Compared to some other events, this year’s Casio CES press conference was brief, focused, and to the point. This year, their goal is to revolutionize the way people take pictures and think about digital imaging. In order to do this, they showed off two new imaging technologies: an online service to create digital photo art, and an all new camera model.
Taking the stage to introduce their imaging square technology was Kazuhirio Kashio. The concept behind this is to give people the opportunity to create digital art easily. Essentially how the system works is that you upload your photo to a Casio server, which then allows you to perform one of twelve different filters that you can apply to the image ranging from water color to HDR. The system then applies those filters and allows you to save the image, send it to friends, or print it. Although billed as revolutionary, it felt a little shallow in practice and seemed like something anyone could do with just a couple minutes in photoshop.
After a somewhat underwhelming beginning to the show Kazuhiro Kashio took the stage to introduce a new update to the Casio Exilim engine. Titled HS, the new engine will allow for a significant increase in speed and processing power, allowing you to do some pretty neat things with your camera. The most notable addition is the addition of automatic HDR imaging. The increased processing power of the new engine allows camera to do all the heavy lifting for you, taking three different pictures at different exposures and then automatically combining them to create one HDR image. The improvements under the hood will also allow for full HD video to be taken on any of the three new models: the ZR100, the ZR10, or the HR20.
The announcement that really stole the show was the Tryx, a uniquely designed camera which will take advantage of the HS engine. The newest model breaks the mold of typical design by moving the lens away from the center and to one of the edges. It’s nothing special in and of itself, but what it has allowed Casio to do is allow the user to pop out the entire LCD screen from the frame and rotate it 360 degrees in any direction. This means that the Tryx can be configured for nearly any situation. You can even pop out the LCD and hang it upside from a wall. Add in some other features like motion controlled picture taking and the EXILIM HS engine and what results is a camera that looks like a lot of fun.
That was all Casio had time for at their press conference, but the camera company also has a number of other products at the show including watches in keyboards. We’ll be sure to bring you our impressions of all that and much more during our time on the show floor of CES over the next couple of days.
