Deal Seeker: Five Bargains for a Photo-Obsessed Culture
“Who cares if your hair is a mess?” I asked my teenage daughter. She was taking much too long to get ready for school.
“It’s school. Everyone is a mess.”
Her response startled me, but it offered an astute commentary on our culture.
“Do you know how many pictures will be taken of me today?” she asked. “Hundreds. If you were having your picture taken all day, you’d do something about your hair, too, wouldn’t you?”
Good point. I would.
We live in a selfie generation. More accurately, we live in photo-crazy times. I never take selfies, but I have personally generated dozens of photos in the last month. And according to recent Nielsen research, parents and millennials are the most photo-obsessed of us all: 84 percent of millennials admit that they snap pics on a weekly basis, and 72 percent of new parents confess to taking quite a few photos every week.
But we all do it. So I rounded up a collection of sweet deals — some exclusive to Deal Seekers — to help you capture, edit, and show off your photos.
Magisto Premium
Magisto is an app for Android, iOS, Mac, and PC that turns your photos and videos into slick movies. Tap to pick a theme, choose some pics, add music, throw on some effects and captions, and it’ll look like you spent hours working things up. No one has to know that it took seconds.
I scored a free month of Magisto’s Premium service — which lets you store your movies in the cloud and upload way more photos and videos — for the first 2,000 people who go to magisto.com/yahootech (or from the app settings on Android/Web) and enter the code yahootech. But you’d better move. The code expires July 10.
Satechi BT Smart Trigger
So many selfies. All of them taken from an awkward angle with too much of the phone-holding arm in the shot. There has to be a better way.
Turns out, there is.
Set the phone or camera down at a reasonable distance, smile, strike a pose, and press the BT Shutter Button in your palm. Or, even better, take fantastic selfies with your DSLR camera using the BT Smart Trigger. It allows you to control your DSLR with your smartphone so that you can snap group selfies or a clean shot of yourself standing in front of a glorious view. I got Deal Seekers 30 percent off the BT Smart Trigger. Go to Satechi.com and use the code YAHOO30 at checkout.
Kodak PixPro AZ521 Digital Camera Bundle
You don’t have to drop a fortune to get yourself a DSLR camera. This slick, smart 16-megapixel camera with pop-up flash and zoom lens is a great choice for anyone looking for a faster shutter speed and more accurate shooting than you get from your phone. And the 52X zoom lens will get in close so you can safely snap those elusive macro photos. It’s on sale at Costco — in a bundle that includes a memory card, case, and extra battery — for $179, down significantly from the already bargain price of $279.
Polaroid 72-inch Monopod Selfie Stick
No one could have seen the selfie stick craze coming. A stick to hold your camera so you can take pictures of yourself? Really? But these days you can’t swing a camera on a stick without hitting one.
I don’t do selfies, but I love these goofy doodads for getting my phone above a crowd. You get much better concert shots that way. If you don’t have one yet, check out this sale at Walmart.com. The Polaroid 72-inch stick is $11.99, down from $20.
ScanMyPhotos.com
But what about those photos your grandparents handed you in that dusty old box? Wouldn’t those shots of you as a tot make awesome posts?
Yes. They would. I scanned in all my old pics, and now I kill it on Throwback Thursday. No need to scan them one at a time, though. Just send the whole box to ScanMyPhotos.com, and you’ll get your pics back on a DVD (along with the originals), ready for social media sharing or adding to your online photo collection. ScanMyPhotos is having an awesome sale: Send 1,000 4-by- 6-inch photos, and you can get them scanned — with free return shipping — for $49.95.
