BEST Quality LOW Price!! Take Advantage of Kyocera & BUY IT NOW!!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Come w/ camera case, lens cleaner, thin, good lens & picture quality, 30fps movies

Cons: No tripod mount, lens cover, video output; inaccurate battery indicator

The Bottom Line: 
Perfect design, nice pictures and small camera body make this the perfect camera to carry around every day! For less then $360, just buy it, you won't regret this purchase!

Author's Review
Slimmer and smaller than most men's wallet even when put in its supplied camera case, the SL300R is probably the best ultra-compact digital camera in its class. (3 Mega-Pixel + 3x Optical zoom class.)

I only research and buy ultra-compact digital camera, because I believe the
best usage for digital cameras is to "capture the moment". I've been a huge
fan of the Canon Digital Elph series, from the S100 to SD100, I've watch
them improve in each generation. However, there is a couple problems that
they have not solved even up till today, and that is its mere 2x optical
zoom and relatively thick body.

Now, you might say "Non-sense, the S400 has 3x optical zoom and the SD100 or
SD10 are thinner than before." To which I would say "Just look at the
Pentax Optio S." The standard of camera size optical zoom was forever
changed when Pentax announced their "fit inside an ALTOIDS can" size camera
w/ 3x optical Zoom!! Unfortunately, both the Pentax Optio S and the Casio
EX-Z3 suffer from poor image quality compare to the Canons. (They use the
same lens and same image processor.)

In come the Kyocera SL300R. Announced in September 2003, the SL300R is the
thinnest 3x zoom, 3 Mega-Pixel camera right now (December 2003), go search
for it on Yahoo to read its spec., and go to Steve's DigiCams for a complete
review sample pictures. I didn't even wait for any reviews before I
bought this camera! I tested it for picture quality myself! (The only thing
I couldn't test was battery life, which DPReview's site has.)

As you can see, picture quality is very good, at least on par with Canon's
Digital Elphs! Skin tones are natural, screen noises are not bad,
compression is done nicely so the whole picture looks very natural. Kyocera
heavily advertises its "RTUNE" image processor, which allows its SL300R to
continuously take 3 Mega-Pixel pictures at 3.5 frames per second, or 640x480
avi movies at 30 frames per second with sound, until your memory card is
full!!(must use a high-speed memory card.) What they didn't tell you is
that you can take 30fps 640x480 avi movies and be able to use optical zoom!
& I only use a normal 256MB SD card (non high-speed card), I can still
record more than 1 minute of movies! (I stopped it, it could keep on recording!) But because this takes way too much
space, I strongly advise against it! Personally, I like the continuous
pictures. Once again, w/ my "low" speed memory card, I can still take 3.5
pictures per second at its highest 2048x1536 resolution. (But zoom and flash
are disabled.) Strong magnesium body feels sturdy. The rotatable lens also
feels strong and is not going to break off easily.

Getting more technical now, aside from the typical settings, the SL300R also
gives you a "Chroma" settings, which lets you adjust the intensity of the
colors (brighter or paler), an AE mode which lets you fix the aperture at
F2.8 or F7.5 (adjust area in sharp focus {depth of field} from shallow to
deep), manual focus from 2 ft to infinty, and finally metering on
evaluation, center or spot area, which is how it calculates the exposure of
the picture. In "evaluation", the entire picture is cut into 64 zones and
the light in each zone is measured to determine the optimum exposure,
"Center" means light is measured with greater weight given to the central
part of the screen, and finally "Spot area" means light is measured at the
center alone. (All these mumble jumble means you have the power to take
professional looking pictures with this tiny camera, if you know how.)

Finally, its weaknesses. It has no tripod mount, probably due to the fact
that it is so thin! However, please note that it can stand still on a flat
surface with its lens twisted foward! There's no lens cover and since the
lens in right at the corner, you will touch it a lot of times at first, once
you get used to it you won't touch it anymore, but be prepared other people
will keep touching your lens when they ask "can I see your camera?" (And
they WILL ask!). Fortunately, it comes with a tiny key-chain lens wiper,
you should hook that to the camera's hand strap. It has no video output,
not a big problem IMO, as I always view my pictures on my PC. Oh, almost
forgot, if you're using Windows 2000 or higher, your pc will automatically
recognize your camera as an external drive, so you don't need to install any
software! Very convenient! Battery indicator seems to be not very
accurate, when it drops to 1/2, it will soon drop to low. If you plan to go
on a trip with this camera, you'll need to buy a 2nd battery. If you don't
use a flash in low light condition, the noise level goes up(this goes for all other digital cameras too.) It isn't too bad, but it's not as good as the Canon Digital Elphs.

So, my conclusion is, if you're in the market for a REAL tiny, 3x zoom, 3
MegaPixel digital camera, you can't go wrong with the Kyocera SL300R! It's
MSRP in Japan is actually just around US$350, I was able to get it for $330
including tax! I think Kyocera is trying to break into the lower/mass
consumer market with this camera, (they used to only make top of the digital
cameras that cost $500 & up. Kyocera is also the maker of the Contax brand
professional cameras.) so take advantage of this I say! Buy it now!