14 DAY TRIAL // This week the whole world was taken by surprise when Sony unveiled its latest Cyber-Shot camera, in the form of a lady-friendly selfie camera that looks like a perfume bottle.
Many were puzzled and we didn’t know whether to poke fun at it or to praise Sony for managing to come up with such an atypical form factor and packing all that photo goodness inside a smallish perfume bottle.
However, for the time being Sony is launching the camera only in China, a country known for its obsession with selfies. Sure, the trend has developed worldwide but for some reason the selfie craze is skyrocketing in this country, which is also the home of beautification modes, selfie sticks and “groufies” (the last two are related to taking group selfies).
Sony will be selling the camera for a big chunk of money (5,199 RMB which is roughly $845 / €637), and given the economic situation of the country, we don’t really believe lots of women will have enough money to purchase it. But even if it launched in your country, would you pay that much for such a camera?
So the question arises, does the world really need a selfie-dedicated camera like this, which by the way comes equipped with a bunch of Swarovski crystals to make everything more extravagant?
The problem is, selfies might be soon be pushed into the background. A year ago no one really heard of the term selfie, as these trends appear and disappear at the speed of light.
And we’re already witnessing that people are finding a new attraction. The so-called “thermie,”or if you like the term better, “hottie.”
A hottie is when you take a picture of the heat emanating from your body, using an infrared camera that attaches to the back of your smartphone (or iPhone to be precise).
Recently, Apple stores have started selling the FLIR One, which confers thermal imaging capabilities to the above-mentioned phone. Basically, the system will get warm things be displayed in bright colors on your iPhone’s screen, while cold things will be shown in dark shades.
The FLIR One camera is quite sensitive, so if two objects differ by one-fifth of a degree Fahrenheit / 0.1 degree Celsius, the camera will know the difference and use slightly different coloring schemes.
As new camera technologies like this become available for the wider population, selfie addicts might soon want to look somewhere else in order to fulfill their self-taking photo routines, looking for improvements and variation. Hotties seems a good way to go, but the technique is limited to the iPhone for the time being.
The Sony Cyber-Shot selfie camera is limited to the women in China who have some money to spend. Putting aside the absurd purpose of the camera and its fancy design, the device is quite decent per se, specification-wise.
It arrives with a 19.2MP sensor with F2, wide-angle and focal length of 21mm and also offers a 3.3-inch viewfinder display, microSD card slot, Wi-Fi and NFC.
The lens is located in what’s supposed to be the cap of the bottle, which is rotatable with 180 degrees so if you want to take regular pictures, you can do that.
Basically, the contents are not that bad, but is the camera worth paying $845 / €637? We certainly think not. Surely, if the perfume bottle makes it to the US, it will be sold for less, but it will remain expensive enough.
So even as the selfie bottle can be used as a regular shooter, you’ll be forced to pay premium just for the shape of the camera and for the trend it stands to represent.