Tiniest mini-cameras launched by Japanese

Press, 15 January 1986, Page 22

Tiniest mini-cameras launched by Japanese

NZPA-AP Tokyo Japanese companies have introduced a thumb-size camera and a video movie camera easily carried in one hand, both said to be the world’s smallest of their kind.

Mr Takehiko Koto, of the Toshiba Corporation said the tiny camera unit was small enough to replace dentists’ mirrors. The unit contains a wideangle lens and an image sensor. It turns optical signals into electric signals that can be seen on a television monitor or recorded.

JVC Company of Japan, demonstrated a I.3kg video movie recorder that Mr Yoshihiro Ueno, director of the video division, said could be enjoyed by both professionals and homeusers.

Mr Koto, director of Toshiba’s audio-visual technology research division, told a news conference on the tiny camera: “To tell the truth, we have yet to complete our research on the usage of the product...

We think there are many many possibilities.” Among them were television monitoring of a home entrance, professional filming, and attachment to robots for monitoring of tiny industrial manufacturing processes. It also could be used to magnify books for people with poor vision, he added. The camera head measures I.6cm by 4.5 cm. It could be connected to its control unit by a two-metre cable, Mr Koto said. The camera was available by special order at costs ranging from several hundred thousand yen to two million yen ($19,158), Mr Koto said. Introducing JVC’s compact video movie camera, the senior managing director, Mr Shizuo Takana, said: “We hope this product will be a stimulus for the further development of the VTR industry.”

He said industry sources expected a total of 100 million VTRs would have been sold by the middle of this year. Forty per cent of

Japanese households and 30 per cent of American households own VTRs. The new VHS format camera contains a zoom lens, play-back features, and is fully automatic. JVC’s video camera will be on the market at the end of February at a cost of 248,000 yen ($2374), a JVC news release said. The company planned an initial monthly production of 60,000 units, to be increased to 100,000 by the end of the year, Mr Ueno said.