Good for casual snapshots

Author's Rating:

Pros: Good picture quality, print direct to printer, light weight and convenient.

Cons: Battery hog, limited controls, colour balance not always accurate.

The Bottom Line: 
If you're looking for a simple point and shoot for snap shots then buy this camera. For serious users, look elsewhere.

Author's Review
I purchased this camera as part of a HP's Digital Home Photo Studio System. The price was right and the camera provides us with a second option for family use.

Technically this camera is a real point and shoot variety, so don't expect to have too much control over your exposure values. That said, it is an adequate option for snapping away at family events. Just be sure to buy yourself some NMh batteries (4 to 6) and charger as this unit is a power hog. This can be overcome somewhat by using the optical viewfinder and by turning off the live view.

Which brings me to live view. The LCD display is very jerky and the image quality on the display is very poor. I find myself using the optical viewfinder. It isn't accurate, but I've learned to use it well.

The lens is a 5.67 mm focal length. In 35 mm equivalent terms, it is about a 36 mm lens. The f-stop range is from 4.0 to 8.0 and the lens is a primary non optical zoom unit. Shutter speeds auto select from 4 seconds up to 1/1000th of a second.

The flash is good to about 3 metres (10 feet). It fills reasonably well at that distance, although the performance falls off quickly after that. The flash control is conveniently located on the top of the camera. It has multiple settings for full flash, auto flash, red eye reduction, and extended exposure with flash for night shots (tripod required).

There is a tripod thread in the bottom of the camera, so you can take advantage of the night flash setting as well as use the shot timer, also on the top of the camera. This feature will allow you to join your group. After setting the timer, you have about 10 seconds to run into the shot. First you push the time button, then the shutter release. A red flashing light indicates when the event will occur.

There is an ISO setting of film equivalent 100, 200 and 400 ISO. I found the faster speed to be of usable quality, but the best images are obtained at 100 ISO. There are three image quality settings, good, best and better. I have a 512 MB SD card, so I simply stick with the best quality. The camera came with an additional 32 MB SD card to compliment the 16 MB built in memory. You can very easily transfer images from the camera memory to the SD memory for remote printing.

There are some nice controls such as EV Compensation =/- 2 stops, White Balance, Black and White or Colour shooting, and controls for configuring the camera for sound, date and time, USB configuration (camera can be set to be recognized as a disk drive by your computer) etc.

I found the sharpness of the images to be less than the 3.1 megapixel ccd suggests. I would without hesitation say that the pictures from my canon 2 megapixel A-70 are definitely sharper and the colour balance more reliable. I attribute the image degradation to the jpeg encoding of the images. AS this camera is less than 1/3rd of what I paid for the Canon, I'd say there is a factor of cost savings in the electronic elements of the HP camera. I could address all of my colour issues by correcting the shots in Photoshop. There seems to be less dynamic range in the HP's ccd, so some of the detail in extreme contrast images can get burned out.

In a pinch, you can use the camera for video. The images are mpeg 1 encoded and have a resolution of 320 X 240. Movie duration is limited to memory card size. Not the best solution, but it can come in handy.

One handy feature is the fact that you can print directly to your printer from the camera, without a computer. There is also an instant share feature that allows you to send select images via e-mail from the camera through your computer.

Don't get me wrong, I like this camera for general purpose shooting. You could enlarge some of your images to over 8 X 10, but I feel this camera is best saved for 4"X6" snap shots. If you're a serious shooter, go for a choice that has more exposure control. If you want a simple and effective snap shot camera, then buy and use this camera with confidence.

As this camera was bundled, I truly don't know what I paid for it. I would have to guess that it was about $100 CDN or $75 USD. At that price, it's great to have it with you wherever you go.