Today is Cyber Monday. It’s like Black Friday but with more indoorsiness. And while Black Friday is more of a brick-and-mortar, you’re-there-in-person type of thing, Cyber Monday is all online and there are far too many stores and deals to completely cover. Here’s a head start on some of the better deals from the bigger sites, though.

You’ll find pretty good deals at Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and Dell. Newegg, Office Depot, Office Max, and Staples have a few gems as well. Apple’s got a few discounts but only on accessories. Buy.com’s list is pitiful, as is Radio Shack’s. Target’s not offering a whole lot of electronics deals for some reason but there’s some decent pricing on other stuff.

Amazon.com

• 8GB iPod touch for $158 (link)
• Creative Vado HD camcorder for $89.99 (link)
• Garmin nuvi 260w GPS for $114.99 (link)
• Nintendo Wii plus $20 Amazon.com Gift Card for $199.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

BestBuy.com

• 19-inch 720p LCD TV for $159.99 (link)
• Garmin nuvi 205w GPS for $104.99 (link)
• 15.6-inch Acer Aspire Laptop with 4GB of RAM for $399.99 (link)
• EA Wii games for $20 off (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Walmart.com

• Nintendo Wii Bundle (system, extra controllers, game, accessory) for $249 (link)
• eMachines 15.6-inch Windows 7 laptop + extras for $368 (link)
• Sony Bravia 32-inch HDTV for $398 (link)
• 8GB iPod nano + accessory kit for $145 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Dell.com

• ST2410 Full HD 24-inch LCD monitor for $184 (link)
• 1.5TB Western Digital 3.5-inch hard drive for $99.99 (link)
• Inspiron Zino HD desktop starting at $299 (link)
• TomTom One 130 GPS for $79.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Newegg.com

• Intel Core i5 desktop with 4GB of RAM for $649.99 (link)
• ASUS 18.5-inch LCD monitor for $79.99 (link)
• Garmin nuvi 205 GPS for $89.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

OfficeMax.com

• eMachines 18.5-inch LCD monitor for $69.99 (link)
• Buy one, get one free on all ink and toner (link)
• Samsung 23-inch TV/Monitor for $249.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

OfficeDepot.com

• Toshiba T135-S1310 13.3-inch ULV notebook with 9-hour battery for $599.99 (link)
• Ativa 21.5-inch LCD monitor for $139.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Staples.com

• Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 for $29.99 (link)
• Acer 21.5-inch LCD monitor for $109.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Apple.com

• Monster Beats headphones for $269.95 (link)
• MoGo Talk for iPhone for $116.95 (link)
• Eye-Fi 2GB Geo SD Card for $53.95 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Buy.com

• TomTom One 130 GPS for $82.49 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

RadioShack.com

• TomTom XL 330-S GPS for $99.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Target.com

• Full list of deals here…

Here are the instructions. Happy uploading and be sure to make those images public!

This also, admittedly, allows you to run your own photo sharing service and to keep your photos completely private.

via WiFiNetNews

Sanyo has been offering Xacti camcorders shooting 720p video (1280×720) for quite a while now, and today Sanyo Japan announced the DMX-CG11 [JP], another (enhanced) 720p model. The new device features a mini HDMI interface and Eye-Fi support.

The DMX-CG11 features a 10.66MP 1/2.33-inch CMOS sensor, 5x optical zoom, USB 2.0, SD/SDHC memory card support (internal memory: 40MB), a stereo mic, mono speaker, and a 3-inch TFT screen. It measures 72.0×38.0×112.8mm and weighs 190g (including the battery and an SD card).

The camcorder will hit Japanese stores on September 11 for a moderate $300 (available in green, silver and orange.

Wow, will you look at that: the Eye-Fi Geo, available exclusively at the Apple store, can wirelessly transfer photos from your camera into iPhoto, or onto your hard drive in the folder of your choice. For an extra ten bucks a year, you can have the Eye-Fi Geo automatically send your photos to one of 25 online photo sharing services. You read that right: $10 per year. That’s a steal! And as with all Eye-Fi cards, your photos will be automatically geotagged. I haven’t fiddled much with geotagging yet, but I know some folks who are really into it. It looks fun.

