Photography and video innovations at Photokina
At the Photokina exhibit, camera makers attempted to one-up each other in every conceivable way. This year, 4K resolution was in the spotlight.
The most intriguing example was at the Panasonic booth, which demonstrated how 4K video provides a revolutionary way of capturing still photos. Each frame of video has about 8 megapixels of resolution, so you can isolate the perfect still image from the hundreds (and possibly thousands) of frames in the video. While that's obviously labor-intensive, it offers a whole new way to take photos.
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Panasonic had another groundbreaking product that generated a lot of buzz, but it wasn’t a camera. It was a smart phone, which for the time being is offered only in Europe. The buzz around this model is that it has a very large sensor (for a smart phone): Panasonic’s DMC-CM1 would have a 20-megapixel, 1-inch sensor paired with a 28mm fixed (non-zoom) f/2.8 lens.
Other vendors made news as well. Canon’s booth had a fascinating low-light display. You basically went into a room that was almost completely dark. Once inside the dark room, you could see images shot with a Canon camera set at a very high ISO. The point was to reveal that Canon’s image sensors are so sensitive in low light that they can out perform the human eye.
—Terry Sullivan
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