Fujifilm wasn’t the only manufacturer to release a new camera today. Nikon has also announced two products, a thin and sleek camera with a built-in projector, dubbed Coolpix S1100pj as well as another new member to the Coolpix family, the S5100.
Mentioning that a digital camera has business features will only confuse most people. For the most part, you have no reason at all to bring a digital camera to a meeting, unless you’ve taken it along to snap some pictures of your partners when you’re done. The Nikon Coolpix S1100pj begs to disagree. The 14-megapixel camera, a follow-up model for the S1000pj released last year, has a front-mounted projector with a brightness rating of 14 lumens.
“As the first to introduce a built‐in projector in a compact digital camera, our consumers have come to expect innovation from Nikon’s COOLPIX S‐Series,” said Bo Kajiwara, director of marketing, Nikon Inc. “In order to meet the evolving needs of our consumers, we have further advanced our award‐winning technology, while delivering the high performance and shooting and sharing versatility they have come to trust.”
According to the manufacturing company, the projector is powerful enough to project image slideshows and videos (stored on its SD/SDHC memory card) as well as presentations of up to 47 inches, through a USB connection, at distances of up to 7 feet. For a dual-capability device that manages to also be thin and light, this sounds pretty good indeed. As mentioned in the previous phrase, the S1100pj includes a USB port that allows the owner to turn the built-in projector of the camera into a LCD projector for computers. USB also allows the user to transfer files from the camera, obviously.
Additional features for the office include a built-in slide show function that allows the user to include music with photos and one-touch HD 720p movie recording with easy projection playback. Of course, while these features would prove quite useful in an office environment, they are just as nice to have at home.
The display the S1100pj equips is a 3-inch 460,000 dot touch LCD one with clear Color Display. Because of the added Paint function, users can write or draw on projected images in real time. On top of all that Retouch functions allow users to add stamps for an interesting effect as well as rate their favorite photos and make them easier to find at a later time. The camera’s Retouch Meno includes several interesting functions such as Soft, Selective Colors, Cross Screen, Fisheye Effect, Miniature Effect and Makeup effect.
What else does the camera have to offer? A 5x Wide-Angle Optical Zoom Nikkor glass lens (28‐ 140mm), 5-way VR Image Stabilization System with ISO settings up to 6400 (which results in quite sharp, crisp images even in low light conditions), 17 scene modes, Subject Tracking, Easy Auto Mode and Nikon’s own Smart Portrait System. The Nikon Coolpix S1100pj could be quite a colorful addition to your lineup of gadgets as its being offered in black, violet, green and silver. The camera will start selling during September this year for an estimated price of $349.95.
So now that we’ve talked about the S1100pj, let’s see what its ‘little brother’, the S5100 has to offer. Nikon has designed this camera to offer speedy performance, a nice, stylish design as well as simplicity of use. You know, the type of camera for people who don’t want to be bothered with learning how a device works, but simply get high quality photographs anywhere,
anytime, doing anything. Because it is meant to appeal to the kind of person mentioned previously, the Nikon Coolpix S5100 has a fast start-up time, a short shutter-release time as well as one-touch HD (720p) movie recording at 30 frames per second. Several smart technologies have been used to ensure that the user can capture awesome night time as well as low-light shots with as little blur and noise as possible. For instance, the camera includes image processing which leads to less noise at high sensitivities, motion detection function and a lens-shift vibration function.
Moving on to the technical part, the camera can shoot photos at 12.2 megapixel resolution and sports a 2.7 inch LCD display. It offers 5x optical zoom and a 4-way VR Image stabilization system with ISO settings to 3200 at full resolution. A tripod detection function, will, as its name suggests, detect handheld or tripod shooting and automatically adjust by selecting the ideal settings (exposure, ISO sensitivity and shutter speed). This will result in reduced blur.
Other features include: 18 scene modes, Scene Auto Selector, Subject Tracking and the Nikon Smart Portrait System. So what you’re getting, for short, is a smart little camera that will for the most part take care of itself while allowing you to shoot crisp, clear images. The S5100 will start selling in October this year and go for about $179.95. Just like in the case of the Coolpix S1100pj, you’ll get to choose your color for the S5100 too, out of black, pink, purple and blue. As Engadget point out, leaked information regarding both of these cameras hit the Internet a while back. Which basically means that we’ll probably be hearing about the DSLR Nikon has in store for us quite soon.
