2007-2008 Camera Magazine Imaging Awards

As the digital imaging technologies mature, the resulting stability is seeing a return to more innovative and individual product design as manufacturers seek a competitive edge. We pick the best of 2007.

What a year we’ve had in imaging! With the turmoil of digital imaging’s introduction now well behind us and the technology maturing nicely, we’re seeing a return to innovation, individuality and ingenuity in product design.

This is good news for consumers, but a challenge for the judges of design awards as the product categories are being more fiercely contested with models which are all ‘extending the envelope’ in terms of their capabilities and their performance.

This year, for example, the D-SLR market really took off as the likes of Pentax, Olympus and Samsung all moved their model programs into a higher gear, the Four Thirds format continued to expand (with the notable arrival of Leica), and the leading brands of Canon and Nikon worked hard to maintain their positions in both the consumer and professional sectors. And with the period of eligibility of our awards closing on 31 August (by which date a product has to be on sale around the country), a whole swag of new models are already queuing up for 2008 honours – Canon’s EOS 40D and EOS-1Ds Mark III, Nikon’s D3 and D300, Sony’s A700, the Olympus E-3 and Panasonic’s Lumix L10. Eligible for this year’s awards was an equally impressive line-up including the Canon EOS-1D Mark III, Olympus’s E-410 and E-510, Pentax’s K10D and K100D Super, the Fujifi lm Finepix S5 Pro, Nikon’s D40 duo, Leica’s Digilux 3, the Sigma SD14 and the Samsung GX10.

Things have been equally interesting in the digital still camera (DSC) market where everybody has been facing up to the challenge of making their products stand out from the crowd. Notable this year has been the steady growth in the market shares of Panasonic and Sony, both of which are now well established as major players alongside the traditional photo brands. The basic philosophy of digital compact camera design essentially remains ‘more of everything’ (megapixels, zooming range, shooting speed, LCD screen size, etc), but there’s also some clever things happening with styling, design, functionality and features… such as face detection based autofocusing and exposure management. While the steadily increasing affordability of D-SLRs (Pentax’s K100D Super is priced at under $700 with a zoom lens) has had some impact on the ‘prosumer’ end of the DSC market, there are still some attractive alternatives offered in the shape of the high-zoom models (from Panasonic, Sony, Fujifi lm, Olympus and others) and there are many more compact models which offer levels of manual control and capabilities unheard of in the 35mm format.

As a result, there’s now no need for the enthusiast photographer who wants to travel light to be compromised in any way creatively or, indeed, technically.

Real Benefits

So, while the pursuit of more megapixels continues unabated, there is now much more effort going into the development of features and functions that have real benefits to the end user rather than just looking good in a brochure.

Digital imaging has undoubtedly made it easier to achieve good results, but product designers and engineers (in cameras, lenses, printers, software, etc) are building on this foundation, providing increased scope to go beyond the passive taking of pictures to the active making of them. The capacity of a product to facilitate, as efficiently and effectively as possible, the realisation of your pictorial ideas and objectives is an important measure of the success of its design.

Encompassed in this are all the key elements of product design that are considered for these awards – technical innovation and performance, features and functionality, ergonomics and handling, and its suitability for the intended application or market.

This year marks the 27th awarding of the only Australian accolades for image product design and which, over the years, have become as important to the manufacturers as those in Europe or Japan. Incidentally, for those of you who are regular readers of this magazine, a miscalculation (the editor ran out of digits!) resulted in last year’s awards being described as the 24th when they were actually the 26th. For the record, the very first winner was the Olympus OM-10 35mm SLR which collected the sole prize for ‘Australian Camera of the Year’ in 1981.

Over the years too, we’ve expanded the categories and, in the light of digital imaging’s rise, revised them to reflect the wholesale changes in the marketplace. As well being subjected to our rigorous in-house testing procedures, products are thoroughly evaluated in the field by a variety of experienced users and we also consult with our correspondents in the UK, USA and Japan. While scoresheets are used to arrive at a shortlist, after that it’s a case of debate, discussion and deliberation from which emerges the winners.

So, without any more ado, let’s open this year’s envelopes.