This Camera is the Dog's Bits

The photo quality is excellent but the main surprise for me was the quality of the video. Amazing. Battery life is very good and with a 16 bit sd card, it is possible to take really good longer videos. Normally I avoid the touch screen stuff. Much prefer Nokia phones than Iphone for example, but this camera works. For me it is a bargain.

Great Camera

Having played with all the features on this Camera I have found it to be very user friendly and the pictures are very good quality too.

Amazing

I have always loved Polaroid instant cameras, & when I saw this one advertised I felt I had to buy it. I have to admit I purchased it over a year ago & because of cicumstances I have only just got round to using it & I think it is brilliant!

I took a picture of my dog & the colour reproduction of his coat is remarkable, better than my Canon Digital camera. I can see I will be using it a lot, it was also very simple to set up. A very good buy I think.

Fantastic camera.

What can I say about this awesome camera? I wanted one that was small and lightweight and able to produce good pictures. This was the perfect choice.

It has many different shooting modes to choose from which are easy to select and you'll find one to suit most weather conditions/activities/purposes. For each mode, there's a quick summary of what it does - helpful when trying to find the best one to use.
It's quick to set up as soon as you open the box. Although it doesn't come with a memory card, you can buy them quite cheap from most places and the camera also has in-built memory, for when the SD card is full (40mb I think it is). Once the battery pack is charged (which didn't take long at all) the camera is ready to go.


Highly recommended!

Great functionality but NOT suitable for all

Buying the camera on the first day it was available on Amazon, I've had the pleasure and mispleasure of using it on several trips.

The good:

- Build quality is really good; it has a solid feel to it and is comfortable in the hand. I find the controls easy to use and the touch sensitive display is superb.
- The panoramic shots are superb and a bit of a show grabber (ok, I like my gadgets!)
- I'm really very impressed by the quality of my outdoor shots using the camera, and the video is equally good

The bad:

- I bought this camera because when going to a bar/away with friends, I like to take a lot of night shots. Phone cameras aren't good at that. The phone suffers in two ways: on several occasions the shutter has opened in my pocket and the battery has drained. I bought the camera to be small and easy to carry so putting it in a case is defeating the object - come picture time, no battery. Pretty useless. Secondly, if the user touches the touch sensitive screen during a picture they are liable to change the settings. Easy to avoid, but if giving the camera to someone else to take the picture it can spoil the moment.
- It really annoys me that you can't connect a standard mini-USB to the camera to download pictures or to charge the camera, so you have to carry the special Sony charger and cable.

For the rest: it's a great small camera, if my"bad" points aren't relevant to you then I heartily recommend the camera, and the pictures it takes/ease of use easily beat anything a phone camera can deliver.

small and beautifully formed - but needs to eat more carrots

my main camera is a canon G10. it's a brilliant camera but just a shade on the big side for carrying with me all the time. so, having used ixuses since way back with the ixus 400, i bought myself one of these as my"carry-it about-in-your-pocket. have-it-on-you-all-the-time. isnae-the-end-of-the-world-if-you-break-it" backup camera. mainly i was attracted by the low price [i got it on offer for £[]-odd], my previous experiences with the ixus range [i got 6 years and 8000+ photos out of my original ixus 400 - and it was still going strong, til' i stood on it and broke the screen], and the small size [think"credit card as fat as a matchbox"].

well, like i say, i've had it a few months now, so that's long enough to have formed some opinions:

THE GOOD
* durable construction - the ixus 100IS has a metal body, not a crappy plastic shell. this makes it pretty durable. clumsy eejit that i am, i inadvertently put this durability to the test, within about two weeks of getting the camera; i was checking out a rattle from the exhaust on my van and lay down on the ground to take a look. as i did so, the ixus slid out of my pocket and wedged up against my pert young buttock. thinking i'd lain down on a stone, i reached down without looking and hauled the offending article out from underneath me, thus dragging it across the tarmac. as a result, the front of the casing now has some nice deep gouges scraped across it. the camera however still functions absolutely perfectly. i dinnae think i would have been so lucky with a flimsier plastic-cased model.

