Hurry on over! We had originally thought that Kodak had this award in the bag, but now that General Imaging (GE) has pumped out a trio of cameras that nearly put us to sleep, we'd say the race for the lamest introduction at Photokina is officially back on. Up first on the chopping block is the E1055W, a GE-branded point-and-shoot with a 3-inch LCD monitor, 10.1-megapixel sensor, blink / smile detection and a 5x optical zoom. Following that is the E1050TW, which packs most of the same hardware but also includes a 720p movie mode. Lastly, we've got the 10-megapixel A1030, which features a 3x optical zoom, 2.5-inch LCD, ultrathin design and super-simplistic button arrangement. All three cameras should be landing real soon for under three bones each, and no, they aren't really that awful... on paper.

[Thanks, David]

Read - GE E1055W
Read - GE E1050TW
Read - GE A1030

Another colorful point-and-shoot, you say? Yes, but with a difference: General Imaging's E-1050 uses Geotate's clever approach to geotagging your photos. Add that to a 10-megapixel sensor, 5x zoom, electronic image stabilization and face detection and red eye removal that's in vogue this year, and you've got an interesting little package. Unfortunately, the unit was tethered by its HDMI port to a TV, so we couldn't play around with the unit and give away our location, so we'll have to wait and see if geotagging is enough of a checkmark to differentiate this little digicam.

The highlight of an otherwise lackluster PMA 2008 came not from Nikon, Canon, or any of the other big name companies, but rather General Imaging: GE's new camera division announced that it will release one of the world's first point-and-shoots with embedded GPS. Well, to say that the E1050 has true GPS would not be totally accurate -- but the very features it lacks are what make it possible to incorporate geotagging capabilities in the first place. You see, this model only contains a GPS radio courtesy of New Zealand-based Rakon, but no baseband chip to process the data in order to create a "fix"; rather, an NXP Semiconductor spinoff called Geotate provides server-connected software that does the heavy-duty calculations once photos have been transferred over. This results in almost no hit to battery life or endless waits for a solid fix.

It works like this: every time the shutter is triggered, the camera's memory card briefly captures the raw data from the GPS radio, associating it with each photo. Then, once the pictures have been imported into Geotate's proprietary client, auxiliary location data is downloaded from a central server, which is then synthesized with the camera data using local resources to establish actual coordinates. What's more, the Geotate software hooks in to Wikipedia as well as the popular mapping and photo-sharing services, giving you real-world information about your shots while also allowing you to map them out and upload to Flickr, Picasa, and friends.

Geotate tells us that besides the E1010, we can also expect to see the platform incorporated into future cams designed by Taiwanese OEM Altek, with such a reference design pictured in the gallery below, along with one for a geotagging peripheral that snaps into a DSLR hotshoe. In the longer term, Geotate hopes to embed its low-cost solution (all that's needed is a small radio and some flash memory) in all sorts of products, from PCs to sneakers to soda bottles. And that's where the name of the company comes from: Geotate stands for "GEOgraphic noTATion," with the ultimate goal being the creation of an ecosystem in which we search not by "what," but by "where."

GE sounded pretty cocky when it announced its first entries into the crowded digital camera market earlier this year, with the company's lead of sales is running around saying things like, "Our aim is to be Number 1 in all aspects – quality, technology, performance and value – and these cameras will do that." Unfortunately, however, it doesn't look GE is going to reach that goal as fast as they'd hoped -- Photography Blog got their hands on the 8 megapixel E850 model and although the design and price are attractive, the camera itself took "horrible" pictures and suffered from sluggish performance. According to the reviewer, the E850 has "the worst noise performance" he's ever seen, and the higher ISO settings make "great impressionistic paintings out of your photos." Ouch. All in all, it looks like you're better off spending your $200 elsewhere -- sorry about that, GE fanboys.

We're so used to GE staying above the fray -- at least for the most part -- with it's snazzy medical imaging devices and non-stick plastics, that it's rather odd to see them really going head to head with the likes of Canon, HP and Sony in the consumer digicam space. No word on the use of non-stick plastics in the development of these things, but it looks like GE is playing it pretty safe for the moment. Its lineup, which will be announced in March and available mid-April, will range from 7 megapixel shooters with 2.5-inch LCDs on up to 12 megapixel cameras with 3-inches of screen. The cameras will be designed, manufactured and distributed exclusively by General Imaging, a new player on the scene formed of former "photo industry veterans" including CEO Hiroshi Komiya, a former president of Olympus. Apparently all of the cameras will include image stabilization, high ISO and panoramic stitching as a standard feature, and there will be a photo printer joining the ranks as well. Otherwise we're in the dark besides that concept render up above, but it seems like we'll be hearing a good bit more about these down the road, 'cause according to Rene Buhay, lead of sales: "Our aim is to be Number 1 in all aspects – quality, technology, performance and value – and these cameras will do that."

[Via PhotographyBlog]