Gearfuse

Have you ever been out with your digital camera and wish you had a tripod? It’s happened to me many times and while a tripod can dramatically improve your shot, they’re just not practical to carry around. Enter the Gorillapad. This tripod uses a “viscoelastic morphing polymer base” to stick to almost any surface, effectively turning anything into a usable tripod for a shot. The best part is that the Gorillapad can be had for less than $20 on Amazon, making it one of the most affordable tripods on the market.

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I often choose not to write about the thousands of digital cameras that come out each week due to the fact that you can simply walk into your local Walmart, slap down $120 and walk out with some 10.1-megapixel compact shooter. Who needs to learn about how many 8, 9 or 10-MP cameras came out with the same crappy features?

That’s where Ricoh’s CX1 comes in. It’s a conservative 9-megapixel digicam that packs some unique features. The coolest is the HDR mode. Shoot those surreal-looking pictures you see on sites like Digg without having to do any fancy handwork. It also features a high-end CMOS sensor and a 920,000 dot high-resolution display for viewing shots. It also gives the photographer great control over white balance and multi-shot ability. At $430, this could be one of the best non-DSLR digicams for the buck.

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Your kids will be going crazy later this year, as LEGO will be coming out with its own line of consumer electronics such as digital cameras, walkie talkies and a whole lot more. Electronics company Digital Blue will partner with LEGO to create the devices, which will feature design that draws from LEGO bricks. You won’t be able to break apart your digicam or USB drive, but it’ll still look like you built it yourself.

Word is that LEGO is going full out with this electronics push, releasing alarm clocks and even boomboxes made from the good stuff. Kids and geeks should try to contain themselves. Look for these goods to hit store shelves later this year.

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Remember a few years ago, when the Nintendo Wii came out, how Target had light-up gift cards that made people go batshit crazy? Well Target realized how great free hype is for your company so it’s decided to up the ante this time. When you’re shopping this month, stop by a Target to get a gift card that features a built-in 1.2-megapixel digital camera. Yes. This is a gift card with a camera. It even includes a USB cable, driver disk, instructions and a voucher for 40 free prints. You really can’t beat that.

It requires two AAA batteries but no matter, you can find those buried in the sofa. You’ll need to load the card up with $50 to $1000 in order to snag one but it seems well worth the effort when your gift card is the best part of the gift.

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Here’s a really cool gadget that was totally made for the extreme sports industry. It’s called the Flee Digital Camera and was designed for aerial photography. It looks like a NERF toy of some sort crossed with badminton and it works like so:

As soon as the Flee launches, it begins to snap multiple photos at a speed interval of your choice. By the time it returns to earth, not only will it have a slew of aerial photographs, but it will automatically deliver them to your mobile phone via Bluetooth.

Like I said, sounds like it could be used for skydiving, snowboarding, cycling, wakeboarding, etc. Of course, you could get real dirty and shove one up your wife’s…

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Are you an aspiring photographer who just can’t seem to find people’s faces when taking a picture? Well if you are, the Fujifilm FinePix S6500fd is perfect for you. This 6-megapixel camera is the first to come with face detection technology. What is face detection technology you might ask? Well, when you are preparing to take a picture, you hit the “faceâ€? button, and the camera will scan the picture for 2 eyes and a mouth. Once it finds those, it will make a box around the face and track it around the picture. Ok, this is pointless. With the time it takes to scan the image, you could look at the screen and spend oh, maybe 2 seconds to find a face. Honestly how hard is it to find a person’s face on a screen? Anyways, some other features included in the FinePix S6500fd include a 10.7x zoom, which is pretty impressive, and a 2.5 inch LCD. This beast of a camera also comes with 10MB of memory and a 300 picture battery. This is a good camera for amateurs, but for nearly $500, it’s a little much for the FinePix S6500fd. Maybe they were hoping that the idiots who need face detection technology will be duped into paying $500 for this camera. — Nick Rice

FinePix S6500fd [via Gadget Candy]