Alas, my Canon DigitalRebel XT only accepts CF cards, while all the Eye-Fi cards are SD or SD/HC format, so I can’t get in on the party just now. Looks like I’ll be stuck searching for cables for some time, yet. That’s okay. You guys have fun with the Eye-Fi. I’ll catch up with you later. I’ll just sit here and send frustrated, pining messages to the Eye-Fi Twitter account in the vain hope that they create a CF version of their magic little cards…

What can be said about the latest Eye-Fi SD card that hasn’t been said about every other iteration? The Pro is just that, a Pro. With support for RAW files, Ad Hoc network support and Selective Transfer, the Eye-Fi Pro is perfection.

Using the Eye-Fi Manager, it took all of three minutes to get the Pro up and running on my Mac. Setting up an Ad Hoc network to my Mac was simple enough that a donkey could do it. From the wireless network dropdown list, select the “set up ad hoc network” option and create an ad hoc network. Once you’ve done that, refresh the network list, select your new ad hoc network and configure the Pro to recognize it going forward. Switch back to your wireless network and you’re done.

DSLR users can now shoot in RAW or RAW+ and have those images directly upload to their respective desktops/laptops over Wi-Fi. Eye-Fi creates two separate folders for RAW images (7-6-09) and JPEG images (July 06, 2009) with differing date formats.

Rather than uploading every single image or video that you capture, the Selective Transfer mode utilizes your camera’s protect function to identify which images to upload and which ones to leave. It’s dead simple. Protect the images you want to upload and then Eye-Fi takes care of the rest.

The Pro, as I’ve said before, is a dream come true — but at $150 it’s tough to justify such a purchase for a slow 4GB SD card. However, it also automagically uploads to your photo sharing site of choice and supports Ad Hoc networks. In a pressure-filled situation, like a live blog, the Eye-Fi Pro is a required gadget in a blogger’s bag. I’d throw down $150 clams for one, but I have the luxury of expensing it back to the big guy.

Eye-Fi Pro [Eye-Fi]

I think I speak for every camera nerd out there when I say, Hallelujah!!! It’s about damn time Eye-Fi released an Ad Hoc enabled SDHC card. Live blogging will now be 100x easier.

The 4GB Eye-Fi Pro now supports RAW files on top of pre-existing support for JPEG and video files. Geotagging and Hotspot access are available on the Pro model as well. The Eye-Fi Pro is available now on Amazon and Eye-Fi for $149.

But that’s not all. Eye-Fi also announced a new feature, Selective Transfer, that lets you pick and choose what gets uploaded.

Using the “protect” or “lock” feature in the camera’s menu, users can select which files to wirelessly upload. Any “protected” photo will automatically be uploaded, and all photos will remain on the memory card until the user manually deletes them. Selective Transfer is free, and available now for all Eye-Fi card users through the Eye-Fi Manager.

On the Eye-Fi Connected camera front, the following cameras are all Eye-Fi Connected: Nikon D5000, Nikon D90, Nikon D60, Casio EX-S12, Casio EX-S5, Casio EX-FS10, Casio EX-FC100 and Casio EX-Z29.

Cisco bought Flip Video. The Peek e-mail device is outselling some smartphones and launching a new version. The wi-fi-enabled media player is fighting it out with the TV for precedence in the living room and netbooks are beating down desktops at school and in the den. Are we entering an era of simple, cheap, and cool?

After a decade of unparalleled one-upmanship – the gigahertz race, the megapixel race, the storage race – we are now hitting a wall. The devices we own are small enough, fast enough, and hold enough data to suit us now until 2012, thank you, so we’ll sit this next iteration of the Intel Xaphod chip out, thank you.

I’ll admit I missed the Flip/Peek/netbook boat but once it came into dock, disembarked its passengers, and I read about its contents in the shipping news I finally figured out what was going on. We are essentially seeing the era of web services made flesh where thin clients take content and broadcast it instantly. And the web guys love it. Take Flip, for example. I was talking to a buddy at Cisco this weekend and he said that Cisco, the heavy-duty switch and server side of Cisco, loves blogs, video sharing, and the like. The more bandwidth wasted on pictures of Chet faux-kissing a hottie the better simply because it requires a heavier network backbone. Therefore, someone like Flip is a perfect testbed for streaming video as well as a nice cash cow.

Even companies like Vizio came out of left field. While everyone else was worried about LCD vs. Plasma, Vizio tore the price of a regular TV down by 50 percent. Imagine if I told you maybe two years ago that a 42-inch LCD HD TV would cost about $700. You’d put me in the loony bin! Even Eye-Fi and Chumby understand what’s going on – you make something small, cool, and very specific and the world will beat a path to your door.

