What you need is an all action camcorder. One that you can clip onto yourself and wear, to take with you wherever you like, not to mention one that can take a knock or two. Enter stage right Swann’s new Freestyle HD video camera. Built to the toughest specification and capable of recording 1080p video with up to 3x digital zoom and still 8MP JPEG images, this is a camcorder you can use practically anywhere, and in any environment.

As well as capable of handling a knock or two, the protective case surrounding the camera is also waterproof up to 20 meters, which means you can use it outdoors without any fear of damaging it. The camera can also be worn either on an item of clothing, or clip to a wide variety of objects, including a bike, car or even a skateboard thanks to its interchangeable brackets.

Other features of the camera include a rechargeable Lithium-ion battery that allows up to 2.5hrs of recording time, a detachable 4cm screen which is used to view your recently taken movies and pictures, and a wireless remote control function.

If you are planning on going on an adventure, the Swann Freestyle HD should be high on your ‘to bring’ list. Recommended retail price of £279.99

For more information please visit Swann’s website: www.swann.com.

[Source: Swann Freestyle HD: The all-action video camera]

Three new XF Fujinon lenses were also unveiled at CES, to go with the new X Mount on the X-Pro1. This new mount is really thin, which should reduce shutter lag, and the lenses have some outstanding apertures: The lenses include an f/2.0 pancake, a 90mm f/2.4 macro lens and a 53mm f/1.4mm lens.

The X-Pro1 is expected to appear in March and the price has yet to be announced.

The Nikon N4, meanwhile, has an intriguing wireless network feature. Connect the D4 to a network using either Wi-Fi or Ethernet and you can use your browser to operate the camera – take photos, change your settings, focus shoot video. You can also see a live feed, although of course how well this works depends on the quality of your connection. One of the most useful features is that you can take photos on your camera and view them on your computer immediately, without having to connect it via USB or place the card in a card reader.

The Nikon D4 is a professional DSLR featuring a 16.2 megapixel CMOS sensor, allowing the shooting of Full HD 1080p and 720p video. Pictures can be saved onto Compact Flash or the new XQD memory card format.

The D4 will be available in February and comes at the professional price of £4799.99

Other cameras that focus heavily on connectivity are Samsung’s range, including the 21X-opticazoom WB850F, the 10X optical zoom ST200F and the 18X optical zoom WB150F, which all offer direct uploads and the ability to sync with Android smartphones for sharing and offloading pictures.

Kodak’s EasyShare M750 also allows for direct uploading to sharing sites and can be paired with BlackBerry, Android and iOS handsets.

Camcorders that also offer Wi-Fi include Canon’s Vixia range and Samsung’s QF20 HD camcorder.

Getting rave reviews at CES was the Canon Powershot G1 X, which is a compact camera but still has a 1.5in, 14.3 megapixel sensor  – that’s up there with many DSLRs. So it should give great picture quality (even in low light conditions) without you having to carry around a large camera. It also offers full manual control, 1080p video, and a 14-bit RAW mode

Available in February for around £700.

Lens giant Sigma also announced its new 180mm f/2.8 macro lens for digital SLRS, which features Sigma’s own Optical Stabilizer technology and a wide aperture to offer narrow depth of field and faster shutter speeds.

Sigma also debuted a new range of Micro Four thirds (for Panasonic and Olympus cameras) and E-Mount lenses (for Sony NEX-series cameras) for mirrorless interchangeable lens compact snappers at CES. There are two new lenses – the 30mm f/2.8 EX DN and the 19mm f/2.8 EX DN. Prices and availability to be announced.

[Source: The best cameras at CES]

Blurb Facebook

Note that last order dates for the services vary depending on products and delivery options, but tend to be around December 12-16. Please check before ordering!

Nero Kwik Media Software

Nero has added a new photo service to its free Kwik Media software. This lets you design and print your own customised calendars, cards and photo books – show off your holiday snaps, print a ‘boast book’ for grandma or send a family calendar to an aunt who lives abroad.