* size - i've not got exceptionally big hands, but i did worry a bit before the ixus arrived as to whether or not it would be a bit fiddly to operate, what with being so small. but i've had no trouble at all. you might not want to try and use it on a cold winter's day with a pair of gloves on but, for day-to-day use, it's fine, in spite of its diminutive size. the tiny size is one of the ixus's best features. it really is the camera that you can carry with you all the times, without even thinking about it.

* HD video - the ability to shoot video on a digital camera has long been one of those features [like building an FM radio into a frying pan] which add another bullet point to the list of spec's, but are pretty useless in the real world. lately however this has been changing with people even making commercial movies using the video capabilities of top-end DSLRs, rather than using 'real' film cameras. this technology is now trickling down to the cheaper end of the market, so that you can now shoot near broadcast quality video on this tiny camera. there's almost nothing in the way of control [focus is fixed at the start of filming and can't be changed as you shoot], but you can use the zoom and, at the end of the day, it's HD video from a camera the size of a creditcard!

THE BAD
* sensitivity - as well as the 'auto' setting, the ixus 100IS has manual ISO settings from 80-1600. in theory this should be more than enough for photography in very low light conditions. however, in practice i find that, even shooting indoors in well lit, big windowed rooms, i'm regularly having to push the ISO settings right up to 800 and 1600, just to get a shutter speed above 1/30th second, so i can hand-hold the camera. and this is on one of the medium settings -not even fullsize resolution. i've no numerical evidence to back this up, but i've used several canon digital cameras over the years and the ixus 100IS is the first one where it feels like i've so often had to manually select an ISO setting because on 'auto' the shutter speed was just going to be far too slow.

i think canon have been sucked into the 'megapixel wars' a bit here. even my G10 [which is a high-end 'pro' compact] has a resolution of 'only' 10MP. unless you're planning to regularly print out your photographs at A3 or A2 size -in which case you'd be unlikely to be using a tiny point'n'shoot compact like this, in the first place- you simply don't need 12MP [4000px X 3000px] resolution on this type of camera. canon would have been far better off using a lower resolution [6 or 8MP], higher sensitivity sensor in the 100IS.

THE UGLY
* i've mentioned above the 'idiot-inflicted wounds', which caused me to scratch the front of the casing. however, even ignoring them, my ixus would still be looking a bit less-than-new, only a few months after purchase. it's great to have a metal casing and the camera looks slinky in black, but unfortunately the black coating tends to wear off quite quickly and easily. my ixus already has the silver metal showing through on a couple of its corners, just from day to day use and being slid into and out of my pocket. i reckon in a year's time it will look decidedly the worse for wear. personally this doesn't bother me. i like my possessions to have a bit of a patina as i think it gives them character but, if you're the kind of person who obsesses about keeping their gadgets in showroom condition, you'd probably be better off going for the silver version.

SUMMARY
* a great, solid wee camera which takes excellent photos and shoots HD video. let down slightly by the poor lower-light sensitivity of the image sensor.

Good camera, questionable reliability

I bought this camera last May (09) to replace an elderly Nikon 2MP. It is a small beast and like many of its contemporaries it lacks a viewfinder. As my eyesight is lengthening I find having to use the screen to frame a shot a major issue, to get it right requires finding my glasses. The resulting pictures are good and the video mode acceptable for simple shots. All went well with the camera until last month when the lens suddenly started making grinding noises when opened or zoomed. Also a 'lens error - restart camera' message on display. Email to Amazon led to request to contact Canon for fault analysis. The was a request to send to repair centre for investigation with no guarantee of turn round. As I had lost half my holiday pictures chance I contacted Amazon who issued a refund, thank you. I have decided to try another A480 as overall I was happy with it.

Lumix FS30 Camera

Thiis was bought for my daughter. From what I know so far she is thtilled to bits with it. She finds it easy to use and has taken some amazing close up shots of wild life and plants that look real pro to me.

