Popular Science Magazine Presents `Best of What's New' Awards To Three Kodak Products That `Bridge' Traditional, Digital Images

Business Wire, Nov 9, 2000

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NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 9, 2000

Advantix Preview Camera, Personal Picture Maker 200, Smart Picture

Frame Honored

Three Kodak products - all underscoring the convergence between traditional and digital imaging - were honored today by Popular Science magazine as among the "Best of What's New" for 2000. The winners, all in the photography category, were the Kodak Advantix Preview Camera, the Kodak Personal Picture Maker 200 printer and the Kodak Smart Picture Frame.

This is the fifth consecutive year Kodak products have been recognized by Popular Science. Each winner supports the company's objective of growing the imaging category with innovative products and services that help people to take, make and share pictures.

The Advantix Preview Camera incorporates an LCD screen that allows users to review their pictures and decide how many prints they'd like on the spot. The Personal Picture Maker 200 also has a built-in LCD screen that greatly simplifies printing pictures from digital cameras, even without a computer. And the sleek, cherry wood finished Smart Picture Frame creates a rotating slide show of up to 36 color digital images.

This is the 13th time that the world's largest science and technology magazine has singled out the best new products of the year. Each year, the editors of Popular Science review thousands of new products, technology developments and scientific achievements and then select the 100 most notable for distinction in the "Best of What's New" December issue.

"It's an honor to have Popular Science recognize three innovative Kodak products at once," said James Stoffel, chief technology officer and a senior vice president of Kodak. "What's especially gratifying is that these products really represent where the company and our industry are going--we want to offer the best ways for people to take, make and share pictures regardless of whether those solutions involve digital or traditional technology or a mixture of both."

Kodak Advantix Preview Camera

The Kodak Advantix Preview camera is the first film camera ever to provide consumers with a `preview and select' feature. In use, the camera allows consumers both to see a preview image of their pictures the moment they click the shutter and to select the number of prints they want of each shot. The new camera also features a 2.6x zoom lens, a state-of-the-art flash system and all the other benefits of Kodak's best APS cameras.

The camera incorporates a separate sensor and optics to capture a digital image that can be displayed in vivid color on the camera's 1.8-inch preview screen. Dozens of Kodak-developed software innovations help ensure that the picture on the preview screen provides a match to a processed print.

If consumers are happy with the previewed picture, they can order between 1 and 9 prints with the touch of a button on the camera back. If not, they can select zero prints and take a new picture. APS magnetic Information Exchange (IX) technology records the ordering information on the film, so the selected print quantity is produced automatically during processing.

Picture-takers also can see how their print would look in different APS formats. These selections are also recorded directly on the cassette, and the chosen quantity and sizes for each print are produced automatically during processing. Consumers never "lose" the pictures they don't select to print because all the images are permanently captured on the film negative and can be reprinted after initial film processing in any APS format.

Kodak Personal Picture Maker 200

Although it can be used as a standard desktop printer, the Kodak Personal Picture Maker 200 by Lexmark is designed specifically to make printing pictures from digital cameras as easy as possible. Thanks to a 1.8-inch, full-color, LCD preview screen just like those on digital cameras, the printer doesn't even need to be connected to a computer. As with all Personal Picture Maker models, the user need only insert a memory card from a digital camera (the printers accept both Smart Media and Compact Flash formats) to print. With the preview screen, the user can quickly and easily scroll through all the images on the card, select those to print, choose the number of copies to print, and in what size and layout. The new printer supports a variety of printing templates, including several matched specifically to Kodak inkjet media, like business and wallet size.

What's more, thanks to several technical advances, the prints produced from a Kodak digital camera and Kodak Personal Picture Maker 200 using Kodak inks and Kodak Premium Picture Paper are equivalent to traditional photographs in appearance, and they have industry-leading print life.

Kodak Smart Picture Frame

With the Kodak Smart Picture Frame that connects to the StoryBox Network, a picture can go right from a digital camera to a stylish tabletop picture frame, without having to connect to a computer. Combining a digital camera card reader, full-color display and modem, the Kodak Smart Picture Frame and StoryBox Network also make sharing pictures with others exceptionally easy. The sleek, cherry wood finished frame can display a single image or sequentially cycle through up to 36 separate full-color digital pictures.