Great for showing off your holiday snaps, creating a gift for the grandparents or sending a family calendar to Mum for her birthday.

With Nero Kwik Media, the user can complete a high-quality, ready-to-order photo book, calendar or greeting card in minutes. Photos can be tagged and filtered using facial recognition so they can found quickly.  Also the pre-configured background themes and layouts can be edited and changed to make your project completely personal to you.

The free Nero Kwik Media software lets you manage, sync and share photos, videos and music across PCs, Android smartphones and tablets.  There are also tools to edit and enhance photos, create slide shows, burn your content to DVD and Blu-ray, and post photos and videos to social networks.

Photo products typically ship within five to 10 business days.

Go to: http://kwikmedia.nero.com/eng for details.

Snapfish

A favourite of many of my mum friends is Snapfish. As well as offering bargain prices for photo printing – especially if you have a big batch to get printed, Snapfish also offers a number of personalised gifts.

A customised calendar or mini photobook, for example, each come in at less than £15. Or how about getting your own image on the stamps you use to send your Christmas cards? They cost from £7.80 for a sheet of 10 x 1^st class stamps.

You can capture your special moments in a personalised photobook – choose books of up to 150 pages – plenty of room for all your family and friends from over the years to be included in a memory book for a partner or best friend. Soft cover book prices start from a stocking filler price of £2.99.

I have just used Snapfish to create a magic mug (the pictures appear as you fill it with a hot drink) for my husband from my little boy. You can squeeze up to 15 pictures onto a mug – a great gift to keep at work. Plus a calendar for Nanny, filled with pictures of her grandchildren – a whole year of lovely images for £14.99.

www.snapfish.co.uk

Blurb Facebook

My favourite pics tend to go up on Facebook, so rather than go back and trawl through the hundreds of images I’ve taken this year, it would actually be easier to take them off my Facebook page.

The people at Blurb have obviously had the same thought because they have just launched a new bookmaking flow that lets Facebook users turn their album photos into professional-quality books.

The Blurb photo book flow for Facebook lets you use your Facebook photo albums, along with their captions and comments into quality photobooks. The resulting  7×7 inch square format books, start at £7.

To create a book, sign into your Facebook account on the Blurb website. Once the albums are selected they will then autoflow into a Blurb book and a personalised cover will be automatically chosen.  Photo comments and captions associated with a picture are also captured.  You can buy or edit your book using Blurb’s online bookmaking tool, Bookify.

The images are automatically optimised to high print quality and there is an option to share and sell your book from the Blurb.com bookstore, as well as to create an ebook for iPad.

Books are delivered in seven to 10 days.

More at www.blurb.com/apps/facebook

Jessops

Jessops has long been a favourite with photographers and it also offers an online service with a wide range of photo gifts.

One of our favourites are the Skins, which can be personalised with your own image for iPhones, iPads and PCs.

If you’re on a budget there are mugs, jigsaw puzzles, mouse mats, gift wrap and cards, snow globes, stationery sets, cushions, key rings and lots more, whether you’re looking for stocking fillers or something a bit more substantial. Keen chefs could even be unwrapping their own personalised apron on Christmas morning.

Until December 6 2011, Jessops is offering 50% off its photo calendars – use the code XMASCAL.

Go to http://photo.jessops.com for more details.

Bonusprint

Trawling through a huge box of old family photos recently, I came across piles of Bonusprint envelopes filled with badly-dressed people with questionable hairstyles – and yes, many of them were me. It’s hardly surprising, as BonusPrint has been around 1979.

However, there’s’ nothing old-fashioned about the service it now offers online. BonusPrint has all kinds of personalisd photo gifts for you to choose from, from Photo Cards and Photo Books to prints, calendars and diaries.

As my small boy has come home from school several times with some other child’s Ben 10 lunchbox, being able to personalise a child’s lunchbox is absolutely inspirational – and at £9.99 it’s pretty much on a par with the prices charged for your average character themed box.