Despite the gimmicks - a solid performer

The crowded Digital Camera market is constantly offering new quirks and 'useful applications', sometimes they fly, sometimes they are contrived but in general, you just want to take good photographs.
This camera offers both qualities. The Kodak M530, despite only having a 3x Optical zoom (the camcorder market with it's huge Optical range, would pity this) takes sharp and well composed photographs.
It is worth noting that the quick start guide is THE guide. It took several attempts at testing the video feature before I realized that the shutter button must be pressed deeply before it will start recording.

Kodak Smart Capture technology:

This is the description Kodak uses to describe the ability to 'take good pictures' without having to do too much.
There are further, similar descriptions:

"Intelligent scene detection-- detects and analyzes the type of scene; Intelligent capture control -- automatically sets camera settings including exposure, focus and ISO for clear, sharp pictures even in low light..."

Personally, I gloss over all that promotional hot air. After all, no camera manufacturer is going to offer the promise of 'unclear, blurry pictures'.

I took several photographs in my well lit kitchen with the automatic 'smart capture' on, and results were impressive. I could zoom in and read the small print on a cereal box, such is the quality of such High Res images.

The camcorder function was okay, but due to an influx of light from the kitchen window being behind me, I was a 'black cloud' and all efforts by the cam to self compose failed. Not a problem, in more appropriate settings the results were excellent. Almost as good as an actual camcorder.

The contrived element to this solid performer is the ability to automatically upload to the various social networking websites such as Facebook and also to Youtube, et al - with one press of a red button. Never in a million years would I want to allow anything to 'go public' with one touch of a button, however careful I am.
To use this feature you must attach the camera to your PC. So, the automatic part of this deal is already looking rather flaky. However, you can't blame Kodak. In the crowded camera market, it's a smart operator who is able to shoe-horn high Facebook and Youtube logos onto the cover of their product.

Face Recognition (the feature you never knew you did NOT need):

Now we really have 'jumped the shark' with the ability to select a face and get the camera to find more photos with that face in it. For example, you can tag a picture of Susan and then the camera will search for other pictures of the same woman. I would dearly love to have this amount of time on my hands. Just think, you could combine this intelligent feature with the one click upload and send all of your pictures of Susan to Mary. Easy. But if an error was to occur and John found out, you'd have a problem that even Kodak's best technician could not solve.

On a serious note, this is a well built 12mp cam that takes crisp and well composed photographs. The extra features are a bit of fun.

Panasonic

All functions on this camera are as expected of Panasonic, good easy operation, good results.

Zoom is a bit dodgy

I recently purchased this after seeing it on the Hollyoaks adverts.
It's a really compact little camera and great if you're just out with friends on the beach or out walking.
The picture quality is good but I don't think people should have such high expectations for a cheap camera. I knew I just wanted a camera to capture quick moments like sunsets and not to have really detailed pictures. I think if that is the overall thing you're after then this camera isn't for you.

I like it but my only problem is the zoom.
I've noticed that when I turn the camera on and attempt to zoom in quickly, the camera can't cope and seems to lock itself and a message appears on the screen saying 'lens error' which is quite irritating. This happens quite a lot with mine but I've learnt to just take my time with it.

So overall a great quality camera. If you want amazing pictures and quick reactions then this camera probably isn't the one for you.

<3 it...

I've only had one digital camera and found it hard to use; There were 2 dials and over half a dozen buttons, plus it was heavy to hold and my hands aren't very steady, so every picture I tried to take came out all blurred. So when Dad borrowed it and lost it (have I mentioned that it was my 21st birthday presant? Thanks Dad), I wasn't really that bothered.


I'm going to a swanky wedding in a few weeks and am going to NYC at the end of the year, so I decided to get a cheap and cheerful looking camera, so opted for a KODAK M320 simply because it was £40 and is a nice shade of red.

