Video Snaps For Grandma?

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

When Sony Chairman Akio Morita unveiled in 1981 a prototype of the first camera to capture images on electronic sensors rather than on film, he billed it the greatest breakthrough since Daguerre's silver-coated copper photographic plate. With Sony's still-video camera, photographers could instantly display their snapshots on ordinary TV screens. But when it finally came out in 1987 with a price tag of about $7,000, the product did not exactly overwhelm the marketplace. Except in a few specialized applications in business and journalism, the filmless camera virtually disappeared.

Now Japan's camera makers are ready to try again, this time with improved technology and prices aimed at a broader consumer market. At the Photo Marketing Association's big annual trade show in Dallas this week, Sony and Canon will introduce a pair of palm-size, lightweight still-video cameras that will sell for less than $1,000. Each model can take and store up to 50 shots on erasable, reusable 2-in. floppy disks. When plugged into a television set, the new systems display images that are about as sharp as conventional TV pictures. They are expected to arrive in U.S. stores this spring, and before the year is out they could be joined by models from Konica and Fuji.

All still-video cameras operate on the same basic principle. Light passes through a lens and strikes a flat electronic wafer called a charge-coupled device, which converts the image into electronic signals that are stored on a floppy disk in the same manner that a camcorder records the individual frames of a video movie. Once an image has been captured, it can be displayed on a TV, printed on paper or transmitted over telephone lines anywhere in the world. But whoever receives the images must have one of the cameras or other special equipment to view the pictures.

It is the ability to store and transmit images that has made still-video technology attractive to professionals, from architects to fashion photographers. Real estate brokers, for example, use it to show pictures of houses to clients in distant cities. Among the biggest consumers have been news organizations, which use the cameras to cover everything from sports events to political conventions. When the Oscar for best picture is awarded in late March, USA Today plans to capture the moment with a professional Sony still-video system and transmit the pictures to printing plants in minutes. The shots will not be as sharp as those taken by conventional cameras, but, as Frank Folwell, the publication's assistant director of photography, puts it, "for a newspaper with a deadline to meet, it's the alternative to having no picture at all."

The availability of new, cheaper models is likely to spur sales in business markets, but whether the technology will be attractive to the ordinary shutterbug is an open question. Proponents argue that still videos are simpler to store than slides or color prints and more easily edited than videotapes. The manufacturers envision video-generation consumers exchanging floppy disks by mail and giving video slide shows to friends and relatives. Says Sony's Hiroshi Yasuo: "We believe it will become a big business."

U.S. analysts are dubious. Between Polaroid cameras and one-hour photo- developing shops, whatever market there is for instant photography would seem pretty well saturated. "I don't imagine this is going to be a major new product category," says George Hersh, a photo-industry analyst at Daiwa Securities. "The general habit people have is they take pictures, make prints and send them to their parents or grandparents." As Hersh points out, grandparents may not want to buy a $1,000 camera system just to see some snapshots.

With reporting by Seiichi Kanise/Tokyo and Linda Williams/New York