As you may have already guessed I wasn't lucky enough to attend Comdex this time (it's only a 20+ hour flight away too..) However with their normal efficiency the Japanese site PC Watch have summed-up the newsworthy digital camera offerings from Comdex (it ain't much).

From their "first Comdex report"

FujiFilm

As reported at very great length by Imaging-Resource (they even got a flight in the Fuji Blimp!) Fuji were touting their new Super-CCD technology which takes normal CCD's and gives them a 45 degree tilt, well nearly.. essentially what Fuji are saying is that the hexagonal layout of their CCD gives the photo-receptors more physical space on the CCD and thus is more sensitive and more detailed than an equivelant pixeled (millions of) traditional CCD. They even displayed a print on their stand (though I'd prefered to have seen two JPEG files on their website with EXIF headers) which shows the difference... Hmmm, time will tell.

Canon

Using their new slogan "Are you digital yet?" (god I hope not, bzzt whirrr), they generated a lot of interested with the S10 (which they should, it's a solid product). Interestingly though Yamada (the reporter) notes that the main stand was overwhelmed by copiers and printers.

Sanyo

Sanyo are still betting heavily on the DSC-SX150 (a 1.5 megapixel digicam) with not a hole lot new other than talk of the new ID format disks.

Minolta

Oh dear, Minolta are still showing the 3D add-on for the Dimage EX1500 from MetaCreation, not only have they been trying to sell this for what seems to be an eternity but they've also not brought out any of the promised "upgraded CCD's" which they used so heavily to sell the EX1500's in the first place.. what's the deal, bad idea?

Casio

Casio showed the QV-2000UX and QV8000SX, however Yamada notes that the main booth was dominated by their Windows CE machines.

The Rest

Olympus had nothing very much new other than their updated C-2020Z and C-920Z. Toshiba showed the M5 and M4. Ricoh exhibited the RDC-5300.

From their "second Comdex report"

Panasonic (Matsushita in Japan)

Showed a camera which was 40% Sony Mavica (take a look at the back!) but had one of their newer SuperDisk (sigh) 120MB drives installed. Looks kinda bulky to me. (Oh it's 1.3 megapixels, supports standard floppies as well as SuperDisks and has a USB connector).

Iomega

Iomega showed a "reference" ZipCam, a 2.1 Megapixel digital with with a Zip drive (take a look at the SIZE of that thing) embeded... Thing that gets me is why they didn't make a smaller one with a Clik! drive too?

Agfa

Ah, because Agfa were showing THEIR CL30 Clik! with a 40MB Clik! drive, that's more like it... Still I'm not sure about having mechanical storage drives in digital cameras.. some has yet to convince me that this is a move fowards and not sideways.

Epson

Epson showed a new digicam the "PhotoPC 650" which is an odd single megapixel digicam... weird.

Hewlett Packard

HP had the C500 on show and even a shot of it sending an image directly to a HP printer using their proprietary HP JetSend InfraRed technology..

The Rest

Various other exhibitors showed prototype digicams, Pretec an Taiwanese maker showed an OEM VGA CMOS digicam the "DC-520" (ouch Kodak), Relisys of Taiwan showed the "Dimera150P" which featured USB and a 1.5 megapixel CCD, Sampo of Taiwan showed the "DC-400", a single-focus 850K CCD digicam, Tatung showed the "TDC-150" (1.5 megapixel).

All in all I'd say a pretty un-exciting Comdex with nothing particularly new (nothing at least that you've not already read about here)