The writing is on the wall. Big numbers a.k.a higher megapixels and bigger zoom ranges which hitherto helped feed a steady market of upgrades, are no longer enough to sell digital cameras. Add to that the growing threat from the omnipresent cellphone and a tanking world economy, and camera makers are pulling out the stops to come up with products that really click — and more.

Through innovative takes on existing point-and-shoot-camera design and more sophisticated computing power stuffed into those compact cases, cameras have been evolving faster in the past 12 months than in many years before that. Sample these, and brace yourself for the future of digital imaging.

Nikon S1000pj ‘Projector’ Camera

That little 3-in LCD at the back of the camera can get a little crowded when you’re back from a vacation and the entire bunch of family and friends is clamouring to view the images at once.

What do you do? Head over to your LCD TV and plug in the video out from the camera? How about having a camera that projects an image up to 40in square at a resolution of 640x480 pixels/30 frames per second? Yes, you read that right.

Using Nikon’s own pico-projector technology, images and video can be projected right from 5-in all the way to 40-in square on a nearby screen. Nikon’s built-in software allows for themed slideshows, featuring transitions, effects and music to complement the images. A speaker also embedded in the camera will play back audio. To round out the projector experience, a wireless remote and a ‘simple’ projector stand and screen will also be included.

All this comes without any compromises — the camera is compact — it’s just .9-in thick, and is packed with a 12.1 megapixel sensor, a 2.7-in TFT LCD monitor, up to ISO 6400 sensitivity, a wide-angle 5x zoom NIKKOR lens and Nikon’s legendary EXPEED image processing.

Scene Auto Selector mode takes care of the settings so you don’t have to worry about fiddling when shooting, and Skin Softening feature makes skin look clearer — expect that to be used a fair bit! The image projection is only VGA, so don’t expect HD quality, but you can’t beat it for convenience — soon we’ll be admiring our holiday snaps on the seat ahead of us on the plane back!

Availability: September 2009 for approximately $600

Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W1 camera

I can’t imagine a soul who hasn’t, at some point of time in their lives, been excited by 3D. Be it cinema or specially printed photos, the additional third dimension of depth adds a sense of realism and drama that no image, no matter how dramatic it is, can match. But goofy red-and-blue glasses and Viewmaster toys can only go so far, and FujiFilm has finally pulled 3D into the mainstream with the FinePix Real 3D W1.

It looks like a normal digital camera, but it has two lenses and two sensors, which take an image of the foreground and the background of any picture. Think of it as two cameras in a single body. Each 3x zoom lens is equivalent to a 35 - 105mm lens on a 35mm camera, and has its own 10MP CCD sensor.

The “RP” (for “Real Photo”) processor within the camera then blends the two images together to create an “image that jumps out at you”. What’s more, the Real 3D W1 also shoots 3D video. Now, like many compact cameras, the video specs aren’t worth shouting out from the rooftops — 640 x 480 pixels or 320 x 240 pixels at 30fps (frames per second) with stereo sound. Yes, yes, the video is decidedly low-resolution, but it’s in 3D!

And no need for those glasses either — the image is displayed live on the W1’s 2.8-in. 3D LCD screen, achieving the 3D effect without the need for special glasses. You can also upload and view your pictures and movies on the 8-in Real 3D V1 digital picture frame.

Availability: September 2009 for approximately $600, V1 viewer extra

Samsung ‘Tap and Take’ ST500 and ST550 cameras

The Sony Party-shot aims and frames on its own, so you’re not left out of the album

It was one of the most anticipated online viral campaigns in recent times. Samsung’s Tap and Take teaser website promised, “your photo taking experience will never be the same” again. Fairly accurate, since you won’t be stuck behind the camera taking pictures. You see, where others give you one LCD, Samsung gives you two! Designed to make self-portraits easier, the 1.5-in front LCD on the Samsung ST500 and Samsung ST550 enables you to frame yourself (and your group or an object in the background, as appropriate) before apparently tapping it to focus and fire the shutter.

