support [Cnet News.com]