BenQ - DC C1000 review

BenQ has its finger in a lot of pies, and one of them is digital cameras. It has recently stepped up the ladder in the Great Hunt For Megapixels, coming up with the DC C1000 which churns out ten of them.

The DC C1000 is not going to wow you if stylish hardware is your thing. Its black and silver, plastic and metal casing is not particularly pretty and overall the camera is chunky (89 x 60.5 x 32.7mm) and heavy (140g before you insert the two AA cells that power it). However, we do have to say in its favour that it feels solid in the hand and that its controls are nicely located, for right-handed users anyway.

But if you want all those pixels, a range of options that'll let you play about quite a bit and fairly easy to use controls - and if you aren't interested in splashing out a lot of cash - then this camera is going to attract your attention.

Be aware that pixels aren't everything, and it is annoying that the DC C1000 is stuck with just a 3x optical zoom facility. You can add another 4x with digital zoom but digital zoom is always best left alone as image quality degrades when you use it. Fortunately you can disable it completely on this camera.

We found two other annoyances during testing. The burst mode shoots four images in quick succession, but you don't get a shutter sound to tell you when these are being shot. We also found that indoors the camera is a bit of a let-down with its less-than-wonderful flash.

There are, though, quite a few goodies. There are plenty of 'scene modes': fireworks, sports, text, close-up, sunset, backlight, beach and snow, kids, night scene, landscape and portrait. In addition there are four settings which allow you different amounts of control to configure your own preferences, limiting you to fiddling with aperture, shutter, both of these, or all available settings.

You can resize images on the camera, too. Naturally enough you can only go downwards, and this feature might be handy if your memory cards start to get full and you have some shots you'd rather not delete. You can set your own image of choice for the startup screen too, which gives a little added fun.

The DC C1000 comes with some software to get you started on image management and editing, a carrying case, PC connection cable and a cable to connect the camera to a TV for those all-important family viewings of pictures and video shot during the day.

BenQ - T700 review

Gone are the days when a camera was purchased simply for the range of its functions and the sharpness of its images. In a very crowded and competitive digital camera market, what makes your model stand out above the rest is more often than not style as opposed to substance.

The first thing that strikes you about the BenQ T700 is the shiny attractiveness of its smooth steel finish (it cunningly comes in four shades, ranging from cherry red and silver to iPod white and black) and its wafer thinness: it's a mere 14.9mm thick.

Weighing in at just 180g plus the battery, this 7-megapixel camera is the first of the T series to have a 3-inch touch-screen display and it's acknowledged to be the world's slimmest. This means you have the largest possible preview of your snaps at a screen resolution of 232,000 pixels.

Operating controls are reduced to a minimum, so apart from your on/off and shutter buttons on the top, there's a zoom variation beside the touch screen, alongside menu and playback buttons. Touching the menu button brings up the large scale icons on the display and you can either navigate through them with your finger or by using the supplied touch-pen.

Built-in storage is a paltry 12MB so you'll need to install an SD card of a decent size. Power is supplied via a rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery and you get all the usual extras such as a recharger, pouch, hand strap, USB and AV cables. Although the controls are simple, the T700 employs a top-tier SMC Pentax lens which produces high-contrast images and high-colour saturation.

If your hand is less than steady, the incorporated Super Shake-Free system does help faster moving objects to stay in focus, and still images can be captured via a high light sensitivity portrait mode of ISO1200. In addition there are three movie modes with resolutions of 640 x 480, 320 x 240 and 160 x 128 and a top frame rate of 30fps, all in camcorder quality MPEG4 format. Most of the time you won't even need artificial flash as you can bump the ISO up to 4000.

Once captured, you can then play around with the finished image by adding various stamps and frames, writing memos, or painting and adding signs. Specific areas of the photo can be enlarged by just marking them with your finger and then tapping.