This is easy to use; Slide in the lithium ion battery [included] and SD memory card [not included. I use a Kingston 2 GB memory card and it can hold over 1000 photos (largest size)]. in the side openings, charge the camera [I lost track of time, around 1 hour], then enter the date and time [It asks as soon as you turn it on] and off you go.


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Battery
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I'm giving the battery charger it's own section because I think that the design is great (maybe it's the norm and I'm totally clueless).

The charging unit is seperate from the prongs and you simply slide the prongs [LOL: What are they called?] in. The great bit is that your camera comes with two prongs; The standard 3 prongs AND a 2 prong set. Since I'm going to the US at the end of the year I think this is extremly useful.

The charging unit doesn't have it's own wire - you plug the USB cable to it. Again, I think that this is great; not having loads of seperate wires to cart around on holiday.


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The pictures
- - - - - - - - - - -

I've taken photos indoors and outdoors, in different sizes [there are eight sizes], different levels of zoom, with flash, without flash and the results have been flawless everytime.

I've took photos of the bright flowers in the garden and the colours have all been true to life - direct sunlight hasn't bleached the results in any way.

I'm not sure would someone more experianced would think of the image quality, but I honestly can't fault it.


I understand this to be a basic camera, yet there are plenty of easy-to-use features; Colour mode [High Color, Natural Color, Low Color, Black & White or Sepia], long time exposure, white balance, face detect capture, exposure metering, AF zone, redeye preflash, sharpness, blur warning, set tags and variable ISO speeds. There is also a built-in help guide on the camera.


I've taken a few short videos too and have been quite impressed. The image is slightly wavy and distorts when I used the zoom, but the audio is clear [a bit tinny though] and I can play it on QuickTime, Itunes [though I can't transfer it to my Ipod. I do have the old 30 GB model, so maybe you can transfer it on newer models] and RealPlayer.


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EasyShare
- - - - - - - - - -

On the camera; There is a 'share' button so you can select the photos you want to print and/or send via email.

Software; It's simply a case of popping in the disc and following the prompts to quickly and easily install the EasyShare software. After transferring over the photos and videos to the computer the first thing that happens is that anything you may have selected for printing or emailing pops up and prompts you to complete the task.

After completing that there is a variety of ways for you to edit your photos, including cropping, rotating, altering the colour, adding text and facial retouching. There are also some 'fun' effects, which younger family members will love; Spotlight, colouring book [b/w pic you can print then colour in], cartoon [I love this. It tranforms the photo into a sort of sketch design] and the fisheye effect. Then you can upload your master artwork to YouTube, Facebook or Flickr at the click of a button.

** You can also make cards and calendars. Some are free, while some templates have a small charge. There is also quick access for joining and ordering prints via the Kodak Gallery **

Nikon D90 Great camera

I bought this after reading the reviews most of which talked highly of the camera. I bought this just before going to Spain for a holiday.

It did not take much time to learn how to use it. Use the automatic to point and shoot first and get used to the camera gadgets later. The pictures are stunning and sharp. This is my first DSLR after using compacts for a long time. I used to have a 35mm before then. Camera handling is great. I would recommend it to anyone.

I wish to thank the people who posted their comments which influenced my decision. In the end I compared Canon 550D, Nikon D90, D3000 and D5000 before settling for the D90. Besides the lens extends from 18-105.

Go and have a feel of the camera. It is slightly heavier than the others but the grip is great and the pictures are stunning and sharp. That is what you want when you spend this kind of money.

Regards

Simple but fulfills my photo needs

This camera is certainly marketed as a budget-end camera yet has some very desirable facilities that makes it appealing to young and old alike.

Firstly, it's not so stupidly small that an adults hands swamp it. Neither is it particularly bulky nor heavy. Feels nice and comfortable in my hands.

The screen is large, bright and sharp. It doesn't have the touch-screen capabilities of more expensive cameras but frankly I never missed that here.

