Olympus To Debut Digicams, Digital Voice Recorders At CES

Staff -- TWICE, 1/6/2001

LAS VEGAS -Olympus America Inc. is announcing at CES two new digital cameras and several new digital voice recorders at its booth #5215.

The Camedia C-2040 Zoom is a 2.11-megapixel (1,600 x 1,200) digital camera with a large-aperture F1.8 zoom lens featuring extended flash range. The camera, expected to ship in March and retail for $599, comes bundled with an 8MB SmartMedia card, USB connector cable and two 3V lithium battery packs.

The C-2040 also features QuickTime Movie, manual exposure, sequence shooting, autobracketing and a range of ISO sensitivity settings.

Olympus is introducing the Camedia C-3040 Zoom, a 3.34-megapixel, 3x zoom digital camera that will begin shipping in March with a suggested retail of $899. The camera offers auto and manual white balance, an improved wide-angled LCD screen, sequence shooting, QuickTime Movie, black & white and sepia shooting modes, and more compression settings.

The Camedia C-3040 Zoom comes bundled with an 8MB SmartMedia card, USB connector cable, Adobe Photoshop 5.0LE image manipulation and creation software, and an Olympus Photoshop plug-in.

It also features a built-in microphone, allowing users to record sound as the camera captures an image. Sound is also recorded simultaneously in the Motion JPEG mode, while a four-second audio attachment can be added to a still image.

The DS-320 Digital Voice Recorder provides five hours and 20 minutes of recording time with speech-recognition software. The recorder, due out in April with an suggested retail of $249, comes complete with IBM's new ViaVoice version 8.0 speech-recognition software for speech-to-text conversion in a PC.

The DS-320 uses 16MB of built-in memory for up to 320 minutes of recording time in Digital Speech Standard (DSS) format. Files are downloaded to PC via a bundled serial cable or an optional USB data-transfer kit. The recorder also features a microphone sensitivity selector, voice activation for hands-free recording, and editing capabilities (insert, delete and partial erase options).

Olympus is announcing two professional digital voice recorders, the DS-2000 and the DS-3000, which support removable SmartMedia cards for up to 22 hours of recording time on a 64MB card.

Both feature a built-in USB interface for file transfer, two recording modes, an LCD display, and an external earphone jack for private review of recordings. They also include three folders for voice-file management, capable of storing up to 199 messages per folder.

The DS-2000, available in March with an expected retail price of $299 ($249 street), comes with an 8MB SmartMedia card, indexing and voice-activation capability. It features DSS Player 2000 software.

The DS-3000 provides additional dictation software (DSS Player Pro Dictation) that automates dictation workflow over a network or e-mail. Bundled with a 16MB SmartMedia card, the model will be available in February for an expected retail of $499 ($399 street).

Along with incorporating the features of the DS-2000, the DS-3000 supports additional recording functions such as the ability to store up to 10 different Author IDs in the recorder.