The general consensus at the time was that it was probably, maybe, possibly a good idea in the long run, but a gimmick as it stood. We reckoned it was your typical early-adopter-only product.

Well, I’m eating our collective words now that I’ve spent the weekend playing with one.

Now I’m not one to be lured by gadgets for gadgets’ sake – in fact I hate them. But I like this one. I like it a lot. And I like it for four reasons:

1. It works.

It may be a first-generation design, but it does exactly what it says. And the projector stuffed into its innards doesn’t massively affect normal picture-taking abilities aside from making it a bit chunkier than your average modern compact. In fact, most of the time you can forget that it has a projector in it at all.

2. The first time you see your photos magically appear on the nearest wall, you’ll giggle.

And the second time, and the third. It’s just great, and absolutely everyone I’ve showed it to makes the same child-like, gurgly happy noises and immediately wants to play.

3. It’s an idea with a future.

As left-field as the whole concept initially sounds, as soon as the giggle-effect has subsided you start thinking about other things to do with it. The first one that sprang to my mind was using the camera as a movie projector. And lo! As with any compact these days you can shoot movies on the S1000pj, but you can then immediately project them, which induces even more silly giggly fun. Disappointingly, it doesn’t have a video input so you can’t feed, say, a standalone camcorder or netbook into it. But it probably wouldn’t take much to add that input to the next model.

4. The integration and pricing make it a disruptive technology.

How many people do you know who might go out and pay £400 for a dedicated pocket projector? I’d hazard a guess that would be none. How many people do you know who might go out and pay £400 for a new camera? Probably at least a few. With the S1000pj you’re not paying several hundred quid for a niche gizmo with no obvious purpose, you’re paying it for the latest Nikon camera. You carry it around with you because it’s a camera. Everyone wants a camera: it’s not an expensive solution looking for a problem, unlike a dedicated pocket video projector. The projector adds roughly £150 to the price – there’s a fair minority who’ll pay that for a cool feature in their new toy, even if they think they probably won’t use it all that often. Hence, Nikon is likely to shift more pocket projectors into the market than the pocket-projector manufacturers themselves.

The downsides

So the light output is only 10 lumens – compared to several thousand for a standard desktop projector, or 50 for the likes of the recent generation of pico-projectors like the Dell M109S. But that 10 lumens is brighter than it sounds*. In a worst-case test scenario, projecting onto a whiteboard right next to the windows in the PC Pro office, we managed to project an image with about a 10in diagonal; move the camera any further back than that and it gets too dim to be useful. Put it in a darkened room, though, and you’ll manage an image size of a couple of feet no problem at all. It looks great.

Battery life is a bit of an issue, but again less than you might initially think. It’ll last a maximum of an hour in projector mode, and that’s assuming the battery’s fully charged, which a camera kept in your pocket usually isn’t. But you’ll rarely want to use the projector for more than twenty minutes at a stretch unless you’ve a particular yearning to revisit the 1970s and bore your audience into an early grave with your holiday slideshow.

So let’s say in five years’ time battery life has increased two-fold and the efficiency of LEDs has done the same, which I’d say is a reasonable expectation. That gives you a four-fold increase in brightness, or a four-fold increase in battery life for the same brightness. And four hours of projection time is perfect for films.

Futurology is a mug’s game, but I’d go so far as to say there’s an even chance of integrated projectors becoming a standard tick-list feature on compact cameras. And once they make their way into lots of cameras, the prices come down and people start wanting them, they’ll pop up in laptops and netbooks too. And all thanks to the off-the-wall punt that Nikon is taking with the S1000pj.

Plenty of things might derail that prediction of course, not least the fact that your average branch of Jessops doesn’t have too many darkened rooms, making the projector a tricky thing to demonstrate. But the S1000pj is the first true hardware innovation I’ve seen in a long time that really looks like it has legs.

UPDATE:

So here’s an image I put together that best represents how things look in a darkened room. In fact in this case a more or less totally dark living room at about 10 o’clock last night. This picture is two exposures blended together so that you can see both camera and projected image. It’s not a mock-up, it’s the actual image that the camera was projecting in that actual position, I just took a long exposure and  shorter exposure without moving anything and blended them to get the best feel of how it actually looks. For scale, those orange and green things at the bottom of the shot are the cushions at either end of my sofa:

Not too bad, eh? That’s an image of a good four feet diagonal. Again, remember this was more or less total darkness so you’re seeing the best it’ll do, but even so it’s impressive if you ask me.

*Human response to brightness is roughly logarithmic rather than linear, in other words the brighter a light is the less sensitive we are to it. So a 100-lumen projector only appears about twice as bright as a 10-lumen one.

Those with photographic fathers are spoilt for choice: there are superb choices available no matter what you’re looking for, whether it’s a compact, DLSR or video camera.

Take the Canon Digital Ixus 95 IS, for instance. It may cost £172, but for that money you’re getting Labs-winning quality that is, according to photography expert David Fearon, “the best compact camera for under £200″ and includes unbeatable picture quality alongside a broad range of features. If you’ve got the cash, then you evidently can’t go wrong with the Canon.

If your budget is a bit tighter, though, the A List alternative is almost as good. The Nikon Coolpix S220 was a runner-up in the same Labs test, winning praise for its flawless outdoor quality and  impressive detail. It’s also only £122 so, if you’re looking for a bargain camera that doesn’t skimp on quality, this is worth investigating.