So where does that leave the CE industry? Well, it’s now a race to the bottom. Video cameras that once cost $500 will now cost about $200. Digital cameras, real ones, are approaching the $100 mark. TVs will soon drop below the $500 mark for lower-end models. And, more importantly, devices like the Peek and the Flip point to a consumer focused on the creation of web content. Whereas our parents wanted to “store” information – in the form of slides, records, tapes, and the like – this generation wants to “dump” information onto YouTube, Facebook, and the cloud. This difference is important. Previously, the old rules of media applied — in a nutshell they can be summarized by that old chestnut “The medium is the message.” The message, formerly vacation snapshots or the latest Bing Crosby, was defined by the medium onto which it was impressed. Now, the message is a free-floating, amorphous thing, and the less that gets between the consumer and the message the better — hence tools that are limited in scope and function (and price) that “just work.”

The concept of dumb tech isn’t a negative thing. It is the understanding that instead of power, people want ease-of-use. Instead of the chaotic jumble of Symbian or Windows Mobile we are enamoured by shiny buttons on the iPhone and the Pre. Instead of a 12-megapixel DSLR, most of us are happy with a camera that takes an OK picture as soon as everyone in the frame is smiling. Instead of a state-of-the-art laptop we’re happy with a lumpen mini-book running Linux. Why? Because it gets the job done more than admirably.

Chalk it up to a bad economy if you want, but I think this is a backlash. For years we’ve been saddled with wonky hardware with 400-page manuals and smartphones that could open VNC connections with NASA but couldn’t save your pictures to Flickr. The tide has turned, friends, and the dumb stuff is winning.

My favorite little at-home gadget is getting a shake up today. Eye-Fi’s Wi-Fi SD cards not only upload images, but now video to YouTube and Flickr. The Share Video and Explore Video cards are now 4GB standard and the existing line of 2GB Eye Fi cards received a price drop.

The Explore is $99 and geotags your images and videos automatically; also hooks you up with hotspots across the land. The Share is $79 and uploads photos and videos to the content sharing sites of your choice and your home computer. The 2GB Share card is now $59 and the Home card is $59.

And to top things off, Eye Fi also announced an iPhone app that allows you to upload your iPhone pics in the same manner as their SD cards.

Good news, YouTube freaks. Eye-Fi is going to demo the all new video-upload-to-youtube  feature at CES. According to the Video End-User Research: 2008, you guys use your camera to shoot videos quite often. It’s the same as before, just with video and in HD.

CES, LAS VEGAS — Jan. 7, 2009 — Eye-Fi Inc., makers of the world’s first wireless memory card for digital cameras, today announced that it is developing a way for users to wirelessly upload videos from their digital camera to YouTube and a home computer. Eye-Fi will preview the technology at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas January 8-11, in booth #32024 in the TechZone of South Hall Three.

“We’re aiming to do for video what we’ve already done for photos: provide the easiest, simplest way to save and share your digital memories,” said Jef Holove, CEO for Eye-Fi.  ”Our wireless technology makes it effortless to upload videos to YouTube using the digital camera you already have, without the fuss of special software.  You won’t need to find a USB cable or even turn on your computer to get your memories in front of one of the largest audiences on the Web.”

According to a recent InfoTrends study, Video End-User Research: 2008, the point-and-shoot camera is now the most commonly used device for capturing memories on video.  With Eye-Fi’s wireless SD memory cards for digital cameras, users can upload photos – and soon video – automatically through Wi-Fi networks. Eye-Fi hotspot subscribers can also upload their memories away from home at more than 10,000 Wayport and open hotspot locations across the U.S.

Eye-Fi is designing its video upload service to support full-resolution HD video, with newer cameras like the Nikon D90 capturing HD video and Web sites including YouTube now testing display of HD video.

“Some of the most popular clips on YouTube are shot on digital cameras, rather than video camcorders,” said Ziv Gillat, vice president of business development for Eye-Fi. “Eye-Fi will give people the power to upload videos automatically, making it even easier for the YouTube community to post their life events, home videos and breaking news – virtually as they happen.”

Eye-Fi will also demonstrate its new video upload technology in the “Last Gadget Standing” event on January 10 from 10:30 – 11:30 a.m. PST in room N255-257 in LVCC, North Hall.

Eye-Fi’s wireless SD memory cards have won numerous awards, including Popular Science’s “Best of What’s New 2008” and PC World’s “The 100 Best Products of 2008.” For more information, please visit www.eye.fi.

