First-Person: CES 2008 in Las Vegas Reveals Greater Flash Memory Storage and Advanced Camcorder Zooming

The Consumers Electronic Show in Las Vegas debuted a wide variety of new items that will soon be hitting the market. Among the products include new digital cameras, camcorders, and flash media.

I had the opportunity to visit the extravaganza. I was blown away by how many upgrades companies such as Kodak and Sony are making to their already popular products.

Canon is launching the MD205 camcorder which will bring users their new technology of advanced zoom. The new lens will allow the MiniDV camcorder to zoom up to 45x with high quality viewing. All of Canon's new MD200 series will feature this new zooming feature. It allows user to bring affordable, compact, yet defined picture quality to their home movies that they can share for years to come. The camcorder features a 16:9 widescreen recording on a 2.5" LCD screen that can be flipped around and used as a light. This enhancement to Canon's camcorders also is new to 2008, allowing anyone to experience panoramic recording.

The camcorder features a microphone input as well for better audio recording. Many cameras pick up background noises while recording, and to most that's annoying. An external microphone can be plugged in for better quality and up close sound recording.

Also a nice enhancement is the use of a remote control from multi-angles. Usually users have be in front of the lens to control the camera using a remote, however it is possible to stand anywhere near the camera and operate it. The camcorder comes with an Easy shooting mode where new users can simply press one button and the camcorder takes control of the settings. The Quick Start option allows users to quickly power up the camera to capture those precious moments almost immediately. This will allow users to never miss a thing that might have taken longer waiting for other cameras to power up and be put in stand-by mode.