Olympus D-400 Zoom Digital Camera
Olympus Camedia D-400 Zoom Digital Camera
(c) Olympus America Inc.
Announced on November 2, 1998, the Olympus D-400 Zoom filmless digital camera continues the Olympus winning tradition, as it is two weeks old today yet has already received its first award. Designed as a camera first and foremost, the D-400 Zoom has an ergonomically designed point & shoot body and features popular in today’s film cameras. These include a 4 mode pop-up intelligent flash, through-the-lens auto focus and 3X optical zoom (35-105mm lens system), auto white balance with 5-step manual override, center weighted and spot metering systems for exposure metering with +/-2 step manual EV control in ½ step increments. This camera is also designed as a "digital" device with many high-tech features, including a 1.3 megapixel resolution (1280 x 960) CCD censor, 2X Digital Telephoto at any focal length, floppy disk compatibility to computer systems, and reusable SmartMedia cards. Finally, it is a consumer electronics device, with video connectivity to popular consumer products and direct printing to the Olympus Personal Photo Printer without the need of a computer.
Olympus America Inc., today unveiled the world’s largest 360° panorama photo created with a digital camera. Shot with the Olympus D-400 Zoom, the newly announced point & shoot digital camera, if placed on end, the photo would tower four stories high. It is 45 feet x 3 feet tall, but is mounted end to end so attendees can view it from within. The photo will be displayed during Comdex in Las Vegas at the Olympus Booth #1648 (LVCC).
The image was created on busy Fremont Street in Las Vegas. This street was chosen because it is an extremely challenging subject for any camera to handle (digital or film-based alike), with great variations in the type of lighting and thousands of bright incandescent and fluorescent lights. The photographer used the Olympus D-400 Zoom’s autofocus and adjusted the exposure, color temperature and white balance to create the perfect image. White balance and exposure are automatic, but may be overriden by the user.
18 photos were taken with a 30% overlap at 1280 x 960 resolution in uncompressed mode to allow for the greatest detail. The photos were then enlarged with raster image software from 3M and automatically stitched with professional panorama stitching technology from Enroute Imaging’s QuickStitch. The finished panorama photo was then printed on a large format HP3500 CP printer at 600 dpi on opaque vinyl media, again from 3M. The resulting image is both technically and artistically stunning.
"The results are spectacular!" said Walter Urie, Professional Photographer. "The Olympus D-400 Zoom performed unbelievably. I’ve used expensive and sophisticated cameras in my profession, but this filmless camera outperformed these cameras creating a breathtaking panorama."
"The Olympus camera is so powerful that it allowed us to stitch the world’s largest panorama with our QuickStitch software without retouching the images," said Paul Cha, Executive Vice President, Enroute Imaging. "This panorama photo surpasses any ever taken with a digital camera and is our most aggressive effort to date."
"The D-400 Zoom is the perfect camera for taking panorama photos since it has a special panorama mode built in," said Dave Veilleux, Director of Marketing Communications, Olympus America, Digital & Imaging Systems Group. "The exposure is automatically locked with the first image in a panoramic set so subsequent photos are consistently exposed – even in widely illuminated subjects. This results in a smooth, even panoramic photograph."