About Eye-Fi

Founded in 2005, the company is dedicated to building products and services that help consumers navigate, nurture and share their visual memories. Eye-Fi’s patent-pending technology works with Wi-Fi networks to automatically send photos from a digital camera to online, in-home and retail destinations. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., the company’s investors include LMS Capital, Opus Capital, Shasta Ventures and TransLink Capital. More information is available at www.eye.fi.

It’s been an exciting year filled with a cornucopia of gadgets having passed through the CrunchGear offices. Most I’ve loathed and a few I’ve adored, but only a handful of things end up finding their way into my gear bag. Here’s my brief list in no particular order.

I’ve had the pleasure of groping every single mobile phone (smart phones in particular) to come out this year and the only one that I can’t put down is the BlackBerry Bold. Sure, I’ve had the G1 and the iPhone 3G, which are great devices but the Bold is the one that always makes its way into my pants. It’s the fastest and sexiest device to come from up North in quite some time. (What they were thinking with the Storm, I’ll never know.)

Next year will be interesting, to say the least, with Android shifting into high gear and Apple doing whatever it is they do to give us wet dreams. I hope RIM steps it up because it’s a whole new ballgame now.

Having a good friend who happens to be a sound engineer does one of two things: gets you into sold out concerts for free and turns you into an audiophile. The latter is more applicable here and that’s why I have to dip my hat to Ultimate Ears.

Ultimate Ears never ceases to amaze me with their line of in-ear monitors. I have nothing but praise for every single pair I’ve tried. Even their more affordable sets are better than most. You won’t find me jamming my eardrums with anything other than the Triple.fi 10s (review coming soon) for the near future. Unless, of course, UE pushes out their 11s into a non-custom model.

THX and Razer’s collaboration on the Mako 2.1 speaker set continues to blow me away.

I’m obsessed with photographing everything around me, so these days I carry around a one-two combo from Pentax. They may not have all the bells and whistles like Nikon and Canon, but I’ve always rooted for the underdog and Pentax feels homier compared to the others. No need to go into minute details over pixels and other hardcore photog details because I’m not a pro and don’t aspire to be.

I just need my camera to be simple to use and the K200D does everything I need it to do. With a little more time my needs and wants will expand and I hope Pentax can fill that upcoming void. For now, the K200D is my workhorse and the 50mm f/1.4 and 28mm manual focus lenses are sufficient enough.

I can’t always travel with my full rig and most point and shoots confuse me with all the crap they come with, but the W60 is fairly easy to use and delivers adequate images in most settings. It’s waterproof, so that’s the biggest draw for me and does well at ISO 800. I relied on the W60 for both videos and images during my trip to El Salvador.

The K2000 is a great starter SLR for those looking to step up from your standard p&s. I just love that little “Help” button.

I’m also going to throw down on Lexar’s Shoot-N-Sync Eye-Fi-enabled Wi-Fi SD card as well. It’s limited for what we need to use it for (live blogging), but it’s a neat gadget that dramatically cuts down the time it takes for me to upload images.

When I do manhandle my iPhone 3G it dies by midday and that makes me cry. A lot. There are a lot of iPhone/iPhone 3G backup battery solutions at the moment, but I’ve used the Mophie Juice Pack the most and the addition of a USB port rather than Apple’s proprietary port makes it more useful and easier to replenish.

What else…

Having recently resurrected my Nintendo DS from the depths of my desk drawer, I’ve been enamored with two titles: Cake Mania 2 and Pipe Mania (for the PSP too). Yes, CM2. It’s good and I’m not afraid to admit it!

I will finally concede and pick the PlayStation 3 for its ability to support all Blu-ray standards (current and upcoming) and play some kickass games like Little Big Planet. It’s a heck of a lot more fun than I imagined.

While we’re on the subject of A/V, let’s toss in the Western Digital WD TV HD media player. It rocks, hands down.

What? I carry a lot of stuff with me.

And I throw it all into my LowePro Fastpack 250 backpack, which has more than enough room for all the aforementioned doodads and then some. Dakine’s EQ Bag also accompanies my LowePro bag while traveling.

Almost finished, I promise.

I love G-Shock watches! All of them. Quiksilver’s Harvard tide watch is a great piece too. Just a huge chunk of glass to show me everything I need to know about my local spot or places I’ll be traveling to.

Oh, and Aircell’s in-flight Wi-Fi service Gogo has made traveling across the country a thousand times better. Wi-Fi on a plane? Need I say more? Of course! Virgin America tops my list of favorite airlines and the addition of Gogo makes it the best airline in all the land.

Well, I think that’s about it.

