5 Megapixel and fits in your pocket

My family is getting ready to take a vacation and my wife has a horrible habit of losing things so we wanted a camera that is small enough to use with two small children, takes a nice picture, uses xd picture cards (like our other camera), and is not going to break the bank if you loose it or it gets stolen. So like always we headed out to Sam's Club and there is was a 5Megapixel camera that fits into your pocket and was priced at $128.00. Unfortunately the sales person did not know a lot about it since they just got in a few days before so we decided to go home and research it a little before making up our mind. Most of the web sites that we found stated that "it is not as nice as out very expensive camera." Well we already knew that, after all we were only looking at spending $128.00 not $500-800.00 on a fancy one. Well anyway we headed back out to Sam's Club and purchased it a few days later.

We had a chance to try it out on the Saturday after we made the purchase since we had two birthday parties to take our kids to and one of them was at a roller skating rink. Now after 20 years of not going to one we had forgotten how dark and loud they are. Well anyway I figured it was the perfect place to try the camera with the lack of light and everything. So with the camera loaded with a 512 mb xd card that allows you to take 140 pictures on the SHQ 2560x1920 setting we started to take pictures of family members skating and having fun. When we left there we decided to go straight to Wal-Mart and get the pictures developed at the one hour photo before going to the next birthday party and we were very pleased. The quality of the pictures was great and we did not have to put them on the computer and make adjustments to them at all.

So off we were to the next birthday party that took place inside of a friend’s house for their little boy and had plenty of light that provided a normal atmosphere. So we decided to use the more compressed HQ 2500x1920 setting that allows 415 pictures on the 512 mb xd picture card. We also decided to see what kind of picture modes that the camera offered as well and were really surprised by the way the lcd screen tells you what each of them are when you turn to each one. And just to see if it worked I tried the self portrait mode and found that after using it three times I was in all three pictures. So we had a good time at the birthday party and when it was time to leave I took the picture card back into Wal-Mart and developed some of the pictures from that party right away as well. Now my first thought is that you would be able to see a small difference in quality but I could not have been more wrong the pictures looked just as good as the other ones did. When we got home we also hooked up the camera to the TV to see what that looked like and thought that it was great to be able to see the pictures on the TV screen with out having to put them on a DVD and watching them that way (out other camera does not have this option).

Now for people that wonder about some other things that the camera has that I have not mentioned here are a few other nice things. A video mode with no sound so you can make silent pictures. A 28mb internal memory that can be used when there is no xd picture card inserted into the camera. A 2.8x optical zoom and an 11x total seamless zoom (2.8x optical X 4x digital). Inside the box there is a 16mb xd picture card, an advanced manual on cd-rom, camera strap, 2 AA batteries, USB cable, video cable, and the software cd-rom for use with them camera. The camera also has some other things that I have not mentioned but I think you can find those when you buy it for yourself.

The only thing that we did not like is that when the batteries start to get low there is a delay after you take one picture until you can take the next one. This is one small con amongst all the pros that we found though. And after all for $128.00 who am I to complain about that.