|
Average rating:
3.35
|
|
|
|
|||
 |
HP Photosmart M4175.0 megapixels | 1.8" screen | 36 – 108 mm (3×)
|
|
Average rating:
3.35
|
|
|
|
Opinion: I've been using this camera for few months as a back-up to my 35 mm SLR.
It's compact and light, handy for taking on hiking or cycling trips when I don't want to lug the SLR and lenses with me.
It gives average results as a point and shoot camera in auto mode. If you want to have more control, you can manually select ISO, White Balance, Scene Mode and exposure compensation, but it takes some hunting in the menus to adjust the settings.
Image and colour quality is good in bright, outdoor conditions, but results can be poor and noisy in low light or shady conditions. I use a mini tripod whenever I can to avoid problems with hand shake.
The sensor appears vulnerable to blooming and highlights are burnt-out in high contrast images (a problem common to many digital cameras). Mostly I do landscape photography. I've got some quite good shots using the tripod and "Landscape" scene mode to force smaller apertures and longer exposures. Attempts at sunrises/sunsets or night photography of buildings took a lot of experimenting with exposure compensation and scene mode.
It's been fun playing with this camera, but I'll be saving up for an entry-level DSLR or Bridge Camera for when I finally retire the film camera.
This is quite an old model now, so read the other reviews and go for something with a better sensor and image processing features.
Problems: Automatic White balance frequently doesn't work, leading to a blue cast on bright but overcast days. The manual setting for "shady" conditions gives a brownish cast.
Screen is poor and refreshes too slowly for action photography.
Zoom control is not fine enough. It tends to jump.
Macro mode poor compared to other Digital compacts by Canon and Olympus.
Opinion: On the plus side of this comera one can note a sharp image quality, a good feature set for a beginner's camera and a cheap price. Feature set includes White balance, Sensitivity levels (100, 200, 400 ISO), Exposure compensation,Several flash modes, Burst mode and several other modes (portrait, scene, ect...).
It is small enough to carry around (though certainly nothing as small as the Canon Ixus family to name an example), and quite light. It also features a relativly strong flash. Using just two AA battries, there will be few problems when they are used up - just pop in another pair. Adaptive Lightning, with which this camera is equipped, seems to do a good job. LCD also gains up well in dimly lit conditions, allowing you to frame subject well.
Problems: Start up time is not great - around 2-3 seconds, especially due to lens having to extend out.
Long shutter lag, especially when using Autofocus. Prefocusing helps a little.
Flash recycle time is long.
A very poor burst mode.
High noise at ISO 400.
A poor quality LCD screen. It certainly has a lower pixel count than any camera I have seen. Worse, it has a very low refresh rate. You can forget of tracking an subject with it.
Lens responds slowly to the zooming buttons. Even a lens as on an old camera as a Fuji 3800 (with a much larger zoom) is faster to reach maximum telephoto.
Optical viewfinder looks more like a tunnel than anything else - and shows less than 85 % of image. It is coupled with the optical zoom.
Construction is of plastic, and certainly not a strong seeming one.
|
|
Reviews and specs
|
Galleries
|
Challenges
|
 | 22.3 megapixels 3.2" screen Full frame sensor |
