Just before the Photokina Trade Show in September, the upcoming follow-up model to the Sony Cyber-shot N1 has been exposed. Dubbed as DSC-N2, the new digital camera boasts of 3x Carl Zeiss Vario Tessar lens.

Aside from these, it also promises an increase in resolution as it now has 10.1MP. Its predecessor came only with 8MP. Its sensitivity is also upgraded as we see now an ISO of 1000. Not to mention its rather unique color, which can be mistaken for as silver when it's not, Cyber-shot N2 also comes with a three-inch touch screen.

Because of the leak, official announcements from Sony are now being expected to be given in the Cologne Exhibition Center, Germany as the digital photography show unfolds this September 26.

After its launch on February 2006, Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1 is poised to mark its place on the world of digital cameras. Although it is not "pocketable" compared to other cameras, TZ1 has its own charms to entice many customers. First, it is considerably less bulky than its 'SLR-like' siblings and their competitors, and although it offers little in the way of truly manual control, it is packed with features like its superb 5.0 million effective pixels, 10x (35-350mm equiv.) Leica DC Vario-Elmarit optical zoom, 2.5-inch(270,000) High Resolution LCD, MEGA OIS image stabilization, Venus III Engine processor,  Fast Linear autofocus system and 18 scene modes which ranges from Portrait, Soft Skin, Scenery, Sports;to Self-Portrait, Fireworks, Beach, Aerial Photo, Snow, High Sensitivity and Night Portrait.

It also available in two color options - silver or black - though this may not be the case for every country and/or every retailer. Its built-in flash has options like Auto with red-eye reduction, Slow synch with red-eye reduction, Forced on/off, and has a range of 0.3 - 3.7m (Auto ISO, wide) to a whopping 1.0 - 2.4m (Auto ISO, wide).

You can store data on its massive 13.4MB internal memory and it is SD / MMC compatible. It runs on a Li-on battery pack that is included in the package and has free optional AC adapter. It has dimensions pf 112 x 58.1 x 40.2 mm (4.41 x 2.29 x 1.58 in) and only weighs 234 g (7.3 oz).

The Pentax Optio S7 camera is the newest addition to Pentax's line of slim and stylish digital cameras called the Pentax Optio S series.

This baby boasts of 7.0 megapixels plus a feature known as the Blur Reduction High ISO mode that reduces camera shake and subject blur due to poor or minimal lighting. Another neat feature is the Face Recognition AF & AE, which guarantees perfectly focused faces devoid of shadows by automatically detecting the position of the subject's face and adjusting the focus and exposure based on the detected position. Also, the camera adjusts shutter speeds automatically to an ISO as high as 1600 to match the brightness of the subject.

Sources add that the Optio S7 captures movies at 30 fps (frames per second) at sizes up to 640 x 480 pixels with image quality rivaling camcorders. Since it employs the DivX® (MPEG-4 compliant) movie format, the Optio S7 can record longer, high-quality movies. Camera shake while filming can also be corrected automatically by switching on the movie anti-shake feature. Smart, eh?

That's not all. The Optio S7 also features 3X optical zoom, a 2.5-inch LCD monitor,an Auto Picture Mode for a plethora of settings (Landscape, Portrait, Night Scene and Program Modes), 23MB internal memory, and MPEG-4 DivX Movie Mode. It is also the first digital camera by Pentax to accept the new SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) memory cards that have capacities up to 4GB.

The Pentax Optio S7 goes for $300.00 and will be available in the US beginning September 2006 - limited stocks only, though.

One may see Kurtis Kronk as a creative person, but he himself admits that he is not one. But it does not take an artist to be a great photographer, right? And Kronk's work-related start with the camera has led to a lasting relationship.

Kronk painted his first date with photography: a challenging quest for setting up "a very cheap studio" while trying to decipher manual camera settings. From then on, he never left manual photography. Many may ask why Kronk let himself be stuck with modifying camera settings manually when the camera has an automatic mode that takes pictures 'just fine'. Kronk provides a nice answer, "It is certainly possible to get a nice photo just snapping away in automatic mode, but more often than not what you’ll end up with is a snapshot rather than an expressive photograph."

Indeed, the images that a camera's automatic settings may capture are not always as dramatic or as expressive as the ones captured by settings that you yourself set. With that said, Kronk decided to release a manual that will provide beginners (or automatic settings veterans) a good starting point on embarking on manual photography.

The manual that Kronk has released is just an introduction to manual settings and focuses on Shutter Speed, Aperture, and ISO sensitivity. More tips on manual settings may come our way in the following days. But for now, read the manual (by clicking on the link below) and who knows, with the info Kronk has provided you may already start churning out great photos. Snap away!

Sydney Harbour is renowned not only for the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge, but also for its panoramic night view. No wonder tons of photos and images of that particular area keep popping up on the net. Let's face it, though - not everyone is good at taking pictures. It's difficult to cram something so grand and majestic in one single shot. This is why Scott Howard put together 170 images taken with a Canon 10D and a Canon 100-400L lens. The result? An awesome 715 megapixel (40,000 x 18,000) photo of Sydney Harbor at night.

Most of the photos were taken using 400mm, with some "fill" shots (e.g. sky in the top left corner) taken at around 200mm. All photos are at ISO 200, 6 seconds, f/6.7 in manual mode. All the office buildings are taken at least 1200 meters (about 1300 yards) away from the camera. The Harbour Bridge shot was taken about half of that distance. When zoomed in, the image is made up of 14,729 .jpg files, each about 5 to 15kb in size. The original image is a 1.3GB Photoshop file.

Check out Scott Howard's photography site and play around with the picture. You can zoom in, zoom out, move it left, right, up, and down. It's fun and it's breathtaking.

News about Panasonic's Lumix DMC-L1 (not the DMX-L1 as our source site says), touted as their 'first real dSLR', has been around for a little while now, but only now has the company decided to formally launch the unit. (We presume that's because they wanted the hype to reach some sort of crescendo before they did so; we're not sure at this point whether or not that's the case.)

We also have some detailed info about the camera that we didn't have earlier. The 145x86.9x80 L1 is a 7.5-megapixel dSLR that's got ISO values between 100 and 1600. It features a Leica D Vario-Elmarit 14-50mm lens with an OIS (Optical Image Stabilizer), a Dust Free Sensor that Panasonic says makes the camera a snap to keep clean (interesting - wonder how that works?), a nice bright 2.5-inch control screen, RAW/JPEG support and compatibility with SD/SDHC cards of up to 4GB capacity.

Not bad, eh? We sure think so, too. All that goodness isn't going to come cheap, though. It's to retail for a little less than 1800 EUR in Japan and 1500 EUR in the States (no clue why), which we hear is an eye-popping 700 EUR more than Canon's renowned 350D. Wonder if it'll be worth it? We'll keep you all posted.

Have a look at some more nice pictures of the Lumix DMC-L1, courtesy of the good folks from Akihabara News.