A Threat to the Darkroom

By Gordon M. Henry

For years camera manufacturers have pursued an elusive grail: an all- electronic camera that would, like modern video equipment, replace the chemical film of still photography with new forms of image making. In 1981 Japan's Sony Corp. announced a breakthrough with the Mavica, which looked like a conventional 35-mm camera but stored pictures on miniaturized computer floppy disks. Technical snafus, however, kept the product from coming to market.

Now it is Canon's turn. At a New York City press conference last week, Fujio Mitarai, president of the Japanese company's U.S. subsidiary, formally introduced the SVS (for still-camera video system), a six-piece array of equipment that includes a 2.2-lb. electronic camera. Like Sony's earlier product, the SVS records images as impulses that can be transmitted electronically. Canon U.S.A. says the SVS will be available in August.

The company's main innovation is a computer microchip called a charge- coupled device, which takes the place of the film roll in the camera. The CCD, manufactured for Canon by Dallas-based Texas Instruments, converts incoming light into electronic signals that are recorded on the floppy. The disk measures only 2 in., but can store up to 50 pictures, vs. 24 to 36 images on conventional 35-mm film, and is reusable. After shooting, the photographer can pop the disk into a recorder to view the images on a TV screen or reproduce them on a special printer. He can use a transceiver to send pictures via telephone lines.

There are still bugs in Canon's system. The pictures that the CCD produces, while perfectly usable, are not up to still-photography standards. The CCD can store only 380,000 pixels, or individual picture elements, the tiny dots that form an image. A normal 35-mm photograph contains 18 million pixels. Canon is working on the problem, however, and rival Eastman Kodak says it has already developed a chip that can store up to 1.4 million pixels.

Canon's new system, by no means cheap, is initially aimed at professionals. The price tag for the SVS is $35,800, and Canon expects that in the first year demand will be limited to about 1,000 units. But Sony and competitors like Nikon and Kodak are developing similar equipment, and industry experts say an all-electronic system costing under $10,000 is five to ten years away. Says Eugene Glazer, a technology analyst at Dean Witter Reynolds: "Canon has developed a technology that will one day make conventional cameras obsolete."

With reporting by Thomas McCarroll/New York