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EISA Products of the Year 2006By Dave Pickstone | | |
The European Imaging and Sound Association (the EISA) have begun announcing the winners of their 2006-2007 awards, which recognise products that show advanced technology, design, performance and value in a range of electronics fields from Audio products to TV - and their photo section is one of the biggest, including SLRs, compacts and other accessories. The EISA itself is a press organisation formed of over 52 magazines from 18 European countries so they know what they are talking about!
The awards themselves aren't until 1st September and the full list of winners has been released, but some of the winners have been announced so we thought we'd share them with you. As soon as the other winners are announced we will let you know and for a list of past winners or to find out more about the EISA, visit www.eisa-awards.org. So without further adieu...
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EUROPEAN CAMERA OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
NIKON D200
Nikon have won the most prestigious photo award this year with the Nikon D200, an affordable high resolution DSLR which offers excellent value for money, ease of use, and is generally a great camera as a step up from entry level Nikons or as a backup to a pro body. As befits Nikon's position as one of the market-leaders, they do quite well in this competition and while they only got two wins, this is the big one!
Previous winners are the Canon EOS 350D in 2005 and the Olympus Camedia C-8080 in 2004
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EUROPEAN HIGH-END PHOTO SYSTEM 2006-2007
HASSELBLAD H2D-39
Hassleblad's Medium Format Digital System has won the High-end System accolade this year. The 39MP system being chosen because it was the first camera to offer this level of resolution at this quality, and also for its compatibility with Hassleblad's existing H series of digital lenses and the V series of camera lenses. It was released in January 2006.
This is a new category, so Hasselblad have the honour of being the first winner (although they have won before in other categories).
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EUROPEAN PROFESSIONAL CAMERA OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
CANON EOS 5D
The Canon EOS 5D was chosen as the EISA Professional Camera of the Year because its full frame CMOS sensor and lightweight body created an entirely new digital SLR category when it was released, and is still the best choice for the pro and semi-pro because of its affordable price, 12.8MP high quality sensor, bright viewfinder and shallow depth of field. Canon traditionally do quite well in these awards, which is no shock since they are market-leader in cameras at the moment, and this is the first of their two awards this year.
The Nikon D2x won the award in 2005, and Canon won in 2004 with the EOS 1D Mark II. The Canon EOS 1V won the award for them in 2000, while Hassleblad, Leica and Bronica have won in other years.
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EUROPEAN CONSUMER CAMERA OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
SONY ALPHA 100
Even though its barely been out a month, Sony have picked up the Consumer Camera award for the Alpha 100 thanks to its 10MP sensor and functions such as SuperSteadyShot, Anti-Dust System and Bionz image engine that it has brought to the digital SLR market. Some emphasis has perhaps also been awarded because the Alpha 100 also marks Sony's entry into the dSLR market, which is a pretty big step, and the introduction of a whole new range of accessories and lenses too. Our review is imminent! This was Sony's only win in the Photo category, but the company picked up five overall, the others being in the video sector.
The Consumer Camera award is a new one, so we can't give you details of past winners.
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EUROPEAN COMPACT CAMERA OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
SAMSUNG NV10
The NV10, part of the new Samsung NV series of style cameras, has been awarded Compact Camera of the Year for 2006/07. Even though it isn't available until September, the camera was available to EISA members who shortlisted the camera (and eventually awarded it the prize) because of its unique Smart Touch user interface, Advanced Shake Reduction technology and design concept that came about as a result of two years hard work on the part of Samsung.
Olympus won in 2005 with the C-7070 Wide Zoom and the Casio won in 2004 with the Exilim Pro EX-P600.
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EUROPEAN POCKET CAMERA OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
OLYMPUS µ 720 SW
The water and shockpoof µ 720 SW picked up pocket camera because it's the perfect partner for active and outdoors photographers: It can survive a drop of up to 1.5 metres and a depth of up to three metres (without an extra waterproof body) so it can take nearly everything you can chuck it at - and it isn't a slump at photography either. This is Olympus' first win this year out of two.
The Fujifilm Finepix F10 won in 2005 and the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T1 won in 2004
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EUROPEAN ZOOM CAMERA OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
FUJIFILM FINEPIX S5600
The EISA voted the FinePix S5600 Zoom Camera of the Year because of its strong performance at an affordable price, highlighting the fast 10x optical lens, the excellent sensor resolution that performed best than other 5MP sensors, Real Photo Technology, ISO 1600 and range of manual features. This is the second award in as many years for Fujifilm, having won EISA Pocket Camera of the Year last year for the FinePix F10. We reviewed the FinePix S5600 where it got an impressive 16/20 so we feel its quite deserving of the award - here is our review (hey, we can't let the companies have ALL the limelight)
Even though this is the fifteenth year of the awards, this is a relatively new category, the first and only winner being the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5 (and we have a review of that too...)
