Hottest New Cameras

Fujifilm X-Pro1

You can gaze upon the X-Pro1, but you probably can't afford to touch it. Fujifilm's first foray into the interchangeable lens camera (ILC) category, shares the large sensor size, lens options, and compact profile of competing models, but costs three to four times more. It's estimated to run $1600 for the body, plus $600 and up for each of three lenses (compared to $600 for most ILCs, kit lens included), all available next month. Nine more lenses are planned through 2013. 


How does Fujifilm justify such a premium? Because this camera is bound to be a lust object for professional photographers, and well-heeled amateurs due to its featherlight weight, magnesium components, and the new16-megapixel CMOS sensor. Fuji claims this sensor's larger color filter array should result in fewer false colors, and resolution that approaches the full-frame sensors found on bulkier DSLRs. The rest of us can ogle its rangefinder good looks, the gorgeous slab of aluminum, synthetic leather, and precision-milled dials and knobs that have become central to Fujifilm's reinvention, from yet-another-digicam maker, to purveyors of high-end, high-style cameras.


Samsung WB850F

Samsung focused almost entirely on rolling out Wi-Fi to more of its cameras and camcorders, at least five of which can now automatically, wirelessly back up images and clips to a PC. The WB850F is the most feature-packed, with a 16.2-megapixed sensor, built-in GPS with geocaching, and direct upload to Facebook, Picasa and YouTube. The 850F can also hook up to the cloud, via Samsung's AllShare Play service, meant to share data across Samsung devices, or Microsoft's Sky Drive. And because hardware still matters, this compact model features the company's longest zoom lens to date, capable of 21x optical zoom. The 850F is due out in April, though the price hasn't been released.


Sony Bloggie Live

Sony's latest iteration of the Bloggie, the Flipcam-style camcorder that went 3D last year, is the Bloggie Live, which can live-stream full HD footage over WiFi. Using Skype's sister service, Qik, users can broadcast live video anywhere in the world. There's a catch, though—Qik steps on the image quality during live feeds, hard, downgrading the 1080p resolution to, as one Sony rep told us, "half VGA." On the plus side, all of the data is still being sent through to the service, which can display the full HD version of that video after-the-fact. The 8GB camcorder can send video and 12.8-megapixel stills to FaceBook, YouTube, Flickr and similar sites, and should be in stores this month, for around $250.


Sony HDR-PJ710V

Sony also showed off a new camcorder image-stabilization feature, that specifically counteracts camera shake during zooms. Balanced Optical Steadyshot is supposedly 13 times better at reducing shake, with two motors that adjust the floating lens structure along the vertical and horizontal axes. The feature is only available on the company's higher-end (though not professional or prosumer-level) camcorders, which also have built-in projectors. The cheapest of them, the $1300 HDR-PJ710V has 32GB of internal memory (good for 40 hours) and can project its 1080p video as large as 100 inches. It's due out in March.

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