For someone who loves their kitchen, or who has just moved into a new home – how about a personalised glass chopping board or glass placemats?

There are loads more ideas – head to www.bonusprint.co.uk for all the details.

Photobox

Finally, Photobox is another favourite in our household. On our first wedding anniversary, I was struggling to come up with a clever paper-based gift until I logged on to Photobox and found their beautiful collage photo posters – I grouped together some favourite photos of our time together for a truly unique gift.

As well as the usual posters, calendars and photo books, Photobox has also introduced Christmas photo baubles this year – great as gifts for grandparents, or for a baby’s first Christmas, or even as a lasting reminder of a loved one who has passed away.

Also new this year at Photobox are the personalised photo snow globes.

Head to www.photobox.co.uk, where new customers can get 30 per cent off their first order using the FIRST30 code.

[Source: Christmas gifts that are pretty as a picture]

The LUMIX G1 has the look of a classic camera, with its gunmetal grey or raven black body – its chassis is smooth aluminium, which means it is both sturdy and light (weighing 413g). The leather grip on the right hand side, is both practical and stylish in a retro kind of way.

The metal body makes it a sturdy camera, compared with some of the plastic bodied models available from Panasonic, making a steady base on which to fit the interchangeable lenses.
Mind you, with a body-only price of £500, it should feel good.

This is another Micro Four thirds camera, which fills the gap between a digital SLR and a snap-and-go compact, offering plenty of manual control and creativity for the enthusiast photographer.

Features that should delight the enthusiast include plenty of manual controls, a speedy autofocus (Panasonic reckons it’s as fast as 0.9s) and Burst Shooting speed of up to 20fps if you’re trying to capture fast-moving subjects.

A 3in touchscreen is also included, although we reckon keen photographers would rather use the buttons for controls. However, if you’re more of a beginner, the touchscreen may feel familiar to you and Panasonic has included an Intelligent Auto Plus mode just for you to help you get going.

The LCD display can also be used to view your HD video and stills.

There are14 lenses to choose from (including Panasonic’s new pancake lens sized 14-42mm X Zoom lens, part of its new range of ultra-compact electronic power zoom ‘X’ lenses) which should be enough satisfy even the most demanding of photographers, plus a 16MP sensor and low-light sensitivity at up to ISO 12800. There is a 3D lens available as well.

As we’ve mentioned, the body is £499.99 or with the H-FS014042 lens £599.99 – both from mid-December. The body with the H-PS14042 lens will be available from mid January at £729.99.

[Source: Bridging the gap: the Panasonic LUMIX GX1]

The Japanese corporation has just announced the DMC-3D1, which is expected to be on sale in the UK in December and which offers both 3D photo capabilities, along with 3D video recording.

So how does it do it? Well the secret lies in the fact that the camera giant uses a compressed twin lens system that offers folded optics. The two lenses are 25mm wide angle types, which have a 4x zoom, along with a 12-megapixel MOS sensor (which can only be used in 2D mode – for 3D you’ll be working with 8 megapixels). The sensor is noise reducing, allowing for sharper image capture.

When it comes to shooting video, you’ll have at your disposal an 8-megapixel version that can capture Full HD 1080p video at 8fps.

Control can be handled using the 3.5inch Smart Touch screen (the screen doesn’t allow you to view 3D images or video though)

If you’re not that bothered about 3D capabilities (and we’re still as yet not sure how interested the great British buying public is in this) there are other benefits to having two lenses – for instance, you could be shooting video with one lens, while using the other for taking still shots (handy at a wedding or party for capturing candid still portraits). Or you can catch a wide-angle image, while zooming in on a specific detail.

Panasonic is also claiming that battery life will be just as good as that on a standard 2D snapper.

No UK price has been confirmed as yet, although the Panasonic DMC-3D1 will be going on sale in the US for around $500.

[Source: Panasonic’s small wonder – the DMC-3D1]

The new Hero 2 uses a better camera sensor and a twice-as-powerful processor to capture Full HD video and photos at an impressive 11 megapixels.

