Fujifilm may have more than a few treats in store for shutterbugs this year. Details and photos have emerged that supposedly reveal the X20 and X100s, direct sequels to the company’s well-known X10 and X100 cameras. Both semi-pro bodies could resemble their ancestors on the outside, based on Digicam-info‘s images, but reportedly tackle the autofocusing performance issues that have dogged the X-series up to the X-Pro1. Photo Rumors hears the two shooters will switch to a newer, faster hybrid (both contrast and phase detection) focusing system that also includes Sony NEX-style manual focus peaking, which provides a rough visual guide as to when a subject is as sharp as possible. A few model-specific upgrades may also be in store: the X20 might get a new X-Trans sensor, while the X100s could add a much sharper 2.4-megapixel OLED viewfinder (up from 1.4 megapixels) and a Digital Split Image feature that could once more help with focusing. Launch plans aren’t part of the leak, although we may not have to wait long to hear about them. There’s a prominent X-series banner at the CES 2013 venue, which hints that we may learn about the X20 and X100s as early as next week.
Filed under: Cameras
Source: Digicam Info (translated), Photo Rumors
When it comes to receiving injections, there are two different kinds of people – one who cannot stand pain, while the other kind of person can be prodded in all directions without missing a beat. Well, Fujifilm caters to the former category this time around by working on a micro-needle array which has been touted to be a new drug administration method, where it can actually deliver the drug of choice into the body simply by attaching it onto the skin. There is a micro-needle array which comprises of a sheet arrayed with projections of 100-2000 micrometers. Whenever the sheet itself is placed on the skin surface, the drug will be injected into the skin from the projections, where it will then be delivered into the body.
So, you think that your Blu-ray disc drive is the bomb, and you have saved your fair share of video and audio content on a library of Blu-ray discs? Well, Fujifilm has some news for you – they are right now working on a new recording method for optical discs through the use of two-photon absorption in order to generate heat. This method is capable of realizing a recording density of 25 Gbytes per layer, which is right now the equivalent to the recording density of Blu-ray Disc (BD), in addition to 20 layers per side of a disc. To put it in plain English assuming one’s mental math is in order, it is theoretically possible to churn out a double-sided optical disc with a 1TB storage capacity, and commercialization of this disc is expected to kick off in three years’ time.
Many years ago, when it came to making backup of your computer data and hard disks came in sizes of 4MB (while costing hundreds of dollars), a far cheaper way for organizations to ensure their digital data remains preserved would be to used cassette tape recorders. These might be slow and clunky, but they had two main advantages – they’re far cheaper compared to hard disks, and had a whole lot more storage space. IBM and Fujifilm has taken a second look at data storage cassettes and decided to develop working prototypes, and such data storage cassettes are said to be able to hold up to 35TB of data each, and are up to 200 times more efficient compared to standard hard drives.