Chicago (IL) – Nikon today announced a new twist for compact digital cameras. The company’s new Coolpix S1000pj integrates a tiny projector that can display slideshows or videos with a size of up to 40 inches.
It’s a bit tough to market new digital cameras simply with more resolution and new image stabilization features these days. Unusual features typically capture attention and that is certainly what Nikon does today. The company is first to announce a compact digital snapshot camera that integrates an “ultra-small” built-in projector.
Before you get too excited over what you could do with such a device, foremost showing your vacation pictures or videos to your family at home right from the camera, or annoying a crowd in a sports bar, keep in mind that this is a small camera that does not provide enough power to be able to compete with typical home projectors. The output is limited to a brightness of 10 lumens, which is far less than the 1000+ lumens even entry level home projectors deliver today.
However, Nikon claims the projector is powerful enough to display images with a size from 5 to 40 inches with a resolution of what Nikon says is “VGA equivalent”, which we would guess means 640 x 480 pixels. The projector range is 10 inches to 6 feet. The advantage of this small projector is that it consumes far less power than the 200+ watt full-size projectors: Nikon claims a full battery is good for a 1 hour slideshow.
Other features of the camera include a 12.1 megapixel image resolution, ISO settings up to 6400, and the firm’s Best Shot Selector, which takes 10 shots every time the shutter is pressed and automatically saves the best one. There is an optical 5x zoom as well.
The camera will be available next month for about $430.
We are not quite sure if this is really a feature we really need. We won’t complain about thoughts how to make cameras more interesting, but we are still waiting for those high-dynamic range (HDR) cameras the industry has been promising for years.
