January 9th, 2009
CES 2009: Best digital camera announcements so far
CES, which officially kicked off today, isn’t usually a huge show for digital camera announcements, with most camera companies saving their big announcements for PMA (scheduled for early March this year). Still, there are already a handful of interesting cameras being announced. Here are a few that piqued my interest so far:
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G3
This might be the most buzz-worthy camera at the show so far. As Sony puts it, it’s the world’s first Web-browsing camera. It’s already shipping for a pricey $499.99, for which you get a 10-megapixel, 4X zoom (35-140mm equivalent, f/3.5-f/10) camera with Wi-Fi support, a 3.5-inch touch-screen LCD, and 4GB of on-board memory. The Wi-Fi capability lets you wirelessly upload photos and videos to popular photo-sharing sites as you’d expect from a WiFi-enabled camera. What’s more unexpected is the built-in Web browser, which lets you connect to any public hot spot, including both secure and unsecured access points and those that require that you go through a log-in or terms-of-service page first (e.g., at a hotel). The camera also includes free AT&T Wi-Fi access to Sony’s Easy Upload Home Page until January 31, 2012.
Polaroid PoGo Instant Digital Camera
While Japan already had the Tomy Xiao, the rest of us had to go old-school if we wanted to get instant prints. Well, that’ll change when the Polaroid PoGo Instant Digital Camera starts shipping in March. The 5-megapixel camera, which is capable of spitting out 2×3-inch, sticky-back prints, will sell for $199, but 10-packs of the photo paper (which can be used with the PoGo printer too) will set you back $4.99 (30-packs are $12.99). The camera itself isn’t all that impressive (think 4x digital zoom), but then again, neither were the film-based Polaroids and we still loved them.
Samsung HZ10W
I love the specs on this camera: It’s a 10.2-megapixel 10x megazoom that’s relatively compact at just 4.13 x 2.4 x 1.4 inches. But what I really like is its ultra-wide lens, which goes from 24mm to 240mm (equivalent). It offers the usual raft of features that are becoming ubiquitous (e.g., face, smile and blink detection) as well as both optical and digital image stabilization. Of particular interest is the ability to capture video in 720p high-definition at 30 fps, with both optical image stabilization and the 10x optical zoom being functional during video recording. A nice touch is the ability to pause video recording and then resuming without having to save the clips as individual files. The HZ10W also serves up plenty of manual controls, such as shutter speed, focus, aperture, and exposure settings. The camera will be available this month at a list price of $299.99. (Samsung also announced two other cameras–read Andrew Nusca’s post from Vegas here.)
Janice Chen has been covering technology for almost two decades. She got her hands on a Nikon Coolpix 900 back in 1998 and has been a digital camera enthusiast ever since. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
Subscribe to Digital Cameras via Email alerts or RSS.
