OSAKA -- Kyocera Corp. will begin marketing a high-end digital camera under its popular Contax brand name as early as this fall, company officials said Friday.
The camera, derived from the Contax N1 film camera, will feature a charge-coupled device (CCD) of up to 6 million pixels, making high-quality, fine-textured images possible and meeting camera buffs' demands.
A CCD converts optical data into electrical signals and then restores and transmits the converted data.
The digital camera will have the same body as the Contax N1, making it compatible with Carl Zeiss automatic focusing lenses, which Kyocera also sells.
The company has yet to decide on a retail price.
Kyocera hopes that its entry into the high-end digital camera market, coupled with planned sales of a compact, 200-gram, 3.3-million-pixel digital camera beginning this spring, will put the company on par with leading digital camera firms.