Whilst 10 mega-pixels might be seen as over-kill for a snap-shot style camera it did produce some very sharp and details photos; its Achilles heel is that it doesn't perform brilliantly in low light but then I didn't expect it to. Manually setting the ISO rating down a tad (requiring longer exposures in low-light conditions) more-or-less eliminates the"noise" speckling if you leave the camera doing its own thing in low light.

Face recognition was an unexpected surprise on a budget camera and worked very well. All my person centric photos were in focus.

One default settings that was changed was the auto-focus: by default it continually keeps trying to auto-focus which can use battery power. I changed it so that you have to partially press the shutter to make it focus. Kids though, would probably appreciate the auto-focussing as all they need to do then is press the shutter.

Kodak make a great deal about easy it is to upload to Facebook and the like but I never tried this. Printing to a printer (with or without a dock or Pictbridge) worked well though.

In summary, this is brilliant bit of kit which does so much more than what the price would suggest. Recommended.

Almost perfect

I normally use a quite heavy DSLR and was looking for a small pocket sized camera for those occasions when it is not convenient to cart the SLR around. I would have no hesitation in recommending the 350B it is really very good, the lens is excellent and it copes very well with a variety of lighting conditions (including very contrasty interiors). Although it is small enough to slip almost unnoticed in to a pocket do not be deceived by its size, the image quality is very good. As a bonus this remarkable toy will also give some fair video recordings although it cannot compete with a dedicated camcorder especially in the sound stakes.

The only slight gripes (and they are slight, especially considering the price of this little gem) is it's lack full manual exposure control, a viewfinder and the lens is only 4 times optical zoom but apart from that it is superb!

A Superb Quality Compact Camera with a Vast Range of Capabilities

I take a lot of photographs whilst out and about and on holiday, an 'artistic snapper' if you like. I have a venerable Toshiba PDR-M81 4.2Mp camera for lightweight/compact requirements where I can accept damage/loss (as I have a couple of spares due to me liking it so much !) and a Canon EOS 400D when the amount/size of equipment is not a factor and where the risk of damage/loss is 'low'. After seeing the specification/reviews of this camera I identified it as something that might fill a potential 'hole' in my camera line-up for occasions when I want something compact but am comfortable taking around something of value (ie the risk of damage or theft is minimal - this camera is not cheap !).

Having bought a Canon G10 and used it for a bit I'm so glad I got it. It fills my aforementioned 'capability gap' perfectly, takes excellent images, is easy to use in what one could refer to as the 'basic' mode and offers a copious range of capabilities. The camera has been around a while now, much written about it and it has also recently been superseded. Despite this I still thought it worth posting my views as from what I read the G11 isn't THAT much of a leap forward so any readers of this review might well be able to satisfy a temptation to get the older G10 at a lower price !

Aside from the size, the main factors which made this an excellent choice for me are the very useful zoom range of the lens, the sensor resolution, the ability to take RAW images and the wealth of features/adjustment possibilities on offer - plus it's a Canon of course.

I can't emphasise enough how wide-ranging and comprehensive the range of features and customisation/adjustment settings are - it really is mind-boggling and I doubt anyone has mastered an ability to remember how to perform every possible setting; but the beauty of the G10 is that it can be used perfectly well as a straightforward 'point and shoot' camera, without having to resort to fiddling with buttons etc. From my experience it is best to just peruse the manual in order to get a feeling for the capabilities, and how to access the essential functions, then use the camera almost immediately to get the feel of it; I am gradually over time discovering the extra capabilities it has, how to set them and what I can adjust.

I think the key consideration to always remember when using this camera is not 'what can it do' but, due to it's superb capabilities, 'what buttons do I have to press to achieve what I want' - I have consistently found it has the answer to any photographic 'requirement' I've thrown at it. You can either do this at your leasure with the user guide at hand or (and I know this sounds a bit stupid) whilst out taking photos 'in anger', 'playing' with the buttons and seeing what happens...

