TrustedReviews Awards 2007

Sony took over Konica-Minolta's digital camera technology when that company unexpectedly pulled out of the camera business in 2006, and put it to good use a few months later with the launch of the Alpha A100, Sony's first digital SLR. The A100 has been a massive success, catapulting Sony into third place in the DSLR market behind Canon and Nikon, quite an achievement for a single camera. Earlier this year Sony followed up the entry-level A100 with a camera aimed at more serious photographers, the superb Alpha A700. It features Sony's brand new Exmor 12.23-megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor, the proven Super SteadyShot moving-sensor image stabilisation system, a rugged environmentally-sealed magnesium alloy body and an ultra-sharp 3in LCD monitor. Its performance claims are equally impressive, with 5fps continuous shooting, an 11-point cross-type AF system, maximum sensitivity of 6400 ISO and a maximum shutter speed of 1/8000th of a second. With the addition of a fantastic range of Carl Zeiss lenses the Alpha system is shaping up to take on the market leaders.

One of our highest-scoring compact cameras of the year was the brilliant Fujifilm Finepix F40fd. It combines a tough and stylish all-metal body, comfortable handling and a good range of features with outstanding image quality and the best low-light performance of any compact camera on the market. Like the S9600 it uses Fuji's unique 1/1.6-in SuperCCD HR, with a resolution of 8.3-megapixels. It features a high-quality Fujinon 3x zoom lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.8-f/5.1, a 2.5in 230k pixel LCD monitor, and a maximum ISO setting of 2000. Unlike most other cameras however, the F40fd is actually usable at high ISO settings, producing better image quality at 1600 ISO than most other compacts cam manage at 200. It lacks image stabilisation, but with such good high-ISO performance it doesn't really need it, since it can use shutter speeds at least four times faster than other compact cameras. It is currently the best all-round compact digital camera on the market.

The latest growth area of the digital camera market is compact cameras equipped with long zoom lenses. Panasonic, Canon, Casio and Pentax have all recently launched cameras with this type of specification, but Ricoh has been doing it far longer and has become very, very good at it. The Caplio R7 is a very impressive 8.15-megapixel compact camera featuring a 2.7in monitor with 230k pixel resolution, moving-sensor mechanical image stabilisation, and a flush-retracting 7.1x optical zoom f/3.3 - f/5.2 lens with a zoom range equivalent to 28-200mm. Despite this impressive specification the camera measures just 99.6 x 55 x 23.3mm and weighs 161g including card and battery, making it slim and light enough to carry in your pocket. There are very few cameras around that can match the Caplio R7 for sheer versatility.

It may not be a camera, but Adobe Photoshop has been the industry standard for image editing and manipulation software for almost two decades, and with good reason. The latest version of the program is optimised for the Windows Vista and Mac OS X operating systems, and supports hyper-threading for multi-core processors. It is significantly faster than earlier versions, starting up in as little as 3.2 seconds, and has a greatly improved interface with many new features, such as partial transparency and improved palette docking. The algorithms for many of the tools have been re-written, and new features have been added aimed at digital photographic image editing, making Photoshop far and away the best software tool for creative photographers. It is still the only image editor that supports full 16-bit editing, essential for getting the best out of digital SLR images. It is terribly expensive, but if you want the very best then Adobe Photoshop CS3 is the only choice.