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EUROPEAN PRO LENS OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
OLYMPUS ZUIKO DIGITAL TOP PRO LENS RANGE
Olympus' second win is in the Professional Lens area with the Zuiko Top Pro range, comprising of five bright fixed-aperture lenses. The Zuikos were chosen because of their quality and performance ability even though they are limited to the relatively new and unknown FourThirds system. The range has three zoom lenses and two prime lenses and a great choice for nearly any situation.
This is the first year that the lens award has been split into two categories.
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EUROPEAN CONSUMER LENS OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
TAMRON SP AF 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di II LD
The lightweight and compact Tamron zoom lenses was awarded Consumer Lens of the Year because of its quality, price and wide-ranging suitability - even though its one of a new breed of digital-exclusive lenses. This certainly isn't a bad feature (as the award obviously shows) as Digital lenses can be designed to take full advantage of the bonuses of shooting on digital, and remedy the smaller sensor size.
Again this is a new award, but Tamron are historically big winners in the lens category, alongside Sigma.
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EUROPEAN PHOTO PRINTER OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
CANON PIXMA iP6600D
Canon's second award is in the Photo Printer category with the iP6600D, a six-ink photo printer that was the one that cemented Canon's position in the photo-printing market. The award mainly came about for the printer's speed and quality that came at a good price - perfect for enthusiasts and semi-pro photographers. The printer's extra features like CD-R and direct printing certainly didn't do the printer any harm in the shortlist.
Strangely, the award wasn't given last year, but the Canon BubbleJet Printer i9950 won in 2004. The other six years were split evenly between Canon and Epson.
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EUROPEAN MINI PRINTER OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
SAMSUNG SPP-2040B
While the Samsung SPP-2040B is also a photo printer, its a pintsized printer, barely bigger than the 4x6 inch prints it produces. Size wasn't the only issue however, and the printer's speed, quality and direct printing features were clearly other big considerations - and the large clear 2 inch LCD on the top is just the icing on the cake!
Last year's winner was the Sony DPP-FP50 won last year and the HP Photosmart 245 before that.
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EUROPEAN SCANNER OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
EPSON PERFECTION V700 PHOTO/V570 PRO
The V700 range (including the V570) was one of the clear runners for this idea because of its DIGITAL ICE scanning technology and Dual Lens System, that remove scratches, dust and allow a high resolution of 6400dpi - the whole package setting a new standard in scanning, not just in photo-scanning. Of course the inclusion of the Epson Creativity Suite, SilverFast SE6 and Adobe Photoshop Elements can't hurt its value either!
Epson has generally ruled this award since its conception, as you'd expect it to, most recently in 2004 with the Perfection 4870 Photo, although ex-digital camera manufacturer's Konica Minolta won last year with the Dimage Scan Elite 5400 II.
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EUROPEAN PHOTO SOFTWARE OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
ADOBE LIGHTROOM
Adobe Lightroom is one of the more obvious choices for Photo Software of the Year, breaking through the hype surrounding it and the similar-featured Apple Aperture to become one of the most downloaded programs of the year already. The program is still in it's beta stage but is available as a free build for Mac and PC which surely is the important factor here - Adobe are offering the program free to get user feedback and to make sure it's bug-free and of the highest quality, an obtainable feat now they have the team behind Pixmantec RawShooter with them now.
This is a new category, although Adobe won the one-off Digital Imaging Product of the Year in 2002 with Photoshop 7.
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EUROPEAN MEMORY CARD OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
SANDISK EXTREME IV
The second winner that we know of is SanDisk, who have won with their new Extreme IV cards. The line is barely a month old yet it has won the award off the back of its speed (40mb/sec) and how they offer the highest performance and reliability for the professional and semi-pro user.
This is a hat trick for SanDisk having won the award since its debut in 2004, the Ultra II line winning then and the Extreme III winning in 2005 - and you can win one of the latter in our August competition. |
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EUROPEAN "IMAGE TANK" OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
JOBO GIGA VU PRO EVOLUTION
This category sounds a bit vague and a catch-all for other photo accessories, but this years winner is the Jobo Giga Vu portable media player. These devices seem two-a-penny these days after the iPod was released, but the Jobo stood out for the EISA because its a photo storage device first, PMP second - it can decode RAW on the fly, display EXIF data and can power zoom to the actual size of the image. Read our preview article on it for more details.
Incidentally, although this is the first Image Tank award (and probably last), the Epson P2000 Multimedia Storage Viewer won Portable Media Viewer last year.
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EUROPEAN PHOTO INNOVATION OF THE YEAR 2006-2007
NIKON U POINT TECHNOLOGY
Finally there is the award for Photo Innovation award, and the year has been seen a lot of real innovation (now that the 10MP barrier has been broken) with Anti-shake technology, user interface advances and the winning technology - U Point technology that was seen in Nikon's Capture NX software (read our first-look) and is one of its outstanding features. The technology does away with complicated selection tools by sensing where edges are in the image, so you can quickly change skin tones without changing the horizon for example.
This isn't an award that appears every year, but previous winners are Konica Minolta's AntiShake Technology, the FOVEON X3 Sensor and Epson's Print Image Matching.
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