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| Olympus C-3040 zoom digital camera |
| Olympus |
|
Price:
$1,000 |
| Coolness
score: 8 |
| Ease
of use: 6 |
|
| A serious digital camera for serious photographers. The 3.3 megapixel camera is durable, has a great zoom lens and produces some great photos. We loved taking photos with this camera, and it was easy enough to use to figure out the controls. Camera comes with a 16M byte SmartMedia card. |
| Olympus D-150 digital camera |
| Olympus |
|
Price:
$300 |
| Coolness
score: 6 |
| Ease
of use: 6 |
|
| 1.3 megapixel camera, somewhat easy to set up, with 3x optical and 6x digital zoom. The resolution of the camera may not be very good for publication photos, but should be good enough for pictures to post on a Web site. It also seemed easier to navigate than previous Olympus cameras that we’ve seen. |
| Kyocera Finecam S3 digital camera |
| Kyocera Optics |
|
Price:
$699 |
| Coolness
score: 7 |
| Ease
of use: 7 |
|
| Billed as the world’s smallest 3.34 megapixel camera, this is a pretty cool camera in such a tiny package. Relatively easy to set up, the camera stores its photos on a Secure Digital (SD) or MultiMedia Card (MMC). While the zoom only goes to 2X, this is still a good camera that doesn’t take up a lot of space in your traveling pack. |
| EZ Digital 1.3 |
| Kyocera Optical |
|
Price:
$200 |
| Coolness
score: 6 |
| Ease
of use: 8 |
|
| Kyocera touts this product as the “World’s Easiest-to-Use Digital Camera.” In some respects, this was true. The camera was simple to operate with a quick glance at the manual. The only downfall in its operation would be that it’s difficult to tell when and if you are actually deleting pictures, and of course my general complaint about digital cameras — that you quickly run out of memory. When it comes to installing and using the ArcSoft PhotoImpression and Instant Email software after you’ve taken your pictures, you’ll find that the manual is the world’s most useless. The directions are incomplete for actually installing the software. And once you’ve got it installed (by the way, though it won’t be noted anywhere on the box, this only works on Windows 98/2000/ME), there are absolutely no instructions as to how to use the software. Using the program to view your pictures takes some guess work, and the “instant”e-mail application is not so quick as adding a picture attachment. For the price, the Kyocera EZ Digital 1.3 does the job, but would be better paired with a more useful program to view your pictures. |
| PowerShot S100 Digital Elph Camera |
| Canon USA |
|
Price:
$500 list price, available for $380 on Amazon.com |
| Coolness
score: 7 |
| Ease
of use: 8 |
|
| Very compact digital camera with lots of nice features. A bit difficult for big hands to manipulate, the camera takes great photos and is fairly easy to learn and set up the software. It's the digital version of the well-known Canon Elph camera and this little gem slips into any pocket. Great for kids. |
| HP PhotoSmart 318 digital camera |
| Hewlett-Packard |
|
Price:
$200 |
| Coolness
score: 7 |
| Ease
of use: 10 |
|
| The 318 is an auto-everything point-and-shoot 2.31 megapixel digital camera. With the quick start directions and simple icons on the viewscreen, you can be up and running in about 10 minutes. Very intuitive and easy to use, it’s a good tool to have around the office if you need to post pictures on the company intranet or send them as attachments. |
| FinePix 6800Zoom digital camera |
| Fuji |
|
Price:
$690 |
| Coolness
score: 9 |
| Ease
of use: 9 |
|
| This camera takes black and white pictures, color pictures (2,832 by 2,128 pixels), video, video with sound (160 sec., max.), and records voice (60 min, max.), voice commentary for still pictures (30 sec. per picture, max). You can re-center stored images and crop them. You can edit and delete photos in the camera or upload them into a PC and edit them there. You can hook the camera up to your TV to display photos or video. Mounted in its recharging platform, the device can perform as a camera for Internet videoconferencing. The camera itself is compact, with an LCD screen for viewing what you are shooting as well as a viewfinder that saves battery power. A Menu button displays options for editing or type of image you want to record, and a separate display panel and set of directional buttons navigates you through editing and other functions. While not entirely intuitive, getting the camera to do what you want it to is relatively easy with the help of the instruction manual. Once the battery is charged up, a novice can shoot pictures within minutes. The zoom lens is the equivalent of a 36mm-108mm lens you might find on a standard 35mm camera. This is flexible enough both to shoot objects up close and to get tight pictures of peoples' faces from across the room so they don't get freaked out by a camera in their faces. |
| StyleCam |
| SiPix |
|
Price:
$70 |
| Coolness
score: 6 |
| Ease
of use: 9 |
|
| A combination digital camera and Web camera for those that need an inexpensive way to take photos and videos. StyleCam hooks to a PC via USB and comes with a TWAIN-compliant driver for downloading pictures directly into photo editing software. For our test, we downloaded the pictures into PaintShop Pro 7. The interface was simple and easy to use. On the accompanying CD there is software for video capture, picture editing and other utilities. One weakness, the camera only has a 640x480 pixel resolution, and no way of previewing pictures on the device. However, with 8M bytes of memory, it can capture up to 180 pictures. But the resolution may only be good for posting on a Web site, prints from those pictures might not be the quality you're looking for. |
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