Toshiba Imaging Systems is shipping a new “button-free” Toshiba PDR-T10, which utilizes an LCD as an interactive touch-screen menu.
The US$399 camera comes with its own stylus, but you can also use a standard PDA stylus or a finger. The absence of buttons, levers and switches on the back of the camera gives the PDR-T10 a “streamlined, elegant styling that ideally compliments its pocket-sized dimensions (3.36 x 2.83 x 1.1 inches),” said Doug Freck, vice president and general manager of Toshiba Imaging Systems..
By touching the 1.6-inch LCD with a stylus, you can navigate the camera’s menus and icons to select from a variety of controls that include flash and zoom options, according to Freck. The controls also let you review photos or download pics to your Mac.
The fully automatic, two-megapixel PDR-T10 also comes with a collection of interchangeable, snap-on faceplates, including zebra stripes, polka dots, and grasshopper green, that let you change the look of the camera. Two faceplates come with the camera, with eight more available to be purchased separately.
The PDR-T10 sports a 2.0 megapixel CCD sensor that captures color photographs at resolutions up to 1600 x 1200 in universal JPEG format at three quality levels. For online purposes (e-mailing pics to friends, uploading photos to a personal Web page, etc.) the camera also has an 800 x 600 resolution mode that creates smaller-sized files.
The camera has a professional-grade, all-glass lens that’s equivalent to f=38mm on a 35mm camera, Freck said. For close-ups there’s also a Macro mode that allows photography as close as 3.5-inches from the subject. Other features include as 4X digital zoom, user-selectable white balance, exposure control and flash, USB interface, and compatibility with Secure Digital (SD) storage media. The PDR-T10 ships with an 8MB SD card, which lets you store up to 80 photos; the camera has on-board compatibility with SD cards up to 256MB.