It’s finally happened: we’re living in an age when cameras will, in certain modes, just shoot themselves. 2009 looks to also be a year when things we once thought of as cinematic special effects, like the projection of Obi Wan giving Princess Leia her marching orders or Dick Tracey getting an assignment from his wrist phone, make their way into real-world mobile devices. We’ll also be able to capture decent video of craters on the moon.
The real pleasure of the annual Consumer Electronics Show is getting a glimpse at such future-tech, but it’s also an opportunity to take stock of which recently-released camera, camcorder, and camera-phone models seem to be most popular with the American public. Time and again, it seems, consumers are choosing ease-of-operation and straight-forward user interfaces over more impressive feature sets. Here’s a quick round-up of some of the stand-out digital imaging product stories from CES 2009:
Super-Fast Meets Point-and-Shoot
Casio is applying it’s high-speed technology to a new generation of consumer digicams. The company announced two new pocket-sized cameras which will be able to shoot 30 still frames per second in burst mode. Both cameras will be branded with Casio’s consumer name, Exilim. The EX-FC100, with a 5x optical zoom and external lens, will sell for $399.99, and the EX-FS10 with a 3x zoom and internal lens, will hit the market at $349.99.
Unlike traditional consumer pocket cams, these two new models can capture ultra-high speed action-shots, such as the precise moment a bat hits a ball, by recording dozens of frames in just a few moments. In playback mode, a review of the many shots looks rather like a slo-motion replay, and consumers can choose to save the most exciting frames.
William Heuer, Vice President of Digital Imaging for Casio America, said the new point-and-shoots capture so fast, even ultra-zoom and night shots are "virtually without blur."
Casio is calling its high-speed engine a redefinition of the consumer camera category.
President and founder of the company, Kazuo Koshio, also appeared at the company’s CES press conference to introduce a new digital imaging technology he called a "moving image composite."
He demonstrated the new idea by taking high-speed shots of a smiling woman presenting a gift to him. He then super-imposed the high-speed shots of that presenter onto pre-fab greeting-card type backgrounds, from a birthday theme to a Christmas card.
In a second demonstration, he superimposed shots of a little boy waving onto a photo of the boy’s own drawing of a car…resulting in a moving image of the boy waving from the window of his own crayon car.
"You can send this moving image card via e-mail," said Kosio, via an interpreter. "This provides photo taking enjoyment, creative pleasure, and viewing delight."
Camcorders: Lighter and Zoomier, with On-Board Editing
Panasonic stole the camcorder spotlight with its announcement of three new camcorders that have a mind-blowing 70x optical zoom. All three, the SDR-H80, the DSR-H90 and the SDR-S26 will be equipped with "Easy YouTube Upload" mode, allowing users to quickly adjust and upload their clips.
National product category manager Sanjeet Patel was eager to show off the far-reaching zoom on the three standard-definition camcorders. "You can actually see the craters on the moon!" he gushed. "And the combination of that zoom with advanced optical image stabilization is what makes this so valuable."
Canon’s is going after the 2009 camcorder market with a something-for-everyone strategy. The company introduced 11 new camcorders at CES, with an emphasis on flashed-based models (4 of the 7 flash-camcorders were high-definition video cameras). 48x was the highest zoom on board the new models. Top-of-the-line camcorders like the VIXIA HF S10 offered the option of recording video to a 32GB internal flash drive or onto an SDHC memory card. They could also deliver high-quality (8 megapixel) still photographs.
2009 is the year Canon is launching a new camcorder creative mode as well. "Video Snapshot Mode" guides users to collect a series of 4-second clips, giving them an easy-to-follow timer (a blue border moves around the LCD in four seconds) for each one. Then the camera pieces together those clips with pre-loaded music, either classical or modern soundtracks, and produces an instant highlight reel. (Users can also import their own music tracks.) Canon marketing supervisor Ben Thomas says the 4-second limit tested surprisingly well with consumers. "We find that it actually makes people shoot better," he said.
Camera Phones and Pico Projectors: Beam Me Up!
Learn this term now: pico projector. It’s futurific gadget that allows a user to plug in their cell phone (or any personal mobile device) and project an image, either a photo or a video, out onto any surface, like the back of an airplane seat or the front of a friend’s shirt.
3M was showing its palm-sized Micro Professional Projector, the MPro110, plugged into an iPhone. The hand-held device is battery-operated and will be available through all major retail channels later this year. An even more dramatic pico-prototype was a Samsung phone, developed in partnership with Texas Instruments, which has a DLP-based pico projector built right in. "The projector phone" will be test-marketed in Korea this year.
All the major phone manufacturers were showing handsets with impressively-megapixelled on -board cameras, 3.2 or even 5 becoming commonplace. (LG has had some success with its dedicated camera-phone, the Dare. Motorola is still promoting its Kodak-partnership phone, the ZN5.) Sony-Ericsson used CES to introduce a new, more affordable Cybershot camera phone, the C510 with a dual LED flash, which has autofocus, face-detection, and shoots video as well.
"We’re finding that consumers don’t always want a smart phone with every single feature," said Sony-Ericsson’s Tony Greco. "They want a human element. This Cybershot has a lens cover and a shutter button. It feels like a camera, and the best camera is the one you always have with you."
Imaging Retail: All Aboard
Though most imaging industry manufacturers are waiting a couple more months to make their major product announcements around PMA (both Canon and Nikon have a full line-up of point-and-shoots coming with shooting modes that make a human operator nearly irrelevant), Noritsu was at CES this year exhibiting a product they hope will attract all sorts of retailers to printing revenue.
The new D502 Duplex Printer is about the size of a typical copy machine, but, at $35,000, is actually an entire photo printing solution, able to produce double-sided, high-res products such as photobooks, calendars, posters, signs, scrapbooks, cards and banners.
Gregory Joe, Noritsu America’s marketing manager, says the D502 is aimed at retailers who might not have been in the photo business before, from independent CE operations to gift shop or bookstore owners. "This is a workhorse printer," said Joe. "And it plays well with others, [from kiosks to binding machines]." Joe says the Noritsu D502 will be available in the U.S. in the second half of 2009.
