Japan's camera manufacturers, battling for a bigger piece of the fast-growing digital camera market, are racing to add features and functions -- giving users a dizzying, sometimes perplexing array of choices.
What the market may want most, however, is simplicity.
Digital cameras currently have at least four competing formats for storing images as electronic files. They also often need a variety of adaptors and software to transfer and prepare photos for printing or use on a Web site.
"The basic requirement is to make cameras that anyone can use," said Shigeki Ishizuki, president of Sony Corp's personal imaging company.
At stake is a global market worth about ?40 billion (US$3.6 billion) last year for Japanese manufacturers, who made about 80 percent of the world's digital cameras, according to shipment figures from the Japan Camera Industrial Association.
Sales of digital cameras have soared as users have taken to the instant gratification of viewing photos on a camera's LCD screen and with the ease of zipping photos across the Web without expensive developing services or using an image scanner.
And, while cameras get cheaper, with industry executives and analysts forecasting another 15 to 20 percent drop in average prices this year, picture quality has improved so much so that most models sold this year will likely offer at least two million pixels -- good enough for photo-quality 8 by 10-inch prints.
Easier connections
Having come this far, Japanese manufacturers are now focusing on making digital cameras easier to use, especially when it comes to linking them with printers and online photo services.
"With digital cameras, unlike film, there are many different ways of dealing with the camera's output, and we have to respond to that," said Makoto Kimura, general manager for strategic planning at Nikon Corp's imaging company. "We camera makers have to offer various solutions."
The company set up a marketing unit with a separate Internet planning group and in April launched in the US the Coolpix 775, which lets users send photos directly through a USB cable to their PC and onto the Web with the touch of a single button. The product is due out in Japan by the end of the year.
Ricoh Co Ltd's pricier RDC-i500 and RDC-i700 go one step further, communicating directly with the Net through a phone line, Ethernet or mobile phone connection. They can also send digital pictures via e-mail.
Several digital camera makers sell dedicated photo printers that let users bypass their PCs entirely. Later this year, Canon Inc plans to release a model with a built-in ink-jet printer that produces business card-size photos on the spot.
Last week Sony jumped into the printer fray with a model that stores snapshots on a built-in CD-R/RW drive and offers a display panel, making a PC unnecessary.
Sony's Cybershot P1, currently Japan's top-selling digital camera, can link directly or through a Memory Stick data storage card with the PlayStation 2 video game console and other Sony devices.
Option overload
Camera makers are wary about loading too many extra functions onto their products, although many offer the ability to capture short video clips and removable storage options. Fuji Photo Film Co Ltd's compact 40i camera even has a built-in MP3 audio player.
While cameras will likely become standard features on wireless phones and other hand held devices, size and weight limitations will require the use of sensors and lenses with resolutions too low for printing, manufacturers say.
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