New MIMOBOT drives
It’s a wiimote swaddled in hemp – what?
The Perfect Unison x Parra: Wooden headphones with pretty pictures painted on
Evernote now works with Eye-Fi cards (and it’s about time)
The Sony lampshade that turns light into energy

Evernote is a service that lets you send photos and select text and images then upload them to a central location. Then you’re free to search the items—photos of business cards, for example—in order to “remember” them. Now, couple Evernote with an Eye-Fi card and then you may have something.

The new partnership between Evernote and Eye-Fi started yesterday, meaning that you can take proper photos (with an SLR, I hope) of whatever—a funny ad on the street, a sale price sign on some out-of-the-way store, and so on—then send them off to your Evernote account. Why use your brain to remember things when you can rely on proprietary technology!

It seems like a long overdue step for the Evernote folks.

By now most of you have heard of the Eye-Fi Wi-Fi SD memory card and what it’s capable of, right? Okay, good. Earlier this year, January to be exact, Lexar announced that they had teamed up with Eye-Fi to bring a Lexar branded SD card with Eye-Fi technology by year’s end. Well, the time has come — Lexar’s Shoot-n-Sync card is finally here and I’ve been testing it out for the last couple weeks. It rocks, but it does have a hangup or two.

From a casual point-and-shooter’s perspective I doubt you’d have any real qualms about performance, but it’s a slow-ass card (something we already knew) and simply can’t hang when shooting with an SLR. That’s not to say you can’t use it with an SLR, but if you’re shooting in high or lo Drive Mode (or whatever it’s called on your SLR) it will bog down after two shots. I hope Lexar bumps up the speed on these Shoot-n-Sync cards going forward.

My card speed gripe aside, the Shoot-n-Sync works well. Setup took less than five minutes. The 2GB card comes in a card reader that’s embedded with Eye-Fi software, so the first thing you’ll have to do is plug the card reader with the card straight into your Windows or OS X machine. Once the application is installed, you just need to set up your home network within the Eye-Fi Manager software. The next step is to link your Shoot-n-Sync card with the photo sharing site(s) of your choice and pick a folder on your computer where images will be uploaded. You also have the option of enabling Geotagging, but that’s an extra $15/year. On top of that, an additional $15/year can be tacked on if you want access to hotspots. All of this takes roughly 5 minutes and you’re on your way.

During my tests, I had images upload to my Flickr account within a matter of seconds but, on occasion, it would take up to a minute for photos to show up on my desktop. The Eye-Fi servers can be a bit finicky at times, but I doubt anyone is going to be anal enough to count the milliseconds in between photo uploads. I don’t believe the size of the image has a lot of bearing on upload times, but I’d be a fool to say that a 2-megapixel image uploads just as fast as a 10-megapixel image. I’m just saying that the upload times aren’t significant enough that you’d be whining about it. Manually transferring images to your computer and then on to a photo-sharing site would take significantly longer.

I typically shoot in RAW, but that does nothing for me when I’m using the Shoot-n-Sync. The RAW files won’t transfer to my computer and it certainly won’t upload to Flickr. Because of this, I’ve been shooting in RAW+, which solves the problem of uploading to my computer/Flickr. But it does cut down on the amount of images that I can take with a 2GB card. Images are uploaded to Flickr (or the photo-sharing site of your choice) even when your computer is off. As long as it can access the network with your camera turned on, the images will upload. When you do turn on your computer, the images will upload to your desired folder.

The S-n-S can be had for as low as $75 on Amazon, but should you want access to hotspots and geotagging it ends up being $105. Compare that to Eye-Fi’s Explore card, which comes with both services right out of the gate at a price of $96, you’d be saving $11. But the Explore card has unlimited geotagging and you’d only be paying $15/year for hotspot access after the first year. I personally don’t care for geotagging, but this is something you should consider if you’re looking at both cards and want that functionality. The S-n-S really goes head-to-head with the Share card and that one sells for $71.

Lexar’s Shoot-n-Sync Wi-Fi SD card works well with the Eye-Fi service and I’d suggest purchasing this one over the Eye-Fi cards for the one-year warranty over anything else. Eye-Fi only gives you 90 days and paying the extra $5 (or whatever it is) is definitely worth it.

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Amazon

Lexar is also guilty of packaging a small doodad into a ginormous waste of resources.

The card is selling with an MSRP of $129.99 but Costco members can get it for $99 on Costco.com – not too bad for a 4GB SDHC card with a built-in wireless chip that automatically transfers photos to your computer and 25+ online photo sharing services. You can also add automatic geotagging and/or Wayport wireless hotspot access for $14.99 per year, per service.

