7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
James Bond just has to have one.
Date of Review: Dec 31, 2002
The Bottom Line: A great very little camera. Very easy to use. With the use of photo editing software you can take good pictures indoors, or out.
This is the digital camera I have been waiting for ... ultra small (around the size of my old Minox) and at least 1 Megapixals. I have only had it for a few days now, but do have some opinions on it.
In getting a camera this size, you have to expect to give up some bells and whistles such as zoom features, extra high quality Jpegs, etc.
My first problem, however, was that I did not have necessary files to complete the installation. So while the installation was stalled waiting for a .dll file, I was on the Net using Google to find it. In all, around 8 files were missing. (The instructions said to get them from my Windows 98 CD, but I could not find them on the CD that came with my HP computer. And the Microsoft web site was completely useless.) The good news is that I found the necessary files and downloaded them into appropriate folders, and the installation then went along just fine.
The camera is quite easy to use.
CAVEAT! To get the most out of this camera you need a good photo editing program. All sorts of them are out there and probably any one would work. Some are included with the software that came with the camera, but I am using software already installed on my computer.
After you get your Jpeg from the camera, you need to put it into the photo editing program. The most common function I use is the "brightness" function. By doing this, I have taken quite good indoor shots with limited lighting.
Another thing you need the photo editing program for is to crop the photo. This is necessary because you don't have an image viewfinder, and hence it is better to get more stuff into the Jpeg than you really want (mainly to be sure you get all of the subject) and then cut it out. The net result is a pretty good Jpeg.
The instruction manuel says you can get around 40 Jpegs at the 1.3 Megapixal setting. I haven't bothered with the lower 640K setting even though the manual says you can get 160 Jpegs. OTOH the camera uses readily available AAA batteries.
The cam feature is a real memory buster, and I am still trying to figure out how to use the cam editor software that came with the camera.
Also keep in mind that with a camera this small, it is very, very easy to move the camera when taking a shot. I brace my hands on my face or nose or forehead to get more stability.
And, yes, it will take snapshots of documents in the close-up mode if you are into that spy stuff.
