Full Review

I received this camera as a gift, mainly because my parents were interested in having a digicam. I have found it to be a very useful piece for simple shooting, but not without limitations. In design, I find it to closely copy 80’s vintage Disc format cameras, with a squared off shape and shiny paint. It uses the standard Smartmedia card up to 16 MB’s, has a built in flash, and is compact. The lens is a 35mm equivalent of 35 millimeters or so.
The best feature is the 1.5 Megapixel resolution, enough for a decent printout. It captures in 640 x 480 and 1280x960 modes and has a digital zoom; this simply cuts the image down in size to include only the center, and is not as good as an optical zoom. My favorite feature is the macro feature allowing focusing to 3.5 inches! (This is as good as my SLR with a close-up filter attached)
Another plus is the on camera ability to preview the image with a 4-times zoom feature and delete unwanted pics. Other notables include the bright LCD screen, manual and auto modes, and self-timer. You can see the pictures on a TV with the included cable, and transfer images to a computer via serial cable. The available floppy disk adapter will speed transfer up.
It isn’t perfect, though. This camera eats batteries like there’s no tomorrow. Good thing it takes AA’s, since replacing Lithium batteries would become expensive FAST. Users of a regular camera would wonder where the drain is; I did. It turns out to be using the LCD. Other faults noticeable by average users are the feeble flash (only 8 feet of range),seriously slow serial cable image transfers, and MIA zoom lens.
These features are available on (way) more expensive cameras, which also feature higher resolution up to and beyond three megapixels. Still, this is the ideal economical digital camera for a family, school, or website to use. For a business, it could perhaps replace a Polariod for quick pictures. One last tip- the best way to get the most out of this camera is to buy a decent card, in the 8 to 16 megabyte ranges. My two megabyte is almost useless.