Wifi and longer battery life for Canon cameras

Canon has demonstrated a prototype digital SLR camera using an Organic Light Emitting Diode (Oled) display, which will help extend battery life and be easier for photographers to view.

Unlike traditional LCD screens, which use coloured filters and a backlight, an Oled generates its own light. This improves the screen's viewing angles and lowers power consumption, both of which are very useful for digital cameras.

Canon’s Oled demonstration used a 2.4in screen with QVGA (320 x 240) resolution, which delivered a bright and detailed image with 167 pixels per inch (ppi).

Photographers will have to wait a year or two before it is commercially available on cameras, but it will put Canon in a unique position where it can manufacture virtually every component in a digital camera. It already produces optics, image processors and the Cmos sensors used in its digital SLRs.

Digital-imaging products unsurprisingly played a key role at Canon Expo 2005.
Joining the recently announced range of digital cameras and Canon’s new HDV High Definition camcorder were demonstrations of prototype Wifi-equipped still cameras, which could transfer images and be remotely operated by computer with a live screen preview.

But Canon did not say when its Wifi cameras will be available; Nikon recently announced two cameras with Wifi, and Kodak demonstrated its Wifi-enabled Easyshare One at CES in January.

Drawing the largest crowds though was Canon’s Smile-shot demo, where a prototype camera tracked multiple faces and recognised their expressions, only taking the shot when they smiled. Running on a Xeon test system, it was several years from commercial production, but effective and fun to use.

Canon also showed off its green credentials, with a Hydrogen Fuel Cell powering a digital SLR camera. The prototype micro fuel cell used hydrogen fuel cartridges to deliver the same power as a Lithium-ion pack with the same physical volume; in the future the hydrogen cells could have much higher capacities.

Hydrogen fuel cells eliminate CO2 emissions when producing electricity, but would only become viable for consumer devices if Hydrogen fuel was already being produced cheaply for other applications, such as cars and home power.