Byline: Mikkel Aaland; John B. Carnett; Suzanne Kantra Kirschner; Jackson M. Lynch; Steve Morgenstern
KODAK EASYSHARE-ONE
SHARE YOUR SHOTS WITH BUILT-IN WI-FI
Little by little, the digital camera is untethering itself from the PC. First there was printing. Then there was in-camera editing, including cropping, red-eye removal and exposure compensation. Now, with Kodak's EasyShare-one, the last piece falls into place: wireless sharing straight from the cam.
Creating a camera that can take a Wi-Fi card doesn't seem tricky. Kodak's challenge was making sure users could effortlessly get online; you can add settings for any hotspot or connect setup-free to T-Mobile hotspots around the world. The camera also needed a user interface that makes it easy to e-mail photos, create albums and slide shows, and upload shots to the Kodak EasyShare Gallery site. And it can wirelessly transfer photos to your PC and printer.
Wi-Fi burns through the batteries, so the camera's wireless connection times out after two minutes of inactivity, and the beautiful three-inch touchscreen dims after a minute. Just in case, a second battery is in the box. 4MP; f2.8-4.8 3x optical zoom (36mm-108mm, 35mm equivalent); $600; kodak.com
CANON XL H1
PRO-QUALITY HIGH-DEF FILMMAKING FOR AMATEURS Somewhere between the major television networks' $40,000 professional high-definition cameras and consumers' $3,500 HD camcorders are the independent filmmakers and small TV stations with the needs of the pros but not the budget. That's where Canon's XL H1 fits in, the first cam under $10,000 to deliver full manual control, 24-frame-per-second capture (to mimic analog film, the gold standard), and industry-standard time coding and connectors for easy integration into small TV stations' existing production equipment. 20x optical zoom lens included; $9,000; canonusa.com
JVC EVERIO G
HOURS OF VIDEO WITHOUT TAPE The JVC Everio G shakes the short recording time and so-so picture quality that dogged earlier tapeless camcorders. It records seven hours of DVD-quality MPEG-2 video (or longer at lower quality) straight onto a built-in 30-gigabyte hard drive. Offload video to your PC and burn it to DVD, no conversion required. 2.6 x 2.8 x 4.3 inches; 0.71 pound; $1,000; jvc.com
CANON POWERSHOT SD550 DIGITAL ELPH
THE BEST POCKET SHOOTER Never mind the business-card size of Canon's SD550--check out its stunning images. The SD550 sports a powerful processor, borrowed from Canon's digital SLRs, that shoots quicker, processes images faster, and reproduces truer colors than ever before. Add in a 2.5-inch LCD, and it's the ideal go-everywhere camera. 7.1MP; 2.2 x 3.5 x 1.1 inches; f2.8-4.9 3x optical zoom (37mm-111mm, 35mm equivalent); 60fps video; $500; canonusa.com
HP PHOTOSMART 475 GOGO
A PORTABLE PRINTER THAT STORES ITS OWN IMAGES The HP 475 is the first portable printer with built-in storage. Just slip in any memory card or attach your digital camera via USB, and you can empty up to 1,000 images directly onto its 1.5-gigabyte hard drive. Use the built-in 2.5-inch LCD to crop, remove red eye, and enhance your photos, then crank out prints of either 4x6 inches or--another portable first--5x7. $280 (optional rechargeable battery, $80); hp.com
SONY CYBER-SHOT DSC-R1
GET BETTER SHOTS FROM A BIGGER SENSOR The larger a camera's sensor, the more detailed its shots and the more information it relays to the LCD viewfinder. The R1's 26-millimeter CMOS sensor is up to 12 times the size of the one in a typical point-and-shoot. It's the first time a large-format sensor has been used outside of a digital SLR. And since SLRs only use optical viewfinders, the R1 is the sole large-format sensor camera to sport an LCD viewfinder. f2.4-4.8 5x optical zoom (24mm-120mm, 35mm equivalent); 10.3MP; $1,000; sonystyle.com
ADOBE PREMIERE ELEMENTS 2.0
VIDEO FROM ANY SOURCE STRAIGHT TO EDIT If you use a DVD camcorder, cellphone or digital camera to record video, you typically have to jump through hoops to convert it into a format that most DVD-editing software will accept. That entails at least one separate conversion tool and the navigation of an alphabet soup of settings: DivX? MPEG-2? What resolution? What frame rate? Adobe's Premiere Elements 2.0 seamlessly imports and integrates footage from any source, so you can burn a DVD without worrying about formats. And it accepts video over the more ubiquitous USB as well as over Firewire. $100; adobe.com
SONY HDR-HC1 HANDYCAM
HIGH-DEF RECORDING IN YOUR PALM You won't look like a film-school refugee while toting the 1.4-pound HDR-HC1, which captures full 1080i HDTV-resolution video with a body that's about one third the size of its rivals. It uses readily available MiniDV tapes for HD capture, enabling both high-def and standard-def playback straight from the camcorder. 2.7-inch widescreen display; 10x optical zoom; $2,000; sonystyle.com