If you’ve got more cash to splash, though, a DLSR could be the perfect gift for the serious snapper. Our favourite is the Nikon D90, which packs in fantastic image quality, a huge range of features and a stunning lens; it’s so good that it makes the £730 asking price feel like a bargain.

If you’d like to buy your favourite parent a DLSR on a budget, though, the Olympus E-420 is a capable camera that costs relatively little – £260, to be exact. It’s got excellent image quality and an impressive range of features but, if you’re buying on a budget, won’t break the bank.

Should your father be into the moving rather than static image, our favourite pair of digital video cameras will delight your dad. The HDC-SD100 is Panasonic’s first CMOS camera and the results are superb, with exemplary image quality and a wide range of features costing just £443, and the Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000 is a pocket-sized package that crams high-quality video capture into a 311g package.

Satnav systems are sure to be popular choices for Father’s Day, so it pays to get the best one – and you can’t get better than the PC Pro recommended TomTom Go 730 or the new 740, which includes updated maps and features. This £199 GPS includes European maps and the IQ Routes system, which calculates routes from traffic speed rather than speed limits. It’s the best navigator around and, if your father is is a frequent traveller, indispensable.

Those buying on a budget, meanwhile, should try the TomTom One, which costs only £87 but offers clear, straightforward guidance at a knock-down price – ideal if your father doesn’t need the myriad extra features included with more expensive models.

Netbooks have proved hugely popular over the last 18 months, so one of these mini-laptops could be the perfect gift this Sunday. If you’re looking to splash out, Samsung models are the ones to pick: the smaller NC10 is the ideal mixture of value for money and fantastic build quality, while the NC20 is more expensive but closer to a real laptop thanks to its 12in screen and superb keyboard.

Musical parents are sure to be pleased with a new mp3 player, but make sure your gift is on-song rather than off-key. Our favourite is the £147 Cowon S9, which offers a sharp, vivid OLED screen and fantastic sound quality, turning a dull commute into a multimedia extravaganza. And, if your dad is an Apple fan, the iPod Nano is your best bet: a gorgeous and intelligent product that, at £123 for 16GB, won’t break the bank.

Audiophiles may also want some top-quality headphones to go with their new kit. If that’s the case, then your dad’ll be pleased with anything from Sennheiser, who normally provide fantastic aural experiences. If we had to pick one pair, though, we’d go for the IE8s: at £157, they cost more than the average mp3 player, but they provide the ultimate in sound quality – it doesn’t get any better than these.

And, finally, those who are a little more flush with cash may want to buy something a little more extravagant. Take a look at the Dell XPS One 24, which is one of the most stylish all-in-one PCs on the market today, or the stunning Sony VAIO VGN-Z31VN/X, which is simply the best ultraportable around, even if it does cost £1,781. And, if you’ve got a dad into gaming, the Chillblast Fusion Spitfire is our favourite pixel-pushing monster – and it’ll set you back £1,029.

No matter what technology your dad’s into, then, there’s sure to be something he’ll love: whether it’s a digital camera, satnav system, netbook or mp3 player, these products are the best in their respective classes – so, if you haven’t already, get buying while you still have time to spare.

]]> http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/06/18/the-pc-pro-fathers-day-gift-guide/feed/ 2 http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2008/06/03/just-in-nikon-capture-nx2/ http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2008/06/03/just-in-nikon-capture-nx2/#comments Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:56:22 +0000 David Fearon http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/?p=1152 Being a Canon man I’ve never been tempted by Capture NX before, but the press launch last week convinced me I should give it a whirl. Despite the name, it’s a proper digital photography workflow package with tagging and powerful processing tools, and the new version is being aimed more at the mainstream than professionals.

Unfortunately though, I’ll never use it, for one simple reason.

The interface is slick and – although it’s been prone to the odd out-of-memory crash which I’m sure will be fixed by the time it’s available to buy – has some neat tricks like highlight and shadow protection, excellent auto-selection tools and a damn good spot-healing brush. For more on that, look out for a full review later this week.

But the reason I’ll never use it in anger is the fact that it doesn’t support RAW files other than Nikon’s own. So I can’t use it with my thousands of Canon shots. To be fair, Canon is guilty of the same thing with its Digital Photo Professional (DPP) application, but the difference is DPP comes free with its digital SLRs. Capture NX2, on the other hand, will be retailing at around £120.

Nikon itself clearly wasn’t awfully comfortable in answering my question about why it won’t support other RAW formats. The official response was limited to pointing out it works fine with JPEG and TIFF image files, so people can use it with shots taken on other cameras if they convert them first. But that’s hardly the point and renders the majority of the most useful tools like the highlight protection useless, or at least far less effective. NX2 doesn’t even support Adobe’s halfway house, the DNG (digital negative) format.

Digital SLR manufacturers have a powerful weapon in preventing brand defection. Most photography enthusiasts have a hefty investment in lenses and accessories that don’t fit other makes of camera. A Nikon user will tend to stay that way: the same applies to Canon accolytes.

But that logic – which Nikon seems to be applying to NX2 – doesn’t always make sense. Supporting other file formats will help people come to NX2, and Nikon will make money on the sale of the software; not supporting them won’t somehow prevent defection to Canon. If someone’s already made the decision to abandon five grand’s worth of hardware, a piece of software costing a hundred quid is neither here nor there. It’s useless as a lock-in device.

Other sectors of the software industry saw the logic of this years ago and pretty much everyone benefitted. If Nikon – as it claims – wants its software to be a worthwhile standalone tool rather than an accessory for Nikon cameras, it needs to do the same.