The best example I can give is the excellent 'Stitch Assist' function. I like taking sweeping panoramic images and this mode offers an easy and intuitive way to take multiple images which can be readily compiled (using photo software) to produce an overall image far bigger than one image 'frame'. Whilst taking photos in a large garden, I found myself thinking 'now it would be far more useful if I could take my images not just left-to-right (as offered when the mode is selected), but also from right-to-left, top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top'. No user guide at hand of course, but I instinctively fiddled with the control dial and lo-and-behold a stitch shooting direction menu appeared on the LCD offering those 4 shooting modes plus a clockwise mode (to form a 4-frame rectangular image) - MARVELLOUS !

I do not intend to go into great depth about everything else the camera can do, but here's a short list of the things I particularly like :

The build-quality - it's very robust and well-finished (but this does create a 'niggle', see below....).
The overall zoom range plus the minimum/maximum focal length capability.
The battery life is excellent - I can almost always go out with just the camera and a well-charged battery knowing it will last the day.
That fantastic stitch assist function !
The readily available exposure compensation facility via a dial (this is easily the setting I adjust most often) - no buttons to press or menus required to access it.
It has a viewfinder.
The useful size of the LCD.
The image quality in bright sunlight doesn't seem to require me getting a polarising filter fitting - the contrast and colour of blue skies, water etc is quite acceptable 'as-is'.
The video quality and that sound is recorded.
File playback can be performed on the LCD without turning on the camera/activating the lens.

On the down-side, I do have a couple of niggles :

It might be pocket-sized but it's much heavier than I was expecting so can't comfortably be stored in a pocket (I want good build quality and a light weight ie my cake and be able to eat it, which is unreasonable I know !).
The location of the 'Exposure Lock' button - I have lost count how many times I've unintentionally activated the function (I don't have the same problem with my EOS despite the button being similarly placed - it's the overall body size and overall layout of the G10 which makes the button more 'vulnerable' when taking photos).
I would prefer that the 'mov' (ie QuickTime) video file-format was a more widely used type such as 'wmv' or 'avi'. This would make the files more readily playable on computers and portable playback devices (eg I can view images from the G10 on my Epson multimedia player but not the video).

There might be other cameras out there that offer similar levels of quality and capability to the G10, but for me this camera is a real winner and well worth considering if your budget can stretch to buying it.

Top Gift for an 8 year old girl

This camera has it all, the simplicity and style is perfect for my 8 year daughter; she picked up straight from the box and was taking photos and video within 10 minutes!

Samsung ES15 Digital Camera

This was a present and was really appreciated and very happy with the product after using on holiday

Nifty little camera - improves on further use

I had this camera on trial for a week or so. Gave it a good going over as we go out on site a lot and we need something that can take a bit of a battering. Have been playing around with the camera a bit more.

The good stuff:
* Nice and compact, fits in your pocket
* Picture quality is decent but there can be a little feathering around the edges but not a huge problem as the the images are high resolution and you can always crop
* I would give this camera five stars for the HD video quality, it is brilliant, the video quality is very sharp. I admit there was a shaky Cloverfield like effect but that's down to operator error!
* The user panel on the back is very simpleand more space is left for the 2.7 inch view screen, the view pictures and record video buttons are straight forward
* The battery and card flap has a lock on it so you don't open it by accident
* you can zoom the picture quite a bit after downloading and the image probably starts to deteriorate at about 300-400% which is not bad (trust me, in our jobs this sort of thing is very handy!)

The bad stuff:
* The buttons on the back are tiny, if you have little fingers then you are okay but most of the guys I work (who would be using it don't)
* The battery for this camera goes in either way but only charges in one direction (match the olympus to olympus logo on the front). It's a minor thing but it was annoying and I couldn't work out why it wasn't charging and I'm not the only one who was baffled.
* The software for the camera is installed in the camera memory but you can only access if there is no memory card in the camera - this is not included in the instructions.
* No viewfinder and the lens does not have a protective cover.

It's a pretty good picture camera but the film is very superior, I would buy it just for that alone.