The results are in for TIME Magazine’s Gadget of the Year poll and the Peek E-mail Device has been rated highest by TIME readers, taking the top spot. It beat out the iPod Touch, the Eye-Fi SD Card, the Flip Mino, and the T-Mobile G1. I reviewed the Peek in September and found it to work well but wondered if it’d be able to gain any traction in a world full of affordable smartphones. Well, apparently it’s doing just fine.

Other gadgets on the list: Wii Fit, Macbook, SanyoXacti HD 1010, Dash Express, and the Canon PowerShot A590IS.

The other week Eye-Fi announced that upload speeds were improved for their SD cards and today we’ve learned that they now support Twitter and RSS feeds. If you haven’t already updated then you should fire up your Eye-Fi Manager ASAP. One can assume this applies to the Lexar mashup, Shoot-N-Sync. These little buggers just keep getting better and better.

Eye-Fi Inc., makers of the world’s first wireless memory card for digital cameras, today announced enhancements to its family of Eye-Fi cards that will make the upload of digital photos from camera to computer twice as fast. The faster wireless speeds will also be made available to existing Eye-Fi users at no extra cost.

Depending on the card you already have, you can also get upgrades like geotagging and direct-to-web uploading for various services like Adoramapix (?) and MobileMe (gah!). You can also purchase year-long access to a type of wireless hotspot I have never heard of before, despite there being 10,000 of them. All in all, fine additions to a fine product. Lovely.

Well slap my butt and call me Sally! The Nikon D90 is real and not just a collection of spy shots that essentially blew the Nikon wad prematurely over the past twenty days or so. It has a 12.3-megapixel sensor, ISO 6400 support, and live video view with HD video recording.

The D90 has a .15-second start up with 11 point auto focus and 3D tracking, a cool feature that keeps your subject in focus no matter where they are in the frame. There’s a 3-inch LCD for live view and it takes 720p 1,280 x 720 pixels video movies at 24 frames per second. It’s got red hot monaural sound recording on the video, so you can rock out like the Brian Wilson in the mono version of Pet Sounds.

It’s $999 for the body, $1,299 for the 18-105mm VR lens. D80 should drop in price shortly while the D70 settles into obsolescence. What do you all shoot? I’m a Canon man, myself.

NIKON D90 DIGITAL SLR ANSWERS THE CALL FOR CREATIVE FREEDOM WITH ADVANCED FEATURES THAT BENEFIT ALL LEVELS OF PHOTOGRAPHERS

It’s All You Need: The 12.3 Megapixel Nikon D90 D-SLR Premieres with the New
18-105mm VR Lens to Give Photographers Superb Image Quality, Live View Shooting, Nikon’s Scene Recognition System, and HD Movie Clip Recording

MELVILLE, N.Y. (Aug. 27, 2008) – Nikon Inc. today announced the D90, a digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera that redefines the creative boundaries of digital photography allowing photographers to easily create stunning still images and High Definition (HD) movie clips with sound—with the same camera. A host of Nikon core technologies were leveraged to develop the D90’s scope of versatility, calling on years of photographic and optical expertise. Whether consumers are graduating from an advanced compact digital camera or are a seasoned D-SLR enthusiast, the Nikon D90 emphasizes brilliant image quality and versatility with its exclusive advanced Scene Recognition System, intuitive creative controls, blazing fast performance and the industry-first ability to create HD movie clips at 720p in the new D-Movie mode.

Inspired by Nikon’s acclaimed flagship DX-format digital SLR camera, the D300, and building on the success of the wildly popular D80, the D90 delivers stunning image quality. The CMOS image sensor and 12.3 effective megapixels combined with Nikon’s exclusive EXPEEDTM image processing system deliver outstanding images with fine details, smooth tones, brilliant colors and low noise across a broad ISO range.

Photographers are able to easily compose stunning images using the Live View Mode on the large 3-inch 920,000-dot high-resolution LCD screen. The 11-point auto focus (AF) system utilizes Nikon’s exclusive Scene Recognition System and Face Detection to help make the best shot in a variety of environments. Matched with the new versatile AF-S NIKKOR 18-105mm Vibration Reduction (VR) image stabilization lens, and a burst rate of up to 4.5 frames per second, photographers can confidently capture fast action and precise moments as they unfold. Also helping to ensure no memory is missed, the D90 offers fast handling with a power-up time of a mere 0.15ms and split-second shutter response measuring just 65ms, eliminating the frustration of pictures lost to shutter lag.