GoPro also went back to the drawing board with the lens, making it a much more attractive wide-angle offering. It manages 170º at full-width, 127º at medium and 90º in its narrowest field-of-view in video recording. Photos operate at either the wide or medium offerings.

The new lens also uses a much better glass, which – continuing the pattern – is twice as sharp as before.

Video-wise, it’ll pull in an impressive 120fps in WVGA resolution (great for slow-motion), 60fps in a respectable 720p and 30fps in 1080p. The camera can fire 10 11MP photos a second in burst mode, or take a single 11MP photo every half a second in the time-lapse mode.

The Hero2 is all-set for professional videoing, with a 3.5mm external stereo microphone input and full compatibility with the Wi-Fi BacPac and Wi-Fi Remote, so you can control up to 50 GoPro cameras at once, or stream live videos and photos to the web.

GoPro are offering three editions – the Outdoor Edition, Motorsports Edition and the Surf Edition – each for £299.99. The different packs all feature the same camera, but you’ll find different accessories in each with mounts for each activity (unfortunately, you don’t find a racing strip on the motorsports edition).

You’ll get about two and a half hours of videoing from a single charge, which is insulated with a battery warmer to enable longer life in cold temperatures. You can also stick in an SD card for up to 32GB storage.

[Source: Go Pro HD Hero2: An action-packed sequel]

With the ability to take HD video images or 5Mp still photographs, the cp45 is small and light enough to fit in your pocket and carry around like a normal camera, thanks to a weight of 6.7 oz and dimensions that measure 4.9”L x 24”W x .94”H.

3M are targeting this range of mini projectors at a female market, although having seen their potential, there is no reason why other demographics would not be interested. The ability to project a picture or video makes them unique and is more than just a gimmick, making them ideal for more serious business use as well.

You can project your images on virtually any surface you could wish, and it is possible to reach an eye-popping size of 65in, ensuring nobody misses out on seeing the videos or pictures. Whether they like it or not.

Of course, said videos and pictures will take up memory, and the 2GB built in capacity is enough to store 25 minutes of video or 1,000 photos. A MicroSD card slot allows up to 32GB extra memory if needed.

A built-in microphone and speakers are the finishing touch to the projector, and you can record narrations to your pictures or moving images for a running commentary to proceedings. Your friends will love you for it. Possibly.

For more information, visit www.3MCamcorderProjector.com

[Source: The 3M Camcorder Projector: Share your photos and videos with everyone]

Big Lens (and everytime I say that in my head it comes out at Big Len’s) comes from Reallusion, awarding developers of 3D and 2D cinematic tools, so they have a degree of street cred when it comes to manipulating images.

Even if you are unskilled in manipulating Depth-of-Field, you should be able to get on just fine with the Big Lens Smart Focus system, wherein you simply use your finger to focus images. If you’ve ever done masking in Photoshop then you’ll know that this can be fiddly, so the Big Lens interface is quite refreshing to use. You can use basic geometric shapes or a lasso tool to auto-focus your target, or you can choose advanced mode to manually define your focus area. The smart part of the Smart Focus system will then automatically refine your selection with a reasonable degree of precision – something that works impressively well for a mobile phone (as a side note I wonder how long I’ll keep saying that and when my expectations for the computing power of a smartphone will change).

You can adjust the aperture in Big Lens with a single gesture to instantly change the blur level of the out-of-focus area. Big Lens also offers nine unique lenses that allow out-of-focus light points to blur into shapes like hearts and stars which makes for some incredibly cheesy looking photos.

Riding the Hipstamatic and Instagram wave, Big Lens has more than 18 filters to enhance color, increase contrast, or add Lomo effects. If you’ve seen either of those apps before than the effects will be familiar to you – although the degree of control you get over the final image is much greater than what I’m used to seeing in such apps.

