Getting Ready for CES, Tools of the Trade.

by John Gaudio

First, a big thank you, to Jeff, of Jeff's Camera.  (It used to be Waxmans, the sign now says Wolf, but it's really owned by Ritz. ;-)  Through it all, the manager there, Jeff, has taken great care of me, letting me play with, test, and ultimately buy lots of video and still cameras.

Right now I'm checking out Nikon's Coolpix S4.  It's light, has a great swivel feature that lets me hold it over my head or close to the floor and still easily see what I'm shooting on the digital display.  So far my only disappointment is the lack of a connection for an external strobe.  I can use a slave of course, but that's more trouble and less accurate.  My old Coolpix 990 let me connect a strobe.  Why do companies forget such important basics as they improve their products?  It drives me crazy.

The S4 does boast 6 mega-pixels and a ten to one optical zoom.  It also claims to have features that eliminate red eye and brighten the background when you use the strobe.  I'm told it will shoot short videos, it's hard to give up my video camera cold turkey ;-), and that it will let me record short audio descriptions with each photograph.  I'll see lots of other cameras and camcorders at the show, but I'm hoping this one will make it easy for me to show you some of the sights at CES 2006.  Four days and counting.   I hope you had a great Christmas/Channukah/alternate holiday celebration, and I wish you an outstanding and Happy New Year.