Digital Camera Reviews

This camera has a lot going for it; it’s incredibly thin dimensions, for one. With a 13-mm girth, it looks more like a mobile phone than a camera. However, that does nothing to stop it from being a fully loaded clicker. It has most of the usual modes but for a super compact, it also, amazingly, boasts 3D imaging. It has an OLED display panel, which while providing excellent viewing capacity, is a little sticky to work with. While it is reluctant to respond to touch at times, at others it exasperates by doing more than it should. For instance, you tap it to view a picture and it suo motu takes you two pictures back in the album. Also, its battery does not last as much as others do. But the TX55 creates good, clean images. It does live up to its claim to special low-light capabilities. With Full HD video, it is a conveniently tiny gadget to carry around in your pocket.

Point-and-shoot compacts are the camera of choice for casual shooters looking to just take snapshots. But the problem many consumers face is they have too many choices. With the compact camera market reaching saturation, manufacturers are pushing the megapixel envelope as well as throwing in full HD video recording to push sales of their newest compact shooters. Read the rest of this entry »

The Fujifilm F550 EXR is curvier than the rest of the cameras, and is definitely shinier with a thick chrome outline running up the sides and top. The GPS unit juts out above the lens, lending it a small DSLR-like note. The mode dial is positioned at an angle, sitting diagonally in between the top and back panels. It’s a unique visual, but doesn’t do much for usability. A raised reverse-teardrop shape below the dial creates a mould for your thumb to gain a grip, but the video record button is awkwardly placed on the rise, making it hard to press.

The Samsung WB2000 scores points for a rugged exterior, and certainly looks like it can take a hard knock or two. Handling is decent thanks to a rubber handgrip, though the off-center placement of the flash does suffer from the occasional finger blocking, in terms of usability however, the WB2000 leads the pack thanks to excellent button layout, though those with larger fingers might find them a little too cramped for comfort. The buttons exhibit good tactile feedback, such as the dedicated video button for instance. We also particularly like its 3.0-inch AMOLED screen, which boasts better color reproduction and viewing angles under sunlight, as compared to the other compacts in the shootout. Read the rest of this entry »

The Olympus Tough TG-810 is also a weather-resistant, shock-proof camera, which means it’s designed with more constraints in mind than other compact cameras. The ports are all hidden behind a sealed, double-lock door for one, and the zoom controls are by necessity, buttons instead of the familiar toggle usually found surrounding the shutter release button.

We found the TG-810 to be not just a tough camera that can take abuse, but also a tough camera to use. The sliver of a power button is too hard to locate, the zoom toggle is stiff and unnatural, the buttons are too small for comfort, the nub of a joystick feels restricted, and the shutter release response feels a breadth too slow.

The headline feature of the Sony HDR-PJ10 camcorder and the HDR-PJ30 that was launched alongside is that each comes with a built-in LED projector. The cheaper pj10 also shoots 3.3-megapixel still photos (vs. 7.1 megapixels for the PJ30), and doesn’t have the led video light and accessory hot-shoe like its brethren. A 1080p full HD camcorder, the PJ10 uses Sony’s very own G lens, and has a focal length starting at a wide 29.8 mm (in 35 mm equivalent). If you prefer a longer reach than a wider field of view, you’d be glad to know that it can zoom all the way up to 894 mm (or to put it simply, a 30x optical zoom). The image trinity is completed with Sony’s Exmor R backlit CMOS sensor and BIONZ image processing engine. Read the rest of this entry »

Canon’s follow-up to the popular S95, the PowerShot S100 is priced slightly higher but improves on the S95 in many ways. Its zoom lens starts at a wider focal length and delivers a longer zoom range, recycle time has been cut drastically, and a GPS has been added. That’s enough for it to replace the S95 as our favorite high-end pocket camera.

The 12-megapixel S100 is almost identical in size and design to its predecessor. At 2.3 by 3.9 by 1.1 inches (HWD) and 7 ounces, it is a bit larger and heavier than competing compact cameras.

The lens covers a 24-105mm (35mm equivalent) field of view, which is a 5x zoom range. At the wide end it opens up to f/2, which lets quite a bit of light in, but the aperture narrows to f/5.9 at the telephoto end of its zoom.

The 3-inch LCD is packed with 460k dots, and even though it is as crisp and bright as the screen found on the S95, it is no longer the best you’ll find on a point-and-shoot camera. Other pocket models, including the Samsung TL500, now employ twice-as-sharp 920k-dot screens. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite having no manual controls and no RAW shooting mode, the 18X-optical zoom CooLpix S9100 should please both novices and pros, It has a great blend of creative automated controls and overall versatility that will make you forget about manual controls. If you want a long-zoom camera that can fit in your pocket, is easy to use, rarely takes a bad photo, and never gets boring, the S9100 is among the best.