For the lazy, the instant focus and blur tools enable you to instantly modify the focus and blur area with your fingers. And for those lacking in confidence the Before & After Preview means can review your images at any time during your make-over process.
The sharing options are also pretty great. As you’d expect you can email and save to the camera roll, but you can also upload to Facebook, Picast and Dropbox straight from the app. No Twitter love for some reason.

The iPhone 4S packs a pretty incredible camera and apps like this that enable you to tweak images on the go is a great addition to any photo-enthusiasts toolkit. It’s not quite DSLR but you can great great images with it. Check it out here

[Source: Big Lens: DSLR effects on your iPhone?]

Don’t get me wrong, I have a creative brain, and there have been many times when I’ve sensed an opportunity to grab the moment and create digital history, it’s just I’ve never had the right type of equipment to do it justice. I’ve gazed enviously at many a photographer, crouching down and aiming the SLR two handed like a pistol at yet another potential masterpiece and wishing it was me. But of course it would never be me; the sheer plethora of dials, buttons and lenses, aperture time, sensor sensitivity, and all round complexity would have me twiddling for hours instead of snapping my money shot.

It seems that those lovely people at Nikon, clearly hearing of my plight, took pity on me and created the perfect solution, the D3100.

Not only does it look the part with a two handed grip body, a choice of high quality lenses and Nikon’s legendary image making prowess, it also has a whole set of options for first time DSLR users who up to now, have just been content using a compact camera. It is in short, the perfect bridge into the SLR world.

There’s a range of automatic settings for example. Live View with Scene Auto Selector selects the mode that matches your shooting situation; Scene Recognition analyzes the scene and optimizing the camera settings immediately before the shutter is released; and the brilliant Guide Mode will take you step-by-step through the process of just how to capture that perfect picture.  Wonderful, but it gets even better.

The D3100 carries a 14.2 megapixel DX format CMOS image sensor, whilst Nikon’s EXPEED 2 processing engine effectively boosts the ISO (100-3200) capability significantly. So there’s a much lower risk of blurred images when you take pictures of your kids running around the room or poor image quality when you’re outside with the family having an evening get together. And talking of family, it’s also got full HD quality video built in too.

You can view your scenes either through Nikon’s viewfinder which now incorporates an 11 point autofocus system, or via the built in 3 inch LCD colour screen.

Now, show me a sunflower and I’ll show you an award winning image. Bring it on.

Nikon 3100  from £430  www.nikon.com

[Source: Nikon D3100: Everything an SLR should be if you’ve never had one.]

So what’s new about the latest model? Well, Ricoh has updated its image processors, and introduced an image stabilisation system to help prevent camera shake. Its autofocus speed should also be faster thanks to Ricoh’s Hybrid AF system. Ricoh claims it has cut focusing time to just 0.2 seconds. There has also been a change in the LED screen – which now uses Sony’s WhiteMagic RGBW technology, so should be brighter than your average screen, while using less power.

There is also an electronic level that is capable of highlighting inclination from the horizontal, and tilting, which is useful if you take a lot of shots of buildings, for instance.

Looks-wise, the Digital IV looks much like its predecessor, which means it’s not exactly beautiful to look at. In fact, some may find its plain boxy black body decidedly unappealing. However, if you’re happy to spend a bit more, you can take advantage of Ricoh’s grip customization service – this means you can choose between a leather, carbon or metal hand grip, which is an unusual feature. Or look out for the limited edition model, which comes in white with a leather camera strap and metal lens cap.

While pundits praised the Digital III a couple of years ago, they were not so keen on its pricetag – at £530 it was pricey for a compact – and the Digital IV is little better – priced at £500. Plus, by the way, an extra cost if you want a camera strap or lens cap.

Image quality was excellent on its predecessor and Ricoh reckons it has got even better thanks to a tweaked optical filter, and new processing engine, even though it sports the same 10 megapixel CCD sensor under the hood.

Get more information at www.ricoh.com/r_dc/gr/gr_digital4/

[Source: Great image quality – but is the GR Digital IV worth the price?]