Getting into Exotic Digital Camera Features

After automobile manufacturers introduced heated seats and the Global Positioning System (GPS) for their luxury cars, everyone wanted them, so the designers had to come up with other high-end features, like holographic rearview mirrors and rocket-powered ejection seats. Digital camera vendors are in a similar race to develop features that are similarly too-cool-for-school. (Believe it or not, some high-end cameras can use GPS to record the camera's current geographical location when each picture is taken!) Here are some features that are exotic now but probably won't be exotic by the time you purchase your next camera:

• Sound-activated self-timers: Some new cameras can be triggered by sound. Just set the audio sensitivity, go get in the picture yourself, and shout, "Cheese!" No more racing to beat the self-timer or ending up with a photo showing you holding your camera's infrared (IR) remote control.

• Ultra-fast shutter speeds: At least one camera has a shutter speed of 1/16,000 of a second. You might need a supernova as your illumination source, but you can stop the fastest action with this baby.

• Image stabilizers: Several cameras offer internal stabilization that cancels the effects of shaky hands or the blur induced by the high magnification of a telephoto lens. Some cameras automatically move the sensor in time with your camera jiggles.

• Night-shot capabilities: Digital camera sensors are inherently sensitive to IR illumination, so vendors like Sony provide enhanced night photography capabilities by taking advantage of this sensitivity.

• Infrared photography: Many cameras have a device called a hot mirror to filter out infrared light but allow flipping this filter out of the way or leaving enough remaining IR sensitivity to allow you to take interesting weird-tonal infrared pictures.

• Predictive focus: Slow autofocus is the bane of digital cameras, and some high-end models are now smart enough to figure out where focus should be set ahead of time when you're photographing subjects for which the focus changes rapidly.

• Enhanced movies: Traditionally, digital cameras have been able to shoot only short video clips (perhaps 15–30 seconds) at abysmal resolutions (some no better than 320 x 240 pixels) and not necessarily with sound. That's changing with the latest crop. Some recent digital cameras are virtual camcorders, letting you grab VHS-quality clips for as long as your digital memory card holds out. Make sure that your card is a capacious one, because digital video can eat up a megabyte a second!

• Unlimited burst mode: Some advanced digital cameras use a technique called pipelining to keep the images flowing onto the memory card at high speed (when used with a high-speed card). Think how well you can analyze your golf swing with a camera like this!

• Panorama photography: A growing number of digital cameras have cool panorama capabilities that make it easy to shoot a series of pictures that can be automatically stitched together in your computer.

• Two-in-one shot: Don't have a tripod but want to get in the photo yourself? Some cameras let you take a picture of the background, have someone else take a picture of you, and then merge the two shots automatically.

• Underwater photography: Now, anyone with a digital camera and an inexpensive underwater housing can take pictures in, around, and under the sea. Furthermore, you get to see exactly what you shot right away, so you can jump back in and do it over until you get it right.

• Time-lapse photography: Thirty or forty years ago, the big thing was time-lapse photos of flowers opening and paint drying. Today, most every television show includes a sunset-to-sunrise time-lapse sequence to demonstrate that time marches on. Whether you have some flowers you want to watch opening or you need to document a construction project, digital cameras with time-lapse capabilities can snap off a picture every few seconds or every few hours, depending on how you set them. This is a great feature that's fun to play with.