7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
A great product for less.
Date of Review: Jan 19, 2005
The Bottom Line: A great value for an easy to use product.
I recently purchased this camera at Best Buy on the day after Thanksgiving for a mere 149 bucks. Not too shabby when you consider that most comparable items range from 200-400 dollars. Keeping in mind that I am technologically impaired, the average Joe (or Jorgina) should have no trouble operating this handy ray of photographic sunshine.
First of all, I'm going to cover some of the basics features, most of which mean absolutely nothing to me but perhaps it will be useful to you, the camera consumer. This is a 4.0 mega pixels camera with 4x Optical zooming power. The lens reads, "33mm to 132mm," whatever that means. Additional features include video recording capabilities that will capture roughly 1 minute of consecutive footage that plays back clear and with sound, a timer, a motion setting, nighttime setting, a portrait setting, landscape setting, and close-up setting. There is also an "auto" setting, which selects the appropriate setting (you guessed it) "automatically." All of those settings, minus the timer, are located on an easy to use dial that can be turned to the selection of your choice. The timer is located on the top of the camera. There is a review button on the back that allows you to pan through the images that you have photographed and recorded, and a delete button for all those not so great shots.
I invested in a 256mb memory chip which can be easily inserted into the side of the camera, and it holds approx 315 shots. The retails for about 30 bucks, but I purchased it on sale for 15. Without the chip, the camera only hold about 30 shots.
The only point of contention that I have with the camera is the battery life. The runs off two AA's that barely seem to last one afternoon. My husband and I took the camera on our honeymoon and had to reload the batteries three times within 5 days. We took almost three hundred pictures and used the review feature quite a bit, but it still seemed a bit ridiculous to use so many batteries.
Even still, this camera was definitely a worthwhile investment. A must-have for those of you that want a decent, but inexpensive digital camera.
