Gone are the days when digital cameras were prerogatives of only the rich. Like cell phones, digital cameras too are now being flaunted with élan by the common man on the road. Go to any college fest, function or party and you would find at least a couple of people hanging around thrusting their digital cameras in everyone’s faces and a major contribution in this fast gaining trend has been the influx of cheap and durable Chinese electronic goods. The latest buzz-word in the digital market’s now is Multicam’s. Like its name suggests these are an amalgam of a digital camera, a web cam and a camcorder all rolled into one.
While in the digital camera mode, these are capable of taking high resolution pictures more than your normal film roll which can be directly transferred to your PC (and worked upon with the photo editing tools supplied in the CD) or taken to the neighbouring photo shop for digital printing. Most of them have regular camera features like an inbuilt memory stick, flash, in built view finder, auto timer shoot and they work on normal AAA batteries. Also to be used as a camcorder, they can record full fledged videos going from 1 minute to 5 minutes. Some models like that of Mercury also have a feature of simultaneous sound recording.
When connected to a PC with the supplied stand, USB cable (it draws power from the PC so no need for batteries then) and driver CD they work as a web cam which can be used for taking still images, recording long videos, videoconferencing with MS Netmeeting or showing off to that hot chick on Yahoo messenger.
Though these features are nothing new, it is unique to find them all in one single product and here comes the best part, their cost-effectiveness. Prices start from a meagre 1800 bucks for unbranded Chinese models and can go up to 5000 and whereabouts depending upon the configuration and brand. These are available throughout India at sites like https://baazee.com; and locally at Nehru Palace, Delhi and Lamington Road, Mumbai. Most of the computer peripheral companies like UMAX, Dlink and Mercury have launched products in this segment. A very cheeky product is the ‘Pock cam’ which is what else but in the shape of a Pen, great for spy work!
So run out and get these latest object of desire that would have your friends drooling over it in no time.
-Vishal Pipraiya