CES - Digital photo and video

Every manufacturer should really have a touch-screen pocket camera in its 2011 lineup and Kodak's is the EasyShare Touch. It's a 14-megapixel ultracompact with a 3-inch touch screen and a 28mm-equivalent wide-angle lens with a 5x optical zoom.

Beyond those basic specs you get 720p HD video capture with a one-touch record button, so no fumbling with switching modes; HDMI output; automatic photo organization that sorts by people, date, keywords, and videos; artistic effects for photos and videos; and, of course, Kodak's Share button for quickly tagging your shots to be sent off to e-mail addresses or … Read more

Rugged and waterproof cameras are growing segments of the point-and-shoot market, but most of them will cost you more than $200. The 12-megapixel Kodak EasyShare Sport, however, is less than $100 and is waterproof down to 10 feet. Unfortunately, the camera is otherwise unremarkable.

Despite the appearance of a zoom rocker on back, there is no optical zoom on this camera; it's digital zoom only. The LCD on back is small at 2.4 inches, too, and the Sport seems to have a bare minimum of shooting options.

Look for the EasyShare Sport in spring 2011 for $79.95 … Read more

Samsung heads into CES week with an early announcement of its HMX-Q10 camcorder, a really aggressively priced model that should have a lot of people asking "what's the catch?" At a price of $299, I'd expect the ultracompact Q10 to have some obvious omissions, but Samsung seems to make better trade-off choices with this model than the manufacturers of similarly priced competitors.

Most notably, almost all competitors play the specsmanship game and opt for lower-than-HD resolution sensor and pair it with a longer (20x-plus) zoom lens, which results in pretty poor video quality. The Q10, however, … Read more

The most remarkable thing about the Samsung WB700 is its 18x 24-432mm lens crammed into a body that's just less than an inch thick. Of course an 18x zoom will only get you so much attention, so Samsung's decided to lead with the camera's Smart Zoom feature that digitally extends the zoom range to 24x. (Judging by the sparse details in the press release, it sounds similar to Panasonic's Intelligent Zoom feature that basically crops in on a photo and then sharpens for better detail.)

In other zoom-related digital hocus-pocus, the WB700 has active noise cancellation … Read more

Jumping the CES gun by a little bit, Samsung decided on an early announcement for a couple of its 2011 cameras. In addition to the WB700, the company is adding the NX11 to its interchangeable-lens camera line. Ostensibly a follow-on, rather than replacement for the NX10, the NX11 seems to offer minor tweaks and a different kit for a slightly lower price.

The main change over the NX10 is support for the i-Function lens system that was introduced with the NX100. i-Function allows you to use one of the lens rings to adjust shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation, white balance, … Read more

I have to admit; once again, I'm heading into another CES with pretty low expectations when it comes to anything significantly new or different in camcorders. Thankfully, we seem to have already reached ludicrous maximus on lens lengths, so while we'll probably see longer lenses than last year's at many price points, I don't think we'll hear claims of even longer ones for the current longest models.

But replacing the long lens claims, the most hyped feature we'll probably see is more 3D, thanks to companies that are trying to sell more 3D TVs … Read more

Let's face it: CES is often about hype. New products, new promises, and a lot of very thick carpeting greets us every year, and as we sort out what impressed us most about the show, we can only hope that some of these gadgets actually deliver.

With CES 2011 just around the corner, it's a perfect time to take a look back at the year that was, and see how the biggest stories of CES 2010 fared. Some of them did remarkably well, including our best-of-show winner, the Panasonic TC-PVT25 Others, not so much (remember the Motorola Backflip?). … Read more

Ah, it's that time of year again where we reflect on the technology that arrived and got us to open our wallets and try to predict what will tempt us in the coming year to toss last year's model for the new shiny shiny.

In past years, when it came to digital cameras the majority of announcements at CES were for refreshes of budget and style lines with the exception of a few with some attention-grabbing feature or design.

However, a big reason for that was the annual Photo Marketing Association's PMA trade show that followed CES … Read more

Up until 2010, there were nearly no off-the-shelf cameras for consumers to create digital 3D photos and movies; it was pretty much a hobbyist or professional thing to do. But with people hungry for content to view on their 3D-enabled TVs or computers, manufacturers started trickling out cameras and camcorders this year that just about anyone can use for shooting 3D.

The cameras don't all create 3D in the same way, though. Panasonic, for example, is currently relying on add-on lenses that feed stereo images to a single sensor. Fujifilm, DXG, and others, however, are using dual lenses and sensors, which is the more traditional way--and some might argue the best way--of creating stereoscopic images.

Sony skips both of these methods by using a single lens and high-speed shooting and processing to simultaneously capture left and right images that are stitched together in camera. (I expect the remaining manufacturers that don't have 3D cameras to go this last route, as it's likely the least expensive option to implement.)

Plus, there's software to take the 2D content you already have and convert it to 3D, which saves you the trouble of buying a new camera or camcorder altogether. (You could always go back to film or DIY, too.)… Read more