CES 2008

Though not nearly as big as CES, the PMA trade show is coming to Las Vegas in three weeks. Yes, less than a month after covering CES, our editors will bravely return to Sin City to report on some of the biggest names in digital photography. That didn't stop camera and camcorder makers from revealing plenty of new products last week, though; major companies from Samsung to Sony revealed their newest digital imaging products at the show.

Sony made one of the biggest camera announcements at the show, unveiling the Alpha A200 digital SLR. This new 10-megapixel model stands to face other intro-level SLRs like the Canon EOS Rebel XTi and the Nikon D40x. Casio also made a splash with the Exilim Pro EX-F1, an EVF camera the company claims can shoot 60 still images per second, or record video at a whopping 1,200 frames per second. I'll believe it when it's under our skeptical eyes in the lab. On the snapshot side of cameras, Kodak and Samsung both announced a handful of inexpensive point-and-shoots, and Kodak revealed the ESP-3 combination photo printer/document printer/scanner.

For camcorders, flash memory was the name of the game this year as Canon, Sony, and Panasonic all announced new, high-end SSD and card-based camcorders. Panasonic unveiled several new SD card camcorders, Canon combined large amounts of flash memory with SD/SDHC card slots, and Sony added an 8GB flash drive to a DVD camcorder, giving users plenty of options for recording and transferring footage. Besides flash memory, camcorder manufacturers revealed new cameras that used more conventional media, like miniDV, DVD, and hard drives. Though it didn't reveal any new high-def, flash memory models, JVC expanded its Everio line of hard drive camcorders with several slimmer, more colorful models as well.

Those are the big headlines from CES, but don't think that's all the new camera/camcorder news of the season. Keep an eye on Crave at the end of the month for our coverage of PMA 2008.

Celestron Handheld Digital Microscope

(Credit: Celestron)

They're not the highest tech at the show, nor are they the easiest to find--I tripped over a couple in the furthest reaches of the exhibits--but I find myself intrigued by a couple of handheld digital microscopes I encountered while killing time before a meeting. These gadgets connect to your system via USB and allow you to capture megazoomed (albeit not terribly high-resolution) closeups of life's minutiae.

The first, from well-known Celestron, seems like it'd be a great gift for the child prodigies in your life. Reasonably priced at $139.95, the Handheld Digital Microscope can record 640x480 snapshots or 15 or 30 frames per second (fps) video at 20x or 400x magnification. It's about five inches high with an LED light. Although the company declares "It's not a toy!"; it's also not really a pro tool--the lenses are plastic, after all.

Celestron does offer a slightly better quality consumer LCD Digital Microscope, which will ship in February. It's not handheld, but a fixed, traditional microscope design. It's got a nice, large 3.5-inch LCD display and a built-in 2-megapixel digital camera. It supports 4x, 10x, and 40x optical magnification levels. At $299.99, it's also pricier.

Big C, the other company showing its microscopic wares, offers the irresistibly named Dito-Lite handheld models. They're even more expensive--the plastic-shelled AM413T runs $349, and its new-for-the-show, metal-hulled sibling AM413M costs $595--but they're also a bit more powerful. They have built-in LED lights, capture 1.3-megapixel images, 10x to 50x (continuous) or 200x zoom, can capture 15 or 30 fps video, and support add-ons like a stand and calibrator.