2012 6Sight Preview

2012 6Sight Preview

1920

Attempting to keep pace with the imaging industry when you consider the radical changes it has undergone in the last decade has been a difficult task at best. And since those changes now appear to be accelerating, it’s clearly time to reach out for a little help.

Help is indeed at hand, and the Big Apple is the place to find it during the last week in June, as the 6Sight Future of Imaging Conference colocates with CE Week at New York’s Metropolitan Pavilion, June 25-26. Attendees can expect two extremely informative days of presentations, discussions and product demos that promise to bring the industry’s cloudy future into much clearer focus.

“The 2012 6Sight Future of Imaging Conference program is organized into a series of sessions that present an overview of a particular subject and offer a variety of views on that topic. Often, this includes a 10-minute showcase of a new technology by its developer as well as a panel discussion and an overview presentation,” explained 6Sight cofounder and president, Joe Byrd.

That blueprint has worked to perfection for this event over the last decade as exhibitors, speakers and attendees focused on advancing all segments of the imaging ecosystem through sharing technological breakthroughs and networking with potential partners and clients.

This year, that setup will include an opening report from 6Sight’s Paul Worthington and Tony Henning on the morning of June 25 that will examine the top trends expected to affect the industry and the impact they’ll have over the next several years. Among the trends expected to be discussed are connected imaging devices, image sharing, mobile apps, smart imaging (facial and scene recognition, GPS, etc.), sensors and processors, optics and displays.

Additional presentations set for the show’s opening day include Mobile Imaging Market Trends hosted by MobileTrax’s J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., and a look at the Evolution of Photo Services hosted by Gary Pageau.

Day two (June 26) is highlighted by Gary Shapiro’s keynote, as new innovation in the imaging industry will be the main focus of the CEA president’s speech. 6Sight’s Worthington will also host a discussion on the amazing world of Imaging Apps as well as a panel discussion later in the day on Social Imaging. For a complete look at the entire two-day 6Sight schedule check out sixsight2012.pathable.com/#meetings.

As for some of the imaging technology expected to steal a few headlines from the show, we give you a sneak peek at the following:

41MP Smartphone Cam . . . Really? Are we looking at a major leap in mobile camera technology with the announcement of the 41 megapixel Nokia 808 PureView smartphone? The 6Sight portion of the CE Week program should provide some answers to that. Introduced earlier this year and recently released in the European market, the 808 is selling for about $600 (US) and yes, we did say 41 megapixels. Nokia explains that this was made possible by combining Carl Zeiss optics and Nokia-developed (PureView) pixel over-sampling technology, which we need to find a bit more about before we explain fully. As everyone in the imaging industry is already well aware, high megapixel counts don’t necessarily equate to high-quality images, but the sample pics currently circulating from the 808 are dazzling (but when are sample pics ever anything less than that?).
We’ll look forward to checking this device out during 6Sight/CE Week, and we’ll be sure to let you know just how “Pure” the “View” actually is. europe.nokia.com

New Imaging Software from Xerox. Xerox will showcase a technology that allows for the natural blending of names or words to a wall or sign within a photo so it all looks part of the original image. The software the company will demo reduces the process to a matter of loading an image into the program and selecting where you want the text to appear and simply typing it in. The software quickly does the rest. While this has always been possible through hours of Photoshop work, not to mention a fairly high skill level with the program, Xerox promises a learning curve of zero with their technology called Simple Personalized Imaging (SPI).

Xerox has also developed several technologies that “make it simple to find the exact images you need to illustrate and communicate your message.” Developed at the Xerox Research Centre Europe, the four new tools they’ll demo analyze, classify and retrieve images and collections in various creative ways:

• Aesthetic Image Search “tackles the difficult task of trying to learn what makes an image special and unique,” Xerox says. “For example, good beach photos are often characterized by silky waves obtained by a long camera exposure. The algorithm will detect such photos.” In use, it can search large photo databases and select the best photos, or find a particular style of image.
• Similar Image Search is capable of searching 5 million images in less than a second on a standard desktop computer. Xerox adds it is working on a cloud-based version that will be able to provide real-time search of hundreds of millions of images.
• Image Categorizer automatically classifies images according to their content. Targeted at advertisers, marketers or photographers who manage large collections of images, it uses machine learning techniques and image-processing algorithms to analyze and classify image categories.
• Catepix analyzes Facebook photos and “tells you what your photos say about your personality.” xerox.com

Bridge to a Better Compact Camera. The compact ultrazoom or bridge camera market continues to offer up some very powerful and equally affordable models, and General Imaging’s new G100 features a 15x zoom and comes with 30 different shooting modes, including an interesting new panoramic capture mode. The camera uses the same advanced CMOS sensor as the company’s earlier E1410SW for high-speed shooting and 1080p HD video capture, and it also offers optical image stabilization, ISO 3200, a 3.0-inch LCD and a built-in HDMI connector for TV sharing. The camera is available in red, white and black and retails for $179.99. general-imaging.com.

NO COMMENTS