HP has been plugging away making cameras for the last five years or so, yet many of the main digital camera outlets don't stock them. This is a shame - just because HP's background is in computing rather than optics doesn't mean it can't make a good camera.
The latest Photosmart 735 may look a little bland - there are only a couple of curves to break up the fairly boxy look of this 35mm, compact-size camera - but its specification and performance put it up with many better known brands. As with previous HP cameras, the lens system is from Pentax, the two companies having collaborated on previous cameras, with each bringing its own expertise to the design.
The lens on the Photosmart 735 offers 3x optical zoom and the electronics add a further 5x digital zoom, producing an unusually high 15x total. The camera has a 3-megapixel CCD array, so it can cope with this high level of digital magnification. Other features more often found in higher-end cameras include manual aperture control, as well as several automatic presets for different environments, such as landscape, night-time and portrait photography.
The camera is straightforward to control and has two LCD displays. As well as the normal colour LCD used to view shots and make menu settings, there's a mono LCD status display on the top of the camera. This shows things like the number of shots remaining, battery status and the selected image quality. Buttons ranged around both displays make it easy to set up and change the camera's parameters.
Picture quality is generally very good, with the camera's optics and electronics working well together to produce natural colours and well-defined foregrounds. When set to fully automatic, the camera still manages to make most of the right decisions and is as 'friendly' for the novice photographer who wishes to point and shoot as for the more seasoned user, keen to take more control.
HP includes its Memories Disk with the Photosmart 735, offering basic image manipulation and management. This makes it particularly easy to get pictures off the camera and onto your PC, or further out onto the Internet. InstantShare is a function which uploads selected images to an HP-maintained Web site and automatically sends messages to selected contacts so they can view them directly from there. This saves sending bulky pictures to all your friends, particularly those with dial-up links.