I can think of a number of occasions where I could have done with a feature like this, and with smile shutter — which automatically snaps a photo when it detects a smiling face — it only gets better. The dual-LCD cameras also include a child mode that displays a cartoon animation on the front LCD screen to grab the attention of camera-ignorant babies. For adults, the front LCD will display a preview of the image and show a visual countdown to shutter snap.

Both the Samsung ST500 and Samsung ST550 are 12.2MP cameras with 4.6x optical zoom, haptic feedback, 720p HD video recording and image stabilisation — the only difference between the models is the size of the rear touchscreen: the ST500 has a 3-in display, while the ST550’s is 3.5-in. Apart from being very high resolution displays, these also offer haptic feedback. When you touch a virtual button on the camera’s rear LCD, it gently shakes to confirm you pressed it.

At the time of printing, Samsung had also unveiled the CL65 camera that features another first in a point-and-shoot — three built-in radios: GPS, Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi. Yes, yes, I’m aware most smartphones already come with these features, but this is the first standalone point-and-shoot camera to feature all three.

Availability: September 2009 for $350 (ST550) and $300 (ST500)

Sony TX1 and WX1 with Party Shot

Ever been to a party where you’re the only one not in any of the photos? Unless you’re camera shy, it’s quite likely you were the one doing all the shooting. Well, Sony has something for you. Party-shot is a dome-shaped device that’s designed to be used with a couple of new cameras like the WX1 and the TX1, and includes motors that run on a pair of AA batteries.

Switch it on at a party, and the attached camera’s facial recognition software monitors its surroundings for faces and instructs the Party-shot base that it’s mounted on to move around so it can aim and frame before automatically taking a snap. The basic premise is that you leave the camera and Party-shot running during a party and at the end, you’ll have a memory card full of pictures, some even of you! Initial results are mixed, but very encouraging given that absolutely no effort was involved.

The cameras themselves have plenty of tricks to offer. They come armed with Sony’s 10-megapixel “Exmor R” image sensor that has better sensitivity than previous sensors (so it works better in low-light conditions), and they also feature Sony’s “Sweep Panorama” feature that allows for super-wide 224-degree (horizontal) or 154-degree (vertical) panorama photos in one easy press-and-sweep motion.

Availability: September-October 2009 for $380 (TX1) and $350 (WX1) and $157 (Party Shot)

Up Next

With most companies hesitantly admitting that squeezing in any more resolution has become meaningless, and instead focusing on improving colour accuracy and low-light performance, what does the future hold for point and shoots, and photography at large?

One innovation deals with freezing motion to remove motion blur — the fuzzy impressions created by objects moving during the exposure. Researchers at MIT have come up with a novel solution — moving the camera quickly to the left before gradually coming to a halt and then accelerating in the opposite direction. This ensures that, regardless of its speed, any object moving to either the left or the right is perfectly captured by the camera for a fraction of the exposure. What happens is that the object is out of focus at other times during the exposure, and so, in the final photograph, all objects appear as a blurry mess. Crucially, though, all objects — whether moving or static during the exposure — are blurred to the same degree, so the final image can be “de-blurred” quickly and easily.

Another research is focusing on the problem of glare, which ruins more photos than it benefits. Now a team at Cambridge, Massachusetts, has found a way to solve this problem. They’ve designed a mask that fits between a camera’s lens and image sensor, peppered with rows of small holes that each act like a pinhole camera. Each captures a tiny circular chunk of the camera lens’s output and focuses it on the sensor, like a laser beam. Software can then fill these bright spots in using colour from the rest of the pinhole, producing a glare-free image.

Then there’s the software side of things, where software is being used to make you prettier. The system uses a set of basic rules about what makes a face attractive, derived by asking volunteers to rate the attractiveness of around 200 photographed faces. The software then alters faces to match the facial proportions and distances between features that were agreed to be attractive. The effect is subtle enough that people are still recognisable as themselves, but somehow prettier.