Hasta La Gadget!

If you thought the new Nikon D3x was expensive, thank your lucky, lucky stars you’re not British (unless, of course, you are British, in which case you should head straight to the pub and get a pint — watch out for those CCTVs on the way).

Nikon has jacked the price of its new high-end DSLR to £6000 ($8800) in the UK due to the slinky-like fluctuations of currency exchange rates. The original UK list price, announced back in December, was a mere £5500 ($8050). That’s almost a 10% rise in one month.

Not to stray too far from the gadget news itself, the British Pound has taken a hammering in the last few months, and is now almost at 1:1 parity with the Euro. This means that, in order to make their margins, foreign manufacturers are having to raise prices on exports to the UK. This is causing huge problems in the electronics market, but – according to my mother – it is also affecting basics like food and gin.

This is, as far as I can remember, the only time that gadgets have gone up in price after launch. If this keeps happening, I could sell off my D700 in a year and make a profit. Wait! I can — the D700 has gone up £100 ($150) already.

NIKON RAISES PRICE OF TOP CAMERA BY £500 [Amateur Photographer shouts]
Nikon Price List [Nikon – PDF]

See Also:

• Nikon Announces $8000, 24.5 Megapixel D3X

This is going to be a hard sell, although it actually looks to be a pretty neat product. The Ecamm network (which sells legitimate hacks for all manner of Apple camera related gubbins) is hawking a Mac-only Bluetooth webcam. This, you will no doubt realize, goes into a pre-saturated market: every MacBook owner already has a camera sitting, unblinking, above the screen.

But of course, that camera can’t be moved and an external cam can certainly be handy. What’s unique about Ecamm’s BT-1 Wireless Webcam (apart from the superb name) is that it is apparently the "the world’s first Bluetooth webcam", managing to stream H.264 video at 640×480 over a Bluetooth v2.0+EDR connection, along with AAC audio (at 48kHz). Those codec specs will make it clear why this Mac-only.

So, apart from going up against an already full market, why is this a hard sell? The camera is $150, that’s why. $150 for VGA quality. We imagine a lot of that money goes into the H.264 encoding hardware — it certainly didn’t go on design.

But you know what? That low key, black box design suggests some fun uses. I’m sure I could nestle this in a moldy corner of the bathroom and enjoy the show from afar. It’s certainly be cheaper than my usual monthly "adult" outgoings.

Product page [Ecamm via ★]

See Also:

• IPhoneCam: Wireless Video Streaming From iPhone
• MacBook Pros Get Secret Camera Upgrade
• HD Spycam Truly Crushes Employee Morale
• Spy Cam Hides Inside an ID Card

LAS VEGAS — It’s not only the HD video cameras that are getting big fat storage — Canon’s line of new standard def camcorders has just been announced at CES 2009, and the top of the line FS 200 has been well endowed with 32GB of flash memory and also a slot to add in an SDHC memory card.

The range carries Canon’s current DIGIC DV II procesor instead of the DV III found in the new Hi-Def cams, but by in return you get to choose from a range of pretty colors. At the Canon booth, while I was shooting some product shots, one of the Canon girls came up to the counter and started pretending to be a dumb CES showgoer:

Does this come in pink? I’ve seen a pink camera before and it was awesome. You guys should make a pink camera.

And:

Can you tell me the difference between SD and HD?

Other than that, there isn’t much — the SD cams are aimed at the bottom end of the market but, although lightweight, they don’t feel plasticky. Pricing: the FS200, which records only to SD media, will go for $350. The FS21 and FS22, which have internal memory as well as SD card slots, will be $500 and $600, respectively.

Product page [Canon]

LAS VEGAS — You, Gadget Lab reader, are a nerd. We mean that in a good way. Example: your digital photos are all uploaded from your camera daily, whereupon you categorize and organazize them, keywords and all. You know you do.

Your mother, by contrast, never lets her camera near a computer. Slideshows consist of crowding around the rear LCD display, and she starts deleting old pictures when the memory gets low. Samsung’s TL100, announced at CES 2009, is for her.

First, the 12.2 megapixel camera comes in a purse-friendly 16.6mm (0.65") thick, has a big 2.7" screen for viewing and has the usual face detection and image stabilization. What’s new, though, is the Smart Auto, which detects exactly what you are snapping and picks the exposure mode. Shoot people and it switches to portrait mode. Shoot a landscape and you get, yes, landscape mode. Neat, especially as mom probably never takes the camera off auto.

Further, there are Smart Albums for in-camera storage, a feature which groups similar images and videos. It won’t let you show all the pictures which have a grandchild in them, but it narrows the selection based on color, filetype or date. Basic but useful, and no keywording required. Price and availability are both CES standard: Unannounced, but expect it at around $250.

Press release [Samsung]

LAS VEGAS — Samsung’s new 10.2 megapixel HZ10W, announced at CES 2009, is a camera that gets everything right and yet fails to bring it together. It’s as if Dr. Frankenstein had stitched together his monster, screwed the bolts into its neck but then forgotten to hook up the lightning conductor.

The one saving feature is the double-stabilized image — both lens shift and in-body. Other than that you get a bright and sharp 2.7" LED, a 10x zoom, the Samsung standard Schneider lens and 720p hi-def video, crunched down into H.264 format.

And a modern, low-end digicam wouldn’t be complete without a splattering of useless picture modes. Here you can pick from face detection, "smile shot", self portrait, red-eye fix and the mysteriously named "Beauty Shot". Not included is the entirely fictional feature called "money shot", a freeze-frame mode which comes with a free splashproof case.

Price, as with everything at CES this year, is unannounced. Exhibitors are being very cagey, citing "these troubled times".

Press release [Samsung]