“The D90 delivers incredible imaging performance and control, setting a new standard for its class. This marriage of outstanding still image performance and HD movie clip capacity represents the dawn of a new age for D-SLR cameras. The D90’s handling characteristics and long list of features are sure to deliver the photographic experience that Nikon photographers have come to expect from Nikon engineering,” said Edward Fasano, general manager for marketing, SLR System Products at Nikon Inc. “Everyone at Nikon is especially eager to see the myriad of ways that imaginative D90 photographers will explore the world of cinematic 24fps HD video through the eyes of NIKKOR optics.”

Legendary Image Quality

For shooting in a variety of lighting conditions, the D90 has a wide sensitivity range of ISO 200 to 3200 (expandable to Lo 1 ISO 100 and Hi 1 ISO 6400) to deliver incredible low-noise images. The camera also employs an Image Sensor Cleaning function that works to free image-degrading dust particles from the sensor’s optical low-pass filter, helping to ensure spot-free images.

The new D90 companion lens, the AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR provides a versatile focal length, and the benefits of Nikon Vibration Reduction (VR) image stabilization technology. Nikon VR reduces the image blurring effects of camera shake allowing photographers to shoot hand-held at as many as 3 shutter speeds slower than would otherwise be possible*, assuring dramatically sharper images, even in challenging lighting conditions.

Borrowed from Nikon’s professional line of digital cameras, the D90 is the most affordable camera to include Nikon’s Scene Recognition System and adds newly-developed advanced Face Detection technology. The intelligent Scene Recognition System interprets color and brightness information of each individual shot from the 420-pixel RGB sensor, and applies changes to AF, auto exposure and auto white balance. The D90 can also detect up to five faces using the new Face Detection system, producing flattering portraits with astounding definition and accuracy. While in playback mode, simply press the zoom button and portraits captured with Face Detection can be immediately magnified to ensure proper focus on the subject and faces are displayed on the LCD screen within brackets for easy reference and subject tracking.

The D90 benefits from Nikon’s comprehensive digital image processing engine, EXPEED, which provides smooth tones, rich colors and defined image details, as well as enhanced processing performance. Additionally, Nikon’s exclusive 3D Color Matrix Metering II helps to ensure accurate exposures, even in the most challenging lighting conditions. Evaluating each scene, input data from the system’s sensor is automatically referenced against an internal database of over 30,000 scenes derived from actual photographs to calculate correct exposure values. To push the creative boundaries even further, Variable Center-Weighted metering and Spot metering centered on the active focus area are also available, as are exposure compensation and auto exposure bracketing.

The Next Big Blockbuster

For the first time in digital SLR photography, Nikon introduces the addition of the D-Movie mode, allowing consumers to create their own HD movie clips (1280 x 720) with sound from their D-SLR camera. Photographers will appreciate the cinematic qualities that come from the 24fps frame rate, which matches theatrical film, whether producing vacation clips or creatively melding stills with video. Additionally, the large size of the D90’s DX-format sensor, combined with the optical superiority and broad selection of NIKKOR lenses, provides shooters with the ability to capture amazing perspectives not possible with typical camcorders. D-Movie clips also benefit from Nikon VR image stabilization, which is automatically activated during recording to aid the low-light capability that trumps many other hybrid devices. Users can record movie clips onto an inserted SD / SDHC card, created as Motion JPEG AVI files that are easily edited with widely available video editing software. The D90 also features an HDMI terminal, allowing viewing of both pictures and movies on High Definition televisions.

D90 Delivers Peak Performance

The D90’s unprecedented start up time and imperceptible shutter lag derives from the same standards as the professional sports photographer choice, the Nikon D3. JPEG bursts can be shot as rapidly as 4.5 frames per second, allowing photographers to capture detailed action sequences or catch fleeting expressions that might otherwise be missed. Images are also processed and previewed rapidly at 120ms, which is less time than it takes to move an eye from the viewfinder to the screen. Users are also able to creatively stop the action with a maximum shutter speed of 1/4000 second or create long-time exposures down to 30 seconds.

Nikon’s 11-point AF also offers best-in-class speed and performance, helping to ensure sharp focus at any focal length. Adopting a refined version of Nikon’s advanced Multi-CAM 1000 AF Module, the AF system’s center area wide-frame operation adds inherent focusing options that will instill greater confidence in getting the desired shot. Single-point AF is suggested for static subjects, dynamic-area AF for moving subjects, auto-area AF for spontaneous shooting and 3D-tracking (11 points) AF for when changing the composition after focusing on a subject.

