I guess just having their own digital camera isn’t enough to thrill kids these days, so Digital Blue’s U-Turn camera comes with a ‘morph’ feature that will distort the images with one of 12 preset effects including swirls and the technological breakthrough known as the stretchy head. (I heard Canon’s still struggling with that one.) The U-Turn’s also got a twisting lens allowing kids to snap self shots with the the 2.4-inch LCD display, and enough built-in memory to store a whopping 80 photos. Expect it to hit store shelves sometime this Spring for a mere $49.99.
It’s a cruel joke, but Hershey has partnered with Jazwares to develop a frustratingly inedible line of consumer electronics, starting with this chocolatey looking but not chocolatey tasting USB drive. Also on the menu are other things that you tend to find in Halloween grab bags but nowhere else, like Krackle and Mr. Goodbar. These drives are available in capacities from 1 gig to 4 gig, for $15 – $30.
What makes even less sense are plush (yes, plush) Jolly Rancher speakers, or a digital camera shaped like a Hershey Kiss. I can’t even imagine how that might work, but thankfully I don’t have to, since we’ve got a rendering of it right here:
Awesome, that’s just awesome. It’ll be $25. As for availability on all of this stuff, I have no idea, but I’m hoping for as long from now as possible.
The whole point behind LEGOs LEGO bricks is that you can build stuff out of them, right? You can take them apart, put them together, and turn pirate ships into space ships. So I’m not sure why LEGO (in cooperation with Digital Blue) is putting out a line of electronics that are made out of non-deconstructable LEGO bricks.
This summer, you’ll be able to pay $20 – $60 for LEGO-style radios, MP3 players, and digital cameras. I can’t help but think how much cooler it would be if you could take these apart and rebuild them… Like, add more storage blocks, different lens blocks, that kind of thing. Sorta like BUG for kids! Oh well, I suppose you can still add more LEGOs LEGO bricks onto this stuff and build things that way, it’s just not quite as fun.
Besides jumping on the netbook bandwagon, at their press conference on Wednesday Sony announced that they’d be entering the cheap and easy-to-use hi-def web video camcorder market with their new ‘Webbie’ cameras. Both models capture high-def MPEG4 video or 5 megapixel photos and come with “PMB portable software” making it easy to upload your shots or clips to online sharing services like YouTube. The MHS-PM1 Webbie pictured above (available in April for about $170) has a vertically oriented body and a rotating swivel lens making it easy to take self shots, while the MHS-CM1 pictured below (about $200 available now) has a more traditional camcorder body with a 5x optical zoom and a 2.5-inch swivel LCD screen. And both are available in your choice of orange, eggplant or silver color schemes.
At their press conference this morning, Casio showed off some new additions to their line of high speed digital cameras. The flagship model is still the EX-F1, a beefy prosumer camera that can take stills at 60 frames per second and video at up to 1200 frames per second… We posted some sample movies when we covered it back in April. The new Exilim models that Casio released today feature a comparable high speed engine capable of 30 fps burst shooting for stills and up to 1000 fps for movies, in a much more compact size. Normal pictures are captured at 9 mpx, burst mode cuts that down to 6 mpx, and it’ll also take standard video in 720p.
Features include the ability to extract the perfect frame from long high fps bursts, and somehow the camera is able to combine multiple blurry shots in a burst into a single image that’s in focus. There’s also a novelty mode that will take a video of you moving, clip you out of the background, and transpose you onto a different background, which is something that you’ve been able to do with webcams for years. Basically, if you’re going to buy one of these, you’ll do it for the high speed, and that’s a pretty good reason if you ask me. Look for these in April for $400 with a 5x optical zoom and 2.7″ LCD, or $350 for a 3x optical zoom and 2.5″ LCD.
It’s no secret that the iPhone’s built-in digital camera isn’t its strongest selling point. And while using some sort of lens attachment might make it a bit more useful, they usually require an extra housing for mounting the lens, which adds bulk to the phone. But USBfever is now selling a trio of add-on lenses for the iPhone (or any compact camera-equipped device like the DSi) that attach with a simple magnetic ring. Of course you have to be willing to attach the magnetic mounting ring to your iPhone with the included self-adhesive ring, but when you’re not using the lenses it means your phone is as sleek as the day you took it out of the box.
The magnetic mount lens kits are available from USBfever for just $16.99, and come with either a wide-angle lens, a 2X telephoto lens or a fish-eye lens which are all made from actual glass and aluminum.
Unless you have an Eye-Fi card, getting pics from your camera onto your computer is more or less a pain that generally involves a cable. Cables, we know, are evil because you never have them when you need them, and when you don’t need them, they’re behind your desk having sex with each other and making cute little baby cable tangles of annoyingness. So having a cable that stays right with your camera and actually serves a purpose is a good idea, right? Sure it is!
This cable has a regular USB connector on one end and a mini connector on the other end, and is strong enough to swing your camera around with. You can find it on Amazon for only $8, along with an inexplicable picture of a record player.
Sooo, remember the Tomy Xiao TIP-521 digital camera with a built-in Zink printer that we posted about last month? It’s now available in Japan, and here’s how they’re trying to convince you to buy one:
Um, thanks. That makes it look totally appealing. If this commercial somehow resonates with you, you can pick a Xiao up for about $350 when it hits the states in Q2 next year.
It doesn’t quite have that magical exciting warm and fuzzy spur of the moment cheap plastic instant gratification feeling that traditional polaroids do, but the Tomy Xiao TIP-521 digital camera does provide the same basic functionality: immediate physical access to pictures. It does this with a tiny built-in Zink printer, which uses special pieces of composite paper embedded with heat activated yellow, magenta and cyan dye crystals to make 2″ x 3″ borderless prints with sticky backs. There are no ink cartridges to replace, you just add more paper, at about $1 a sheet.
With a printer packed inside the camera, there isn’t much room left over for optics (the case is pretty bulky looking as it is) so I wouldn’t expect wonders from the 39mm equivalent fixed focal length lens and 5mp image sensor. For that matter, I wouldn’t expect wonders from the printer, either. But I would expect the camera to print out something a mere 60 seconds after you snap the picture, which is no small feat in of itself.
The Tomy Xiao TIP-521 will be available in Japan on November 28 for about $350.
Related Tags: Digital Cameras, Toys
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