Oscar Night for Cameras
The New Digital Cameras Look as Good as the Pictures They Take
Published: March, 2006
It’s like a red carpet — only the paparazzi are snapping pictures of the cameras now. The season’s lineup of digital cameras are beautiful, they take beautiful pictures, and they are all light enough to lug around without feeling as if you’re on a professional photo shoot.
The biggest overall improvements in the new generation of stylish cameras include big LCD screens that actually give you a fighting chance of previewing your photo and attractive navigation tools like the iPod’s scroll wheel to help you view your photos quickly.
But design only goes so far. Beneath the hood all of these cameras have between 5 and 8 megapixels of resolution which means your photos will look good whether you send them in an email or print them to an 8X10. They all shoot short little videos, not suitable for filming the next Indie, but certainly good enough for sending a video email to the relatives. Most of all they help you look like a reasonable photographer. Most have gyroscopic mechanisms inside of them to “stop the shakes” as you shoot and built in choices to help optimize your photos for indoors, outdoors and everywhere in between help make you a photo hero.
My Camera Oscars, Spring 06
Best Overall Style Nikon CoolPix P3
It uses an iPod-like scroll wheel to navigate through your pictures; has a built in slide show, and find a face technology that hunts for finds the face in a picture and automatically exposes it correctly. Add 8.1 million pixels, Nikon’s vibration reduction, a large 2.5 inche screen and WI FI transmission from the camera to your computer. $449
Best Compact Canon PowerShot Digital Elph SD600
Also has a touch pad like an iPod and a huge 3 inch LCD screen with 6 MP of resolution in an uncommonly small form factor. Great at low light shots. $399
Best Artist in Box HP R927
$400 for an 8.2 megapixels and a large 3 inch LCD. HP includes a fun a design gallery which is like having PhotoShop-lite built into your camera. You can apply animation, cartoon effects, backgrounds and borders… there’s even a ten pounds slimmer feature
Best EBay camera Casio Exilim -Z850
8megapixels, a large LCD in a tiny compact form factor. An eBay mode automatically switches to a macro mode when you get close to the subject. The pictures are optimized for selling on eBay. It’s a great camera for emailing images too. $400
Best For Those Who Want it All Kodak V570
This camera has two lenses and two CCDs, one for wide angle and one for zoom in a package that’s less than an inch thick. Take wide angle panoramic shots, group photos, or portraits and still get great results.
Best Outdoor Performance in Adverse Conditions Olympus 720sw
This 7 megapixel camera is waterproof (to ten feet) and shock proof (to 1.5m) without requiring any special casing. Take it underwater up to ten feet deep or drop it on the ground a few times. It stays the course. Available in pink or blue.
Best Zoom Lens Panasonic Lumix
A clever folded lens system let’s this tiny camera have a built in 10X optical zoom for ultra close shots.
Its image stabilization helps get rid of the blur.
Best Fun and Games FujiFilm V10
They’re calling this one a shoot and play; it takes a great photo with a large 3 inch LCD screen but it also has 4 simple video games in it to help keep the kids occupied.