News: October 6

1. Two of the winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics this year are Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith of Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, USA "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor." While CCDs are increasingly being replaced by CMOS in digital cameras, the CCD really started the digital image revolution.

2. Camcorderinfo.com doesn't review as many cameras as we might like, but they do get around to one or two...and they've just reviewed the Canon HV40. Tape is not dead yet! The HV40 is the latest update to Canon's popular HDV small camcorder line, unfortunately it seems it's only a small update: the only notable advance is the support for true 24p (rather than 60i video with a 2:3 pulldown used in the HV30.)
Since the HV40 is only a minor upgrade over last year's HV30, it seems that Canon isn't putting too much effort into its tape-based HDV models. The HV40's flash-memory counterparts have more sophisticated designs, better handling, and more useful features, suggesting that they are Canon's camcorders of the future. Canon's new top-of-the-line HF S series (HF S100, HF S10, and HF S11) also outdid the HV40 when it came to our video performance testing.



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