Holiday Gift Guide 2010: Camera-lovers gifts for under $50
ThinkGeek Universal Gadget Wrist Charger ThinkGeek has turned out to be one of my go-to online shops this holiday season (what does that say about me?) and this little doohickey is a great find for gadget lovers of all types. With everyone and their brother using smart phones, portable gaming devices, digital cameras, and the like, portable charging devices that let you juice up your devices away from an outlet have become almost commonplace. Until now, one of my favorites has been the Ecosol PowerStick (me and David Pogue, both), but if you've ever tried to use a phone, camera, or other gadget with even the tiny PowerStick dangling from it by USB cable, you know how awkward it can be to charge on the go. Well, the cleverly designed Wrist Charger actually snaps around your wrist like a watch, allowing you to talk, play, or snap away comfortably while charging. It's true, you may feel like a complete dork wearing it, but that's a small price to pay for the convenience. The Wrist Charger comes with nine adapter tips to power a plethora of phones, music players, gaming devices, and any mini-or micro-USB-compatible camera or camcorder. Plus, with a 1,500mAh capacity (in six Lithium-Ion cells) it can give a full charge to most smartphones, portable camcorders and compact point-and-shooters, unlike the 750mAh PowerStick which doesn't even fully juice my iPhone.
Sanyo Eneloop Rechargeable Batteries Speaking of charging up on the fly, I've been a long-time fan of Sanyo's Eneloop line of rechargeable batteries. In fact, I've recommended them here in the past, because they're not only pre-charged and ready to use out of the box, but they have a lower self-discharge rate than other rechargeables. Just in time for this holiday season, Sanyo has released new and improved versions of its AA and AAA Eneloop batteries. According to Sanyo, the new versions can be charged up to 1,500 times (approximately 500 more charges than their predecessors) and maintain about 75-percent of their charge for up to three years. They're currently available at Costco in a $25.99 combo-pack that comes with a four-battery charger, plus eight AA and four AAA batteries. The batteries in the combo pack come in colored pairs (two shades of blue for the AAs and two shades of green for the AAAs) to make it easier for you to keep track of paired batteries. Plus, Sanyo walks the eco-friendly talk by using solar energy to pre-charge the batteries at the factory.
Agloves With more and more digital cameras sporting touchscreen interfaces, snapping photos outdoors in the colder weather is becoming as finger-numbing as using your smartphone: You have to pull off your gloves to get those capacitive touchscreens to work. I've seen other touchscreen-friendly gloves, such as these or these, but they've either had those freaky-looking silver fingertips or else they sport finger-tip flaps that are both unwieldy to use and drafty. Then I discovered Agloves. Finally, a pair of relatively normal-looking and warm knit gloves that do the trick. Rather than going the more techie-looking route of adding conductive material to the finger tips only, Agloves weave silver-coated nylon fibers throughout the whole glove (creating a nicely heathered look). They fit snugly enough to allow for fairly precise touching and, unlike other touchscreen gloves, they let you use any finger, knuckle, or whatever part of your hand to tap, scroll, swipe, and pinch away.