The S9100 turned in the best overall score we’ve seen for a point-and-shoot camera in our testing for image quality. Its aggregate score for all four of our image-testing categories was the highest of any camera we’ve evaluated in the past year. Read the rest of this entry »

The X100 is expensive, but there are enough committed camera fans out there for Fujifilm to have judged it worthwhile investing development resources in this fixed-lens camera.

The fully manual 12.3Mp camera is built from magnesium-alloy and has an APS-C sensor crammed in. The aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation settings can all be checked before you switch on the X100. A 2.8in LCD offers an alternative viewing and composition option. There’s also a dedicated RAW button, which lets you switch between uncompressed shooting and processing mode.

The camera weighs 445g and is a chunky 54mm thick, so you won’t want to take it out and about on the off-chance it will get used. It’s anything but a point-and-shoot model, and has plenty of quirks.

Having spent some quality time with this camera this summer, we can attest to the fact that the Fujifilm X100 amply rewards patient use. A less complex (and less expensive) model, the £560 Fujifilm FinePix X10, is also available.

Not everyone wants to spend hundreds of pounds on a digital camera. The Kodak EasyShare M5370 packs in plenty for its £129 price tag. You get a 16Mp CCD, video capture, and support for direct uploading to a range of photo-sharing sites and social networks, plus in-camera editing to finesse your images.

EasyShare software can automatically recognize that there’s someone in shot that looks a lot like a person in a previous photo and suggest they might be one and the same. If so, the face detection and tagging beloved of Facebook form a formidable alliance and pre-tag your photos ready for uploading. When you next turn on the camera, it’ll group photos in the gallery by subject, making it faster to find the best photo of a particular person.

A 5x optical zoom, image stabilization and 20 scene presets all feature on this likable budget camera.

Panasonic’s smallest Micro Four Thirds camera to date, the GF3 Is aimed at less-than-hardcore photographers: there’s no accessory port on top and very few buttons to confuse newbies.

Having said that, it’s no entry-level lightweight. The touchscreen Interface – unique in this company ֊ means the lack of controls doesn’t limit usability to any great degree, and there are some impressive features here: full HD video at 60fps In the telly-friendly AVCHD format, for instance (although those HD images are set against mono sound). Read the rest of this entry »

A camera doesn’t need to be packed to the gills with fancy electronics in order to take decent photos.

Lomo’s La Sardina analogue film cameras deliberately allow you to produce photos containing images laid over each other. In fact, the guide that comes with this 35mm camera suggests creative subjects for multi-exposure photos.

The oversized flash bulb is detachable and is the one concession to electronics. The La Sardina’s flash requires a single CR123A battery.

Coloured filters that fit over the camera lens offer a low-tech means of adding variety to your shot in the absence of zoom, art filters and f-stop adjustments. The La Sardina’s very simplicity allows you to focus on the subject and how they’re framed, rather than the mechanics of taking the shot.

You have probably seen images of this camera on television and in magazines. Yes, it’s the one where you see the LCD panel fanning out in various angles. The first thing you will notice, therefore, is the LCD that opens up rather like a page in a book. It allows you knew viewing angles, though it achieves half the 360 degrees movement of the display in more advanced cameras. The second thing you will notice is how thin the camera is. It is less than an average finger width with the LCD closed down and, therefore, could deceive you into thinking it is a smartphone. These features make the MV800 a device of which you could proudly claim, “Mine is smaller than yours.’’ Read the rest of this entry »

Piping the Canon EOS 60D to the winning post, the Nikon D7000 offers great image quality, image depth and wide dynamic range. Its weather-sealed construction allows for shooting in extreme conditions. With a 39-point autofocus system, shutter speed of 30 to 1/4000 sec, auto ISO 100 to 6,400, this sturdy shooter packs in a punch with panache. It has fast focusing and a large bright viewfinder with 100 per cent coverage and a comprehensive feature set that all make a for superb shooting capability.

The Samsung SH100 is built to appeal to very casual snapshooters. It has both a 14-megapixel sensor and a 5X-optical-zoom lens; it also does 720p video recording at 30 frames per second.

Upping the ante, though, are its built-in wireless features, which include (but aren’t limited to) direct uploads from the camera to Facebook, YouTube, and other sharing services.

Download a free Remote Viewfinder app and install it on a Samsung Galaxy SII or Galaxy S phone, and you can use the handset’s touchscreen to view a real-time feed from the camera’s lens, snap photos by remote control, and adjust the camera’s flash and resolution settings. The app establishes a direct connection between the phone and the camera (no Wi-Fi hotspot needed). Read the rest of this entry »