Push Creative Boundaries to the Limit

No matter the level of experience, the D90 makes high-quality photography fun and easier for a remarkably broad range of picture-takers. Users can enjoy complete control over all manual features or let the camera optimize settings automatically. For the camera novice and photography enthusiasts, the D90 puts all of the tools to explore new creative possibilities at their fingertips through the simple menu-driven interface. For those looking to enjoy the added performance and versatility of digital SLR photography, creative shooting is as simple as rotating the Mode dial with Advanced Scene modes on the camera. There are many options when it comes to realizing creative vision, such as Picture Control settings to provide an assorted palette of color effects that optimize color, saturation and hue through user-selected choices of Standard, Neutral, Vivid, Monochrome, Portrait, and Landscape. Popular editing tools such as Nikon’s exclusive D-Lighting and image trimming, image overlay, and a wide assortment of color filters can also be applied to images after capture. The D90 also provides new options for in-camera image enhancement, including:

o Distortion Control: Adjusts lens aberration
o Straighten: Helps to correct linear inclination of an image for straight horizons and landscapes
o Fisheye Effect: In camera filter produces optical effects similar to a fisheye lens

Skillfully Capture Inspiring Images

The D90 has been engineered with the photographer in mind with an intuitive interface that places a variety of automatic and advanced features at the hands of the user. The camera is built to withstand the rigors of an urban excursion or backcountry safari while boasting an impressive shutter mechanism that is tested to 100,000 cycles for durability. Whether upgrading from a compact digital camera or already a seasoned hobbyist, the D90 D-SLR will help anyone take great pictures, thanks in part to the following new features:

o Battery life: New circuitry enhances power consumption, affording up to 850 shots in typical conditions on a single charge of the Lithium Ion battery (CIPA standard)
o Viewfinder: The bright viewfinder offers a luminous 0.94x magnification to more accurately compose images
o LCD screen: The high-resolution 920,000-dot, 3-inch LCD screen gives a 170-degree angle of view to make both composing and sharing easy and fun
o New playback function: Users can show their images in either four, nine or 72 thumbnail images, or use a new calendar format to easily find photos; users can also show their photos via Nikon’s Pictmotion slideshow, including background music
o Built-in Flash: The built-in Speedlight offers a guide number of approximately 18/56 (ISO 200) and can wirelessly control up to two groups of Speedlights in full iTTL mode

Nikon System Legacy

The D90 also offers unprecedented compatibility with Nikon’s extensive selection of NIKKOR lenses, including DX NIKKOR lenses, which are designed for optimum performance with Nikon DX format digital SLR cameras. NIKKOR lenses offer legendary optical superiority and add to the D90’s ability to deliver outstanding images. Paired with the D90 is the new AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR lens, which provides a versatile 5.8x optical zoom and VR image stabilization, for even sharper handheld picture taking. This lens offers a 27-157.5mm focal length in 35mm equivalent, a one-lens solution that offers a broad focal range to let photographers get up close and personal to their subjects from a distance, or wide for breathtaking landscapes. The built-in Silent Wave Motor ensures quick and quiet AF operation, while an aspherical element and ED glass deliver high resolution, high contrast images with minimal chromatic aberration and distortion.

Photographers will also enjoy advanced functionality anywhere in the world with system accessories designed for the adventurous globe trekker. When used with the Nikon GP-1 GPS unit (available separately beginning November 2008), the D90 provides geotagging to images with latitude, longitude and altitude data imprinted on the images’ metadata. Users can also prolong their adventure with the MB-D80 battery pack that accepts two EN-EL3e or six widely available AA-size batteries. Additionally, photographers can share and upload their images with a wireless interface optimized for the Eye-Fi™ wireless enabled SD card wherever there is a wireless network.

The D90 is also fully compatible with Capture NX2 software (available for purchase separately), Nikon’s highly versatile and elegantly simple new photo editing solution designed to help photographers tap into the full potential of NEF (RAW) images. Featuring an innovative user interface that provides easier access to powerful and visually intuitive enhancement tools, Capture NX2 affords photographers the ability to use revolutionary control points.

Price and Availability

The D90 will be available throughout the United States beginning September 2008 at an MSRP of $999.95** for body only and $1299.95** for body and lens outfit that includes the new AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR lens. The GP-1 GPS unit will be available in November 2008, and pricing will be announced near the time of its delivery to the marketplace.