Digimax 201 ~ Good cam, just know what to expect!!!

Author's Rating:

Pros: SIMPLE, cheap, quality pictures, small cam, easy to navigate, low shutter lag.

Cons: Drains battery, no lense cover, software isn't set up well, no audio on movie clip.

The Bottom Line: 
This camera is small, cute, and SIMPLE! Perfect for beginners! It was inexpensive and it takes really nice pictures and video! I love it!!!

Author's Review
Well, I had a VGA 640x480 digi cam before that was about $50. I liked it a lot but one day something just went wrong with it. I've been wanting to get another digi cam for a long time, and finally just decided to shop around. I came here to read reviews for the Digimax 201 because I saw it at Walmart for $139. Her and on Amazon.com, it had a rating of about 4 stars. So I read all the reviews and decided I wanted to get it. I held off for a month and looked around for deals on it or rebates and at other cameras at different stores. Then I saw it on Walmart.com for $129 and the 2-3 priority shipping only cost $5. So, I got it. :o)

The day I got it, I used the live view (where you can see everything on the LCD as you move the cam.) The batteries were dead within 5 hrs of occasional use. I had bought 4 AA Lithium batteries anyways, so that wasn't a big deal. I just don't turn the live view on. My mom has a Kodak Easy Share camera and she hates it. Their software is a total pain and the lag time on the shutter is FOREVER. She always gets bad pictures because people wait too long for the flash to go off and end up with a "hurry up" look on their face or taking a pic of the dog as she runs away. :o) Well, I was concerned about that with this cam, but it's almost instantaneous that the pic is taken. And even with the live view off, it will show you the pic on the LCD after you take it. I had it set to show it for 1 second but then everyone I was taking pictures of wanted to see it so I changed it to 3 seconds.

I've taken literally hundreds of pictures of my son! He was sleeping so cute but the light was off and I didn't think the pic would show up, but it looks great! Even with the lights off, this cam takes a good pic! Wayyy different than my old one. It's really easy to change the settings on it and I like that you can take a large high resolution pic and then change to the small low resolution pic right afterwards.

I didn't like the software that came with the cam to view the pictures. It labels the pictures with numbers like 100 0255 and it was annoying to have to rename hundreds of pictures to organize them into my file folders. So, I just uninstalled the viewing software and I don't know if Windows 2000 or earlier versions have it, but my Windows XP has a camera and scanner wizard that let you take all the pictures off of your camera and copy them to a folder that you designate, you give the group of pictures a title like "Family" and then it just adds 001, 002, 003, etc to the end of the pic, and then if you select the check box, it will delete all of the pictures from your cam, too. I usually make the title something like "8-15-03 ~ " and then it adds the picture number (001, 002, 003 etc) to the end and then I turn off the cam after all the pictures are copied and deleted from the cam to save batteries. (if that's really confusing but you want to know what I mean, you can e-mail me at chrissylove123@aol.com)

It would be nice if the video mode had sound, but the files are soo big it takes like 10 minutes just to e-mail 3 seconds of video anyways. Besides, I have a Samsung camcorder that I'm in love with, too.

I also got a 64 megabyte secure digital memory card so that I can take up to 1249 pictures, YES 1249! It was only $37 after tax at Walmart.com and there's a $10 rebate if you get it by Aug 31st, 2003. Good deal! :o)

I would HIGHLY recommend this camera to anyone! I love it!