(Nikkei BP Group)
(No.1 High-Tech News Site in Japanese)
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| Ricoh to Sell High-End Digital Camera with USB Port
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February 18, 1999 (TOKYO) -- Ricoh Co., Ltd. unveiled the Ricoh RDC-5000
digital camera with a 2.3-million-pixel charged-coupled device (CCD)
on Feb. 12.
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The new digital camera, to be sold from late April at 99,800 yen (US$840),
has a USB port as an interface with a PC, optical 2.3x zooming and a
variety of other features.
The new camera also will be released overseas, and its
liquid crystal display (LCD) monitor has two display modes for English
and Japanese.
Image output on TVs is compatible with the National Television System
Committee (NTSC) format and the Phase Alternation by Line color television
(PAL) format.
It has a 1/2-inch CCD with a total of 2.3 million pixels, of which 2.15
million are valid pixels. The image size can be selected from resolutions
of 1,792 x 1,200 dots or 896 x 600 dots. In addition, digital zooming
provides another image size of 640 x 480 dots.
To send image data to a PC, the RDC-5000 has an RS-232C interface and
a USB interface. Use of the USB interface requires a Windows 98 PC with
a special cable available as an option, Ricoh said.
Also, the camera has a video output terminal for sending image data to
a TV. This terminal is compatible with the NTSC and PAL formats.
It has an optical zooming function, and the lens focal length is equivalent
to 38mm-86mm in terms of a 35mm film camera. Automatic focus or manual
focus can be selected.
The exposure is automatically set by the camera based on a program method,
and it can be adjusted manually. White balance is set automatically
and manually according to the lighting conditions (outdoors, cloudy
weather, fluorescent light or incandescent light), Ricoh said. Stroboscopes
are installed in the camera.
The RDC-5000 has an optical finder and a 1.8-in. thin film transistor-liquid
crystal display (TFT-LCD) monitor.
Image data is compressed in the JPEG format and recorded in the built-in
memory or SmartMedia. A 32MB SmartMedia unit can be used for recording.
The color camera also can operate in black and white and in sepia mode,
and it has a dating function.
Ricoh's RDC-5000 is 131.1mm wide by 68.8mm high by 39.3mm thick, and
it has the appearance of an ordinary compact camera. It weighs around
315g without batteries and other accessories.
Ricoh targets monthly production of 15,000 units of the RCD-5000.
This is the company's fifth digital camera, following the 1.32-million
pixel DC-4U and DC-4 models, the 350,000-pixel DC-3Z model, and the
410,000-pixel DC-2S model.
The DC series name is being changed to the RDC series so that domestic
and export products will have the same model names.
Related stories:
� Fuji Photo Film to Sell 2.3-Million-Pixel Digital Camera
� Sony Unveils Digital Camera with 2.1 Million Pixel CCD
(BizTech News Dept.)
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