Nikon is projector and camera in one

So she can forget about getting the new Nikon Coolpix camera for Christmas. According to Nikon, the Coolpix S1000pj is the first camera to include a built-in video projector. Touch a button and the camera will fling your snapshots or videos onto any nearby wall, ceiling, or floor. Now it is easy to show your photos to an entire roomful of viewers as apathetic as I am.

The Coolpix S1000pj is the latest entry in the “pico projector’’ market. These are pocket-sized devices that use lasers or miniature liquid crystal displays to project small, but useful, images onto any handy surface. Pico projectors began showing up a couple of years ago, but are only now coming into their own. They sell for as little as $225, and can be connected to a variety of video storage gadgets, from laptop computers to iPhones.

It makes sense to build a pico projector into a cellphone, where it can show off images stored in the phone’s onboard memory. South Korea’s Samsung has done this, but the resulting phone, called the Show, has not gone on sale on this side of the Pacific. Nikon’s Coolpix is a shrewd application of the same idea, but in a camera. According to the Photo Marketing Association, about 40 percent of Americans keep their favorite pictures in their digital cameras, using the device as an electronic photo album. So why not make it easy to share?

The Coolpix, $429 at Amazon.com, has more going for it than the projector. It features 12.1 megapixel resolution - which keeps images sharp even when they’re blown up and beamed against a wall - and a 5X optical zoom lens. It also shoots standard-definition video, which you can feed directly from the camera into your home TV set. Nikon tosses in a little remote control, so you can enjoy the show from a distance.

The camera comes with a CD full of software for installing on a PC or Mac. Fair enough, but I keep hoping that all digital gadgets will eventually put their software right inside the device, like Flip video cameras do. Then you could just plug in the camera and it would set up with minimal fuss. Bring it on, Nikon.

It is the camera’s projector that sets it apart. Mounted right below the flash unit, it throws out a surprisingly bright beam of light. It can be placed up to 6 feet from the target surface, and will display an image over 3 feet across. A slider button on top lets you sharpen the focus. You can aim it at the wall with your hands while working the controls, but Nikon supplies a little plastic stand so you can rest the camera on a table. Then you can run the show using the remote control.

So how does it look? Not bad. Images are viewable even in a well-lit room, and much better if you lower the lights. You can place the camera 6 feet from the wall, but I found the best results at around 4 feet. At that distance, the projected photos were still reasonably colorful, with tolerable contrast. To be sure, the projected images did not look nearly as good as they did on the camera’s 2.7-inch LCD display screen. But the results are quite good enough for showing off to friends and family.

Nikon calls the S1000pj “your personal theater on the go,’’ but not quite. I tried installing an AVI video file from my home computer and viewing it on the camera. No dice. Nikon officials told me that the device will only show videos that were created on the camera, so forget about using it to watch any other movies. And beware of the rechargeable battery. The projector drains it fast, especially if you’re also shooting photos and videos.

As someone who prefers to view digital photos on a computer screen, I regard Nikon’s in-camera projector as a nifty but inessential gimmick. It is not nearly as useful as built-in Wi-Fi or cellular networking for transmitting photos directly to the Internet. But then, I do not feel a desperate urge to show everybody the photo I took 15 seconds earlier. Maybe someone at Nikon knows my wife.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.